Psycome: Murder Anniversary and the Reverse Memorial

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By Mizuki Mizushiro and Namanie. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Nicole Wilder.

It is somewhat odd that I feel reassured at Psycome’s lack of ambition. At heart, this is meant to be a broad comedy, and as such it can’t give in too much to its premise. Despite having an innocent man in a prison devoted to making teen murderers into assassins, despite befriending a truly insane timebomb of a gas-mask wearing girl, despite finding out that your little sister seems to be genuinely disturbed… despite all that, the tone of this series has been light. Everything skews towards the cliche, towards the trope, towards the predictable. And yet you don’t really mind, because despite its flaws it’s sort of fun. That especially holds true for the 4th book, where we meet Eiri’s family and find they are a machine-gun nest of cliches.

Eiri herself is already quite the cliche, ticking off all the tsundere boxes very neatly. In case you think that she earned marks good enough to be able to leave the school, save your breath: she came in second to last, beaten only by the mohawk guy who spent the midterms in the nurse’s office. But her family have called for her, and so she must go. They’ve also asked for Kyousuke, which she finds disturbing. As for Ayaka and Renko, their grades WERE good enough to let them go outside for the reward, so they come along as well, because leaving Kyousuke and Eiri alone together is unthinkable. (Sorry, Maina, you’re just not important enough, though you do get the cover of the next book.) So everyone’s off to visit Eiri’s palatial home, which has the inscrutable mother, the little sister whose love for her sibling has turned to hatred, and the big brother who is creepy and a bit of a pervert. Oh yes, and murderous twin 9-year-olds, one male, one female, who are at least not named Hansel and Gretel. Eiri’s been called back home to try to solve the big problem: her inability to kill.

The climax of this volume is actually a giant anticlimax – by design, to be fair – and so most of the meat is devoted to the relationship between Eiri and her younger sister, Kagura. The moment you see Kagura and she attacks Eiri, you can see the entirety of her plotline laid out from end to end, and sure enough it’s all there – the hero worship, the frustration at being second best, the anger at being second best to an assassin who can’t kill. And of course the buried love she still has for her sister, which ends up coming out even after Eiri refuses to kill an innocent child to prove herself. The point of this book is to get Eiri – and by extension her family – to admit that it’s not that she can’t kill but that she doesn’t want to – that she finds it wrong. This is tied into the murder of her father as a child – Eiri felt the agony of her father’s death and her subsequent grieving, and even though she wants revenge, every time she made the attempt she though of others going through that and stopped. It’s good character development. Honestly, it’s more earned than the “I guess I do love you” tacked on at the end, which seems designed to keep things on a more even keel romance-wise – Kyousuke having spent much of the volume wondering if he really does love Renko.

Psycome is never going to be “really good”, but it’s still reasonably funny, and I like many of the characters. And we keep getting hints of the endgame plot, which I suspect will happen in the final volume. Recommended if you don’t mind cliches.

Beasts of Abigaile, Vol. 1

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By Spica Aoki. Released in Japan as “Bara Kangoku no Kemono-tachi” by Akita Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Princess. Released in North America digitally by Seven Seas. Translated by Alethea and Athena Nibley, Adapted by Marykate Jasper.

Once again, a manga I had very few expectations for manages to please me greatly. I always enjoy it when this happens, particularly when it’s shoujo. The premise of this seemed to be ‘Werewolf reverse harem’, which did not inspire confidence, and I admit that when I first read the words ‘Alpha, Beta and Omega’ midway through, my heart sank. But it won me over anyway, partly due to the art (the artist is really good at facial expressions, particularly in the case of Nina, the heroine) and partly due to Nina herself, who is a great combination of spunky, stubborn, and sort of goofy in the best way. We haven’t seen a title from the ‘Princess’ magazine in quite some time – Tokyopop used to do a lot of their stuff before they shuttered their manga line – and I like that it feels different from the Big Three’s shoujo titles.

The premise is that Nina and her uncle have arrived at the vaguely Mediterranean country of Ruberia, apparently to get a fresh start after getting bullied so bad in Japan she had to flee the country. Unfortunately, no sooner has she gone exploring then an escaped convict runs past her, and when she tries to stop him using her martial arts fighting skills (because yes, she’s that sort of heroine), he tackles her and bites her neck, causing her to pass out. After some brief suspicious guards catch the convict, they shove her into the paddy wagon as well. When she comes to, she finds herself on the prison island off the coast of the country, which turns out to be populated by werewolves, all of whom are prisoners of sadistic human guards, trained and tortured to be servants to the country’s human population. Which is troubling enough, except… Nina now has wolf ears and a tail too! Did the bite turn her into a werewolf? And how will she survive?

As you may have guessed by the description above, this title is gloriously silly and over the top. If you take it seriously, I’m not sure it would actually work. The characters are not blazingly original – we get the seemingly nice guy who’s actually in thrall to the Queen Bee, we get the incredibly jealous girl who hates Nina getting the attention of her love (no doubt she will attack Nina viciously in Volume 2), and of course we get Roy, who’s the sort of smug but sexy and mysterious jerk that every shoujo manga needs. Luckily, Nina fights back – in fact, the final moment in this volume made me laugh out loud at a shoujo cliche getting subverted, and I daren’t spoil it. Nina also ends up in a pack of trans werewolves, and while they tend towards the stereotypes and sometimes a punchline, they don’t seem to be there to be made fun of, which is nice.

Basically, as long as you don’t mind werewolf cliches (I did mention the alpha thing), this is a hell of a lot of fun, especially Nina. I look forward to the next volume.

If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord, Vol. 1

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By CHIROLU and Truffle. Released in Japan as “Uchi no Musume no Tame Naraba, Ore Moshikashitara Maou mo Taoserukamo Shirenai” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Matthew Warner.

The most popular light novel genre at the moment, both here and in Japan, is “generic RPG fantasy world”. In this genre, however, you can do all sorts of things. There are isekai variations, and novels where it really is a game. There are harem romances, and dark gritty tragedies. These days it seems like a popular editorial request is “do fantasy but with __________”. And with this particular title, we’re getting another type of popular Japanese genre, the “single dad raises his daughter/adopted daughter (it’s always a daughter) and she’s really really goddamn cute” genre. The dad can be bumbling or competent, but the adorableness of the girl is never in question. (The light novel genre being male-oriented, the single mom raising her adorable son has not to my knowledge had any series, but hope springs eternal.) And now we have this series, where the adopted girl is a devil abandoned by her people for mystery reasons, and she’s just cute as the dickens.

The first 2/3 of this book is basically running on that premise. Our hero is a seasoned young adventurer who looks like the standard ‘generic guy’ you see in these sorts of fantasy book (Smartphone guy looks exactly the same). He runs into Latina in the woods, starving and unable to speak human languages, and decides to bring her home on the basis of being unable to let her starve to death or be eaten by monsters. Then he and the couple who run the inn he lives in slowly watch her grow up, learn to speak and read human, show she can use magic, wait tables, and wrap absolutely everyone around her finger. Part of the fun in this book is seeing Dale (the dad) turning into a complete over the top loon about his new daughter. Actually, one drawback is that I wish we’d had a bit more of Dale as he was before he met Latina – we see flashes of it, but it loses a bit of impact as we barely know him before he’s a doting dad.

The last third is far more serious, and at first I thought it might be dealing with Latina being bullied by her peers, but no, she’s being emotionally and mentally abused by her new teacher, who lost her family to devils and has gone half-insane to rage and prejudice as a result. Latina’s attempts to hide what’s being done to her with “everything is fine” even as she looks more and more worn and exhausted will ring a bell with anyone who ever dealt with a bullied child “staying strong”. The whole section is brutal, and it wouldn’t have nearly half the impact it does without most of the book being variations on “look at the daily life of this cutie”. It is nice to see the entire town seemingly standing up to protect her, including Dale, whose cold rage is absolutely terrifying to the temple who employed the teacher.

There are 5 volumes in this series, and each one shows Latina slightly older, so I suspect we won’t have cute antics for the whole series. But if you enjoy series like Yotsuba&!, Sweetness and Lightning, or Bunny Drop (the first half – I hope) and wish it had more swords and sorcery, I think you’d greatly enjoy this series.