Happy Cafe Volume 1

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By Kou Matsuzuki. Released in Japan as “Shiawase Kissa Sanchoume” by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

It’s fairly well known by now what my shoujo buttons are. Strong, optimistic heroine. Lots of goofy comedy. Occasional sweet romance. So it’s probably no surprise to anyone how much I enjoyed this manga.

The plot is incredibly unoriginal, but again, shoujo manga. It’s not what you start with, but where you go with it. Plucky heroine strikes out on her own due to misunderstanding, meets hot guy (with hot guy friend), worms her way into their life, and into their hearts with her shiny cheeriness. Despite this, it’s nothing at all like Fruits Basket.

For one, the heroine’s family issues are resolved almost immediately. If we’re going to get future angst from Uru, it will have to be somewhere else. (As a side note, the Urusei Yatsura fan in me is disappointed that a girl named Uru doesn’t have cute little horns.) And while she’s bright and cheery, and sometimes a little clueless, she’s only a 5 out of ten on the shoujo heroine density index, where 10 would be Hikari from Special A.

Ichiro, the blond guy, is underdeveloped so far, but that’s no surprise in a manga that wants to set up the lead couple. Shindo is very well done, though. He fits the archetype of ‘jerk guy’, but in a good way. He’s mean to the heroine in ways like “why do you keep breaking things?” and “I am uncomfortable with telling you about myself”, which is totally understandable given his background. We don’t get ‘I like to screw with my girl’s head’ that so many other authors seem to think is what shoujo jerks should be.

So far the couple is quite sweet, with blushing going on between both Uru and Shindo. Since the series has three leads, I’m unsure if Ichiro will somehow enter and make this a love triangle, but it wouldn’t surprise me. This was 15 volumes long in Japan, so we’ve clearly got a ways to go before we wrap up. The cafe plot lends itself well to one-shots (such as the one here with the model), so we don’t have to spend every chapter watching these two not get together.

There’s some very funny humor, with a lot of side ‘out of speech bubble’ comments I’ve seen in other Hana to Yume works. Uru’s incredible strength is a good quirk, though I think Ichiro’s sleeping/needs food schtick is somewhat overdone in the first volume. My favorite gag is when Shindo sees Uru up on a high ladder studying, and notes she shouldn’t sit so high wearing a skirt. Having read shoujo manga before, we expect red blushy “you pervert!” comments. So Uru’s blase “It’s OK, I’m wearing underwear!” made me laugh a lot.

There is, of course, one major fault. There is absolutely nothing new or innovative about this manga. It will not shock you, or make you struggle to get through the months until the next volume is released. It is what I call ‘comfort manga’, the title you can turn to after a long day that is not very taxing on the brain and puts a smile on your face (and a song in your heart, naturally). But it’s funny, and sweet, and has likeable leads, and thus as comfort manga I think it does its job quite well.

One Piece Volume 27

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

The Skypeia arc continues, and we finally meet our main villain, Eneru, face to face. One thing that’s immediately apparent is that his face is based on the American rapper Eminem (even his name is similar). Oda admitted this in an interview, but even if he hadn’t the caricature is so well done that it seems immediately apparent. He has the utter arrogance that most One Piece villains seem to have, but he’s also possessed of a sort of bored cruelty, very fitting to someone playing God. He has his rules, and his minions must obey them… at least till the end of the volume, where the rules are abandoned.

Speaking of villains, I can’t help but notice that the ‘cover story’ arc in these volumes deals with Wapol, one of the minor yet utterly irritating minor villains from the Alabasta arc. Oda has also stated that he hates to kill off villains, preferring to leave them broken and having their dreams crushed. This arc makes it clear why he might do that – so they can get new, better dreams. Seeing Wapol become an expert at making children’s toys is not something I remotely expected, but it’s very fitting for the sort of worldview One Piece has.

The other major thing that happens in this arc is meeting the Shandians, the other major inhabitants of this area. They’ve been at war with Eneru for some time, and at war with the sky people, and just at war in general. In fact, they read very much like a cross between an extended close family and a terrorist cell. And their leader, Wyper, seems very much like one of those ‘I don’t care about means vs. ends’ warriors we see so much in modern fiction.

And dropping into all of this chaos are our heroes, who get a lot of chances to shine. Well, OK, Chopper doesn’t shine, but you get the feeling he’s being set up to do something later. There’s also lots of funny moments, such as Nami’s utter devotion to money, and the crew somehow managing to convince a pack of wolves to stay and party around their bonfire instead of eating them. (I love that scene, as it reads like one of the ‘cast member and animal’ cover pages in the real world. Also has a great shot of Robin sitting apart from the others, smiling. She’s happy but guarded, as always.)

I also note this volume has the Straw Hat Pirates actually trying to get treasure! It’s so rare it actually needs to be pointed out. Adventure, saving kingdoms, battling tyranny, rescuing friends… there’s usually very little looting on their agenda.

The volume ends with the crew splitting up to search for the ruins where the treasure is. One team is Luffy, Zoro, Chopper and Robin. One assumes that Robin can keep the other three from getting utterly lost. One would be wrong. One giant snake later, everyone’s split up. Can’t wait to see what happens next…

Love*Com Volume 16

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By Aya Nakahara. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Bessatsu Margaret (“Betsuma”). Released in North America by Viz.

Everyone knows the tragedy of a great series with low sales cut off in its prime. You see it a lot here in the US, with superhero comics. And it’s all over Japan, with Weekly Shonen Jump being particularly unforgiving of its newbies. But Japan also has the opposite problem, which is when a series gets popular, and you get an anime or a live-action movie, so the artist has to continue it. Unfortunately, it’s almsot done. So what happens? Plot complications, waffling, brief breakups, focusing on side characters…

It’s sad when a series you really enjoyed hits this wall, but that’s what’s happened with me and Lovely Complex, aka Love*Com. The early volumes had both fantastic comedy (the facial expressions in particular were a thing of beauty) and some sweet romantic angst. I read each volume religiously, and couldn’t wait for Koizumi and Otani to hook up.

And then they did. Woo hoo! And… wait, there’s 9 more volumes to go? Uh-oh. Even this volume, the second to last, has issues. It’s actually the last volume of the main series proper, but there’s another one due out in 2 months, which will have a bunch of ‘side stories’.

What’s worse, they couldn’t even fill this volume! Sometimes in early volumes of manga, you see ‘one-shots’ that have nothing to do with the main story, inserted into the manga by the author to fill space and to get her old work in a book. Which is fine. But you rarely see it later on, after a book has become popular. This volume has a 40-page ‘dramatization’ of the lead actor from the live-action Love*Com film, and it’s OK, I guess, but it’s so hyper-realistic that it’s totally out of sync with the rest of the series.

As for the main series, we have one more side-character to get paired off, as the artist seems to be falling into the ‘must pair all the spares’ habit that shoujo does a lot. (Marmalade Boy made fun of this, noting that it deliberately left two guys un-hooked up in its manga.) So we meet a new girl, and she’s not what she seems, and she has a crush on Kohori, so they try to help her out. And it turns out that when she comes out of her shell, she’s awesome! If this sounds cliched, yeah.

To be fair, if you don’t like cliches, don’t read any shoujo manga at all. And I did like the student film they put together, where Otani finally (if indirectly) says that he loves Koizumi. It was very sweet, and her reaction was wonderful. And the play Otani-Boshi was hysterical, especially Koizumi’s improvised ending. Nice to see one great blast of the comedy this series was known for.

But overall, I can’t help but think this is a classic example of a 17-volume series that should have been 8 or 9. It’s staggered to an ending, but I’ll probably be re-reading the earlier volumes more.