Plus-Sized Elf, Vol. 1

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By Synecdoche. Released in Japan as “Elf-san wa Yaserarenai” by Wani Books, serialization ongoing in the magazine Comic Gum. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jennifer O’Donnell. Adapted by David Lumsdon.

As those who follow me on Twitter know, I frequently make comments about manga as I’m reading them, before I do a review. This are usually glib, off-the-cuff, and not meant to be taken seriously. Case in point: while reading Plus-Sized Elf, I noted that it was an odd combination of a fetish manga and an exercise manual, and several people actually sounded more interested in it than they were. So I want to clarify here: we’re talking about 85% fetish manga and 15% exercise here. You have to really, really like seeing large breasts, large butts, and the women who possess them, as they’re on pretty much every page. That said, when I heard that this was a title that ran in Comic Gum, I was actually expecting much worse than I actually got. Plus-Sized Elf is, in the end, goofy fun, and far more interested in gazing at plump girls than in doing anything sexual with them.

That’s our heroine on the cover, clutching her McDonald’s fries and glaring at us. She’s Elfuda, an elf (the names are not exactly world-beaters in this title) who has come to the human world to eat, because additives and preservatives are unheard of in fantasy land, and things TASTE SO GOOD with them. Unfortunately, this means she’s gained more weight than she’d really like. She ends up at an osteopath clinic and meets Naoe, a young man who does a combination of massage therapy and diet/exercise advice. After taking care of her horribly out-of-alignment bones, he recommends a diet that works… at first, but Elfuda quickly backslides. As the title goes on, we meet more fantasy creatures that are hanging out in Naoe’s town, all of whom have various reasons for being on the hefty side: a dark elf who’s standing at her job all day, a mandragora girl whose large flower on her head (and possibly other large things) leads to poor posture, an ogre who loves booze, etc.

As I said above, there’s something that so far is very obviously missing from this title, and that’s any sense that it’s a “harem” series. Naoe clearly appreciates full-figured women, and he can be seen blushing a number of times. But none of the girls who he helps and meets up with really seem to be that into him. This is not about a guy amassing a bunch of women, it’s about a bunch of women and the guy who hangs around them. The manga also manages to walk that fine line between finding amusement in Elfuda’s inability to resist junk food and keep weight off without actively mocking her for it. And a lot of Naoe’s advice is pretty good, too – there is a BIT of exercise manual in here, as I said. Again, this is still a title you should only get if you don’t mind fanservice – there’s several shots of the women eating food and getting massages that are basically orgasm face art. But if you don’t, Plus-sized Elf proved to be more fun than I expected.

How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, Vol. 7

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By Dojyomaru and Fuyuyuki. Released in Japan by Overlap, Inc. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sean McCann.

This is a strong volume of Realist Hero, getting back to what most people reading the series are here for. No, not harems, though there’s a lot of that going around. No, not sex, there’s none of that here. But diplomacy gets to be front and center again, as Souma and his entourage end up traveling to not-Turkey to see what that nation is all about. There they find themselves designing syringes and scalpels, dealing with a boisterous yet forward-thinking young prince, heading off the discovery of quite a nasty dungeon (and seeing what it does to the poor villagers who lived next to it), and negotiating a three-way trade agreement involving doctors, drugs, medical tools, and the power of HOVERCRAFTS! And all this is only in the first two-thirds of the book, so there’s plenty of time for short stories involving things like dragon meteorologists and Juno (from the group of adventurers) finally learning the truth about her mysterious adventuring companion.

Sadly, our main heroine, Liscia, is totally absent from the story. She’s pregnant, you see, and so has gone off to live away from all society in case something should happen to the child. In reality, I do sort of wonder if she’s been exiled due to her Saberface. Probably not, though, given that this volume sees the introduction of Yuki and Mikuru from the Haruhi Suzumiya series. Well, OK, not really, but close enough. They’re childhood friend and bodyguard, respectively, of the Turgis prince, who is filled with fresh new ideas and also a head full of teenage stupid, which is what leads him to doing things like proposing to 12-year-old fox girls. You’re meant to get the sense that when he matures he’ll be an excellent leader, and there’s hints of that here, though you can also see why not-Yuki calls him dumb all the time. You also get the sense his polyamorous relationships are shaping up nicely. Speaking of which, Hal has recovered nicely from accidentally getting a dragon bride last book, only for us to find that he’s adding an elf soon as well. the book does not have to pair off Souma with EVERYONE.

The worldbuilding is the highlight of the book, once more. There’s a real feel that the author remembers what he wrote before and is building on and adding to it constantly, which is not only the case in books adapted from webnovels, where often you get the sense the author is just thinking “what is the next cool thing?”. Admittedly, sometimes I could do without the worldbuilding – Komain’s refugees are meant to echo the plight of Native Americans, but having her literally look like a Native American stereotype, complete with war paint and feathers, is a bit much. Still, for the most part I am happy and content to see where the book leads me next. Will we finally deal with the demons? Will Souma be reaching out to yet another country? Will he ever work up the nerve to go to bed with another one of his fiancees? This is apparently a big seller for J-Novel Club, and it’s easy to see why. Go get it.

Yona of the Dawn, Vol. 14

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By Mizuho Kusanagi. Released in Japan as “Akatsuki no Yona” by Hakusensha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by JN Productions, Adapted by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane.

As I’ve mentioned before, Jaeha is my favorite of the Dragons, and I suspect I’m not alone there. He fits into a lot of characterization buckets that appeal to me. Indeed, he frequently puts himself in those buckets, behaving a specific way either because he wants to be seen that way, or in order to distract from how he’s really feeling. And traveling with Yona and company is troubling him, as he’s falling for Yona hard, which would be fine except that a) he totally sees the writing on the wall with Yona and Hak, and b) he worries that it’s his dragon blood MAKING him feel this way for her. As a result, in this volume we see Jaeha at his most reckless, sneaking off to a brothel partly to piss off Hal but mostly as he senses there’s something wrong about the new town they’re in. And unfortunately, Jaeha’s “always save the girl” mode also kicks in, leading him to be drugged with something quite potent.

Fortunately for Jaeha, his attempts at acting like everything is TOTALLY FINE and he is just being a horndog are doomed to failure, so Yona ends up rescuing him. Unfortunately, rescuing the town will take some doing, as its residents are in various stages of addition. Once again, Yona decides to stick around to see if this is something that can be fixed, with relatively little argument for once. Indeed, for part of the volume Yona and company are seen as they might be from the outside – as the most obviously suspicious ones. This is because we’re introduced to the young and idealistic princess of the water tribe, Riri, who is there to remind us of what Yona used to be like back at the beginning of this series. Indeed, she’s even got her own female equivalents of Hak and Jaeha as her bodyguards, though one of them might not survive an end-of-volume stabbing.

I do find it amusing that no one seems to recognize Yona, but instead Hak is the one that they find familiar – he’s not exactly an unknown face either. This ia a fantasy world with little modern technology, which is probably why The Dark Dragon and the Happy Hungry Bunch can get away with as much as they do, but they’re getting famous too, and eventually Su-Won is not going to be able to run into Yona on the battlefield and just go “whoops”. This series is long-running, and we’re nowhere near finished, but I am wondering what the endgame for it is going to be. In the meantime, Yona is far more concerned with saving Tetra (the Jaeha-ish bodyguard who was stabbed) and showing off that, even if her sword skills are rough and unpolished, facing off against Hak is a lot harder than facing off against nameless goon #2.

I feel like I’m ending each review the same way, but it’s always true. Yona of the Dawn is one of the best series Viz is putting out. You should be reading it.