One Piece Volume 44

4 Replies

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

First of all, I realize that warning about spoilers on my blog is laughable, as anyone still reading me knows I spoil everyone and everything until you want to beat me to death. Nevertheless, if you don’t know how this volume ends, I’d advise not reading it. Really, if you come at it fresh, it will be amazing. And devastating.

Secondly, oh, that cover. Oda has been gradually increasing the fanservice as the series has gone on, with Nami and Robin’s breasts getting larger every arc. Here, though, we see Robin reminding readers that her ass is awesome as well. Though she does seem to be angry with us for staring.

As for the volume itself, Robin is finally free. Woo hoo! And that means that Spandam finally gets his. Now, later on when they truly escape there will be a more serious takedown of Spandam by Robin, but I have to say I prefer the mass slapping at the beginning. He’s such a loser that it fits his character more to just be bitchslapped to death. Speaking of Robin, I was impressed at how, once the Buster Call actually comes into full force, she’s crippled with what may be post-traumatic stress disorder. She gets over it, but not right away, and it’s a nice bit of realism for her character.

Kokoro being a mermaid is not particularly surprising in my opinion, but the signposts at least helped it not come out of nowhere and be a deus ex machina. The high point of the revelation, of course, is Sanji’s reacting to seeing Kokoro. Poor boy, his dreams are crushed. Sanji, in fact, veers wildly this volume, as his character tends to do. On the one hand, we have this, and also his trying to glomp Robin and getting literally kicked out of the way by Nami and Chopper. On the other, his vanishing and closing the Gates of Justice was a stroke of genius. Clearly, women drag Sanji down. He needs to find an island of all men or something…

Luffy’s fight, meanwhile, is taking forever. At one point, he seems to be down for the count, causing Sniper King, in a stunning moment, to remove his mask to yell at him. Sniper King is Usopp! Oh my God! To his credit, Usopp does deliver a great inspirational speech to get Luffy to stand once more. I do admit that I prefer the scanner’s “It’s not like it’s Hell here” to Viz’s “This isn’t the afterlife”, but hey.

By the way, One Piece is endlessly re-readable. So many throwaway gags in the middle of serious scenes. Sniper King stopping the attacking Captains with Usopp Noise, Zoro, Sanji and Luffy’s V-for-Victory deadpan after using Luffy as a slingshot, the marvelous cameo by Ryo from KochiKame (these chapters appeared at KochiKame’s 30th anniversary). And it’s not just the gags… witness Luffy’s final move, which is punctuated by flashbacks to everyone saying how horrible Robin is, and her screaming that she wants to live. The filmic qualities of this manga are stunning.

And then there’s the final chapter. In many ways, this is the first major character One Piece has ever killed off that wasn’t in a flashback. Even Pell got better. But Merry’s last moments are just pure emotional rawness. When I first read this years ago, I was choking up. Years later, knowing it’s coming… I still choke up. Iceberg talking about what an amazing life Merry lived… the flashbacks to her best moments… the pitch-perfect reactions of everyone (Luffy, Chopper, and Nami openly crying, Usopp trying poorly to hide it, Robin’s single tear, Zoro and Sanji’s stoicness)… it’s in my Top 5 One Piece chapters. Fantastic. As others have noted, “I can’t believe I’m getting emotionally attached to a BOAT!”

Technically, Enies Lobby ends here. The next volume is back to Water Seven, and is mostly a breather volume. Of course, being One Piece, the breather volume has more plot in it than 30 volumes of anything else.

Manga the week of 5/12

Leave a reply

Via our friends at Midtown…

I’m not sure why it’s shipping 2 weeks later than all their other titles, but it’s great to see another volume of Karakuri Odette from Tokyopop. Odette is easily one of the best robot girls in manga. And I look forward to more of Asao being a grumpy cuss as well.

Viz has all their ‘not Shonen Jump or Shojo Beat’ mainstream titles this week, including the third Inu Yasha VIZBIG Edition, for those who didn’t buy it the first time. Looking at the unread Vol. 2 sitting by my desk, I’m starting to get nervous. They also have another new series from Shonen Sunday, Maoh: Juvenile Remix, which sounds like it should be a sequel to a seinen manga called Maoh but isn’t. It’s about espers instead.

Yen has a whole PILE of Korean stuff, which I don’t really pick up much of. Not that some of it isn’t great, but I already get too much from Japan as it is. There’s also a new volume of Black Butler, which I’m sure will join its brother on the NYT bestseller charts. Note to self: don’t do that Black Butler drinking game where you take a shot every time he smirks.

And there’s the debut of My Girlfriend’s a Geek, which I suspect will sell a lot better than the literal title, My Girlfriend’s a Yaoi Fangirl. Based off of a light novel, which in turn is based off of a blog. It’s from Enterbrain, so naturally all bloggers will have to review it. I think it’s in the blogger’s code or something.

Twin Spica Volume 1

Leave a reply

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.

While I was reading this manga, I kept looking for the little things. The big beats, while not exactly bad, were fairly typical. Spunky cute girl with a tragic past and a dream. The sullen blonde who will presumably slowly be won over by our heroine’s relentless niceness. The Hideously Difficult Academy of Culling. Betcha two to one she gets bullied.

This is, however, balanced out by so much that the manga gets right. The little things. The first one I loved was when the cute blond guy with no eyebrows gives her a walnut, telling her she’ll need to build up her hand strength. It’s something that seems like your typical ‘meet cute’ story, and the art does its best to make Asumi look tiny and fragile… but then we see Asumi blithely crush the walnut with only two fingers, barely looking like she’s exerting herself at all. I love hidden depths in my spunky heroines.

Likewise, though at first it seems like a rather cruel way to get rid of 3/4 of your applicants, the test they get is really very clever and practical. Forced cohabitation with perfect strangers, trying to get through a necessary but utterly boring task, dealing with setbacks as things go wrong halfway… welcome to space flight, here’s your rocket. And Asumi gets this right away. Man, I hope she’s not a kid genius in addition to her strength and cute spunkiness. If she is, the bullying will be EPIC.

The other characters are introduced, but the first volume doesn’t really give us much of a sense of them, being primarily devoted to Asumi. They’re the big beats, as I noted. Childhood friend with a crush. Smiling laidback cute guy. Tomboyish girl with glasses. And, of course, the cool loner girl, who is screaming out ‘redeem me!’. I’m pretty sure we’ll see Asumi break her to friendship in future volumes, as one would a wild horse.

The other character who we get more of than merely setup here is Mr. Lion. A mentor isn’t really that unusual in a manga like this. A mentor who’s actually dead is rarer, but still only raises an eyebrow. A ghost mentor with the head of a stuffed lion, though, is impressive. We see him more in the two big short stories that come at the end of this volume (which apparently appeared before the series proper began), and learn that he was an astronaut on the fated Japanese space flight that ended in disaster and killed (eventually) Asumi’s mother. Even he has his cliches (ironically, the volume of Zetsubou-sensei that also came out the week Twin Spica did shows the characters discussing how to have a dramatic death, and mentions the dead man leaving behind a hidden engagement ring), but for a ghost wearing a lion head, he seems very straightforward and practical. I like that in my mentors. (He’s apparently completely written out of the live-action series they made of this. Bah. Japanese TV is not ready for lion-headed ghosts!)

The art can take some getting used to, but once you do, it shows off its moments of real beauty (check out the sequence with Asumi’s mother on the boat, and the 2 pages after that…. just amazing). And Asumi manages to look cute, tiny, and not her real age without appearing to be drawn solely to appeal to loli fetishists, which I appreciate.

I can appreciate why Vertical is putting this out, there’s a lot to get into here. I barely touched on the plot of the space program itself, which ties in with Asumi’s sense of wonder which I anticipate will be the driving factor. The pages that sum up the volume best are at the end of Chapter 4, when we see the three exhausted girls sitting next to their completed domino stacks, right after the testers noted that no one was actually expected to really complete it. But they did it. Beat the odds. Get into space. Never give up.