The Water Dragon’s Bride, Vol. 1

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By Rei Toma. Released in Japan as “Suijin no Ikenie” by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Cheese!. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Abby Lehrke.

Holy catfish, this is dark. Don’t be thrown off by the cutesy picture of the heroine looking adorable on the cover, this is a fantasy that comes close to pure horror at times. Starting off with every parent’s worst nightmare, we move from crisis situation to crisis situation, and it’s a small miracle that Asahi (the aforementioned heroine) manages to be as strong as she does throughout. The water dragon in question is one of those “what are these strange things called human emotions” types, who has to be reminded of things like “humans eat in order to stay alive” She manages to find a good friend in a small village, but sadly Subaru’s mother comes from the School Of Evil Moms (TM) and Asahi ends up in probably worse trouble than if she’d just stayed hidden. There’s a lot going on here, so it’s a good thing you can’t tear your eyes from it.

We actually start off in modern times, as Asahi is a normal and seemingly somewhat spoiled girl who ends up being literally dragged into her family’s backyard pond by a wave of water and winds up in a fantasy-style world. (I have a sneaking suspicion the parents will never be seen again, and shudder to think of their reaction to their daughter literally vanishing when they turned away briefly.) Luckily, she meets Subaru, a nice young kid about her age. Sadly, she has pink hair and purple eyes, something that this world does not seem to have run across, and therefore must be EEEEEVIL. As a result, they perform a ritual to the local Water God and offer up Asahi, which is to say they tie a large rock to her ankle and throw her to the bottom of the lake. Then she meets the Water Dragon, who reminds me a bit of Ayame from Fruits Basket. Sadly, it’s Ayame before he grew up and wised up, so he’s pretty much a callous jackass.

Things move on from there, and I won’t keep describing the plot, but I will once again say that there’s some amazingly traumatic stuff in here, and the artist captures it beautifully. Asahi’s sacrifice, the starvation, the skeletons in the water, the hallucinations of each other that she and Subaru see… there’s a good reason this runs in shoujo/josei hybrid Cheese! and not, say, Ribon. That said, it’s not all doom and gloom, mostly thanks to Asahi’s basic spunky personality, as even when she’s despairing she still tries hard. And there are a few laughs in the book, mostly involving the Water God getting roundly mocked by the other nature gods for being, well, a petulant manchild. I have no doubt that his maturation, with the help of Asahi, is the point of this book. That said, Asahi is about 8-9 years old, so if it does end up being a romance I’m rooting for her kid friend rather than the God. I suspect a timeskip in the near future.

In short, I was somewhat blown away by this new series. Dark it may be, but I can’t wait to read more.

Assassination Classroom, Vol. 15

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By Yusei Matsui. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialized in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by Tetsuichiro Miyaki. Adapted by Bryant Turnage.

(This review talks about *that* spoiler, the one everyone already knows, but I thought I’d warn you anyway.)

Now that we have the North American Weekly shonen Jump magazine, serializing the popular series at the same time they come out in Japan, surprises are very difficult to hold on to. Doubly so here, as the anime has also aired. But at the time when the Kaede Kayano revelation came out, it was quite a surprise, trust me, and everyone went back to look at their previous volumes to see if this was something truly planned fro the beginning or something that the author came up with on the fly. He helpfully tells us that it’s the former, showing us tiny specs of art that hinted that Kayano was Not What She Seemed. And this extends forward as well, as Kayano is in reality the younger sister of the class’ former teacher, who she alleges that Koro-sensei killed. How that happened is apparently part of the next volume. Yusei Matsui really ties this together beautifully, making it one of the best volumes in this already excellent series.

I’ve complained a few times about how, given she’s the closest thing we get to a female lead among the students, Kayano’s character has been somewhat flat. Now it turns out that this was not only deliberate but engineered on her part, trying not to attract too much attention and therefore setting herself up as the cute but plain friend of the real “main character”, Nagisa. The flashbacks not only show the lengths she went to to engineer her attack on Koro-sensei (who, as she reminds us herself, she named in the first place), but also the tremendous pain that hiding her altered state has caused her over the past several months. It’s been the perfect acting job. That said, sometimes you can get too caught up in your role, and Nagisa sees what Kayano isn’t letting herself – that she really has had fun in this class, made true friendships, and most importantly, has seen that Koro-sensei is maybe not the sister-murdering monster she thought.

This leads to the funniest scene of the volume, where Nagisa has to stop a dying Kayano from burning out her brain due to overuse of her tentacled form. He does this by a callback to Irina’s ‘foreign language techniques’, essentially kissing her into submission. Not only is this great ship fodder for fans of this pairing (and no doubt very annoying to Nagisa/Karma fans), but we also see Irina saying that he could have done better, the other students muttering that *they* could have done better, and Karma and Rio getting pictures and video of the whole thing on their cellphones, because they are glorious assholes. The entire scene just calls out how well-written the whole series is.

There are other things going on here, mostly in the first half. We learn about the principal’s past, which shows – surprise! – that he’s a former idealist who had tragedy turn him to the dark side. And the Peach Boy play, which is hysterical and also features a glorious moment where they discuss Kayano acting in a lead role, and she quickly ducks and says she’ll be in charge of props. (Highlights of the play discussion also include Irina suggesting the student’s do a strip show, and Karma suggesting Nagisa act in drag as Sada Abe (which Viz, wisely probably, forces the curious to Google). If you avoided the series before because it looked too silly or the premise was sketchy, you should definitely catch up, as it’s top tier Shonen Jump. And if you already read the weekly chapters and saw the anime, buy this anyway, as the reread factor is high.

My Big Sister Lives in a Fantasy World: Humanity’s Extinction Happens During Summer Vacation?!

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By Tsuyoshi Fujitaka and An2A. Released in Japan as “Neechan wa Chuunibyou” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

After three volumes, I’m still not quite sure how seriously I should be taking this series. Based on the premise and what actually happens in the books, you’d think the answer would be ‘not seriously at all’. And that’s probably the right answer, given the sheer amount of ridiculous things going on here. This is a parody of a certain melancholic series, and as a result is going to be over the top. At the same time, this is also the “this was a success, please expand on the plot and backstory a bit” volume, so we start to try to understand why Mutsuko is the way she is, and why Yuichi woke up one day seeing ‘roles’ over people’s heads. It’s a worthy goal, I suppose, but does mean you get a lot of wordy exposition at the start of the book, and if you think about it too hard it doesn’t really explain much at all.

The story picks up where we left off, with the club (and younger sister, who is there just because) heading off to a remote island, where Mutsuko has planned survival training. The remote island is a bit blatant, to the point where the characters spend several pages discussing the Haruhi equivalent without actually naming it. Once they get there, after conveniently jettisoning the minor characters, they find themselves drawn into a cult conspiracy to sacrifice virgins in order to resurrect an alien who is being worshipped as a god by the local anthropomorphic villagers. Yuichi, along with Natsuki, his serial killer-turned-love interest, is sidelined from the sacrificing for the most part, which is likely a relief, as when he does arrive to confront the God, he ends up one-shot killing it. In between these events, we get Aiko worrying about her vampiric heritage, Yoriko vacillating about how incestuous she really is, and Mutsuko being both obnoxious and disturbing at the same time.

When the book is being as light and frothy as this synopsis makes it sound, it’s excellent. Yuichi’s deadpan “well, whatever” reaction to events is shared by others in the cast now, and makes the whole thing less ridiculous and overpowered than it would sound if it was written in a more grandiose manner. Much as the series is riffing on Haruhi (to the point where much of the exposition discusses the idea that certain people can influence the world so that it obeys their whims, with the implication that Mutsuko is one such person), Mutsuko and Yuichi are only superficially similar to Haruhi and Kyon. Where the book falters a bit for me is when it does try to take itself too seriously. Kanako’s discussion about why she likes isekai stories hints at a much darker take on her character than I’d expected, and given how little she matters in the books to date it feels like pure setup and nothing else. Also, if you’re going to mock the “the sacrifices have to be virgins” cliche, don’t follow through with the “the non-virgins were raped and killed” part of that. You can’t mock your cliche and eat it too. That left a bad taste in my mouth.

In the end, this is an enjoyable series of books, but I find I’m enjoying the metatext a bit more than the text. the series walks a fine line between deconstructing this sort of light novel schtick and just going along with it. So far it holds up, but it needs to realize that dropping more serious content into the middle of it may be harder than initially thought. We’ll see what happens next – judging by its subtitle, the fourth book looks to double down on the Haruhi comparisons.