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 What I Reviewed: April 2005 (part one)
Written by Barb Lien-Cooper
Back in the day, there was a site that my wife Barbara used to review manga for... I think it was Comics World News? Well, they became defunct, but I found some old manga commentary that Barb wrote way back then that never got used, and I thought it could be cool to open this little manga time capsule... with “whatever happened to” commentary after them from me (well, if needed... no commentary needed from me on the first one)... So come with me now BACK... BACK... BACK in the time machine to that era when this Naruto thing was really starting to catch on:
APRIL 2005.
Pet Shop of Horrors v10
by Matsuri Akino, from Tokyopop
When I hear people tell me that girls don't like horror, I laugh. I laugh because girls are the ones buying R.L. Stine books and going to movies like The Ring. We're also the ones who make manga like Pet Shop of Horrors. Matsuri Akino is a female writer, you see. I always like knowing that female creators are behind manga like Pet Shop and Saiyuki (an action-adventure comic I highly recommend) because it proves those who say that girls don't care for the same things in comics boys do somewhat wrong.
Needless to say, I was a Pet Shop of Horrors fan from Day One. I miss it a bit now that it's over. Part of missing the manga is because the ending was, frankly, a bit dissatisfying. The set up, if you don't know: the mysterious Count D sells enchanted and scary pets to folks with peculiar tastes in pet ownership. Pet Shop, in reality, are little morality tales. In the cases where the owners are decent people, the pets help them find their way. In the case of bad owners, the results are pretty terrible for all involved.
Volume 10 of Pet Shop is disappointing because it gives away all of Count D's secrets; specifically who he is and why he's running such a shop. While one wants some of those secrets answered, one feels let down that the answers were so unambiguously comic book, for lack of a better phrase. I read an article about J-horror in Esquire that said the beauty of J-horror is that delicious ambiguity of not knowing all the answers.
So, in the end, I give the entire series a low 8 out of 10. Some stories weren't paced right, some were silly, but the majority of them were fascinating and original. I'm not going to let the ending spoil my memories of an above-average series.
Hellsing v1
by Kohta Hirano, from Dark Horse
I really liked the anime of Hellsing, but it left me wanting more of the story. So, I bought Hellsing, the manga, v1. Sadly, the thrill was gone. If you haven't seen the anime and you're into gunplay and blood, you'll probably like the manga version of Hellsing. It's one of the more "Western" of mangas visually... Because of all the violence, it'll probably be of interest to those who are missing the blow-things-up-real-good factor of a comic like Preacher.
The plot, what there is of it, is that an agency called the Hellsing Agency blows away vampires for a living. Its main vamp exterminator happens to be (not a stretch there) one Alucard (read it backwards for more info).
The problem was, for me at any rate, that after seeing all the violence animated, the comic itself seemed, well, an empty experience. The characters don't have a lot of initial backstory, for instance. Sure, we don't need the life history of characters first shot out of the box to identify with them. But, when you don't care about the characters, it's just like trying to novelize a John Woo film. It's just too flip-through-able for my tastes.
Dolls v1
by Yumiko Kawahara, from Viz
If you took the set up of Pet Shop of Horrors--
--a mysterious shop owner sells enchanted artifacts
--Subtracted the gothic part of gothic shoujo (i.e. the horror)
--And made the artifacts beautiful dolls instead of intriguing pets...
You'd get Dolls.
Sadly, I need the gothic in my shoujo. I also need better pacing, less-predictable plots, and less-wooden characters than Dolls seems to offer.
The art is lovely, though.
So, let's just say it wasn't for me, and leave it at that.
Battle Royale v5
by Koushun Takami and Masayuki Taguchi, from Tokyopop
Battle Royale is an intense experience. It's not for kiddies. It's also not for those with a depressive temperament. While I'm not a child, and I actually like intense, violent works, I do tend to get into stories a bit too deeply for my own good. That's sort of why I stopped reading the otherwise excellent Battle Royale after the fifth volume.
The set-up: A group of high schoolers, in the ultimate reality TV show of the future, are taken to a desert island and told it's the most dangerous game time. In short, they're told that they have to kill the other contestants or be killed themselves.
Now, I plowed through the first five volumes of the series, intrigued and glued to the page.
By volume five, however, I had to bail. Oh, not because of the violence. I can take people being blown away just fine, in a fictional context.
The problem was that I started to LIKE the characters so much that I couldn't deal with seeing people I grew to identify with have a death sentence over their heads. In short, my stomach was strong enough, but my heart was too tender. In a way, that's a tribute to excellent storytelling---that it just got too much for me.
Verdict: this is excellent (albeit controversial) storytelling and if you can take it, I recommend the work highly.
The Kindachi Files: The Santa Slayings
by Yozaburo Kanari and Fumiya Sato, from Tokyopop
When you're too young for Columbo re-runs and too old for the Hardy Boys, you should probably be reading The Kindachi Files. It's your typical teen detective book, only, unlike a McGurk Agency book or an Encyclopedia Brown story, people actually get murdered the Kindachi-verse. If you're into dastardly murder mysteries that have a bit of formula to them, these brainteasers are very cleverly done. The Santa Slayings is one of the lighter Kindachi cases, but still a neat little puzzle (I myself prefer the Kindachi mystery called Death TV).
I just wish that we knew more about the characters, particularly the teen detective involved with solving the murders. I wish that these killings made a bit more impact on our hero than "well, that's that" at the end of the works. In other words, while The Kindachi Files are really good mysteries, if you're looking for more backstory to your characters, you'd probably be better off reading the manga of Case Closed.
One Piece # 6: The Oath
by Eiichiro Oda, from Shonen Jump/Viz
Shonen Jump is a magazine that publishes action-adventure comics for kids (mostly boys, but girls have been known to read the stories, too). We got Dragonball Z, Knights of the Zodiac, Yu-Gi-Oh, etc. from this magazine. However, we also got some mangas I actually read from there, including Rurouni Kenshin, Hikaro No Go, and Naruto. One Piece is somewhere in the middle. I read the first six volumes with some interest because the storytelling is fresh and breezy. I stopped reading after Volume Six because I prefered watching the anime on Cartoon Network to spending money on the books.
I also stopped reading One Piece because, frankly, it's a little too young and silly for me. Now, if I were a kid or a parent with a smart kid, I'd be all over this comic. One Piece is a rip-roaring pirate story about a young man named Monkey D. Luffy (did I mention that this comic has a big whimsy factor to it?) and his attempts to become king of the pirates by finding a treasure called One Piece. Along the way, he and his crew meet some of the strangest misfit toys type pirates you're ever going to meet.
I totally admit that One Piece has excitement, intelligence, and good plots. But, I also admit that I'm too much of an adult to appreciate its sillier aspects.
In short, it's a really good comic for children and younger adults...and those who are children at heart. It saddens me a bit to know I'm not sufficiently in any of those categories to read the comic...
But, Cartoon Network better keep showing the series, or I'll be hopping mad...
(Editor’s Note: we got over the anime, too. The incredibly ridiculous censorship didn’t help, but mostly the verdict was: Too Silly.)
Next time: More time-capsule reviews and commentary
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