The Champions of Justice & the Supreme Ruler of Evil

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By Kaede Kikyou and Tobari. Released in Japan as “Seigi no Mikata to Aku no Sōtō” by the author on the Syosetu website. Released in North America digitally by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Jekaterina Bält.

As with Obsessions of an Otome Gamer, the other Cross Infinite World title I’ve read, I went into this because the concept intrigued me. Honestly, it sounded like Excel Saga, and I am nothing if not a fan of anything possibly related to Excel Saga. We have a young girl who is trying to take over the world but is a bit of a flake. We have an organization that essentially fills the role of a sentai team trying to stop her. That said, that’s about where the similarities end. Instead of Il Palazzo, Mia has her late father, who drilled into her daily the rules on how to use magic but seems to have forgotten (on purpose, as we later find) to tell her what being “evil” actually means. As for the Champions of Justice, they’re cops, and while they have some flaws, for the most part they are all adults who see this Supreme Ruler of Evil they’ve been assigned to stop for what she is: a lonely young girl living alone with genuine magical powers.

Changing up my usual style, I’ll start with the good and move to the bad. It’s mostly good – I was quite entertained by this, which is a LOT deeper and more dramatic than I’d really been expecting. There’s lots of humor, sure, as Mia has a tendency to act like a stereotypical cackling villain at the drop of a hat. But I loved how her attempts to “do evil” are all rather pathetic, and that at heart she is obviously meant to be catching bad guys instead – there’s a bit of Ran from Super GALS! in her, only Ran’s just in denial, whereas Mia genuinely does not seem to know what good and evil are as concepts. The five officers are divided up fairly easily: the serious one who wants to make sure Mia eats properly, the blase one who has a secret I could have done without (more on that later), the angry guy who’s trying to date someone long-distance; the romantic lead who is constantly sexually harassing Mia as a way to distance himself from the fact that he’s fallen in love at first sight (more on that later as well), and the token woman, who is there essentially to be a big sister sort. Gradually they get Mia to open up and get closer, and honestly I think the book may have been better (if less marketable) if it removed the romance and stuck with “found family”.

There are some things I didn’t like. The book was noted as being somewhat racy, and I wasn’t quite sure why till we got to the chapter dealing with Shou, the cheerful yet sneaky blonde guy. At one point, when fighting with Mia, Mia’s magical attacks tear his jacket, which seems to cause him to go dark, and he takes her back to his apartment… which is set up like a bondage fetish room. With lots of toys, lovingly described in great detail. And a rape threat (which Shou clearly doesn’t mean but I don’t care). Honestly, this entire section could be removed with no damage to the story – sure, Shou would get no development, but Aya didn’t either. As for Ren, the love interest, he’s acknowledged in story as sexually harassing Mia, a high school student who is not yet 18, from day one. It’s done in that “this is a romance title” sort of way so I wasn’t as annoyed with it as I was with Shou, but it’s there. I did like Aya at the end admitting that she let him get away with it as she could see he was working through his issues and if he screws this up now she’ll kick his ass to hell and back.

This is another of those really long books, though at least it is complete in one volume. Overall, I’m glad I read it, as I loved the bonding between this group of rough yet gentle police officers and their wayward charge who is a “Supreme Ruler of Evil” who can’t help but do good to anyone she comes across. If you like shoujo romances, I’d definitely give it a try.

Dr. STONE, Vol. 1

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By Riichiro Inagaki and Boichi. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Caleb Cook.

It’s always difficult to judge these Jump titles because the beginning feels like a prologue even when the series takes off, as this one has. Here we have the new series from the writer who brought us Eyeshield 21 and the artist who brought us Sun-Ken-Rock. So they’re both seasoned veterans, and there’s no doubt the new series feels confident. I’m just not sure who I’m supposed to be focusing on. The guy on the cover, Senku, starts the book as the seeming “intelligent sidekick” type to the classic idiot Jump hero-type guy, Taiju. That said, Inagaki has learned his lessons well from his days at Eyeshield 21 and knows that no one read that series for Sena, likeable as he was. No, Eyeshield’s popularity was entirely due to Hiruma. As such, it’s pretty clear the the intelligent, verbally abusive guy is who we need to keep an eye on. (I’m fairly certain he’s not a real doctor, though.)

Our story begins with Taiju, for whom the words ‘lovable lunk’ seem to have been invented, finally manning up and preparing to tell the cute Yuzuriha that’s he is in love with her. Sadly, as he’s about to do this, something flashes across the entire world and every single human on it is turned to stone. Their consciousnesses survive, they’re just… trapped in stone. (It’s not just humanity, some birds are caught as well, but most animals seem to have survived. Fast forward to the year 5738, and Taiju finally is able to escape his stone body. It turns out Senku, his science friend, has been awake over half a year earlier, and has big plans. Together, they’re going to find a way to un-stone people and revive humanity. Naturally, Yuzuriha is one of the first revived, as, well, you need a cute girl in a Jump series. Unfortunately, their other revival proves a bit more unfortunate.

I’m going to leave aside the likelihood of everyone being turned to stone yet alive and conscious for over four thousand years and being mostly fine when they are revived, because that’s clearly handwave plot powers. I’m also going to leave Yuzuriha aside, because as I said earlier her sole purpose seems to be pretty and female – hopefully the manga will get a few more well-defined women in it soon, but honestly, Eyeshield 21 wasn’t great on that front either. Senku and Taiju are much better defined characters – despite his Dragon Ball hair, Senku is clever (and knows it) and pragmatic, and is ready to rebuilt the world with the help of Taiju’s muscle. The antagonist is also interesting, as he points out this is the perfect time to only revive the best, while Senku, our hero, thinks they should revive everyone regardless of whether they’re evil or not. I’m not entirely sure how you can guess the morality of a person from their stone statue self, but given our antagonist seems perfectly happy to break apart little kid’s stone bodies, I suspect he’s not really meant to be much other than ‘the bad guy’.

The art here is good, and I do like Senku, but it feels very much like a prologue. I think I’ll need one or two more volumes before I see where Dr. STONE is going. Till then, Jump fans should like this. Also, Boichi seems to have studied at the Masakazu Katsura school of female character design. Yuzuhira could have stepped off the pages of Video Girl Ai.

Amagi Brilliant Park, Vol. 1

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By Shouji Gatou and Yuka Nakajima. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

In the beginning there was Full Metal Panic!, a long series of light novels that sadly will probably never be rescued but which spawned a long-running anime franchise. Then there was the spinoff, Fumoffu, which was FMP as a gag comedy and featured Sousuke dressed up as an amusement park mascot. As the author admits in the afterword, the design of the mascot was so perfect that the author just poached it outright (with permission) for his new series Amagi Brilliant Park. Sousuke is not inside the costume this time, but fortunately we have Isuzu, who is sort of a gender-reversed Sousuke with about the same amount of social skills and the tendency to use guns as the first and only option. Fortunately, the male protagonist is not a Kaname expy, but instead Seiya is a young man (and former child star) who is smart, handsome, athletic, and smug about all of this. He’s clearly the perfect person to take hostage and beg to save your magical theme park. Which is what Isuzu does.

For most of this book, I will admit, I was a tad underwhelmed. Isuzu and Seiya were flawed characters, but it sort of felt that the flaw was meant to be a “quirk” rather than lead to actual character development. The same applied to other characters – the other heroine is blind, but this is apparently so irrelevant the anime didn’t bother to adapt the blindness. In addition, as part of his job to save the magical amusement park, Seiya is given a magic power, but it’s hilariously useless and for the rest of the book he simply never bothers. The writing itself is solid – no surprise, given the author’s experience – and it definitely does not have the “I am adapted from a webnovel” feel that so many titles do these days. But I really wanted something more from the series, and as the deadline to save the park crept up I was wondering what weird plan our hero would come up with to save the day.

Then came the revelation of what that plan was, which I will do my darndest not to spoil. At first I was sure it was a fakeout, because there was absolutely no way that they were going to go down that dark, cynical road. But they absolutely do, and I literally said “Holy shit” out loud when I read it. It’s a horrible thing to do, and while Seiya wins the day and the amusement park is (for now) saved, both he and Moffle (one of the “mascots” who is the spitting image of Bonta-kun and also the only one we care about in this volume) feel like it is a bitter, undeserved victory. It absolutely is. And it made the book so much better for me, knowing that in among all the wackiness of Isuzu shooting things and the mascots talking about getting it on with hot moms, the author is ready to pull the rug right out from under his readers with this sort of thing. It made me sort of ill. Bravo.

The next volume is supposed to be more lighthearted, and I’m not sure that’s really what I’ll want. But for now, I recommend Amagi Brilliant Park to fans of FMP or ‘comedy workplace’ series who don’t mind the hero coming off as something of a tortured sociopath. I’ll be reading more.