Brace Yourself! The Long-Threatened Yaoi Review is Here!

This post comes with some warnings.  If you don’t like boys’ love or yaoi, skip this post.  Just don’t read it.  I’ll probably do another post tomorrow, so just come back then.  If you don’t mind or feel adventurous, please, read on.

I have a limited yaoi collection, mostly because this kind of manga just recently became available at the Borders across the way from where I work, which is where I buy the grand majority of my manga.  The last time I shopped at Barnes & Noble the cashier literally shoved my purchases at me after I paid for them, which I found offensively snobbish and will still be limiting my time there.  However, this is not a bookstore review.

I had initially planned to re-read the two volumes of Love Recipe, but since I do most of my reading at work currently I decided that wasn’t really possible due to the explicit nature of the material and one nosy coworker.  This is my favorite yaoi though, so I should be able to review it with no problems now.

If you’re familiar at all with Animation Runner Kuromi, Love Recipe is similar, but with a boys’ love/yaoi bent.  If you’re not familiar with Animation Runner Kuromi, go get familiar with it.  Now.  In the meantime, Love Recipe is about a newly-minted graduate, Tomonori Ozawa who has just landed his dream job as an editor for a manga publisher.  The tiny detail he isn’t aware of before showing up for his first day on the job, is that he works for a Boys’ Love manga publisher!

It’s not long before Ozawa is sent to retrieve a manuscript from RoseBoy’s most popular author, Sakurako Kakyoin.  Under the impression that Kakyoin is a woman, he readily agrees, and is shocked to find that Kakyoin, is in fact a man that draws boys love comics.  Ozawa is molested by Kakyoin shortly thereafter.

There’s an odd charm to this manga.  Although there is the initial consensual-on-one-side sex, the sex scenes in the rest of the manga seem to be mutually consensual.  At least as much as it ever is in yaoi, from my limited experience.  The relationship between the two main characters is amusingly complex, and all the extra snippets about manga editing, moe, and the purpose of boys love comics makes this manga a continuously good read.

The biggest draw for me is the relationship between Ozawa and Kakyoin.  Kakyoin starts out as the older, experienced aggressor, but ends up quickly falling for Ozawa, who doesn’t have a clue.  Ozawa’s cluelessness carries the humor for the rest of both volumes of this manga.

In short, I highly recommend this manga, for yaoi beginners such as myself, or maybe even long time fans.  It’s cute and sweet, and the sex scenes are well done, without being overly graphic or weird.   They’re a little more expensive than most manga, but for the extra money, you get lovely slipcovers on your manga.  It’s definitely worth the extra money.  In fact, feel free to check out Digital Manga’s website to see more of their catalog.

I want to find happiness

I’m not sure exactly when manga started being published by companies in the United States.  My earliest manga purchases were the paperback size Mixx Manga of Sailor Moon, and the big flopped Magic Knight Rayearths.  The latter of which was surprisingly expensive even then – 14.95 per volume.  Yet I bought them.  I started into anime and manga fandom in the middle of my high school years and remember there only being a shelf of books to consider buying.  Thankfully over the years, the selection has grown to such an extent that I couldn’t possibly keep up with all the titles I want to keep up on, let alone new ones.  I’ve still managed to amass what I’d like to think is a pretty impressive collection.

There was a time early in my fandom when I was able to keep abreast of all CLAMP releases, and one that stood out was Clover with its weird tissue paper-like dust covers.  The volumes I own are in decent condition, but those covers tear so easily.  They’re pretty, but ultimately impractical, so I was glad to see an omnibus edition collecting all of Clover into one convenient volume.  Of course, I purchased it, and re-read the entire thing, and it surprised me.

A quick synopsis: Kazuhiko, a retired military officer, is requested to go on a final mission for his former commander.  He is to escort a girl, Sue to Fairy Park.  Along the way they are intercepted by the military of an opposing country, but eventually they reach their destination.

Now what really surprised me about it is that Clover annoys me terribly.  There are two giant reasons that it annoys me.  I appreciate the story being somewhat centered around a singer and the song that she co-writes with the girl, but the endless repetition of random song lyrics really got on my nerves, personally.  For me, it doesn’t help that I have absolutely no frame of reference for the tune of the song.  Without the tune, the lyrics have no rhythm and don’t add anything to the story besides my annoyance.

The other reason is the art, or the lack thereof.  It’s old style CLAMP with loads of wispy hair and sharp pointy eyes, which isn’t a problem.  The problem for me is all the white space, and all the panels that look like they were simply photocopied badly and pasted into place.  I spent a little time reflecting on why this bothers me so much and the simple reason is that I feel cheated.  I buy manga for both story and art, but this one seems awfully light on the art.  With all the manga I read, I’ve really become used to the page being filled, with empty pages serving to emphasize an event.  Most of the pages being empty however, emphasizes nothing and merely irritates me.  It seems awfully lazy.

My smaller complaint is the story.  The main story is linear, but it’s resolved in two volumes, leaving the other two volumes to fill in background.  I actually enjoy narrative that jumps the timeline of the story, so I didn’t mind this…much.  On a second reading however, it just seems like volumes three and four are filler created solely to fill up space.  The sad part is, I liked volume 3 more than the rest of the series.  It does the most to shed light on the entire world setting and general plot.  Plus the relationship between Ran and Ginsetsu is more interesting than any of the other relationships in any of the volumes.

Sadly, I have to say that I would not recommend buying the Clover omnibus, unless you happen to be a CLAMP completist.  Even then, I probably wouldn’t suggest it, simply because it’s so different from the works of CLAMP that I happen to be familiar with.  I will however, being looking forward to the Cardcaptor Sakura omnibuses with much glee.

Chibi Reviews: Suzaku of the Counterattack, Higurashi, and Black Butler

I’ve been reading a lot of manga lately, mostly because I can’t walk out of a store without at least 3 volumes, so I’ve been trimming down my stack to read by taking them to work with me and reading during my breaks.  Since I promised reviews of most of my last massive buying binge, I’m going to post some mini reviews, focusing on three aspects of each: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Code Geass: Suzaku of the Counterattack volume 1 manga by Atsuro Yomino, published by Bandai Entertainment

Synopsis: Code Geass told through the point of view of Suzaku Kururugi and without the mech suits.

the Good: The alternate telling of Code Geass from Suzaku’s perspective is interesting.

the Bad: It’s a little too unfamiliar.

the Ugly: It’s not all that memorable.

I didn’t actually buy this manga intentionally, it was included in a Code Geass DVD box set, which also had a soundtrack and drama CD.  I wish more box sets were that cool.

Higurashi: When They Cry (Abducted by Demons Arc I) story by Ryukishi07, art by Karin Suzuragi, published by Yen Press

Synopsis: Keiichi is really enjoying himself in his new hometown with his new friends, until he starts learning about the secret that everyone is hiding.

the Good: The color art is spectacular and the two page spread in this volume is one of the creepiest images I have ever seen.  I still get chills looking at it.

the Bad: The rest of the art was generic.

the Ugly: The harem seems awfully contrived.  I know this is derived from a game, but it still bothers me.

Black Butler, volume 1 story and art by Yana Toboso, published by Yen Press

Synopsis: Ciel Phantomhive’s butler Sebastian seems to be too good to be true or too perfect to be human…

the Good: There’s a good mix of seriousness and humor.

the Bad: I honestly can’t remember all that much of the plot in this volume.

the Ugly: The first chapter is completely different from the rest of the volume – reading it along nearly turned me off from the series altogether.

Unless otherwise stated, I personally buy all the manga that I review.

“I’m not special.”

I recently went on a manga buying binge, so there might be a lot of review posts coming from that.  I counted, and it looked like two-thirds of what I bought were first volumes.  So much for my self discipline and only keeping up with series I already had a lot of.  Darn those pesky manga publishers and their temptations.  For that matter, darn bookstores and their sometimes spotty selection as well.  Hm, that sounds like material for another post.

Today’s post won’t be about a first volume, rather I’m going to review the second and final volume of Beast Master.  For a refresher of what I thought of volume one, go here.

Yuiko really loves animals.  Unfortunately she gets too enthusiastic with her attentions, so animals don’t love her back.  Her animal loving ways do lead to her becoming friends with Leo Aoi, a scary looking transfer student who grew up in various wild places, like Africa.  Leo goes berserk when he sees blood and turns into a ruthless killer who scares himself, but Yuiko is able to get through to him and calm him down.

This volume was not quite as good as the first volume.  There’s a new arc introduced for a couple chapters wherein Leo is set to inherit a fortune once his birthday hits, and is consequently nearly killed by his jealous relatives.  Of course, Yuiko is thrown into the mix, but the interesting bit there is that Yuiko releases some of her own inner beast, shouting down Leo’s relatives as they tell him that he’s a freak and doesn’t deserve to live.  The whole “hey guess what? he’s rich!” thing just seems too cliche to me still.  Then Leo’s dad makes an appearance, just in time to whisk him away elsewhere so he’ll be safe from his relatives.  Yuiko attempts to convince Leo to go, and what happens after that is easily the best part of this volume.

The art remains great.  It’s clear, and there’s a lot of energy in it, which will keep me re-reading it over and over.  I will definitely be keeping a hopeful eye out, looking for more translated work from Kyousuke Motomi.

I was glad that another of his works was included in this volume, a short 4 chapter manga titled “Cactus Summer Surprise.”  I think I actually enjoyed the short manga more than the rest of the volume.

I still think it’s worth a buy, especially since the series is only two volumes.  That makes Beast Master a short and sweet addition to any manga collection.

Attention Manga Lovers

I just went through my manga collection and have quite a few that I don’t want. Here’s the deal: if you see something here that you’d like to have, comment here or e-mail me  (sailorsamus@araknamedia.com) and I’ll send it to you. I’m not really interested in making money from these, I really just want them out of my room and I’m willing to send them to people I (sorta) know first.  No charge.  I will send you free manga.

In the (unlikely) event that more than one person wants a volume of whatever, whoever messages me first gets it. I’ll be keeping this list updated also.  Also, I’ve put this list up on my personal facebook page, so there may be some competition, but I doubt it’ll be all that serious.  I just hope this works.

Manga up for grabs!

-Beauty Pop vol 8 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Kiyoko Arai
-Absolute Boyfriend vols. 1,2,3 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Yuu Watase
-Ral Grad vols. 1,2,3 (Shonen Jump Advanced/Viz) Tsuneo Takano & Takeshi Obata
-Wild Ones vols. 1,2,3,4,5 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Kiyo Fujiwara
-Tokyo Boys & Girls vols. 1,2,3,4,5 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Miki Aihara
-Heaven’s Will (Shojo Beat/Viz) Satoru Takamiya
-The World Exists for Me (Tokyopop) Chiho Saito & Be-Papas
-Descendants of Darkness: Yami no Matsuei, vol.1 (Viz) Yoko Matsushita
-Densha Otoko vol.1 (CMX) Hitori Nakano & Wataru Watanabe
-Her Majesty’s Dog vol.1 (go!Comi) Mick Takeuchi
-Go Go Heaven!! vol.1 (CMX) Keiko Yamada
-The Magic Touch (Oyayubikara Romance) vols. 1,2 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Izumi Tsubaki
-Sensual Phrase vol.1 (Viz) Mayu Shinjo
-Captive Hearts vols. 1,2,3 (Shojo Beat/Viz) Matsuri Hino
*Edit February 10, 2010: all claimed or sold off, sorry about my impatience, although this isn’t too likely to happen again any time soon. Rest assured, any time I have extras of something, I will post them here first for you guys. Or make a contest of it.

Quick Manga Thought: Shounen vs. Shoujo

In my pile of manga I bought a couple weeks ago is D. Gray Man volume 15, which I read today.

I had no idea what was going on.  I didn’t remember any of the events from the last volume, and had to piece what recollection I had from this current volume.

That’s the problem I have following shounen manga.  Once it gets past a certain point, it seems that the storyline gets too convoluted to follow easily.  I’m not saying this is true for every shounen manga.  It’s simply an observation from the ones that I have read.  It’s entirely possible that I’m not reading the right kind of shounen manga.

Anyway, convoluted plot gets to be a problem.  I’ve had this problem with Naruto also.  The only difference there is that I tend to lose interest and stopped following it entirely.  Twice.

As you may or may not know, I have a giant weakness for shoujo romance.  One of the major reasons is the difference from the shounen manga I have: I don’t forget what’s going on where.  The plots may be simple, but for these manga it makes all the difference to me.  I can pick up the next volume two months from the last volume and be back in the heart of it.

That may be the entirety of why I have so much more romance-y manga than action manga.

Side note: a figure post is coming.  Just need to edit a few pictures for it.

Eyes of a Predator

Back to the promised regular anime fandom…or more specifically manga.  I recently bought a handful of manga about a week ago now, and I think I’m going to try and write reviews for all the first volumes at least.  There may come a time when I decided to re-read one I’ve been keeping up with and reviewing it volume by volume, but I wouldn’t look for that to happen any time soon.

The volume I’ll be reviewing today is Beast Master volume 1 by Kyousuke Motomi published by Viz Media in their Shojo Beat imprint in November 2009.  The original manga’s copyright is 2007.

The main character, Yuiko Kubozuka really loves animals.  Unfortunately animals don’t love her back because she tends to smother them with too much love, like the Abominable Snowman in old Warner Brothers cartoons.  She sees a wild looking boy who jumps out of a tree holding the cat she’d just scared up the tree, and then voila! he transfers into her class at school the next day.  Of course, rumors fly.  He has very scary looking eyes, which keeps everybody at a distance.  Except for Yuiko who only wants to thank Leo for rescuing the cat the day before.  She sees him on the roof, surrounded by birds, and jealous, rushes forward and scares the birds away.  When she’s asked by Leo if she’s afraid of him, she answers “No,” and is rewarded by his smile.  Turns out Leo is simply innocent and friendly; he just tends to normally have a scary expression (much like Sawako in Kimi ni Todoke).  For me, that was surprise number one.  The guy in this romance is friendly but shy.  Of course, that can’t be all there is to him.  After making friends with Yuiko, Leo’s cornered by a gang whose leader wishes to fight him.  They end up scaring Leo up a tree who confesses that he’s never been in a fight, except when a panther tried to maul him and just recently.  He also reveals that when he sees blood, he gets scared and doesn’t remember what happens afterward, he just comes to and finds his antagonist dead or severely damaged.  Chagrined, the gang leaves him alone, the leader even vowing to help Leo whenever he needs it.

Leo is lured back up to the roof to face the other people he fought with, and they proceed to beat him.  Yuiko is there also, and tells them to run, but it’s too late.  Leo’s in berserk mode and proceeds to beat the living daylights out of everyone around him.  Yuiko stops him by tackling him from behind and holding on until she’s sure he’s himself again.  Thus starts the tale of the hapless animal lover who takes a wild boy under her wing.

Leo is shown to live with a guardian, Toki, who’s a former mercenary.  His past and parents are a subject of mystery, except for the fact that he’s apparently grown up in the wild in places like an uninhabited island and the savannah of Africa.  The rest of the volume is more of Yuiko and Leo at school, and more of Leo losing control and Yuiko wondering why it’s so easy for her to calm him down.

I was surprised that Leo turns out to be friendly and innocent rather than just scary.  The fish-out-of-water wild boy is nothing new, but so far the author hasn’t used any of the situations and jokes you’d expect with that particular trope. Yuiko seems like a fairly typical shojo heroine: outgoing, friendly, overly optimistic and impulsive.  What’s particularly refreshing about Yuiko in this first volume is that her lack of fear of Leo goes all the way to Leo in berserk form.  She doesn’t hesitate, she simply grabs him and tells him it’s okay.  She even wonders why she’s not afraid then.  The gang leader is also surprising, giving up on fighting Leo after finding out he was scared and even protecting him.  The cast of characters is pretty small, and the plot seems pretty typical over the first four chapters anyway.

I really enjoyed the art, especially in some of the action scenes.  There’s great movement and energy that comes out of Motomi’s illustrations here.  My favorite scene from this volume is in the first chapter, where Yuiko tackles Leo from behind, wrapping her arms around his head and her legs around his waist in order to keep him from continuing his rampage.  There’s a good amount of detail in all the characters and their clothing, and the artist does well with both the more realistic portrayals of faces and bodies, and the more deformed and humorous expressions.

My verdict?  I’m hooked.  I’m probably going to be keeping up with the the releases of this series in the States.  The only low point might be the plot, but I require a second volume at least, before I make any judgements on that.

You might like this manga if you like Kimi ni Todoke.  Leo’s general situation (looks scary, is actually friendly) is much the same as Sawako’s.

The manga in this review was provided by the author.

How dare you stomp on my honor?!

I believe my roommate may be one of the few people who isn’t all that up to date on Bleach…and what I mean by up to date is that she’s seen the first three major arcs and some of the arrancar arc.  I gave up on keeping up with Bleach quite a while ago, deciding that I would just wait for DVDs and watch it then.  As much as it sometimes pains me to not be up to date on some shows, I’m pretty used to it, and still enjoy them months and even years later.

I’d assured her that we were in a good arc with lots of action and things happening.  I remember the first time watching these episodes, I ended up getting so drawn in that I felt compelled to watch more and more.  I believe that’s how I got through them the first time.

Now I’m hitting the magical ‘why did I think this was great again?’ area.  This is because we’ve seen a couple of the major fights.  Major as in the prior ten episodes have been building up to this fight.  Major as in dialogue heavy, mostly cocky bragging and ‘Impossible!’.  Seriously, how often do you need your opinion disproved before you learn to just shut up before you can say something else that’s going to make you look like an ass?  I can tell you why though.  There were many events, and the pacing of non-major fight events is fast.  So fast, that I was confused, but I was thinking about it, and that’s what kept me going through.  I’m not so much a fan of 5 episode fights and the tons of talking they require, but I do realize they are a staple of shounen action anime.

Which got me thinking on something else.  I have a book by Dianne Wynn Jones entitled the Tough Guide to Fantasyland.  In a way, reading this book gives you a guide on how to write a fantasy novel, making fun as it does of all the tropes of the fantasy novel.  Knowing that sometimes manga authors don’t have much control over their own creations, I’m wondering if they are aware of the tropes of shounen manga and in fact make sure to include them in their manga.

I think it’s interesting to reflect on.  You may argue what about originality?  Originality is great and all but remember that manga is still a business.  Originality is great as long as it sells books, but sometimes a story that’s a little more comfortably familiar is the better sell.

Now before any of you decide to jump on me for that particular opinion, I would like to defend myself a little.  Given a choice, I’d rather have the originality, if it exists.  I just like to make the arguments that I don’t see too often, probably because I presently don’t read too many anime/manga blogs or listen to many podcasts on the subject.  I’m working on fixing that.

After all, artists have to eat too.

*For anyone wondering, we’re up to the Ichigo/Byakuya fight.  Actually into the fight, but not yet at the point where Byakuya unleashes the second stage of his bankai.  I believe Ichigo just revealed his bankai and demonstrated his additional speed.  Besides all the speeches, and boasts, and counter-boasts.  *sigh*

Comic geek moment

I’m sure I have mentioned this before, I started down my own road of geek fandom with American comic books.  Early in my fandom if you asked me the art or writing question, I would answer art.  It is what first catches the eyes of prospective readers after all.  However, it does fall into the category of judging a book by its cover.  The outside does not necessarily reflect the inside.  Eventually I came to see the light, especially after having read a string of comic books with pretty art and horrible writing.  I now weigh in on the side of writing.

Academic aspects of comic books such as the art vs. writing debate fascinates me.  The evolution of the medium also fascinates me.  In the past ten years I have become disenchanted with modern American comic books and moved onto Japanese manga.  I have read some Korean manga as well…or is it manwha?  I’m not sure.  One thing that podcasts have taught me is that while I’m still more into the otaku culture than most of the people I know, compared to others I really am still a casual sort of fan.

That’s beside the point.  This week I read two manga by Natsuki Takaya (amazingly I managed to remember that off the top of my head, but I’ll probably look it up to be sure).  You might recognize her name from her epic hit manga, Fruits Basket.  If you haven’t even heard of Fruits Basket, I’d like to see the rock you’ve been living under.

In fact, I happened to read the last two volumes of Fruits Basket and the first volume of her first manga, Phantom Dream.  There are no visible similarity between the two.

Phantom Dream looks like the typical style for shoujo manga.  Reading it, I could not tell you that it was from the artist of Fruits Basket.  It’s going to be hard for me to explain why this fascinates me so much, but I’m going to try.  Please bear with me, readers.

I’ve noticed this between two manga-ka now, the aforementioned Takaya, and Miki Aihara.  I’ve read three of Aihara’s works, Tokyo Boys and Girls, Hot Gimmick, and Honey Hunt.  Along with Takaya, in her first title Aihara draws in a typical shojo style that seemingly has no likeness to her current work.  The thing that becomes so fascinating to me is to look closer at the artwork, to try and find similarities to current works.  For Aihara, it was some of her super-deformed facial expressions and eyes.  For Takaya, there were a couple instances where I could see the faint beginnings of how she would later draw eyes.

I would love to read more of the works of both authors to see more of the evolution of their particular art styles.  Both started off fairly typical, and both evolved into something much more stylized.  For Takaya, her figures started off typically willowy and skinny, and with Fruits Basket, they’re still skinny, but they seem much more solid to me.  For Aihara, the eyes of her female characters have become much bigger and therefore more expressive.

I will probably write more on this subject as I come around to it.  Reading more of particular artists’ bodies of works is partly what has led me to pursue something of a study of Japanese language.  I’d love to be able to read Japanese and therefore gain greater access to the works of my favorite manga-ka.

Hope this wasn’t too boring!

Araknapod Episode 3: Excuse me

I had some issues with hiccuping, so there’s a few times I say ‘excuse me’ out of reflex, hence the title.

Opening theme: Deja Vu – Hideaki Matsuoka (Tokyo Babylon)

For news items I very briefly touch on the Fairy Tale anime, the Otomen drama, Andrew WK’s upcoming solo piano album, and the release of Final Fantasy Dissidia in the States.  I also talk about finishing up two podiobooks, How to Succeed in Evil and Weather Child.

Review of Tokyo Babylon. Although I took notes, there’s still much in the way of pauses.  It turns out I’m not so good at talking at length about stuff by myself.  Might see about getting my roommate to cohost a podcast sometime.

I also talk a little about my current cosplay project.

And I mention e-mail/comments, and ways to contact myself.

Ending theme: Strawberry Kiss Kiss – Hideaki Matsuoka (Tokyo Babylon)

Any feedback? Suggestions? Comment or e-mail me!

*side note about Otomen* I watched the drama since this recording, and currently I love it!