Hayate the Combat Butler Volume 16

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By Kenjiro Hata. Released in Japan as “Hayate no Gotoku!” by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Viz.

This is another fun volume of Hayate. For those who like the series’ goofy otaku humor, there’s jokes galore! If only they were explained by some endnotes. Sigh… My favorite was mocking the ‘Four Heavenly Kings’, which takes swipes at both Pokemon and Megaman. I also love Hibino Fumi to death, even if she’s barely in this volume. Her ability to speak before thinking serves her well.

If you want romantic comedy, that’s in here as well, though of course don’t expect anything approaching resolution. The volume begins by finishing up Hayate and Hina’s date, with both of them suffering from the fact that they can’t read the other’s feelings well. Hayate eventually does manage to win her over, and all is well… oh wait, Hayate also has a habit of being hideously honest, even when the situation calls for subterfuge. Hina is not amused. Oh well, at least she got to see an amusement park.

Perhaps the most startling part of the volume was seeing Yukiji Katsura, everyone’s favorite desperate lush teacher, as a hot young high school student. We’d heard before that Katsura-sensei used to be slightly less… bitter and over the top, but seeing her in flashback as the girl everyone admires in class is still stunning. I also agree with Kaoru-sensei, the idea of Hina turning out like that is very scary indeed.

The best reason to get this volume, though, is the second half, which has a longer story focusing on Izumi Segawa, the goofy airhead of Hinagiku’s three friends. She’s placed surprisingly high in the first popularity poll (even Hata said he was surprised), so this was no doubt created to give her more face time. It works pretty well. We meet her insane father, who is naturally incredibly overprotective (He apparently owns So*y… gosh, I wonder what company that cam be? The asterisk makes it impossible to tell!). And the family ‘butler’ shows up, with his crush on Hayate still very much intact. Throw in Miki and Risa stirring things up for fun, and the realization that Hayate has another (if less obsessed) suitor, and you have the basis for much fun.

Well… mostly much fun. We’ve noticed, starting about Volume 9, that it’s a bad idea to let Hayate have flashbacks to his childhood. We see that again here, as Izumi tries to find a way to change the subject so that she doesn’t have to admit to having a crush on him. She asks about what his ex-girlfriend he’d mentioned was like. We see him think of her, the same princess-curled blonde we’d seen in earlier flashbacks (though we still can’t see her face)… and he starts to cry. He’s not even sure why he’s doing it. Luckily, Izumi giving him a hug to calm him down gets things back into comedy range, but… when is Hata going to show us who that girl is, and why Hayate’s past is so traumatic?

We get the answer in the preview for Volume 17, which shows us it will be there. Hata also apologizes in the author’s notes, noting the next volume will be ‘a major turning point’. And he ain’t kidding. The next volume of Hayate the Combat Butler, continuing into 18, will be far more serious than this series has ever been to date. Meanwhile, this is another light, fun read. It won’t bring in new readers, but its antics are just what fans of the series want to see.

Twin Spica Volume 3

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By Kou Yaginuma. Released in Japan as “Futatsu no Spica” by Media Factory, serialized in the magazine Comic Flapper. Released in North America by Vertical.

As we get into the third volume of Twin Spica, it becomes clear that one of Yaginuma’s strength’s is how to pace things out. I didn’t get this at first, as when I finished the first chapter I felt that the whole ‘Asumi runs away’ was resolved entirely too neatly. But of course it’s not resolved at all, as we see the teacher continuing to show bias against her once she returns – as well as seeing that he’s been ordered to by higher-ups, for reasons unknown. For once, we’re reading a 16-volume series that feels like it’s been plotted out to 16 volumes in advance, rather than one where the editors said “this is a hit, can you add 12 plotlines?”.

One plotline that I’m surprised we haven’t seen yet is the student bullying. Perhaps because Asumi is bullied enough by her teacher, the students here seem to stick together. Not just her circle of friends, either; we see a great scene where the students are all put on a spinning, revolving wheel of death and forced to do math. Asumi, of course, handles the g-force with ease, as we have already seen that physically she is badass. If tiny. When she finishes, the other students crowd around to congratulate her and wonder how she can do such things. They also join Kei is protesting the teacher’s bullying of Asumi. They’re the anti-Gakuen Alice students. (At least so far.)

And a lot of this volume is devoted to showing us that even the cold or ‘villainous’ characters are just human beings after all. Not only is Sano, the aforementioned teacher, being told to try to get Asumi to quit (which to be fair he doesn’t push against too hard), but he then resigns after a brief crisis of faith (involving some backstory for The Lion, the tragic accident that powers much of this series). Asumi comes to realize that he, just like her, is a dreamer who wanted to see humanity get into space, but was simply crushed by events. The best art in the volume shows her confrontation with Sano as he leaves the school, showing that she knows what he’s dreaming of.

We don’t get Mariko’s backstory here, beyond her clearly being rich and lonely, and her parents being very overprotective and wanting to isolate her. But that’s enough for now, and she certainly remains one of the characters I want to see more of (I will admit that their other friend Kei, who is likeable enough, I don’t really feel the same way about.) Mariko needs to open up, and starts to do so here a bit, overpowered by Asumi’s basic niceness (at times this reads very much like a shoujo manga).

There’s more main story here, so we only get one ‘side story’ starring Asumi as a child. This one being a very melancholy tale from her middle school days of her brief friendship with a sickly boy who is the only one besides her that can see Mr. Lion. However, I’m definitely more into the main story by now. I want to see Asumi do more spaceflight stuff, and see more of Mariko. And I definitely want to find out why the higher-ups in the school seem to have it in for Asumi. Is it entirely related to her father’s work on The Lion? In any case, this series continues to be almost impossible to put down.

Toriko Volume 2

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By Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

Though I did greatly enjoy reading this volume of Toriko, I will admit that as a manga, it’s not very filling. A light snack, something to whet the appetite, but I’ll be turning to series like One Piece or Gin Tama if I need a real meal.

OK, enough of the food metaphors. Toriko is, in many ways, a perfect Jump series. It is very much geared to boys. We see lots of fantastical creatures, lots of beating those creatures up, and lots of… well, that’s it, really. The entire volume consists of going on a quest to find this rare but delicious whale, the Toriko world’s equivalent of tiger blowfish, which is not only very easily poisonous but also in a cave surrounded by hideous predators. It’s not something Toriko can do with just Komatsu, so he secures the help of his friend/rival Coco, who is the milder and more sensible counterpart to Toriko’s loud and boisterous self.

The author continues to love drawing this insane, creature-filled world that the leads inhabit, and it’s here that we see his real strength. The creatures and things we see are imaginatively silly and/or dangerous as need be, and of course incredibly tasty as well. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the human cast. Toriko so far hasn’t really found much depth, Komatsu is still pretty much ‘useless cheerleader with no powers’, and Coco is rather dull.

There was also one bit that I found needlessly short-sighted. At one point the dorky sidekick, Komatsu, is literally killed by a ‘firecracker’ Toriko left him to scare off predators. The firecracker turns out to essentially be a bomb, as Komatsu later notes. We get very scary shots of his eardrums rupturing and his heart stopping. Of course, this is only Volume 2, and he’s a main character, so he is immediately resuscitated by a kindly old badass drunk. That’s not my problem. The problem is that Toriko’s reaction to all this is “Oh! A ha ha ha, well, you’re all right now!”. I know that this is meant to be the simple lunkhead shonen hero, but come on. Even Luffy would not give a friend a bomb, kill them by accident, and not feel some remorse.

I wasn’t as fond of the 2nd volume of Toriko as I was the first. But then I’m not exactly the target audience for this series. 10-12-year-old boys are, and I think they will just eat this up. No pun intended.