Manga the week of 9/1

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Ah, it’s one of THOSE first weeks of the month. Well, according to Midtown. Generally I’ve found that when the 1st comes on a Wednesday, publishers regard it as an unofficial 5th week. That seems to be the case here, as Midtown lists no Viz. Luckily, we have some other neat stuff.

Vertical has Chi’s Sweet Home, which I reviewed earlier today. KITTY!

Dark Horse has Volume 15 of Oh My Goddess, another in their series of re-releases in unflipped style. If I recall, this wraps up the ‘Queen Sayoko’ arc. They’ve also got another Evangelion spinoff starting, this one a shoujo horror tale that ran in Kadokawa’s otaku-girl-oriented Asuka. If you want your Evangelion with lots more Shinji and Kaworu, this is for you.

I know little about DMP’s yaoi release of the week, The Tyrant Falls In Love, except that it apparently appears in a BL magazine in Japan called ‘Gush’. Nothing else to add except I love the idea of a BL magazine called Gush. For one thing, it keeps the title away from Ero magazines…

And then there’s a brace of Tokyopop. A new series called Witch of Artemis, from Mag Garden’s Comic Blade. More Hakusensha shoujo to keep me happy, with Karakuri Odette 4, Happy Cafe 4, and Portrait of M & N 3. Fans of Karin, aka Chibi Vampire, will enjoy a one-shot spinoff called Airmail, featuring short stories with the same cast. And there’s a new Alice in the Country of Hearts, which I keep not getting around to reviewing. I sort of put it in the Vampire Knight category. Yes, I know its flaws are obvious and blatant, but OMNOMNOM what a fast and addicting read!

Chi’s Sweet Home Volume 2

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By Konami Kanata. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Morning. Released in North America by Vertical.

Another volume of Chi, and it’s just as cute. Chi’s personality is easily identifiable to cat lovers, especially her stubbornness combined with her intractability. Much of what makes this manga fun is seeing the various expressions of surprise and happiness Kanata-san draws on Chi’s face – along with the expressions of being incredibly pissed off. Seeing Chi defend her home from interlopers was highly amusing.

Speaking of said interloper, we get a new character introduced here in the form of a huge black cat that’s wandering the neighborhood stealing food. At first the cat looks to be some sort of villain character, but as time goes on and Chi meets him a few more times, it’s clear that Blackie (which I believe is the cat’s name) is going to be more of a mentor figure for Chi. Already we’re seeing the difference between kittens like Chi with very strong ties to their owner, and cats like Blackie who strive to be ‘independent’.

Chi does develop a bit here. As time has gone by and her life with the Yamadas becomes more dominant, she’s no longer troubled by constant memories of her old family. Though we do see her instinctual need for mother love pop up at times. Likewise, at one point Chi escapes from the Yamada’s yard, and we suspect another long ‘where am I?’ arc, but Chi has learned from past adventures, and is able to quickly find her way back.

If there’s a fault to this manga, it’s not one of the writer or publisher. It’s just that Chi’s Sweet Home can be a bit much to take in one volume’s sitting. I can see how insanely popular this is in the pages of Weekly Morning, where it runs in between such titles as Vagabond and Kinou Nani Tabeta?. But I get exhausted reading 150 pages of pure kitten love. I have similar issues with other ‘one mode’ manga which serve a similar function in other weekly magazines, such as Bobobobo-bobobo in Jump. (Weekly Morning was also the home of What’s Michael?, so it’s no stranger to cat manga. Even though What’s Michael? is a lot weirder than Chi will ever be.)

However, the collection is incredibly sweet, and the coloring and translation are top notch. (I’ve grown used to Chi’s baby accent, mostly as she seems to be using it less and less as the books go on.) I would happily recommend this collection to any family who wants their kids to have a nice comic to read, or to those who like cute gag manga, or just to cat lovers.

Excel Saga Volume 16

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By Rikdo Koshi. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young King OURS. Released in North America by Viz.

Welcome, my friends, to the Teriha arc! Excel Saga has turned another corner, and now we get to see whether it can do something it’s never really tried to do before. Namely, whether you can have 4 1/2 volumes of Excel Saga without Excel.

We left off in Vol. 15 with the realization that Il Palazzo had kidnapped Ropponmatsu I and is using her core with an Excel body as his company president. Sadly, the people closest to Excel, namely Hyatt and Elgala, don’t notice the difference, despite the complete personality change. Meanwhile, the real Excel has managed to escape from her hellish priestly torments, only to be near-dead in a gutter, where she is found by Umi. Umi takes her back to Shiouji’s, and it becomes rapidly clear that Excel has lost her memory.

This is not the first time we’ve seen memory loss as a plot point in Excel Saga, and it’s not really a surprise. Il Palazzo has had holes in his memory the entire series, and it’s been implied that Excel herself in ‘normal’ mode is also forgetting a lot of her past, whatever that may be. Unlike the 2-chapter memory loss in Volume 4, however, this one is a biggie. She not only can’t remember who she is, but her personality is totally different. Meek and introverted, she is the diametric opposite of the Excel we all know.

Eventually it gets out that Umi has brought home a ‘stray’. Shiouji wants her thrown out, but Miwa overrules everything, and enjoys groping Excel’s breasts just as much as she does Umi’s. So Excel stays, and is given the name ‘Teriha’ since she can’t remember her own. (To avoid confusion in future volumes, I’ll continue to call her Teriha as long as she’s lost her memory, and will call the fake Excel ‘RopponExcel’ to emphasize who she really is.)

This is not to say that Teriha is a complete blank slate. She clearly has the memories, buried beneath the surface. Watching a shot of Il Palazzo on TV (advertising his company) leads to a major freak out, as she knows he’s important but can’t recall why. We also see that she’s still hardcore about saving and/or rescuing any money she can find, and is very good at selling merchandise, even to otaku. Excel is there somewhere, buried under Teriha’s memory fuzzed persona.

It’s not all Teriha this volume, though. Kabapu and his team are at a low ebb, as he’s lost all his power, influence, and money. The shock of this seems to have a physical effect on him, as he ages rapidly throughout the volume, to the point where he’s a shrunken, wasted old man at the end. The security team are sticking by him, but that’s more due to inertia and the need for paying jobs than any loyalty. Momochi DOES have loyalty, and is worried about him, but she’s Momochi, so we really know nothing about her and her inner mind’s workings at all. IN a real sense, Kabapu spends this volume alone. And really, he sort of deserves it. I’ve noted before that he does villainous things, and we see many of those here in flashback, showing his bribery and dirty tricks.

RopponExcel, Hyatt, and Elgala are still living the high-powered exec lifestyle, although Elgala is bitching about it, to no one’s surprise. We also see how unobservant both Hyatt and Elgala are when a giant power failure shuts down the city. They’re in a glass elevator on the outside of the building at the time, and not only does it stop, but RopponExcel collapses as well. Elgala tries to lift her, but finds she now weighs almost a ton (herniating her disc as she tries it, too). Eventually, RopponExcel wakes up and manages to save them by ripping the elevator to the correct floor with her brute strength. Elgala stares, wondering when her sempai got superpowers. (She clearly needs to read previous volumes, but even Excel was never THAT strong.)

The power failure also catches Iwata & company, who are out celebrating New Year’s and destroying priceless national treasures for the lulz. And, for once, we actually get a little revelation, as we see the cause of the whole thing was Miwa, in her own underground base, attempting to power… something. Or, more likely, someone. Miwa once again manages to be the closest this series will have to a final boss character. What’s more, due to Kabapu’s flashbacks, we see that she was a meek, shy young woman 20 years earlier. Something happened after her husband disappeared to make her what she is today.

(The fan theory is that she is her husband in some way, be it bodyswap, mindswap, or what have you. This is easily the most popular Excel Saga fan theory out there, topping all the Solaria stuff, and as has been noted, it’ll be more of a surprise if it’s NOT true.)

Rest assured, by the way, that there is still a lot of comedy in this volume. The entire chapter featuring Iwata and Sumiyoshi having an eating contest, run by Ms. Manager (still not Emeraldas, in case you were wondering) is hysterical. Watanabe has completely turned to evil, and is all the funnier because of it. And Teriha is dragged to Comiket by Umi, and forced to dress up as Cure White (man, this came out back when Pretty Cure’s FIRST season was new!). She’s a little freaked out by it all, but does note that the uniform is… the wrong color somehow.

I’ll be honest, I love all of Excel Saga, but this arc has issues. Notably, Teriha is so passive that it makes you long for her memory to return with the fire of a thousand suns. She’s really far better being manic. Still, it’s not happening anytime soon, so instead we’ll prepare for Excel Saga 17, where Kabapu may actually die!