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 What Ysabet's Reading - December 2009
Written by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane
There's just enough time left in the year to squeeze in another batch of short reviews! To finish off 2009, here are some quick looks at vol. 13 of Ouran High School Host Club (Bisco Hatori), vol. 2 of Black Bird (Kanoko Sakurakoji), vol. 7 of We Were There (Yuki Obata), vol. 15 of Kaze Hikaru (Taeko Watanabe), vol. 5 of St. Dragon Girl (Natsumi Matsumoto), vol. 6 of Mixed Vegetables (Ayumi Komura), vol. 12 of Crimson Hero (Mitsuba Takanashi), and vol. 14 of S.A. (Maki Minami)
All reviews are based on copies provided by the publisher except volume 7 of We Were There.
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Ouran High School Host Club vol. 13 (Bisco Hatori)
Translated by Masumi Matsumoto (no adaptation credit given)
Ouran is always a good time, and this newest installment is no exception. After volume 12 gave readers more focus than usual on the older boys, volume 13 comes back to the tangle of varyingly-unacknowledged romantic feelings both Tamaki and Hikaru (and Kaoru, although he's taken a step back) feel for Haruhi, and back to the question of how Haruhi feels about each of them. Hikaru, in some ways one of the most childish characters in the series, has mostly come to terms with his feelings with some help from Kaoru, but his friendship with Tamaki makes it more than a little awkward.
Since I've said all that, you might think this volume is all about romance, but it's more than that; rather, the possibility of romance is making the characters more aware of how much they've really come to feel like the family that Tamaki fondly imagines them to be, and that dynamic is ripe for exploration. As for Haruhi, while she's reluctant to admit the possibility that she might feel more for Tamaki than admiration, she's making a real effort to be less passive and initiate things in her life, including with the host club--much to the guys' amusement and chagrin. And of course, business as usual (mostly) continues in the club itself, so there are plenty of hijinks to go around.
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Black Bird vol. 2 (Kanoko Sakurakoji)
Translated by JN Productions (no adaptation credit given)
I tend to cut a series' first volume a fair bit of slack. Volume 1 of Black Bird offered a premise that I thought could be developed in interesting ways, and while it didn't seem to be reaching its potential, well, it was early yet. Unfortunately, volume 2 doesn't help. Too much of the main characters' relationship has already gone from making me uncomfortable to making me feel kind of gross just reading it. (Note "making me feel". Mileage may vary, clearly.)
In this volume, Misao--whose flesh and blood can give demons different degrees of power depending on whether they consume or marry her--is still trying to figure out whether Kyo, a tengu she knew as a child, truly loves her or is only interested in what he can gain from marrying her. While she's piecing things together, she meets his retainers (who for the most part are charming and friendly to her, and are my favorite part of the book), one of whom looks an awful lot like Kyo.
Based on this volume, I still think there's some promise in the concept, but very little of the execution works for me. Misao interacts with Kyo as if she thinks she owes him something and has talked herself into believing that her attraction to him is love. Kyo is clearly meant to be more sympathetic than he actually comes across, and there are hints of a tragic backstory to go along with his kind gestures to his retainers. He's also clearly meant to be seen as actually loving Misao very much, and not just for her power-giving potential. So that's...nice. I mean, it's an extremely baseline requirement for a romantic relationship, and he doesn't get much past it, but at least it's there. He cares. He's just an aggressive, domineering jerk about it.
VIZ offers so many fantastic series in the very same genre that I can't recommend going for this one unless the premise sounds like it's exactly up your alley. I personally can't convince myself to see this as at all romantic, but at least Misao isn't a wilting flower who doesn't even try to resist Kyo's alpha male behavior.
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We Were There vol. 7 (Yuki Obata)
Translated by Tetsuichiro Miyaki and adapted by Nancy Thistlethwaite
Speaking of fantastic series VIZ offers, We Were There continues to be a great read. In volume 7, Yano and Nanami's friend Takeuchi is trying to do the right thing and get over his feelings for Nanami, so he accepts another girl's invitation to try being her boyfriend for a month. Yano has a few sharp words for him over the decision, but Takeuchi retaliates; in his eyes Yano isn't really in a position to criticize anyone else's relationship choices, especially since Yano still hasn't figured out how to avoid making Nanami miserable.
It's a timely conversation--soon afterwards, Yano has to make a decision that, it turns out, will have a profound effect on Nanami's feelings, and Takeuchi's right that his track record with that kind of choice isn't the greatest.
As always, We Were There's strength is in Obata's execution of the story. There's a fair bit going on in this volume (more than there often is, with this series), but it's all about decisions and their results, and Obata is very good at showing the consequences of her characters' actions.
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Kaze Hikaru vol. 15 (Taeko Watanabe)
Translated and adapted by Mai Ihara
Kaze Hikaru is another title I recommend highly every time I read a new volume, and vol. 15 is one of the installments in the series that's driven more by the characters than the politics, which always makes me happy. (It's a serious point in the series' favor that I find the politics-heavy volumes as interesting as I do, but that may have a lot to do with the liberal sprinkling of cultural notes through the series. You'd have to really try to not learn a lot, reading these books.)
The bulk of this volume is devoted to Sei's attempts to maintain her male disguise in the face of multiple threats: she's still being plagued by the unwanted attentions of Nakamura, a new recruit who's utterly convinced that Sei is a woman, while Captain Kondo invites her to perform a coming-of-age ceremony which would involve--among other things--changing her hairstyle to one that would eliminate the last traces of femininity in her appearance. Sei is less upset by the prospect than she is by Nakamura's reaction to it, and Okita's lack of reaction. And on top of all that, a renowned doctor visits the troop and offers to give all of the men physical exams.
That's all enough to keep Sei plenty busy, and it provides lots of opportunity for her to consider her situation in general and the nature of her relationship with Okita. Okita himself is a bit flustered for a lot of this volume, which is adorable--Watanabe writes him as both extremely competent and convincingly awkward in much the same way as she writes Sei as an obvious girl with a convincing masculine disguise. Since those are some of my favorite things about Kaze Hikaru, I thought this was a solid installment in a generally awesome series.
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St. Dragon Girl vol. 5 (Natsumi Matsumoto)
Translated by Andria Cheng and adapted by Heidi Vivolo
St. Dragon Girl is really growing on me, even though it's a much more episodic series than I usually prefer. (It helps that I've started thinking of it a bit like a TV series where almost everything about the relationships go back to their default settings after each episode, with any lasting changes happening slowly.)
Momoka has started taking real steps towards really letting Ryuga know how she feels about him, using time-honored strategies like making him lunch and finding an ideal location to confess her love to him, but both supernatural and mundane forces--but wait, there's no such thing as a mundane force in this series. At any rate, unrelated supernatural events and calculated interference from both Momoka and Ryuga's other prospective love interests, who are plenty magical in their own right, are all conspiring to keep our heroes apart. With a sports festival, a club trip, and the occasional rampaging panda spirit to contend with, volume 5 of St. Dragon Girl is quite literally action-packed from beginning to end, and it's a lot of fun.
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Mixed Vegetables vol. 6 (Ayumi Komura)
Translated by JN Productions and adapted by Stephanie V. W. Lucianovic
Volume 6 of Mixed Vegetables has a somewhat unfortunate problem: there's never really any doubt about how its central conflict will be resolved. At the beginning of the book, Hanayu has just failed one of her exams because she chose to help her father finish an important order at the patisserie the night before, which is more than a little awkward since she promising Hayato's parents that she'd stop working at their sushi shop if she didn't pass all of her exams. Rather than explain the extenuating circumstances and let them decide whether to hold her to the agreement, she follows it to the letter instead of the spirit, thereby making herself miserable and either saddening or frustrating almost every other character.
Now, this criticism doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the book--this is far from being the only series with this particular weakness. I continue to find most of the characters in Mixed Vegetables enjoyable, especially Hayato's parents; beyond that, how the situation gets resolved isn't so glaringly obvious, and I liked the way it was handled. I'm less pleased with the other subplot involving Hanayu's father's assistant, Maezawa, who no one seems to like but who Hayato seems to regard as a credible threat to his relationship with Hanayu anyway.
If this all sounds a bit wishy-washy, it's because Mixed Vegetables is continuing to be a perfectly pleasant story, but it has yet to make itself remarkable in any meaningful way.
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Crimson Hero vol. 12 (Mitsuba Takanashi)
Translated and adapted by Naoko Amemiya and Tetsuichiro Miyaki
Judging only from my very limited experience with Crimson Hero (this is my fourth consecutive volume), it almost seems to alternate between volumes devoted to major volleyball games and volumes devoted to the characters' interpersonal relationships, although of course there's overlap in both directions. Volume 12 is more in the latter camp, which means I liked it better than I did vol. 11.
Nobara has major relationship issues in this volume, what with a) really wanting to be in a relationship with Yushin (no surprise there, but not being in a relationship despite their feelings for each other is rough on both of them); b) not wanting to keep their feelings for each other a secret from Haibuki, a friend who's in love with her and doesn't know of any reason why he shouldn't be; and c) being the object of a really pushy rich boy's affections... a) and b) are handled pretty well, but I found the c) storyline set my teeth on edge a bit. Fortunately, that doesn't get the bulk of the focus; instead we get a fairly believable depiction of a love triangle where one of the people involved doesn't know what's going on. Having made the decision to not formalize their relationship, the way Nobara and Yushin handle the situation is unfortunate but plausible, and their concerns about their feelings throwing the team off-balance are justified.
All in all, I found this volume was a pretty good read, but I suspect that the next volume will swing back to volleyball and the supporting cast I haven't entirely figured out yet--which is only fair, given that this is a sports manga and all--and if it does, it'll probably be much less to my taste. But I'm sure the pendulum will swing back again.
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S.A. vol. 14 (Maki Minami)
Translated by JN Productions and adapted by Amanda Hubbard
The newest volume of S.A. uses a tried and true method of shaking things up: with Hikari and Kei's relationship going pretty well, the thing to do to retain the competitive spirit at the heart of the series is introduce a new challenger. New transfer student Iori Tokiwa arrives on the scene and promptly ties Hikari for second place on an exam, pushing everyone in S.A. (except for Hikari and Kei) down a notch. The lack of bad history between Tokiwa and Hikari means that her competitive instincts come to the surface in a healthier--and friendlier--way than they do with Kei, who begins feeling jealous of how well she's hitting it off with Tokiwa.
As I've said in earlier reviews, this series, while it'll never be a favorite, is working somewhat better for me since Hikari and Kei actually acted on their feelings for each other. I don't usually like jealous boyfriend storylines, but Kei's usually so confident about his superiority that it's a nice change to see him a bit shaken up. Tokiwa seems a little too perfect to me, but since his job so far seems to boil down to making Kei jealous, I guess that's appropriate. (Actually, he seems so specifically designed to appeal to Hikari that it almost makes me suspect that he's some sort of decoy in an elaborate plot designed to lure Hikari into something unfortunate, but I don't think this is quite that sort of manga.)
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