Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?, Vol. 5

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By Dachima Inaka and Iida Pochi. Released in Japan as “Tsujo Kogeki ga Zentai Kogeki de Ni-kai Kogeki no Okasan wa Suki desu ka?” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham.

This is a slightly stronger volume than the previous one, if only as the author has hit upon a very solid plotline for this book: a tournament arc. Do You Love Your Mom? is not exactly a Shonen Jump series, but certainly mom is overpowered enough to be a last boss in the sort of tournaments you see there. Here she fights against 15 other mothers who are all basically variants on the position. There’s elf mom, giant mom, robot mom, devil mom, angel mom, ninja mom… etcetcetc. There’s also our two minor comedy villains, who disguise themselves as “one girl on another’s shoulders wearing a coat” but get away with it because LOL. The most interesting competitor, though, is “Hahako”, who at first appears to be Mamako’s dark mirror or evil doppelganger. That’s not QUITE true, but it’s certainly playing on those ideas until we get to the reveal. As for Mamako, well, she even has a few points here where she struggles. Briefly.

The rest of the cast exist basically to a) get humiliated, and b) show that they have grown as well, if only slightly. Given the nature of the series, Masato gets humiliated a bit more and also has to wait longer to prove he’s not pathetic. He has at least gotten better at identifying the “powers” that his mom has and differentiating hers from, say, the other fifteen moms who all seem to love him and want him to be their son as well. (For one thing, he’s not attracted to his real mom. I appreciate that a series which at times seems entirely to have been released because of the incestual premise refuses to go down that road.) He also trusts her to do the right thing even when it might require a leap of faith, which helps to defeat Hahako, who “feels” almost exactly like Mamako. But isn’t.

I won’t go into Hahako’s actual identity, but I will say that I liked the attention devoted to “what is it that makes a mother?”. Mamako’s speech was actually good, and reminded us that the relationship need not be biological either. The rest of the book, well, is a lot of gags, some funny, some not very funny. The sports commentary stuff was great. I could have done without Mamako being changed into various different fetishes… erm, sorry, types of character. Even if the last one dies actually make her struggle for perhaps the only time in this series to date. There are also a few hints for future books… it’s now really obvious that Porta’s mom is one of the main villain group, and Shiraaase is also not infooorming nearly as much as she could be. There’s a lot of secrets going on here.

The next book, which features Mamako in a wedding kimono on the cover, fills me with dread, but oh well, it likely won’t go there. This remains rather silly, but not as bad as you’d expect.

The Isolator, Vol. 5

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By Reki Kawahara and Shimeji. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

Last time I said it might be 2020 before we see the next book in this series, and here we are. More amusingly, last time I talked about this series have a better class of villains than SAO or Accel World, and in the afterword here’s Kawahara talking about how he hates it when villains turn good and always has his villains be “extra evil” because of it. Kawahara-san, you are wrong and should feel bad, at least about the second part of that. This particular book is sort of a breather volume in the series, with minimal battles but a whole lot of set up for what’s to come. Liquidizer, who gets the subtitle this time around as well as a second cover picture in a row, isn’t joining the good guys per se. But she wants Trancer back, and for that she’s willing to join forces with Minoru if she must. Meanwhile, Minoru is slowly (though he doesn’t realize this, which is honestly a good thing) letting others into his life.

We get a large chunk of the book that takes place at Minoru’s school, including a handsome guy who is highly interested in Minoru, mostly as he improves vastly on his midterm grades. Of course, the question is was this him being smart or others falling – there’s a rash of illness going around the school, leading the previous top scorers to all be too tired and drawn to do their best. This applies to athletics as well, including Minoru’s not-girlfriend Tomomi, who is feeling more and more as if she doesn’t want to run – to the point where she eventually collapses and goes to hospital. We do eventually figure out who’s behind this, but not till the cliffhanger ending. Still, it’s far more school than we’ve had in the previous book.

The rest of the volume is devoted to Liquidizer and her request for help in recovering Trancer from the hands of the… good guys? Well, that’s a good question. Given this is a book where the author has decided not to make all his villains evil beyond all measure, it makes sense that the people in charge of the good guys likely also have murky motives of their own. Of course, she’s not asking the others to work for free – she’ll give them the location of Oliver’s younger sister Claire, who is revealed to have been captured before Minoru joined them and also had Jet Eye powers. I… kind of wish this had been seeded into earlier books, as it really reads like a far-too-handy reveal here. The few action sequences that we do get are well-handled as always, and show off Minoru’s growing strategic thinking. Oddly, the one think missing here is romance – Yumiko is briefly seen to be annoyed that Minoru has had Suu to his house before, but Liquidizer’s relationship with Minoru rarely goes beyond allies, possibly as she spends a lot of it with a bullet wound.

I enjoyed this book despite it mostly feeling like putting pieces in place for next time. As for when next time is, shall we bet on 2022?

Yuzu the Pet Vet, Vol. 1

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By Mingo Ito. Released in Japan as “Yuzu no Dobutsu Karte” by Kodansha, serialized in the magazine Nakayoshi. Released in North America by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Julie Goniwich.

The afterword of this manga volume revealed that it was actually a collaborative spinoff of a game (Bow Meow Animal Hospital: Let’s Become a Great Vet) that came out for the 3DS. This surprised me, because as I read it in fact I was feeling a different kin of nostalgia: I was reminded of the older shoujo manga of the 1990s. Shoujo has mostly skewed older as the years have gone by, and these days when you think of it you think of high school girls having to choose between the sullen black-haired guy and the sunny blond-haired guy. (She chooses the former.) But older shoujo actually did feel much of the time like it was writing for a target audience of 10-12 year old girls. Nakayoshi in particular felt that way. And so this retro manga about an 11-year-old girl dealing with her nervousness around animals while working at her uncle’s vet hospital is really wholesome and refreshing.

Yuzu has had a tough life as we begin this volume. Her dad passed away when she was five. Her mother is sick enough that she has to be hospitalized. And so Yuzu goes to stay with her uncle Akihito, who’s a veterinarian. The trouble is twofold: first, she’s scared of animals (and the hospital’s mascot, a chihuahua, doesn’t like her much). Second, he’s putting her to work as his assistant, which… is child labor, but that’s really not what the manga is about, so I’ll ignore it for now. There’s an underlying plot of Yuzu learning to get along better with animals, as well as with her peers, make new friends, and try to stay strong as her mom recovers. That said, the main draw is that each chapter has a dog or cat with a problem, and Yuzu is instrumental in finding the solution, as she’s very empathic.

The manga is not afraid to shy away from topics that are common around vets: the first chapter begins with a dog dying of old age (there’s even an (owner hugs the dying dog as they talk about them going to heaven) shot – this manga is not afraid to slam on the cliches when it wants to pull at the heartstrings). Most of it is telling pet owners to be more observant in how their pets are acting, to pick up on little signs that they may be in distress. This goes both ways – the reason that Yuzu is so quick to solve these “cases” (it reads a bit like a mystery at times) is that she can spot the owner’s emotional deficiencies – the owners also being kids her age. There’s chapters on not overworking your pets, on being able to move on from one pet to another after the first passes away, and (the strongest of the four chapters) on dealing with dogs who have dementia.

There’s not much story here – I expect Yuzu to bond more with the chihuahua, get less nervous overall, and be a ball of sunshine. It’s about the cute animals. Some of them may err on the side of ‘cute’ rather than ‘accurate’ (that Golden Retriever at the end made me laugh at how bad it is), but that’s fine. This feels like a manga for young girls about cute animals and overcoming fears. Recommended for all ages.