Stolen Hearts Volume 1

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By Miku Sakamoto. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine The Hana to Yume. Released in North America by CMX.

CMX seems to have a knack for choosing lesser-known but underrated shoujo works, and this one is no exception. In runs in one of Hakusensha’s spinoff magazines from their regular Hana to Yume. The spinoff, called The Hana to Yume (yes, ‘The’ is meant to be the English) runs 6 times a year in Japan. So it allows the creators a bit more time and care than they get with a regular twice-a-month shoujo series. The author has been with Hakusensha for about 10 years now; her first sries, Nadeshiko Club, will be coming out by CMX later this year.

Stolen Hearts, like many shoujo manga, starts with an incredibly cliched premise. Small cute girl accidentally splashes milk on bag of huge scary-looking guy. Turns out it had a rare kimono in it. Now she’s forced to work it off by modeling kimonos! Say, what do you want to bet the scary-looking guy is just misunderstood? You’d be right.

But no one reads shoujo for originality. You read it to see if the author can draw you in with likeable characters and sweet situations. And this series has that in spades. The two leads go well together almost immediately. The series was likely created as a ‘one-shot’ chapter, as they get together and declare their love right away. However, that works in the book’s favor, as we don’t have to deal with the usual ‘I can never say what I truly feel’ shenanigans.

I also really liked Shinobu, the lead heroine. She may be tiny, but she’s no wilting wallflower. She takes the lead in their relationship, confessing to him and not letting him pull away ‘for her own good’. And she can think on the fly, solving a kimono crisis in Chapter 4 and turning it into a huge success. As for Koguma, our hero, he’s the standard ‘I am bad at social interaction’ hero, but Shinobu is slowly getting him to open up (possibly to her detriment, as now that he isn’t scary girls notice how handsome he is.)

And of course there’s Koguma’s grandmother, who is simply awesome. I always warm to tough old grandmas, and she’s a great example of one. I loved the implication of a Yakuza past.

It’s hard not to overuse the word ‘adorable’ in describing this manga. From the kimonos themselves (which look lovely, and show the author did her research) to Shinobu and Koguma, who look cute and get lots of couple moments, the manga is designed to simply put a smile on your face. I look forward to seeing more of it, and now have added expectations for her other series that CMX is starting in June.

Higurashi: When They Cry Volumes 1-4

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Story by Ryukishi07; Art by Karin Suzuragi (Abducted By Demons Arc)and Yutori Houjyou (Cotton Drifting Arc). Released in Japan by Square Enix, serialized in the magazines Gangan Powered (Abducted by Demons Arc) and Gangan Wing (Cotton Drifting Arc). Released in North America by Yen Press.

Before I begin the review, I want to note that a certain amount of spoilers are inevitable. If you know nothing about Higurashi and want to read the first series completely cold, stop right here. This review assumes you know the basic ‘gimmick’ behind Higurashi, and the reason the manga is divided into arcs.

I’ve never played the Higurashi games, but I know of the basic premise through Internet Osmosis. The games are quite popular, so it’s no surprise that the franchise was picked up for a manga. The manga has been running in one form or another for almost 5 years (the final arc is currently running in Gangan Joker), so it’s also quite popular. Square Enix seems to enjoy setting each new arc in a different magazine (the 3rd arc, Curse Killing, was in yet another, GFantasy) in order to get fans to spend even more money. Whether that was successful is in doubt; both Gangan Powered and Gangan Wing have folded since these manga came out, being replaced by Gangan Joker.

Higurashi reads, on first glance, like a dating sim. There is little doubt that the author set it up that way on purpose. You have the all-purpose normal male lead, and he gets to choose between the shy girl, the busty tomboy, the grumpy loli and the happy loli. Even the introduction of Shion in Cotton Drifting is pure datesim – look, an identical twin! What are the odds they’ll switch? Or have different personalities deep down? Will wackiness ensue?

Well yes, but not THAT kind of wackiness. Higurashi is a murder mystery. And a horror manga. And, yes, still partly a datesim. (It may also be a floor wax and a dessert topping, I’m still looking into that.) As Keiichi, our “hero”, goes through his everyday life he finds out that everyone in the town is hiding secrets. There’s also a legendary past, the spectre of the God Oyashiro-sama watching over everyone, and worst of all, his shy friend/tomboy friend (depending on the arc) is acting really creepy and threatening.

As individual arcs, I found the Abducted by Demons arc stood better on its own. Keiichi’s spiral into paranoia is pretty well done, with the reader trying to figure out what’s going on without necessarily being on his side. Things descend into a spiral of madness and come to a hideously tragic conclusion. The end.

Well, not quite. First, it’s hinted that there will be a further series examining the same events (the “Atonement” arc) in the final ‘coming soon’ pages. But then, in the next manga, everything’s back to normal. Keiichi and his friends, still alive, go through the same wacky comedy datesim events again… and then the secrets come back, and things fall apart in a totally DIFFERENT way. That’s Higurashi’s basic gimmick, watching the bad end several times over and picking up clues as to how you can finally beat the game.

Of course, this being a manga, you aren’t choosing anything. I’m pretty sure the creators assume the ones reading this are Higurashi fans. Like many other media tie-ins, these manga are not really for anyone who wants a good yarn, or wants to figure out what’s happened next. They’re for people who’ve played everything, and seen the anime, and want to watch another variant of the characters they like descending into slaughtering each other like wild dogs.

This can work against the manga at times. The second arc, Cotton Drifting, features Mion’s twin sister Shion, and much of the plot of the first volume involves the classic ‘twin switch’. Unfortunately, much of the second volume involves Mion, Shion and Rena explaining things in long laborious monologues, and a great deal of the violence is only hinted at offscreen. (That said, it does have a fantastic final ‘horror’ image.)

At the end, we see that the Cotton Drifting arc also has a ‘response’ to it in the ‘Eye Opening’ arc, which seems to star Shion and will presumably expand on things here. Probably a good thing, as it doesn’t work as well on its own as Abducted By Demons did. Unfortunately, we get all the initial arcs first, before we get any of the followup ones. The manga follows the game, and wants to leave you confused. Not always a good thing in a manga series.

The art is typically shonen, but each arc is done by a different artist, so there are variants. The second arc’s artist seems to enjoy drawing Mion and Shion’s large breasts, whereas in the third arc (which I haven’t finished yet) everyone looks much younger and ‘cuter’. And Yen’s translation is serviceable, although translating Rika’s verbal tic as having her call people “sir” makes me think of Marcie from Peanuts. Then again, I’ve always felt it very hard to do accents or verbal tics in translation to begin with. Osaka from Azumanga is another example of a translation choice that I knew why they did it, I just found it awkward anyway.

Overall, this is a series for those who already like the franchise. That said, it’s well done overall (assuming you can get past the basic otaku fetishes that litter the premise), and I look forward to further volumes.

Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei Volume 5

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By Koji Kumeta. Released in Japan by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Magazine. Released in North America by Del Rey.

This volume of Zetsubou is a particular favorite of mine, containing two of the best early chapters, and perhaps the iconic image of one of the characters. It also introduces three new minor characters. There’s a lot going on here.

In one chapter, Itoshiki goes to a hot springs only to find (of course) all his students there. Unfortunately, this hot spring advertises that it removes toxins from the body, and this proves to have an adverse effect on everyone. This is the sort of story that could only work playing off of the broad stereotypes of the cast, and we now know them well enough to be amused by Abiru without her injuries, or Harumi reading a nice clean kids’ manga.

Another excellent story plays off the idea of the dream ending. Ever since Tezuka said in an interview he hated the cheapness of ‘it was all a dream’ endings, they’d been unofficially banned in Japan. Of course, Kumeta goes all out with this, and we see the various characters becoming the opposite of themselves (because it’s all a dream). Again, it’s taken five volumes to really appreciate Usui being greeted by everyone, or Komori playing outside as a gag.

We see three new minor characters introduced in this volume. Itoshiki’s brother Kei and Ikkyu, an “old friend” of Itoshiki’s (in another chapter that’s essentially based around an untranslatable pun). And Mayo Mitama is a new student, even though we’ve seen her in the background since the very first chapter. She has mean-looking eyes, and everyone misunderstands her. Unfortunately, it’s hard to work her quirks into the story, so she mostly stays a minor student in future volumes.

This is also the volume where Chiri Kitsu pretty much completes her evolution. Starting out as a ‘precise’ anal retentive girl, we started to see bits of psychosis in Volume 3, where she beat Itoshiki into a coma with a gravestone. But by Chapter 48, Kumeta has realized that Chiri is funniest when she’s completely flipped her lid and gone ax crazy. Page 116 has the perfect example of what Chiri has become. All it’s missing is the shovel that becomes her weapon of choice in the future.

So, it’s a great volume in terms of content. Unfortunately, I found myself dissatisfied with Del Rey’s handling of the volume. The translator of the first 4 volumes has moved on, and they brought in someone new. I’m not sure if he just didn’t have time to go over everything before the deadline, or if it simply never went through a final editing stage (Del Rey does not credit their editors the way Viz or CMX do), but there are many examples of simple sloppy translation choice and editing.

For some examples, there is the footnote noting the reference to the character “Bejiita” from the manga “Dragon Ballz”. Now, at first I thought this was simply the typical Japanese policy of not referring to a manga from another company, but they’ve mentioned One Piece in earlier volumes, and talk about Shonen Jump here. It reads more like the translator didn’t recognize Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z. An entire chapter talks about measuring a person’s ‘minotake’… without a single end note noting the origin of the word. Yes, he defined it in the text as “Measuring one’s value as a human being”, but usually if you’re going to use a Japanese word (rather than a translation) throughout a story, you should say something about its background, especially as I believe this is a Japanese pun based around measuring one’s height.

And some other problems are purely the fault of the editor. The contents page has the “these chapters were printed in Shonen Magazine Volumes 1-13” blurb at the bottom… which is the same as Volume 4. (In reality, they were Volumes 14-26). And consistency is also something lacking. When you have the same character saying the same thing in four straight volumes (“Don’t open it”), you don’t change it to “Shut the door!” in Volume 5 if it’s the same Japanese wording. This is not the new translator’s fault, but it’s something an editor not only should have caught, but it’s his job to look for!

(Del Rey is not alone in this problem. Almost every manga series, when it changes translators, finds itself reading slightly differently. Manga editors in general should be better at keeping the feel of the book consistent across all volumes, regardless of who is translating.)

These may look small, but they added up for me, especially since the previous four volumes were so well-done. And I admit, your mileage may vary, as Johanna Draper Carlson felt that the new translator, with fewer end notes, made things simplified and easier to read. But for me, it damages what is overall a great volume of Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. I’m hoping that the quick 2-month turnaround time between volumes might have meant this was simply rushed, and that Volume 6 will see a more consistent approach.