Eyeshield 21 Volume 30

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By Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.

The Devilbats are right in the middle of the Christmas Bowl finals, and they’re in big trouble. As we saw in Volume 29, Gao succeeded in breaking Hiruma’s arm, and he’s out of the action. Now Sena is the quarterback. Can the team find a way to win with Sena at the helm?

Well, no, in fact. But at least he keeps things going. Sena has a steep learning curve, and can’t pass worth a lick, but that works to the team’s advantage, as the defense for the Dinosaurs can’t figure out where his wobbly passes will end up – only Monta can. And of course a mere throwing arm is not going to keep Hiruma out of the game for long.

And so the volume goes, being an excellent example of classic sports shonen. I suspect that fans of actual American football go nuts reading this series, which plays very fast and loose with the rules and regulations of actual football. But who wants a realistic football manga? We want BEYOND THE IMPOSSIBLE!

Hiruma has to come back because Hiruma is the series. Yes, Sena is Eyeshield 21, and technically the hero, but Hiruma is the driving force. In the character poll that came out the volume before this one, he won 1st place handily. He’s a magnificent bastard who wants to win more than anything. At one point late in this volume, the Devilbats telegraph that Hiruma will throw a long pass. Marco is disbelieving, but Gao just nods. “No. He’ll throw with a broken right arm. He’s that kind of monster.” And yup, he does.

I don’t worry too much about spoilers in shonen sports mangas, because in tournament arcs like this, you know that the only place the main team is going to lose will be in the final, if then. (Actually, Japanese sports mangas have a surprising number of titles that end with our heroes’ defeat, and a vow to come back next year and TRY EVEN HARDER.) Much like all their previous games, the Devilbats fall way behind early, then score in bunches to catch up. Sena is a ‘mobile quarterback’, Monta defeats the Ptera Claw, and even Jumonji manages to pick up a fumble and return it for a score.

And we finally get Marco’s backstory, showing how driven he is to win. His story is tied into the Kansai region’s team, who we hear about here for the first time. They’ve won 25 years in a row over Tokyo’s team, and will presumably be our heroes’ opponents in the Christmas Bowl. And they’re so blindingly good at everything (especially recruiting away from other teams) that Marco loses sight of football being fun and starts to focus on winning at all costs. Maruko’s sad realization of this is quite touching. (I also nominate Marco and Maruko as one of the more confusing romances in shonen. No wonder he calls her Maria.)

The best part of the whole volume, though, may be set in the infirmary where Mamori is trying to get Hiruma to stay put and not go play football with a broken arm. Hiruma simply says “Third question: Fools in the NFL often play with a broken bone. True or False?” We then flash back to Volume 2, where Hiruma said he would ask Mamori three questions, and if she got any wrong, she’d have to obey him. After she got two right, he just changed the subject. Now he asks, and when she answers ‘false’ to try to get him to stay there, he calls in his bargain. Great use of what seemed like a simple gag in the very early days of the series.

This series is nearing another climax, and this has been one of my favorite volumes to date. As an example of shonen sports in one of its purer forms, you can’t go wrong with Eyeshield 21.

Maid-sama! Volume 3

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By Hiro Fujiwara. Released in Japan as “Kaichō wa Maid-sama!” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine LaLa. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

Maid-sama! has so many things working against it that it’s a wonder I like it as much as I do. The basic premise of ‘feisty school president has to hide her part-time maid cafe job from the world’ sounds cliched. And we do get the occasional bit of the guy telling the girl she needs to be more careful and let him protect her, etc. However, for the most part this manga manages to rise above, or at least subvert, some of the cliches.

It helps to have a strong heroine. Misaki is very much a Hakusensha heroine in the modern mode, being loud and gung-ho and winning everything by sheer grit and willpower. She’s not only a honors-level student and Student Council President, but she’s also strong and athletic. Her faults are those of the typical tsundere – she’s stubborn as a mule, will occasionally get in over her head, and doesn’t need anyone’s help, thank you very much.

Usui is there to provide balance, being the classic shoujo male snarker who makes passes at the heroine but is really looking out for her. He admires her while waiting patiently for her to fall in love with him (which can take forever in these kinds of stories – see Special A). One of my favorites parts of this manga (in an otherwise rather stupid and unrealistic chapter) is where Misaki is under hypnotic influence and begging Usui to help her out of her hot clothes. After briefly noting he’d love to if she was genuinely willing, he shoves her back onto the bed and says plainly, “No way, no how.” In a shoujo world increasingly dominated by heroes of the Black Bird variety, I was pleased by this.

And then there’s the maid-cafe premise, which I have warmed to. I’ve warmed to it partly because the stories in the cafe seem to be much better so far than the stories set at the school, and partly because it just leads to a wider variety of humorous situations. One of my favorite chapters in this volume was the ones where the cafe is doing a “little sister” themed event (have I mentioned how creepy I find the idea of maid cafes?) and seeing the unfeminine Misaki struggle with the concept (her research is hilarious, as are her various strained cheery grins). And we once again see her drive at work, as she actually manages to pull off a natural ‘little sister’ near the end – at least till Usui baits her. And the chapter with everyone trying to decide Misaki’s Power Ranger color was also excellent.

The manga is good at subverting and working with cliches, but at heart it is still based in those cliches, which can be a weakness. Chapter 13 features the least surprising cross-dresser in the history of shoujo manga, and the athletic festival episode was simply treading the old ground of “never give up!”. And as I noted earlier, the final chapter is awash in bad hypnotism cliches.

Still, with a strong heroine who’s a good role model despite her temper and impetuousness, and a male love interest who’s on the lighter, more likeable side of ‘I am a jerk because I love), Maid-sama is good, solid shoujo.

Oh My Goddess! Volume 34

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By Kosuke Fujishima. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Afternoon. Released in North America by Dark Horse.

It dawned on me as I was reading this volume of Oh My Goddess that I have been reading this manga series for almost a third of my entire life. This was the first manga title I started buying regularly at my comic book store, along with Ranma 1/2. I got them both in the 32-page floppy format, flipped. That’s how long this has been running. Dark Horse notes it’s American’s longest-running manga series, and it’s the truth. And it’s still running in Japan, so we’re in no danger of it stopping anytime soon.

The first half of this volume deals with what has almost become the main plot of OMG: motorbikes. Yes, theoretically there’s something about a boy living with a bunch of goddesses, and the manga does have arcs where it deals with Heaven and Hell and the like, but the driving force of this manga, more than the somewhat simplistic characters, and more than the pretty art (love that hair!), has been the bikes. Much like Fujishima’s first manga, You’re Under Arrest!, the manga is a starting point where he can overindulge his fetish for old-time engines and namedrop Honda as much as possible.

The second half of the volume focuses on Skuld, the bratty future goddess who has been slowly (very slowly) (very very very slowly) growing up over the course of this series. She runs into her crush Sentaro, but he’s distracted by something, and she can’t figure out what it is. Naturally, her sisters and Keiichi try to help her, but aside from moral support (and hideous teasing on Urd’s part) there’s not much for them here. Eventually it becomes clear that Sentaro is moving, and he was trying to find the best way of telling her.

And that’s pretty much it. The volumes have grown much skinnier recently (Dark Horse is using a slimmer paper, but they also match up with the skinny Japanese volumes), so we don’t really get much focusing on Keiichi and Belldandy beyond one small gag where Urd feeds Keiichi medicine to get him to say what he’s honestly thinking. But since Bell and K1 are the #1 chaste couple in all of manga, nothing happens.

Let’s be honest, no one reads Oh My Goddess and eagerly awaits the two of them declaring their love and going off to have hot hot goddess sex. It’s been 34 volumes and over 20 years (in Japan), and while K1 and Bell are clearly a couple in love, they can’t even bring themselves to kiss anymore. They were actually more affectionate at the start than they are now! That’s the one big drawback of the series: if you can’t stand people who cannot resolve a relationship, drop this title now and read something else.

But I read Oh My Goddess… because I’ve always read Oh My Goddess. Or at least it feels like it. I like reading about Keiichi and Belldandy being sweet, and Urd being annoying, and Skuld being annoying, and the rest of the cast being annoying. I like Fujishima’s art, and I think he draws very cute women. Plus now that the cast has graduated, this is another rare manga dealing almost entirely with adults, with Skuld being the only exception.

Dark Horse’s presentation is top notch. This is a title edited by the legendary Carl Gustav Horn (TM), and so we get attention to detail galore, not to mention 4-page spreads telling you about The Monkey Z50J/II, which has a Takegawa R-stage head to enhance prn! Or something. As an added treat, Carl has found the original copies of the monthly magazine Afternoon that OMG runs in, and has found that Fujishima had little comments with each chapter. This volume translates the first 15, with liner notes.

Yes, it’s another comfort manga, and won’t blow anyone’s mind. Probably as we’ve seen so many Magical Girlfriend titles influenced by it that we’ve forgotten how good it was. But Oh My Goddess keeps on trucking, and for anyone who’s been enjoying the ride, well, now you can enjoy the ride while knowing how many cc’s the engine is.