Strike the Blood, Vol. 7

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By Gakuto Mikumo and Manyako. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jeremiah Bourque.

Let the drums roll out and the trumpets call, strike up the band as well as the blood because I am here to tell you that this is easily the best Strike the Blood to date. It has finally moved above its decent but uninspiring attempts at makework writing and had me say, after finishing this book, “yeah, that was pretty decent”. And it should come as no surprise to find that the main reason for this, in my opinion, is because it doesn’t abide by the formula of the first six books. Oh, yes, the middle section may make an awkward attempt at it, and indeed the section in the classroom was my least favorite in the book. But overall we get backstory revelations, setup for future books, a reasonable amount of character development… it makes me cry that we haven’t bothered to have this before now, but I’ll take it.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to overhype this too much: this is rising to the level of ‘pretty good’, but that’s all it’s doing. I would not recommend reading through the previous six books to get to this point. That said, the first third of the book, which is a flashback to when Kojou and his sister meet the Fourth Primogenitor, is well-handled, and exists pretty much to tell us that what little we’d heard to date, including Kojou’s own memories, was pretty trustworthy. We also meet his father, who seems an Indiana Jones sort, and while he’s a pretty cool guy it’s not hard to see why he is divorced from Kojou’s mother. The last quarter or so of the book also does another “finally” and focuses on Yaze, who has occasionally helped out (and gotten beat up a lot) but whose thoughts we rarely get much beyond surface. He gets his own backstory here, and shows us he’s not merely someone who is Kojou’s friend because he has to be.

As I said earlier, I was annoyed at the wacky comedy in the classroom with Vattler’s minions, mostly as it once again felt cookie cutter, Strike the Blood’s worst fault – you have a feeling his editor had a line [INSERT COMEDY HERE] at the first pass. Once Natsuki passes out and the drama starts up again, though, it’s reasonably gripping and entertaining. Despite its lack of risk-taking, the series does fights well, and that’s true here too. The villain (if she is one) is a reasonably clever fake-out, which makes you wonder if the series is going to be turned completely on its ear. It’s not, but it does come with one big benefit – Asagi is present to see both Yukina and Kojou whip out their powers, and does not lose her memory, get knocked out, or otherwise forget afterwards. I’ve wanted her to find out the truth for 7 books now. Her reaction (as Yukina observes) is understated, but she explains why that makes sense. More to the point, setup for the next big arc hints that Asagi’s secrets are about to become big news. Will she learn about her own supernatural abilities?

This isn’t going to pick up any new readers, and old readers will be continuing the series anyway. But as for me, I’m just happy not to have to end a review with “well, yeah, it’s Strike the Blood, whatever”. This was solidly pretty good. 7 out of 10, maybe? Oh yes, and it gets bonus points for Kojou saying “this is my fight” at one point and Yukina not actually responding “No, sempai, this is OUR fight”, even if it feels like it’s only not there as the author forgot.

Baccano!: 2001 The Children of Bottle

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By Ryohgo Narita and Katsumi Enami. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Taylor Engel.

This must have been quite startling to readers at the time, and it’s still pretty startling. The first four books in this series all took place around the same two year period, and there was no reason to expect anything else. Thus suddenly jumping forward to 2001 is jarring, even if you do know intellectually that a large number of the cast are Immortals. Furthermore, Isaac and Miria, bar a cameo at the start (which ended up being used in the anime) and the end, are absent from this book. But that’s OK, because we are introduced in this book to Elmer C. Albatross, a man with so much sheer force of personality that he tends to overwhelm the narrative when he’s in it. Having him interact with Isaac and Miria would be like eating something too sweet. Best to have moderation. That said, this is still an excellent volume of Baccano!.

The girl on the cover is Fil, and she is essentially the heart of this book. (To avoid too many spoilers, I will try not to refer to her as Fil and the Filtones.) The basic premise has Maiza and Czeslaw, who we’re familiar with from previous books, searching the world for the remaining immortals from the 1711 ship journey where they gained said immortality. The goal is to tell said immortals they can stop hiding, as Szilard is now dead. They pick up two more for this journey: Sylvie, a gorgeous women who was hell-bent on nothing but revenge on Szilard and has to figure out what to do now that someone else got there first; and Nile, a large North African man who has spent his immortality fighting in wars and wears a mask because his face no longer shows emotions when doing things like killing people. They are now all arriving at a tiny village in the middle of nowhere in Europe, where Maiza has been told he may find Elmer. He does find Elmer, but also finds what Elmer’s been doing for the last few years: trying to make everyone smile.

Elmer is one of the most awaited introductions for longtime Baccano! fans, and he doesn’t disappoint. As I said earlier, on the surface he might seem a bit like Isaac and Miria, but that’s just the surface. Elmer is a bit broken, and his quest for smiles at any cost, no matter how inappropriate the time, no matter if he’s talking about a killer, no matter if it involves selling everyone’s soul – it’s just disturbing when you dig down into it. He’s doing the right thing here, but it’s not really for the right reason, and yet in the end you can’t help but love Elmer, even as you find him vaguely disquieting – I suspect if I met him in real life he’d be unbearable. (I suspect that about a lot of Baccano! characters.) The rest of the cast also get stuff to do – Czes shows that years and years of physical, mental and emotional abuse can still affect you even almost a hundred years later, Sylvie gets to be sympathetic and sweet (mostly; she’s noticeably different when only around the other immortals), and Nile at first seems to be comic relief till an absolutely stunning speech that rips into a character’s desire to end their life with beautiful precision.

Speaking of Nile, let’s talk translation. Baccano! has a large fan community who translated many of the books before they were officially licensed. That hasn’t been an issue before this, as the first four books had fan translations ranging from adequate to awful. 2001, though, had a really good translation, so I was concerned fans would be wedded to that and object to anything different. That said, having finished the book, I think we’re good. The main concern is Nile’s way of speaking. He has a habit of prefacing his sentences with “Let me just say this:” and variations, which emphasizes his declamatory language and also shows a bit that he’s constantly asking permission to speak, something Maiza calls him out on. The fan translation had “I say this:” which is more literal but not as smooth. I think Taylor Engel does a very good job of making each character’s speech pattern distinct, which is important, as not everyone’s dialogue is as eccentric as Nile’s.

I haven’t talked much about the actual plot of the book, but that’s because it’s one of those books where I don’t want to give away the surprises too much. Suffice it to say I found it very enjoyable, and think you will as well. And if you’re annoyed that we don’t get more of Firo, or Isaac and Miria, or Jacuzzi and Nice, well, we’re back to the 1930s with the next five books.

Oh yes, and ‘Children of Bodom’ is the title reference, a Finnish metal band.

Nichijou, Vol. 10

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By Keiichi Arawi. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialized in the magazine Shonen Ace. Released in North America by Vertical Comics. Translated by Jenny McKeon.

I haven’t reviewed Nichijou in full since its first volume, it not being the sort of series that lends itself to deep discussion. This is the final volume, though, and I think that it’s worth looking at to see how far the series has come and how abstract it is now. The creator almost seems to be hiding it with the final cover, which features the cast in class paying attention stoically, but it’s meant to contrast with the first volume, which had a random deer on Yukko’s desk. The cast does still feature, and there is, believe it or not, character development of a sort, particularly in the ‘flashforward’ chapters, but for the most part Arawi has honed his surrealist art skills here, and knows what his audience wants: randomness and reaction shots from Mio. We get those in abundance in this volume.

Let’s look at that character development. Some of it can be seen at the start, where Mai and Yukko team up to prank Mio over and over again in a game of musical chairs. But then this is followed by a chapter, seemingly set moments later, which features Yukko rapping for pages on end and embarrassing her friends. Nichijou is not a title you want to read if you get frustrated by randomness – it never stays in one place too lo0ng, it’s quite happy to toss aside reality when it wants to, and in the ‘short panel collection’, sometimes the stories are only a panel or two long. The flashforwards, however, are a bit more developed. We saw one of them in the prior volume, showing a Professor who’s actually attending school, and Yukko apparently returning from America. Here we see more, as we have Mio as an actual manga artist, with an overworked assistant, begging for last-minute help from Mai, who now teaches preschool. This is mostly fascinating because of Mai, who has always been the quiet stoic “troll”. She’s still quiet here, but seeing her smiling and showing genuine emotions is both startling and heartwarming.

In the ads afterwords, Vertical mentions Helvetica Standard, the two-volume series coming out in the fall that’s connected to Nichijou (it’s the manga Yuna is reading all the time), but it’s apparently more of an artbook with occasional comics and diaries. The “successor” to Nichijou is Arawi’s current work City, which Vertical has also licensed. What these licenses tell me, besides the fact that Nichijou must have sold better than I expected, is that it’s Arawi’s art that seems to be the big pull. There are some startling frames in this volume, particularly in the aforementioned “Mio reaction shots”, where he really goes the extra mile in making things weird yet fascinating. In the end, Nichijou oddly reminds me of Short Cuts, the old manga series by Usamaru that Viz released back in the day. The characters are fascinating, and we like them, but in the end you tend to read Nichijou for the art and the really, really weird humor. It’s been an experience.