Bungo Stray Dogs, Vol. 1

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By Kafka Asagiri and Sango Harukawa. Released in Japan by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Kevin Gifford.

I often regret that I haven’t read as much classical Japanese literature as I should. To be fair, a great deal of it is not translated into English, but there’s a ton that is as well, and for all that I’ve wanted to read No Longer Human, it sits on my phone with about 80 million other books I tried to read and then got distracted by. But I suppose I’m going in with the wrong mindset, as I don’t really want to read these works for their literary value, but in order to understand what the hell is going on in all the manga that make references to them. And honestly, do I know any other Dazai than No Longer Human? Did I even know the classic film Rashomon was based on a short story? And if I knew the literary references that flit throughout the first volume of Bungo Stray Dogs, would I find it more interesting than I did?

Without the literary references, what we have here is a somewhat standard superhero team-up story. Our young hero is an abandoned orphan fleeing a monstrous tiger creature that’s been following him around and wreaking havoc; he sees a very eccentric young man supposedly trying to kill himself in the nearby river and rescues him, and their two lives become intertwined. It turns out that a) the supposedly suicidal young man (like Zetsubou-sensei, it’s played for laughs throughout) is part of a group with powers who form a detective agency, and b) our hero IS the tiger that follows him around – that’s his power, though he’s been sort of suppressing it. After a brief test to see if he has the skill and compassion to make it in their agency, he joins up with them and they battle a mafia kingpin who uses his powers not for niceness, but for evil.

The literary references come in because they’re all named after famous Japanese authors and poets, and their powers are based on their most famous work. Dazai is the eccentric man, and his power is No Longer Human. The villain, Akutagawa, has a power called Rashomon, from the short story of the same name. And so forth. Without this, unfortunately, you’re mostly left with something that we’ve seen a lot of before, and I’m not sure the gimmick is enough to keep me interested. It doesn’t help that we get brother/sister incest used for humor value, something that can be done with a light touch, but rarely is a light touch used. There’s no doubt this is popular – it spawned an anime, and the cast are attractive bishies who snark at each other much of the time. The action scenes are also pretty well done. But I’m not sure that’s enough to make me come back. It’s good, but lacks that certain something.

Accel World: The Binary Stars of Destiny

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By Reki Kawahara and Hima. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jocelyne Allen.

Much as I said last review that this one was probably going to be nothing more than a string of fights, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Bar the beginning, where despite everything Haru and Chiyuri do indeed succeed in punching hope into Takumu, this volume is a bit of breathing room in the midst of what has become a 4-volume arc. What this volume actually ends up being is a giant pile of good times for Haru, as if the author knew that too much bad stuff had rained down on him lately and so is trying to make up for it here. We get the renewed bonds of friendship, some cute ship tease, and finally succeed in busting out of the Accel World version of the Imperial Palace. We even get to see Haru bust some moves in a basketball game. No, really.

And look, another cover image that isn’t Kuroyukihime posing half-naked! (Don’t worry, it’ll be back for the 9th volume.) But yes, part of the plot of this book is to show how to move to the next level with the Incarnate system, and apparently it involved confronting what your worst trait is, and turning it into a positive. No prizes for guessing that Haru’s self-hatred and urge to escape his troubles is his big negative – this is what led to Silver Crow in the first place. But now we start to see him consciously apply what everyone else has always known are his good points – his ability to analyze a situation and come up with an appropriate response, combined with nearly infinite compassion. Let me tell you something, I realize that OT3s don’t actually happen in actual anime/manga, and also that the endgame of this series is clearly (and deservedly) Kuroyukihime. But after reading the first third of this book, you too will believe in the Childhood Friends Threesome of Pure Love.

Then there’s that basketball game. It’s not as if Haru magically becomes a good athlete, or even an average one – he literally works himself into unconsciousness. But this is the first time that we’ve really seen Haru take what he’s learned from fighting battles in the Accelerated World and apply it to real life – not in a cheating sense, but in terms of using his brain to analyze the best course of action. It’s telling that the one actual basketball player on the other team gives him respect – he’s earned it, simply by not giving up immediately and coming up with a solid plan. (They do still lose, I mean this isn’t Sword Art Online.)

Naturally, of course, it all crashes and burns in the end. After escaping from the Castle, we find that the ISS-infected users are busy torturing Ash Roller and his child – and likely doing so until they’re both forced from the game forever. Haru’s compassion is a big positive, but when he sees his friends cruelly tortured, it comes out in the worst possible way – revenge. And so the Chrome Disaster is back, and we have yet another volume to try to resolve this. Kawahara says it’s the last one, he promises. He’s said that before, of course. But I don’t mind. It’s a great arc in an underrated series.

Kiniro Mosaic, Vol. 1

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By Yui Hara. Released in Japan by Houbunsha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Manga Time Kirara Max. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Amanda Haley.

For the most part, when we’ve seen ‘girls in a high school hang out and do things together’ titles in North America, they’ve tended to be attached to some sort of club or activity. K-On! had its band, Sunshine Sketch and GA Art Design Class both revolved around its specialized art classes, etc. To an extent, Kiniro Mosaic does that as well – this time the theme is “foreign exchange students”. We get one right at the start, and midway through another one pops up – both from England. Thus the theme of this series is supposed to be ‘see the amusing ways that Japanese and British culture can clash’. Of course, like many of these sorts of series, including both K-On! and Sunshine Sketch, the real question involved is “how much yuri tease are we going to get?”. So far, a goodly amount.

Our first exchange student is Alice, who’s actually pretty well-versed in Japanese, and mostly runs into issues with cultural variations and such. She’s staying with Shinobu, who stayed with her in England a year or two earlier. Shinobu is the standard ‘average Japanese girl’ for the most part, a bit dense, but she does have one defining character trait, which is her love of cute things, especially blonde girls. Naturally, she really loves Alice, sometimes a little too much. Adding to this we have the remaining three girls; Youko, who is active and somewhat oblivious; Aya, who is usually the straight man of the group, and seems to have a crush on Youko; and Karen, another exchange student who’s not nearly as good at Japanese as Alice is, and thus speaks somewhat brokenly; she seems to be the ‘baka’ of the group, though as always with these types of series I suspect that ball will be passed around as the plot warrants.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this book – everyone’s likeable, cute, and amusing. I suspect it may be funnier for a Japanese speaker, who is more readily able to see the cultural differences a little better than I can. That said, there’s nothing yet that really draws me in like the series I mentioned above do. I suppose there’s the potential yuri tease, but unlike, say, Bloom Into You or similar series, I don’t think I expect too much from that front – after all, nothing canonically happened in K-On!, Sunshine Sketch or GA either (though Sunshine Sketch came reaaaaaal close). So it’s definitely worth a read if you enjoy seeing cute girls crushing on other cute girls. But if that’s not your thing, I suspect this really isn’t going to do much for you. It’s light as air. And of course, being the genre that it is, I don’t expect many dramatic moments to advance the plot – there’s only cute, and there is no plot. Even if someone has to move back to England, you get the feeling it will be resolved by the end of the chapter. Mildly recommended to fans of this genre.