Spirit Circle, Vol. 1

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By Satoshi Mizukami. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialized in the magazine Young King Ours. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jocelyne Allen, Adapted by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane.

I greatly enjoyed Mizukami’s last series to be published over here, Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer, and so was definitely looking forward to this. The first volume is very much a manga of two halves. In the first half we set up the situation and meet out heroes and find out what grudges they may have against each other. That said, this is also a tale of reincarnation. And so the second half of the manga is seeing Fuuta’s past lives, which are various types of tragic so far, and seeing him grow as he slowly starts to remember things. Being a first volume, I’m unsure whether the bulk of the series will be the war between Fuuta and Kouko or the flashback lives – hopefully it will continue to be somewhat balanced – but it’s off to a pretty good start, and is only six volumes, so is unlikely to wear out its welcome.

Our hero, as seen on the cover, is Fuuta, a nebbish dude who can see spirits. Our heroine is the girl on the BACK cover, Kouko, a new mysterious transfer student ™ who initially seems rather cool and standoffish but once Fuuta gets to know her proves to be much worse. Because after she throws him headfirst down a flight of stairs (as you do), he suddenly finds himself flashing back to his previous lives, reincarnation style. No, they aren’t long-lost soulmates – in fact, long-lost enemies is a better term for it, and in the two lives that we see in this initial volume, Fuuta’s past selves make life miserable for Kouko’s past selves – or in some cases simply kill her outright. Helping the two of them are two ghostly familiars – hers is older and serene, his is the bubble pinkette on the cover.

The familiars are a weak part of the book so far – Juno, the pink girl, seems to fulfill no function Except to be bubbly and cute in a series with two rather dour leads. The strong part of the book are the previous lives – the second one in particular could almost be a different, separate manga, and shows Fuuta’s rather bitter and cynical past self, cursed by the witch he killed (Kouko, of course, who was literally making a medicine to save a village, but hey, witch) and living a rather desolate and depressing life, till he is redeemed to an extent by an abandoned child. I’m not actually sure if Kouko and Fuuta will get set up romantically, by the way – certainly she’s not fond of him right now, and the past lives both seem to hint of a connection to some other girl (who, if she’s in the present, we haven’t seen yet). Indeed, a romance may not be the point of this at all.

This first volume does its job quite well – it’s good, and I want to read the next one. That’s really all you can ask for in a new series.

Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest, Vol. 3

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By Ryo Shirakome and Takayaki. Released in Japan as “Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou” by Overlap. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ningen.

This was a relatively good volume of Arifureta provided you understand what genre you are reading – it’s a teenage power fantasy of the strongest kind – so let me get the weak point out of the way straight away. It’s not hard, she’s sitting on the cover. Judging by Arifureta fans’ reaction, I’d expected to dislike Shea, introduced last time, but instead I really found myself taken with her. Tio, introduced in this volume, is not nearly as fortunate, mostly as she’s a walking sex joke (it’s a sad state of affairs when the buxom bunny girl is NOT the walking sex joke). She’s a dragon person who is mind controlled to kill the party that Hajime and company are tasked to rescue, and is unsurprisingly very hard to kill. Hajime, who as we know prefers overkill anyway, ends things by shoving a giant spike up the dragon’s bottom… which apparently not only dispels the mind control, but triggers her masochistic side. She spends the rest of the book making the standard “your abuse turns me on” jokes. Also, if you’re going to develop a heroine, don’t do it at the end in an extra story. It just looks like you forgot to.

Leaving Tio aside, the rest of the book is much better. The teacher of this sent to another world bunch, Aiko, gets the bulk of the development, and honestly probably should have gotten the cover, especially as I suspect she’s eventually going to be part of the inevitable harem, though I’m not happy about that. She still has a tendency to be a bit too much of a ripoff of Komoe-sensei from Index, but her desperate idealism and desire to help everyone she meets – as well as all her students, even when they’ve turned totally insane or (in Hajime’s case) become cynical and bitter. In fact, she’s far stronger than you’d expect, and when she goes up against Hajime to convince him to do the right thing and save the town, it’s him who blinks first. Yue also helps here, saying that the Hajime she fell in love with is not someone who will kill for no reason. Having taken the hero as dark as we can, it’s time to start bringing him back to the light.

That will take some time, and may never completely happen, though I particularly liked his reasoning for killing the villain at the end, even though he was dying anyway. Hajime, Yue and Shea continue to be the most broken trio ever, and Shea has now fully integrated herself into their little group (though he still won’t sleep with her.) If you read a series in order to see the hero overcome hardships and struggles, this is so not the book for you. If, on the other hand, you enjoy seeing a ridiculously overpowered twink waltz his way through a fantasy world and occasionally be reminded that he once had an actual soul, and don’t mind him abusing nearly the entire cast, you should enjoy this quite a bit. I would not go as far as Yue and say that Hajime is a tsundere, though. Maybe he’s a tundra.

Kamisama Kiss, Vol. 25

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By Julietta Suzuki. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by Tomo Kimura

I haven’t done a full review of Kamisama Kiss in over 7 years, but it’s always been near the top of my want to read shoujo titles, and I’m impressed with it for lasting 25 volumes, which is more than four sets of Karakuri Odette. (Does anyone recall that series? It’s been about one fandom generation since it came out.) I was wondering what the author was going to do with this final volume, given that almost everything was resolved in the previous book. And it’s true, this is a victory lap of a sort, a light and cheerful final volume devoting itself to wrapping up the romances and getting Nanami and Tomoe married and living in the human world. It’s well worth the read, though, as it’s a well-told victory lap, and will put a smile on your face.

You’ll note the cover art is a bit different from the ‘wedding pose’ cover that the regular edition had. I picked up the Limited Edition, which comes with this alternate cover and a separate, hardcover minibook that features all the color pages from the series, as well as an epilogue chapter taking place several years later. I think it’s worth shelling out for the extra edition – the art is gorgeous, even if pretty small (this is still the size of a regular manga volume) and we also get one of those ‘extra chapters’ that always tend to happen in Hana to Yume series but so rarely get collected into North American (or indeed Japanese) volumes. Without spoiling anything, fans of Akura-Oh and Ami will absolutely want to pick up the Limited Edition.

As for the main event, I like how it shows that even after all this time, Nanami still has a tendency to sublimate her own desires if she thinks Tomoe will be uncomfortable or dislike anything, and I like the fact that the entire cast serves to clamp down on that and give her the epic wedding that she (and the series) deserves. As for the other human x supernatural pairings, Ami and Kurama is left up in the air, mostly as Kurama has not gained as much experience with human emotion as Tomoe has, but it’s pretty clear that she’s not going to be moving on. As for Himemiko and Kotaro, they’ve got a few more things conspiring to keep them apart, including some of what Nanami has dealt with before (the “they must be unhappy, it would be best if I left them” feelings), but they also have a very good reason to stay together, and the result is dealt with subtly but will put a smile on your face.

As will the entire volume, really. Kamisama Kiss has had its fair share of drama, and so after all the near deaths and trips to the afterlife it’s a relief to see such a sweet ending. Admittedly Mizuki may not agree with me, as Nanami and Tomoe becoming human means a parting from the spirit wold, but even that may be only a temporary thing, we discover. As with most really good manga, finishing this series makes a reader want to go back and start over from the beginning.