Manga the week of 9/29

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Let’s start with the not-Tokyopop stuff. Bandai has Volume 3 of Gundam-00 Season 2, which should definitely please the numerologists among you. Given this runs in Magazine E-No, I’ve decided to rename it Gundam For Airports.

Dark Horse has Volume 36 or Oh My Goddess, which will probably be a nice comforting relaxing read for me, despite containing none of the Keiichi/Belldandy sex marathon that readers have been waiting for for about 22 years now.

I’m not sure what Digital Manga Publishing’s Seven Days – Monday→Thursday is all about, but any title containing an arrow is a winner in my book. Also, it runs in a magazine called Craft, so perhaps you could use it as gateway yaoi for knitters.

And then there’s Tokyopop’s pile o’ titles. I’ve discussed how much I like Shinobi Life and Maid-sama before. Tokyopop’s experimenting with Demon Sacred, releasing the first two volumes at 5.99 each. It’s old-style shoujo from LaLa, and quite intriguing. And of course there’s Hetalia Axis Powers. It was only two years ago that I was walking all over NYAF telling everyone and their brother to license this. Now Tokyopop has it, and I imagine it should do pretty well for them. Oddly, I’ve still never read it – I was recommending purely on hearing of the fanbase. Now I’ll see what the fuss is about.

Bunny Drop Volume 2

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By Yumi Unita. Released in Japan as “Usagi Drop” by Shodensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Feel Young. Released in North America by Yen Press.

The second volume of Bunny Drop reminds you that parenting is a never-ending process of trying to remember 80,000 little things. Just when Daikichi feels he’s got it together with cooking and nursery school, he finds he has to get Rin into a good primary school, and find out what sort of hobbies she likes so she can have some good well-rounded activities. Heck, he can’t even remember to bring a camera to her graduation!

Still, Daikichi is in general a nice, dependable, rock solid sort of dad, bumbling on the surface but usually understanding what needs to be done fairly quickly. In a way, he’s almost idealized, but then this is a manga written for the magazine Feel Young, which is marketed towards young women in their mid to late 20s. Just as titles like Margaret and ShoComi feature either cutie-pie nice guys or sexy jerks with hearts of gold, Daikichi represents a fantasy figure for the Feel Young reader. He’s more realistic, of course, not being devastatingly handsome, and awkward around women, but he’s got the makings of a great husband and father.

Not that Rin isn’t a major part of this volume as well. After dealing with major life-changing tragedies last volume, she’s settled in to being far more of a typical young girl here. And just as we follow Daikichi working out what parents have to deal with when raising kids, we see Rin dealing with what kids have to go through – peer pressure, popularity based on looks, and of course wanting to grow up as fast as possible. (And frankly, I thought Rin’s tricked out hairstyle Daikichi gave her was great. Also love the Sukeban Deka ref.)

The main plot point in this volume, besides the usual ‘single dad raising little girl’ stuff, is finding and meeting Rin’s mom. Who proves to be a less than likeable person, but then this is a long-running series, and I’m sure we’ll see her again. Daikichi comes into the meeting with her with some expectations that are pretty much shattered, and his thought processes while Rin’s mother is talking are the funniest part of the book, in a darkly cruel way. Sometimes young people aren’t ready to be parents, and the combination of selfishness and self-hatred we see from Masako underlines that. Clearly we’re going to see more of her, but in the meantime she does inspire Daikichi to make the decision to be a permanent parent, and not just take care of Rin ‘for the time being’.

This is a slow-moving series, so the twice-a-year release from Yen, while financially sensible, can be frustrating. I was expecting there to be a romance starting between Daikichi and the divorced mom he’s bonding with, but that’s clearly not the focus of this series if it ever does happen. Instead, it’s simply a sweet manga about a nice guy and his cute girl, filled with sweet moments. Which is fine with me.

Itazura Na Kiss Volume 3

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By Kaoru Tada. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Bessatsu Margaret (“Betsuma”). Released in North America by Digital Manga Publishing.

Come on, Tada-san, throw me a bone. I realize I said in my last review of this title that it was basically like drinking raw shoujo straight from the tap, but even so, this is ridiculous.

The problem is not really Kotoko, who is pretty much the same throughout this vo0lume. The pacing of this series is realistic yet also slow, so as we head into the 2nd year of college Kotoko’s lack of maturity niggles a bit more. Still, she’s a shoujo heroine, so you pretty much take simple yet happy as a default option. She did briefly show that she can do OK if she applies herself, when she studied for her English final so she stayed in the same class as Naoki, and she was good (if panicky) in a crisis, but she’s still pretty much a huge flake.

The problem is Naoki. He is developing, and we see it. He’s starting to deal with the fact that he’s essentially still adrift in life, and tries to make a clean break by moving out and living on his own. Which is exactly what he needed to do, so no issues there. But man, what a stoneface. The only time we see him show emotion is when he’s pissed off. His moments of contemplation are entirely from Kotoko’s point of view, and reveal nothing to us of his thought processes. Even in the final pages, where he thanks Kotoko for everything she did, doesn’t seem to move him into a smile.

These chapters ran in Betsuma in late 1991, and shoujo was clearly another world then. Nowadays publishers know that you need to pay attention to other demographics while still remaining true to your core readership. Jump, for example, has a large female readership, as any cursory examination of all the Gintama yaoi at Comiket should tell you. Likewise, many guys these days are fans of shoujo and shoujo magazines (including myself). Here, though, we see Naoki only through Kotoko’s eyes. He is a deep, unfathomable mystery, and we get few to no hints or reassurance that he even cares that Kotoko exists. Hell, even when they’re forced to spend the night in the same bed, we don’t get the standard shot of him watching her sleep with a sweet look on his face.

This does help to keep the suspense going – unlike many other shoujo manga, you can easily see why Kotoko has no self-confidence in their relationship – but it does make for very frustrating reading. Of course, it’s also very well-crafted, and a page-turner as well, so everything balances out. I thought we had one too many rivals show up by the end of this book, but that’s OK. The pure shoujo title continues to mine a deep, rich vein of girly romance. If you can put up with the lead being a ditz even now that she’s headed into her twenties, and the hero being so hard to read he needs a Naoki for Dummies book, then this is still highly entertaining.