Silver Spoon, Vol. 12

Leave a reply

By Hiromu Arakawa. Released in Japan as “Gin no Saji” by Shogakukan, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Sunday. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Amanda Haley.

You can tell that the new year is starting in Silver Spoon because there’s a new freshman, and she’s interested in horses. This despite being in the dairy program. Again, it’s great to see that even at an agricultural school like Ezo, you don’t have to necessarily be slotted into the drawer that your family farm and/or business puts you in. It also once again shows the value of trying even after failure (she tried to get in on the science track, failed, and tried again on the ‘general’ track), which is good, as Hachiken is also dealing with some repeated failures in his life as well. On the positive side, his father is reading his business proposals and taking them seriously. On the negative side, they’re still not good enough, and he’s still not investing any money in them. That could change as we see the start of something that seems obvious but was never thought of much before: Hachiken needs to earn money and invest in his own business.

Of course, sometimes taking that once-in-a-lifetime chance can also lead to failure in the end – there’s a two-week student program in France that’s offered to Hachiken but he passes it on to cheese-loving Yoshino, who jumps at it… and then finds that for the two weeks, she’s at a high school specializing in fish. And yet, even with this obvious punchline, she manages to eat lots of French cheese and has a better idea about the direction she wants to go in. Any experience is good experience if it can show you a better way forward. That also applies to Komaba, who9 still has everyone telling him not to simply give up and abandon all his dreams, including his own family, and Mikage – indeed, the scene between him and Mikage is possibly the best in the volume.

As for Hachiken, he’s sticking with what he knows best – which is to say, pigs. Pigs and pizza. The section of the book dealing with pasturing pigs, free-range style, is fascinating, as with most of the “here is how you do agriculture” stuff in this series. He’s also found a way to solve the problem of Ookawa’s ongoing awfulness – hire him as company president, as when he’s working he’s far more reliable. It’s a character development that makes sense and is hilarious. As for romance, well, it’s pretty much on the back burner until Mikage manages to get into college – though that’s not stopping others (Sakae) from trying to get them to “go all the way”. And there’s also a suggestion that more equestrian action may be in his future – this despite the fact that he’s not picked for the preliminaries. They’re saving him! Again, seeing Hachiken from Vol. 1 and comparing him to this Hachiken is like night and day.

I’m not sure what to add. Another very good volume in a stellar series. Read it.

I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level, Vol. 6

Leave a reply

By Kisetsu Morita and Benio. Released in Japan as “Slime Taoshite 300 Nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level MAX ni Nattemashita” by GA Novels. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jasmine Bernhardt and Taylor Engel.

There is a literary device known as lampshade hanging, wherein the author, knowing that a plot point is ridiculous or obvious, points this out in the narrative, thus taking the curse off it a bit. A classic example is Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2 bemoaning that he’s having the same bad Christmas as Die Hard 1. Readers of Killing Slimes for 300 Years, therefore, should be ready for a number of instances in this book, even more than the usual, where our heroine just straight up says “wow, it’s just like we have in Japan”. The temple visits, the way that weddings happen, various types of spirits… boy, it seems really familiar somehow. This, of course, is because the author is Japanese and doesn’t want to spend too much of a slice-of-life book developing a world when she can have the cast go to the beach instead. Even the Beelzebub side story (which makes a welcome return) has as the central gag Japanese office politics, only with demons.

As with previous volumes, it’s a grab bag of what are basically short stories with Azusa and the gang. While visiting her “mother”, she eats something that turns her small, allowing her a few days to be treated like a real child. She goes to a “singles event” that turns out to be filled with much older men than expected, then meets the local spirit, who tries to officiate weddings but has had bad luck with no one coming by lately. No one in the cast is ready to get married, so they do a “sister’s wedding” between Falfa and Shalsha, inviting most of the regulars. After an injury causes her to revert to her slime form, Fighsly enters a fighting tournament anyway. The cast, as I said above, go to a jellyfish-filled beach, and then we see Halkara’s hometown, and find she’s the responsible one. Then we get more of Beelzebub’s origin story, as she has to deal with crooked administrators and murderous former colleagues.

There’s nothing really to analyze here – it’s not as if people have character development in a series like this – so the goal is to see how cute and fluffy everything is. The answer is very. The wedding may be between two sisters, but features all the things you’d expect, and will put a smile on your face. Halkara’s family were funny and also helped make a character who can grate on a reader fairly easily more sympathetic. There’s more wacky spirits – one talks like a dazed hippie a lot of the time, and another is interested in painting portraits… but the portraits may not come out the way others like. And the Beelzebub chapters are great, showing how even when she’s unsure of herself she still kicks eleven kinds of ass.

Anyone wanting depth and ongoing plot should run far away from this series. But if you like “cute girls doing cute things”, it’s right up your alley.

Toradora!, Vol. 8

Leave a reply

By Yuyuko Takemiya and Yasu. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jan Cash & Vincent Castaneda. Adapted by Will Holcomb.

Last time everything was terrible, and I asked is some of that could be fixed by the end of this book. The answer is mostly no, though we do get one major revelation that I expect will eventually lead to the endgame. Till then, though… this was a good volume, with lots of relatable teenage angst, but I have to admit that it feels very much like an author being told to stretch out a series to a nice round ten books and therefore just having everything continue to disintegrate. Minori in particular is still making all the wrong choices, trying to pretend that everything between her and Ryuuji is still exactly the same. Sadly, she’s much better at pretending than he is, so he assumes that his almost-confession meant nothing to her. Ami calls her out on her bullshit, which leads to a major fight between them. And then there’s the ending of the book, which I’ll get into later but leaves Minori sobbing alone in a corner. This is not a wacky fun Toradora! volume.

The tone of the book is set up right off the bat, as the much-awaited trip to Okinawa is cancelled when the hotel they were supposed to stay in burns down. As such, the class trip is a much shorter skiing trip, which pleases absolutely no one. As for Ryuuji, he’s still devastated by events of the previous book, and only JUST manages to get back to himself by halfway through the book. This thankfully allows for the brief bit of comedy we get – the tracksuit outfits picked out for the class are deliberately tacky and awful, and there’s various “Ryuuji and Taiga can’t ski” jokes that are a lot of fun – at least till the end. The main plotline remains the love septangle going on. Taiga is trying to distance herself from Ryuuji, and has also gone so far as to give Minori the hairclip Ryuuji was going to give her. She’s really pushing Ryuuji/Minorin hard. As for her crush on Kitamura, well…

As with the previous book, events in the last twenty pages of the volume almost consume everything else. After another fight, Taiga ends up disappearing off a cliff, and Ryuuji is the one to go down and rescue her. Unfortunately, Taiga, who is groggy from concussion and blood loss from the fall, sees Ryuuji’s goggles and thinks it’s Kitamura. We’ve heard that Taiga and Kitamura had a talk at New Year’s (which Ryuuji, in the hospital with flu, missed) and now we get the pretty obvious answer of what it was about – Taiga is incredibly devastated that despite her best efforts, she still loves Ryuuji. Naturally, she’s unaware she’s telling this TO Ryuuji. It’s so sweet and sad and heartwarming and terrible all at once, and I do feel that Ryuuji made the right choice for the moment of pretending that he was not her rescuer, but this isn’t going to go away.

If you like Toradora! and its teen comedy-drama, this one is almost all drama, but should definitely appeal. Next time, one hopes, Minori will finally open up, but I suspect nothing will really be resolved until the final volume.