Moyasimon: Tales of Agriculture Volume 2

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By Masayuki Ishikawa. Released in Japan as “Moyashimon” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Evening. Released in North America by Del Rey.

It seems like it’s been forever since the first volume of Moyasimon hit stores last September, and it may be forever till we see Volume 3 (which isn’t listed on Amazon, and which one bookseller has shipping in April 2011). But for now, we have this volume, and it was well worth the wait, as it’s terrific.

There’s no real ongoing plot per se, as it’s still just seeing the wacky adventures at a Japanese Agricultural college. The joy is in seeing the characters bounce off each other. The deadpan reactions to chaos, meeting the school beauty and discovering she’s just as weird as the rest, attempting to survive the school festival, and of course desperate attempts to earn enough money to get an aphrodisiac.

That last one is especially odd as so far, there’s been no romance in this series, nor does it look like there will be in the foreseeable future. Sure, there’s nice-looking women – in fact, the author really seems to like drawing them, whereas the guys tend to be far more sketchy – and you get the feeling that Tadayasu and Hazuki might make a nice sweet couple if they ever felt that way about each other, but in this volume, you got the feeling that the guys were trying to win the aphrodisiac more for sex as a mythical beast than due to actual desire. Which is likely why Hasegawa held them in such contempt.

Aoi Muto is introduced here, though we still don’t quite have much of a sense of her yet. Clearly she’s very pretty, and we hear the backstory of how she ended up ‘avoiding reality’. And she and Hazuki do provide some fantastic drunken yuri tease, which I’m sure inspired some doujinshi when first seen. Still, she gets more to do than Kei, who takes a leave of absence about 1/3 through this volume for reasons unknown to us. Kei’s role was mostly to tell us about alcohol and be a straight man to the wacky antics, but Tadayasu and Hazuki both fill the straight man role anyway, so he was pretty superfluous. I can only hope when he returns, he’ll be more interesting.

(That sound you just heard was the anvil I just dropped. You’re welcome.)

The original Japanese volume had little character profiles and asides in the margins, which are reproduced here. Much to my surprise, the asides about halfway through start to walk about Moyasimon being released in the US, how they think it will sell, what manga Americans read, that sort of thing. I can only imagine that it was written especially for this volume, and it’s fantastic. I love seeing authors interact with their readership, and Del Rey gives this author a unique voice in which to do so.

In fact, the whole volume is well done. All the little niggly editorial issues I’ve had with Zetsubou-sensei, another Del Rey title, don’t apply here at all. The translation is smooth and flows freely, even in the long, long lectures that take up much of the book. There are fewer notes required, but they’re either in the endnotes at the back or the author explains them in his margins. And the redesigned cover is cute and stands out. If this is why each volume takes so long to mcome out here, I can put up with a wait.

With a lot of terrific humor (and, frankly, a lot of lecturing about microbacteria – you have to put up with the science lectures if you read this manga), funny characters, beautiful women, and just plain silliness (one chapter is told from the POV of the microbes, bitching about a recent disinfection that wiped out many colonies), this is a terrific Del Rey title and great example of seinen. I really hope it sells well enough for Del Rey to keep putting it out. Definitely recommended.

Gatcha Gacha Volume 5

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By Yutaka Tachibana. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Melody. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

This review is utterly filled with spoilers for this entire volume.

Having teased us for four volumes, this is the one where most of the plot guns are fired off. We left off last time at the culture festival, where Yabe ran into a girl who looked just like Motoko’s dead older sister Kanako. But… Kanako’s dead, right? After all, Motoko would never lie to us! Motoko, sadly, is AWOL, cutting school to try to figure out what’s going on, while Yabe continues his clean-cut look, an obvious sign that he’s not over Kanako at all.

This volume, as with all of this series, lives and dies by its four leads. Yabe, knowing that he’d be better off with Yuri but also knowing that means very little to him. Hirao, still trying to make Yuri happy while being unable to tell her of his own feelings. Yuri, pinballing from one emotional extreme to another as she ends up sobbing by the end of the volume (and we’re reminded of Motoko’s warning to Yabe, “You’re gonna make Yuri cry in the end. 100% guaranteed.”). And Motoko, doing what she does best: playing the villain, hitting on attractive women, and doing her best to protect Yuri from the inevitable.

Surprisingly, Kanako actually plays a large part in this as well. She knows that she has amnesia, and can figure out fairly quickly that Yabe and Motoko are connected with her past. But she doesn’t, at first, want anything to do with it. Considering how Tachibana portrayed her in the past volumes, it’s very odd to see her handled sympathetically in this one. After all, her past involved incestuous jealousy and attempted murder. Why would anyone want her to get that back?

My favorite scene in the volume is probably when Motoko – after 3 tries in previous books – finally tells everyone the truth of what happened with Kanako that evening when she “collapsed”, and how the entire family conspired to “kill” her. Yabe is, understandably, furious, and punches Motoko to the ground with a right cross. One can argue about whether or not Motoko deserved this, but the telling part is Hirao’s inner narration – Motoko played up her nastier side to get herself hit, as she hated herself for what they did. But again, I could spend several blog posts just analyzing Motoko.

This all comes to a head in the finale of this volume, where Kanako is kidnapped by the gay street gang that is after Sekine. By now Sekine has become a secondary target, and their main goal is to beat Motoko and Yabe to death, by any means necessary. (As I noted in Volume 3, this series is not known for its tolerance of gay men, or writing them as anything other than crappy cliches. It’s a major fault.) Unfortunately for them, when they knocked Kanako out to kidnap her, they also provided the impetus for her memories to return.

Interestingly, she’s NOT immediately psychotic and evil again, as her ‘new self’ is fusing with the old, and her mind flashes back to her treatment of Yabe, calling it into question. She’s convinced he won’t come to rescue her – after all, she did stab him – and when he does, she ends up confused and in tears, convinced that he’s now doing this to hurt her. It’s very well-written, and gives us hope for future volumes, even as she reverts to her Motoko-obsessed selfish self at the end.

So Volume 5 is over, and Yuri and Yabe lasted precisely two volumes as a couple. Yuri’s curse strikes again! Of course, there *is* a non-bad boy who’s in love with her. But he’s a wuss. Will Volume 6 be the kick in the head Hirao needs to finally get his girl? … Wait, no one cares about the guys in this manga (least of all the author, who notes this several times). What will happen with Yuri and Motoko? We shall see… In the meantime, this is probably my favorite volume of Gatcha Gacha to date, providing humor, drama, and tons of soap opera.

Children of the Sea Volume 3

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By Daisuke Igarashi. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Ikki. Released in North America by Viz.

There’s actually quite a bit going on in this volume of Children of the Sea, which surprised me as the feel of the book is that things are moving at a very slow pace. There’s even flashbacks interspersed throughout, usually a sign that the author doesn’t want the main characters to get where they’re going quite yet. But here, it actually serves to flesh out Jim and Anglade, in preparation for future events.

I have the say, the more I see of Anglade, the less I like him. He’s really coming off as a creepy guy, both in the flashbacks where Dehdeh points out that he’ll be nothing but trouble to the current arc where he cheerfully wonders if Ruka will die, he’s a character designed for ambiguity. And I actually feel a little bad for Jim, who spends most of the volume getting trashed for not thinking big enough and not doing enough. I’m still not entirely sure who ‘the good guys’ are here.

Well, we can always call Ruka one of the good guys. Maybe. She’s still the audience identification character, which is bizarre considering everything she goes through in this book. After the climax of the last book she’s still not quite all there, though she’s convinced she has to go out to the sea with Anglade and Umi. (I swear, I’m starting to feel bad for her parents. Living with Ruka must drive them nuts.) She gets several stunning sequences where she’s just swimming through the water looking at the ocean life, including one from the perspective of ‘her soul’ that’s both stunning and intensely creepy.

She’s still fascinated by Umi, but he’s not quite himself either this chapter, having seemingly forgotten about Sora. Things aren’t helped by Anglade, who makes Ruka doubt whether anything Umi feels for her is real or just in her head. (That said, there’s a fantastic shot of Ruka and Umi on the boat holding hands that’s really quite sexy. Ruka looks almost post-coital.) Of course, Ruka’s need to understand Umi is the plot of Children of the Sea, so no doubt we will see more of this in the future, assuming she survives the cliffhanger. Well, OK, we saw her as an adult in the beginning of the series… way to spoil, Igarashi-san!

Much as I love the mood of this manga, and the art style, which is very distinctive, I have to admit that my eyes sometimes glaze over at the science. But I think that’s merely my own disinterest rather than any fault on the part of the author. Certainly when the plot turns to mythology, such as the description of the world towards the end, the images evoked are riveting. I also enjoyed the cantankerous Dehdeh, introduced here, though I hope she’ll avoid becoming the standard ‘wise woman’ from so much other media.

Really, I’m not sure it’s possible to read Children of the Sea per se. You just have to let it wash over you and engulf you in its story. Like Ruka, we’re trying to figure it out, fascinated and scared by some of the things we see… and trying not to drown. Haven’t drowned yet, though, but I’ll get another chance with Volume 4, which I eagerly await.