Seiho Boys High School! Volume 3

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By Kaneyoshi Izumi. Released in Japan as “Men’s Kou” by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Bessatsu Comic (“Betsucomi”). Released in North America by Viz.

After the gut-wrenching plotline of Volume 2, I was ready for something a bit lighter, and indeed this is a bit lighter than Volume 2. At the same time, though, it draws heavily on that, with Maki being told my everyone in the world that he has to try to move on, but finding that it’s not really as simple as that. Things get even worse when he meets a surfer girl whose name is very familiar…

First, though, we have the comedy. This features Miyaji, the girl we’d met at the end of Volume 2. She’s still crushing a bit on the handsome, smart, and athletic Kamiki, and wants him to treat her different than he does everyone else. So when they decide to spice up their school play by adding an actual female (pretending to be a male in drag), hijinks naturally ensue. Honestly, this was the story that read the most like ‘typical’ shoujo, and you’d expect that in typical shoujo, Miyaji would be the heroine whose life we follow. Here it’s the guys, though, and we discover that class jerk Nogami is not the only one who has an unerring ability to ruin relationships by simply opening his mouth.

The other non-Maki chapter features Nogami, who presumably saw Kamiki being tactless in front of the girl who likes him and thought “Hey, that’s MY schtick!”. So we get another chapter featuring his passive-aggressive (emphasis on the aggressive) relationship with the school nurse. Being a teacher/student romance, naturally she is getting pressured to leave for the sake of the students, despite the fact that no romance has actually occurred. Nogami is having none of this, of course, and refuses to read her ‘final letter’ to him, most likely as it’s saying goodbye. This all culminates in her final address to her students, interrupted by Nogami in an epically awful way. Naturally, this is all part of a plan to make her admit she wants to stay. The ending itself felt a bit rushed, and the author noted it wasn’t what she originally planned. On the other hand, the last line was great.

Then there’s Maki. I realize that this is far more likely to occur in Japan than in North America, but running into a teenage girl with the exact same name as your dead junior high crush has to be a giant monumental coincidence. It doesn’t help that she has a similar grumpy demeanor. (She’s also quite busty, something I noted only as it’s rather rare in shoujo manga. Counting the school nurse, this now makes two women in the series with that attribute. No wonder the author notes that everyone doubts this is a shoujo manga…) Maki finds himself fascinated by her, but as always is putting up a front of ‘nice guy’ that girls find off-putting.

Maki, frustrated by his friends heaping abuse on him for his lack of a love life, asks her to pretend to be his girlfriend. She does this, despite having accused him of being gay multiple times (she even calls him an uke, and is rather startled when he manhandles a guy attempting to grab her with ease). She also calls herself a BL fan, and Maki is so desperate for her companionship (it seems) that he starts trying to molest Kamiki to attract her interest. Of course, this culminates in her tearing him apart for pretending to have a girlfriend without bothering to even hold her hand. And it becomes clear that she’s just as smitten with him as he is with her.

This was my favorite part of the manga, but it’s still very odd. Erika’s similarities with Maki’s former girlfriend are eerie, and I keep thinking that there’s more behind this than there actually is. Her facial expressions, especially when she noted someone would be miserable with him as a boyfriend, read very much like she has a backstory of her own that will hold things up as much as Maki’s will. And once more we see Maki, who is outwardly the perfect high school boyfriend, giving off auras of ‘I am preoccupied with something else’. Luckily, he seems to finally be trying to work past this, and asks her to give him more time to make this work. Of course, he’s going to have to mention his past at some point, especially as Erika finds her namesake’s picture on his phone right at the end.

Arguably the main thrust of this volume relies too heavily on coincidence, but that is the problem with a lot of fiction, and it’s not like I’m asking the series to be completely realistic. More to the point, this series has some of the best characters I’ve seen in shoujo in a while, being handsome guys, outwardly great, but all with quirks that makes it easy to see why there are immense problems with having any of them as a boyfriend. Maki in particular is riveting, and I root for him to make things work with Erika while realizing that there are immense problems with it happening. More to the point, anyone who ever drops a series after one volume should read this as a great example of why you should give it a bit more of a chance.

Kamisama Kiss Volume 1

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By Julietta Suzuki. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz.

I’ve been greatly pleased with the release of Suzuki-san’s prior series, Karakuri Odette, so this new one was a must buy. It’s doing pretty well in Japan, already being her longest series to date, as it passed Odette’s volume length earlier this year. As for the story itself, it seems to be a lot more traditional shoujo than Odette was, but that’s not to denigrate it – this is a lot of sweet fun, it’s just fairly fluffy.

Well, as fluffy as a series that’s about yokai can be. For those who were reading Natsume’s Book of Friends but wanted less melancholia and more romantic overtones, this may be the series for you. Nanami finds herself homeless after her deadbeat dad abandons her, and after saving a man from a dog, somehow ends up as the deity of a local temple. (If it seems I went by that too fast, I was merely imitating the author – the backstory is dealt with in 10 pages at most.) There we meet two cute will-o’-the-wisps who are delighted to see her, and a fox-spirit named Tomoe who is far less so. But he’s cute.

Nanami and Tomoe’s relationship is very much out of the old-school book of manga cliches, with both of them being the sort who will overhear each other at the worst possible time, be stubborn about any feelings they may have, and secretly worry. Of course, a lot of this may have been deliberate – Karakuri Odette was notable for having very little romantic interaction, so it’s possible that this is for all the readers who had demanded that Odette and Asou get together. Tomoe in particular seems to be very jealous and possessive of any other guy he sees as flirting with Nanami – even if they’re actually bullying her. Clearly softening his prickly character is one of the goals of this book.

There are some healthy doses of humor in the book – I particularly liked Tomoe’s stunned face when he’s forced to do as Nanami says – but this is more of a sweet and mellow work so far, despite the two leads doing their best to shout at each other. Judging by what Tomoe says, it would appear a great deal of the series might be helping out with romantic entanglements, and we see that towards the end of the first volume, as a yokai princess requests help in reuniting with a human boy she met years ago.

I will admit, this feels slighter than most series, but it is Volume 1, and I usually give these sorts of things a while to win me over. But if you like yokai, or typical Hana to Yume romances (stubborn positive girl x grumpy negative guy), you’ll like this.

Gakuen Alice Vol. 13

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By Tachibana Higuchi. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

After the huge emotional gutwrench of the last volume, it was obvious that this one would be a breather, and it is, for the most part. There are no major villains here, and the plot is mostly about recovery from the last adventure and school shenanigans. We see how Valentine’s Day operates at the school, we watch Mikan’s class try to pay tribute to those graduating, and we meet a young boy whose Alice has left him as he grows up – as some Alices do – and so he has to leave the school.

This last one struck a chord with me, as it becones another reminder of how horrible this whole setup is regarding the school and Alices. Mikan is at first consoled by the fact that Hosshan (the boy who’s lost his Alice) will be going home and reunited with his happy family. Then she’s promptly informed that his family hasn’t been spending as many letters recently, so he’s wary of that, and more importantly, the community he’ll be going back into will likely resent him. Towns are apparently paid a government stipend for having an Alice at the academy, and when they leave, that’s less money for the community.

Then of course there’s Valentine’s Day, which Mikan thinks will be normal and sweet, but is anything but. I was surprised to see the manga talk so blatantly about all the students trying to use mind control candy to get another to like them, but then again, Gakuen Alice is a title that mines its humor and heart from hideously traumatic ideas and events. This doesn’t even count the girls wanting Luca to wear rabbit ears, or ex-girlfriends trying to give a little payback revenge, or even Hotaru, who simply wants revenge with no feelings behind it whatsoever.

There are some nice character moments in here. I liked Hotaru being mildly more tolerant of Mikan’s clinginess after seeing her near death the last volume, something that Mikan then proceeds to abuse horribly. Tono also seems to have worked out Mikan’s past, and is justifiably worried for her. Sometimes this doesn’t always work – the graduation story was the weakest of the volume, and I felt that the backstory between Curly and Mindreader-kun felt rather tacked on in an effort to give that chapter more emotional depth. I did like seeing his blank smiling face with an ‘angry mark’, though.

After the high point of Volume 12, this inevitably seems a bit of a letdown. But hey, it’s only brief – the next volume will introduce Luna, who is the next big challenge for Mikan and her friends. As I think I’ve finally grown used to this deconstruction of ‘superhero school’ and its close look at bullying and manipulation, I am looking forward to more. Which is good, as I’m behind, and Vol. 14 is sitting here waiting to be read.