Occultic;Nine, Vol. 2

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By Chiyomaru Shikura and pako. Released in Japan by Overlap, Inc. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Adam Lensenmayer.

This volume of Occultic;Nine does what it needs to do, which is begin to draw together the many and varied elements of the first book and show they’re all part of the same main plotline. It does actually shift genres a bit, as signposted by the end of the first book; that one may have been a mystery, and there are certainly still mysterious elements, but this second volume crosses over into outright horror much of the time. Unfortunately, its faults are still carrying over from the first book as well. While it does begin to draw together said elements, everything still changes viewpoints and tonal shifts a bit too much for my liking. And it’s still left with Yuta Gamon as the protagonist, and he’s really, really aggravating – yes, it’s deliberate, but that doesn’t actually make it easier to take.

To be fair, he’s had a bad day – he’s right in that any sane police officer who has his presence in the room and his fingerprints on the murder weapon would have arrested him by now. Luckily we have another one of the eccentric cast members as the detective, and he enjoys playing with his food, I guess, preferring to torment Yuta with cryptic conversations. Unfortunately, Yuta’s coping mechanism is to double down on being obnoxious, something which is fine by Ryoka, who still gets nothing to do this volume, but is starting to worry his new friend Miyuu, who was already somewhat wary of him (her friend basically says he’s a creep and why do you care?), but he’s falling back into familiar behavior patterns to cope, even if they’re bad ones. Also, he clearly hasn’t read any genre fiction at all, or he’d know that introducing everyone to the mystery radio voice only he can hear was never going to fly.

As for the main plot, the corpses in the lake that were briefly signposted last time become a big deal when they’re discovered this time around, and the clever reader will start to realize what’s actually going on when it takes forever and a day to actually identify said corpses. There’s a lot of somewhat interesting talk about acceptance of the occult versus looking for an actual realistic reason for said corpses, but the fact that said reason also sounds ludicrous and the reader is also getting the mystery organization of evil talking about their corpse plans tends to ruin it. Again, as with the first book, the ending is the strongest part – first, the darkest and most horrible part of the book (which completely rips off the movie Se7en, but is still well written), and second, the final revelation that Yuta figures out when he gets all the names of the bodies in the lake. What will Volume 3 bring us?

Good question, but one we’ll wait a while to answer – the third volume is not out in Japan yet, and I suspect the author is concentrating on finishing the visual novel, which is due out this year. In the meantime, there are bits of good and bad here. I’d recommend it to fans of this creator.

Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, Vol. 6

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By Izumi Tsubaki. Released in Japan as “Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun” by Square Enix, serialization ongoing in the online magazine Gangan Online. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Leighann Harvey.

In terms of the Nozaki-kun fandom, one of the fortunate things about it is that there really aren’t very many ship wars. For the most part, this is because the main pairings in the manga, even though none of them are actually romantically paired, are so blindingly obvious – Nozaki and Sakura, Hori and Kashima, and Seo and Wakamatsu. The one wild card has always been Mikoshiba, and it’s therefore no surprise that fan writers love him. I’ve seen him used as an alternate pairing with Sakura, just in case she ever tires of Nozaki (doubt it will ever happen, but hope springs eternal), and I’ve also seen quite a few Nozaki/Sakura/Mokoshiba OT3 fics. But the addition of Nozaki’s brother Mayu gave BL fans someone new to focus on, and this volume must have delighted them, because not only are Mikoshiba and Mayu comedy gold but they’re also very, very shippable.

A lot of the humor in Nozaki-kun relies on building from previous gags and characterizations, as you’d expect. Mikoshiba is the inspiration for the heroine in Nozaki’s manga, so when Nozkai discovers he’s getting cute texts from someone else, and that he’s responding as “Mamiko”, he gets fired up in the best Nozaki way. Meanwhile Kashima is having trouble dealing with her new role, which requires “wistfulness”, and when given the choice between Sakura’s practical advice and Nozaki’s romantic, thinking like a writer advice, she knows exactly who to turn to. Nozaki has the brilliant idea (no, really, it is this time) of having her avoid and not speak to Hori for three days. Sure enough, this nearly kills her just by the end of one day – and, even better, Hori is somewhat poleaxed by it as well.

Elsewhere, we get Wakamatsu’s amazingly inept acting, the dangers of playing a visual novel and not using the default names, and Miyako’s fellow mangaka relationship with Nozaki continuing to be misunderstood by the guy who’s crushing on her… who, because this manga is very close-knit, turns out to be Seo’s big brother. We also meet several other author’s in the magazine that Nozaki’s published in, and they all seem to have their own eccentricities, though they can all agree on one thing – Nozaki’s manga is generic and dull. Honestly, it’s something of a surprise it hasn’t been cancelld by now, but I think that the ‘Nozaki tries to find the idea for a new series’ plot is being saved for a rainy day – that and the tie-ins to real life are too much fun to drop. Possibly best of all, Mikoshiba needs to have someone pretend to be his girlfriend, and each of the three main options are hilarious.

Nozaki-kun remains hilarious, and the hilarity is because of its character-based humor. Unless you can’t stand anything to do with 4-koma or tsukkomi-0style humor, you should be reading this every time it comes out.

Very few tanukis this time around – we are running a tanuki defecit.

A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 10

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By Kazumi Kamachi and Kiyotaka Haimura. Released in Japan as “To Aru Majutsu no Index” by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Prowse.

This picks up immediately after the end of the previous volume, as befits a two-part arc. In fact, Kamachi helpfully provides a recap for anyone who may have somehow skipped the previous book. I had wondered if we’d get more athletic events for the festival, but no, sadly the festival is mostly offscreen for Touma, as he spends 4/5 of the volume chasing after Oriana Thomson, watching her nearly kill his friends, and arguing with her on the nature of doing good and how it’s impossible for everyone to share the same view, ethics, or religion – it’s all influenced by their own head. Luckily, the Roman Catholic Church is coming to the rescue to change everyone’s minds into their own! For some strange reason, Touma objects to this…

Introduced in this volume: no one! Given this is the second in a two-parter, we get no new characters. That said, Lidvia certainly gets a lot more to do here, and she’s really not a pleasant person at all, though when given Lady of the Tiger choice she at least attempts to do the right thing by choosing Lady AND Tiger. We also see Laura Stuart (or rather hear Laura Stuart) at her most devious and cunning – Lidvia has a long way to go to get to Laura’s level. Himegami also gets a larger role in this book, and it once again reflects on her status as a “failed heroine” – she wants to do romantic things with Touma, but he’s too busy saving the world, and in the end she ends up an innocent victim who Touma doesn’t even have the time to rescue – Stiyl and Komoe-sensei have to do it. (I will simply ignore the ship tease between Stiyl and Komoe in this book, because eurgh.)

Luckily she’s cheered up by Index, who also gets very little to do this book, but that’s by design, as most of the Magic Side know that Index is a plot maguffin and so they have to keep an eye on her to see what’s going to happen. Of course, finding out Touma is once again getting himself hospitalized without her knowing anything makes her grumpier. I find Index far more tolerable in prose form – no offense to Yuka Iguchi, but I think Index herself simply sounds less stupid in the books as opposed to the anime. She’s the emotional core of the series, and it’s her purity that inspires many other characters – most obviously Touma and Stiyl here. (She also gets a great line about Peter Pan when looking at the youthful looks of Touma and Mikoto’s mothers, which the anime sadly cut.)

The book itself does its level best to conceal its big secret: this entire runaround was pointless, and chasing after Oriana was meant to be a distraction. Luckily, like follows like, and pointless follows pointless – for all that Lidvia succeeds in her ritual, it’s useless due to Academy City’s fireworks show lighting up the sky. I think one reason Index is so upset is that she could have saved him a lot of running around and injuries by simply having hm ask her, but then when you’re a walking magic wikipedia… In any case, a good volume, and less magic theory than the 9th book (though we still get some, mostly related to astrology). Next time, Index Does Italy!