Spice & Wolf, Vol. 1

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By Isuna Hasekura and Jyuu Ayakura. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Paul Starr.

All right, so I’m just a little bit late to the party here. In fact, the party has long since had everyone leave and shut the lights off, and Carol Burnett is walking around me mopping up. But when this series began here in North America, it was in the pre-Yen On days, and I wasn’t as into light novels as I am now, so I never got around to it. Then when I did show interest (particularly after seeing the author at New York Comic Con) it was more a case of “I don’t have the room for 17 volumes on my shelf”. But glory be, the whole series is due to be released digitally over the next few months, and there’s a new book coming out in May as well, so I thought “Why not?” And it’s a good thing I did, as this proved to be a very good first volume.

I knew a bit about the series before I began to read it through internet osmosis – I seem to recall the general talk about it was “come for the nekkid loli wolf girl, stay for the economic theory’. Thankfully, at least in the first volume, the nekkid loli is kept to a minimum, as after her introduction Holo finds clothes and for the most part stays in them. She is indeed a wolf girl, or to be more accurate wolf goddess of the harvest, and her ears and tail and the hiding thereof take up a bit more of the narrative’s time. The majority of the book, though, is about two things: 1) the travails of Holo and Lawrence, the merchant who picked her up at the start, trying to stop a vast economic conspiracy and also make a bit of cash doing so, and b) the banter back and forth between them as they do this. And honestly, economics is fine, but I’d say the dialogue and banter is the real win here.

The series takes place is sort of “generic middle ages X”, but thankfully is more of a genuine fantasy novel rather than all of the RPG-styled worlds we’ve seen in more recent books. I mentioned Lawrence earlier, and he’s our narrator and viewpoint character. He is seemingly rather pleasant and mild-mannered, but there is a deep awkwardness to him as well, with the odd hint of a tragic past. It’s rather cruel that the one man he looks forward to meeting at the start of the book turns out to be one of the main villains towards the end. You get the sense that Lawrence and Holo are made for each other, and there certainly seems to be a bit of ‘will they or won’t they?’ through the book. Despite being called a loli, Holo acts and speaks like you’d expect someone hundreds of years old to, and honestly looks to be about 15-16 on the cover, which for anime and manga is pretty much ‘go for it’ age.

Basically, “come for the economics, stay for the playful sarcastic banter” is my tag for this series. I look forward to catching up.

The Seven Princes of the Thousand-Year Labyrinth, Vol. 1

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By Atori Haruno and Aikawa Yu. Released in Japan as “Sennen Meikyuu no Nana Ouji” by Ichijinsha, serialized in the magazine Comic Zero-sum. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Beni Axia Conrad, Adapted by Ysabet MacFarlane.

As I continue to read more and more manga, I find myself becoming familiar with not only the differences between genres, but also the difference between specific Japanese publishers and how they work in those genres. A Jump manga and a Sunday manga are too very different beasts, and both are also different from Magazine. If I’m reading a shoujo manga from Hakusensha’s Hana to Yume, I expect two to three times as much dialogue as I would if the manga was in Shueisha’s Betsuma. And sometimes you can be reading a manga and without even knowing who the publisher is, you can correctly identify it based merely on the style. Such is the case with this new Seven Seas title, which may be one of the most Comic Zero-Sum things I’ve ever seen.

This is not a bad thing, to be fair. Seven Princes knows what it wants to be, and does its job very well. It wants to be Zero-Sum doing a survival game manga. Being Zero-Sum, instead of teenagers locked in a school, we get beautiful and slightly eccentric young men locked on a fantasy world castle/dungeon combo. Our hero is the only one who isn’t famous, or so it seems at first. Ewan wakes up one day to find himself trapped in a deep pit. Luckily, he’s rescued by another man who was trapped in a different part of what turns out to be a prison. Evading deathtraps and meeting up with others, they gradually realize that they are participating in a legendary ritual to determine who will be the new Emperor. Unfortunately, that ritual seems to involve a lot of deadly puzzle games – one participant is already dead when we meet him, and two more seemingly die by the end of this first book.

I say seemingly as I have experience in this genre, both good and bad, and know that fake deaths and “they never saw the body” are common occurrences. One of the fun things about this title is that it knows its cliches, and feels free to blithely abuse them when it suits. One character is introduced to us as the one female participant, something that is so unlikely in this world of “it’s not quite BL but close enough” that several of the characters immediately think “there’s something odd about her”. And sure enough! Likewise, Ewan may say that he’s just a typical young student, and not a famous thief/detective/singer/etc. like all the others, but he not only has the shiny “we can get through this if we all work together!” attitude that most survival game leads need, but he can also apparently read ancient lost scripts with ease.

I do wish there was a bit more humor – the few attempts at it mostly revolve around the thief and detective hating each other in amusing comedy ways, but for the most part this is meant to be serious business. Old-school manga fans may recognize the artist from such works as Butterfly (never completed here as the publisher stopped doing manga) and Dark Edge (different publisher, ditto). This is only four volumes, so hopefully will have a bit more luck. Recommended to those who like dark fantasy, survival games, or hot guys getting close to each other.

Yona of the Dawn, Vol. 3

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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.

Yona of the Dawn has clearly been a fantasy series from the get go, but with this volume we also see it starting to take on the quality of myth. Or rather, of creating a myth, as it turns out that Yona’s red hair (something she’s always disliked) is part of a prophecy that has been bandied about. Not to mention that the priest we meet at the end of Vol. 2 turns out to be able to literally communicate with God, and also mentions a “red dragon” who will unite the land. So good thing Yona is the protagonist, then, as she certainly has her work cut out for her. Luckily, she manages to gain a few more allies than just Hak in this book.

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First off, we have Yun, who I suspect was brought in by the author to fill the ‘tsukkomi’ role, but in non-meta terms, he’s got a destiny that’s bigger than just taking care of an absent-minded priest, and Yona is where he can find it. His backstory once again reminds us that this land is filled with strife, politics, and suffering, something that Yona too is gradually discovering as she realizes how much she really wasn’t aware of as the pretty princess. The other new ally is Gija (please, no romanization arguments, Japan asked for the G), who is one of the Four Dragon Warriors who wield tremendous power (as seen by his reptilian right arm), and whose ancestors have been waiting an awfully long time for Yona to show up. Being a blond second love interest sort, he and Hak naturally don’t get along, and I suspect this will be a source of amusement in the future.

This is Yona’s volume, though, and she’s really fantastic in it. She’s determined to not be useless if they get attacked by enemies again, but saying you want to learn to use a sword and bow and actually having the nerve to take a life are too very different things. Yona clearly has some skill (used, in best romantic comedy fashion, when Hak provokes her), but she’s a princess who was raised by a pacifist. Hak explicitly says that by teaching her to fight, he’s defying her late father’s order to never let her touch a weapon. Violence and strife will come to Yona, but facing them head on will not be easy. Something that she realizes as we move on.

Note that this story is not all serious murmurs about fighting and destiny. Yona and Hak may or may not be the main “will they get together” couple, but they are hilarious together, with Yona’s faces when she’s aggravated with him being particularly funny. (The start of Chapter 15 verges on magical.) And Yun, as I noted before, has a nice ability to be a grumpy snarker, having absolutely no time for Hak and Gija trying to figure out who is the best man to protect Yona. No doubt all of them will try, but I’m hoping that as the series goes on, Yona will learn more and more to protect herself. Can’t wait for the next volume.