Manga the week of 8/4

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Midtown gets in everything I got this week, plus everything Diamond’s other folks got this week, plus the normal next week stuff. If you buy your manga at Midtown, cry. Like a girl.

If you like gay prison fantasy, I hear that 801 Media’s Under Grand Hotel is right up your alley. It’s got a larger number of pages, so is also more expensive, be advised. Fans have apparently been waiting for this one.

On the Del Rey front, there’s a pile of titles, which is reassuring considering the recent news, both bad and nonexistent. Tsubasa’s penultimate volume, and another Negima volume which is a must for fans of albino woobie girl Ako Izumi. More Zetsubou-sensei, which I still love to bits despite my ongoing editorial issues with Del Rey. The final volumes of Mushishi, which gets a giant 3-in-1 omnibus, and Le Chevalier D’Eon, which was far along enough not to need one. School Rumble also gets a 3-in-1, though it has several volumes to go before it ends. Four-Eyed Prince manages to be the only series I know of to be licensed from Nakayoshi’s offshoot Nakayoshi Lovely, winner of the girliest magazine title ever award back in 2007. And a new shonen debut, Code: Breaker, from the author of Samurai Deeper Kyo.

And then there’s Tokyopop. More titles ending, as This Ugly Yet Beautiful World and KimiKiss both wrap up. The return of more long-lost series with Your & My Secret (10 months) and Genju no Seiza (2 years). Always glad to see anything from Akita Shoten’s Bonita line. V.B. Rose is still awesome and a must buy for shoujo fans, and I’m sure Gakuen Alice will be as involved as ever.

And then there’s Qwasar of Stigmata, perhaps the most infamous title to come out next week. From Akita Shoten’s Champion Red, home to Franken Fran (and why this is licensed and FF isn’t is beyond me), and from the mangaka who brought you the Mai Otome manga (which, trust me, was far worse than the excellent anime) comes this series, which bills itself on Wikipedia as the first mainstream manga to use breast milk as a major plot point. And I use the word ‘plot’ loosely here. I admit I was rather stunned to see this licensed, but then Media Blasters did put out 12 Eiken manga here, so what do I know? For those of you who love titles like not simple and Twin Spica… this may be the polar opposite of those.

Book Girl and the Suicidal Mime

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By Mizuki Nomura. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen Press.

I must admit, when I first saw that this series was coming out, I thought that it would be a lot more ‘moe’ than it turned out to be. Light novels in Japan have trended towards this in the last several years, with variations on ‘Normal guy meets girl with (insert plot point here). Will they get together with the help of their wacky classmates?’. Luckily, at least in the first volume, Book Girl is nothing like this.

I think I’m going to have to face up to the fact that I need to get a copy of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human. Between this book and Zetsubou-sensei, I feel like I’m just missing out on a lot of references when I read about it. Of course, I’m probably learning the wrong lesson here, as one of the main points that Book Girl makes (in order to emphasize a greater one) is that Dazai wrote tons of stuff, and that perhaps too much attention is paid to No Longer Human by depressed and emotional readers. Still, you get the sense throughout the book of the power of Dazai’s earlier novel, and much of the plot riffs around it.

The titular Book Girl herself is not the main character here, and functions more as a Poirot, popping up whenever it’s time to move the plot along or explain things. Touko can be slightly demanding, but I never got a sense of her being a total brat the way that I did with Haruhi Suzumiya in her earlier novels. You can see why Konoha is sometimes annoyed by her, but you can also see why he sticks around. Besides being an excuse to continue his writing, she’s also fun to be around, and surprisingly philosophical. Plus her namedropping of both Eastern and Western literature is fun, though I question some of her taste (Barbara Cartland?).

The main plot involves a cute little girl of the bubbly pixie type, who has asked the Book Club to write letters for her to give to a guy she likes, as she thinks they will do a better job than she would herself. The entire plot as ‘disaster’ written all over it from the moment you see it, of course, but you keep being tricked about just how big a disaster it is. At the start of the book you think we’re going to be in for a lot of wacky misunderstandings and crossed wires. Then you wonder if the author is going for a Cyrano plot.

However, the book is not called ‘Suicidal Mime’ because it’s trying to be cute. And I’m impressed that it actually emphasizes both words equally (mime in this case being akin to ‘wearing a mask and acting out a role’), as thoughts of suicide as well as pretending to be a normal person when you’re secretly thinking differently are both given equally strong emphasis, both on people we expect such as the flashback characters, as well as surprises – such as the narrator.

The themes in this book resonate perfectly with your typical teenager, which is I think why it makes a perfect license for Yen. The entire thread of ‘I am different than everyone else and NO ONE MUST EVER KNOW’ is something everyone who’s ever been a teen can identify with, and the book handles it well. (Yes, there is a mystery here too, but the mystery is, in my opinion, only a plot device to move the characterization along.) That and the YA-friendly cover design make me hope that this takes off in the way that LNs designed for otaku over here have not. There’s several plot points that are dropped here but left for future books, as it’s clear that the author was commissioned for a series from the start. I look forward to reading the next one immensely.

Ugly Duckling’s Love Revolution Volume 1

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By Yuuki Fujinari, based on a game by GungHo Online Entertainment. Released in Japan as “Otometeki Koi Kakumei Love Revo!!” by Enterbrain, serialized in the magazine Comic B’s-Log. Released in North America by Yen Press.

Believe it or not, despite the obvious ‘based on a work by (company name)’ credit on the front cover, I didn’t actually realize that this manga was based on a date sim game. Of course, now I feel stupid, because not only is it insanely obvious, but it also explains the manga’s lack of backstory and lack of plot. It’s fleshing out the bits in between the game sections, and therefore can’t advance much of a plot. It is, in other words, pure service.

The premise of the game (which is merely implied in the manga, irritatingly so) is that the heroine, Hitomi, used to be young and cute but then discovered the wonders of sweets and is now very overweight. Luckily, she is at a school with a ton of incredibly hot guys, who are there to help her lose weight and exercise. Perhaps she can even fall in love with one of them!

I will admit, you really do get a sense of Hitomi’s weight problem here. Most anime and manga, when they have characters who are pudgy or fat, tend to fudge this a little, having people say so but merely being less stick-thin than everyone else, or having them be tubby yet cute. (Satsuki Yotsuba from Negima is an excellent example.) Hitomi does not suffer from that. She’s not only huge, she also has a sort of pug nose that makes her whole face seem squinty and pinched (we never see her eyes as more than dots). Interestingly, we don’t actually see her eating a lot – the few points where she mentions diet and exercise, she is able to keep her willpower and avoid sweets. Presumably that’s because the manga is following the ‘good ending’ path.

I’m not certain which guy she’ll end up with here, or even if the manga will bother to pick a guy. It could simply be left open-ended, so as not to upset girls who picked another guy to end up with in the game. It’s also somewhat irrelevant, as these guys are really, really dull. The fact that this is a heroine among a bunch of guys does not change the fact that this is a datesim, much like Kanon or Clannad (though with far less soul crushing angst). So you have a wide variety of guys to choose from, depending on your fantasy. The stoic respectable leader, the cute shouta, the yakuza hair, the sassy teacher, the vaguely ill bookworm… all these characters are here for your love love needs.

None of them are fleshed out, though. I’ve no idea if they get more characterization in the game or not, but it is quite frustrating as a manga on its own. This title simply doesn’t work without its parent to refer to. As a complement to a game, I imagine it does its job adequately, giving us more scenes of the guys in action at school (Hitomi doesn’t even appear beyond a cameo in the first chapter). And the guys seem handsome enough – despite the lack of BL in this series, I can see why it ended up in Enterbrain’s BL-friendly Comic B’s-Log. As a manga, though, I can’t recommend it, unless you’ve already played this in Japanese. There’s just not enough going on, and the guys are cyphers.