Inubaka (Crazy for Dogs), v. 1

by Yukiya Sakauragi
Published in the U.S. by Viz



Slugline: A competent story about a girl who is especially good with dogs.

Suguri is a high school grad who loves dogs and wants to move to the big city. Like many manga girls with a special ability, she is otherwise inept, overly optimistic, and not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Through a series of misadventures (and one tasteful scene of her mutt humping a purebred bitch) she lands a job at a dog boutique in Tokyo.

As a dog owner myself, I was a bit disappointed by the attitude of the store owner and love interest is that mutts are worthless. That tends to lead to the attitude that some dogs are "good" and some are "bad" when the truth is that any dog can be a good dog -- whether a mutt, a pit bull, Chihuahua or Great Dane -- and any dog can be a bad dog. It all depends on what humans teach them, or fail to teach them.

Suguri does run into some realistic problems, such as dishonest roommates, in Tokyo, but on the whole Inubaka is a lightweight story with lots of cute puppies and dogs.



Inubaka (Crazy for Dogs) vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

Series Update: The Devil Does Exist, v. 2 & 3

SERIES UPDATE

Wow.

I was sorta expecting after the first volume for the series to take a sharp turn downhill, into the land of suck. Because often that is how stories end up, that the girl would go crazy and start debating back and forth, or what have you. I am not saying that the series breaks bold new ground -- they do have the mandatory so-sick-with-a-cold-he-passes-out storyline, and the everyone-goes-to-an-amusement-park-storyline -- but what happens are events I can sorta see happening, in that time of your life when everything seems so important and life as you know it hangs by a thread. And the problems people have don't just come from everyone not talking to each other and refusing to even attempt it, but make some sort of sense. You do not have to completely suspend your disbelief to follow this series and enjoy it. You just need to take it out for a night on the town and ply it with sake for a little bit.

Kayano and Takeru move closer together, but Takeru has severe mother abandonment issues which I sense are going to come up, and may turn into a wedge because no girl likes being compared to her mother. Ignore the covers, they are attractive but meaningless and do not represent anything story-wise.

I know people gave CMX in general a bad rap, but if you want a shoujo series that treats the creepy guy who professes love at the drop of a hat as actually creepy rather than annoyingly cute -- which seems a little more connected with reality and with a girl that seems almost normal and sane -- try this.

style="font-family:verdana;">such a way that you don't really think about it until you try to break it down. The secret of Neo is revealed -- and it's something more complicated and more reasonable than just a prehistoric creature -- and how this ties into Misaki's own background. The series ends with a mild recommendation. I wanted to give it a stronger recommendation due to the story and the characters, but the lack of background is holding it back.

The Devil Does Exist vol. 2 and vol. 3 are both available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand

Mamotte! Lollipop, v. 1

By Michiyo Kikuta
Published in the U.S. by Del Rey Manga



Dishonorable Mention

The way our heroine (Nina) keeps going on about wanting a boyfriend who would protect her, you'd think she was living in Iraq. The story goes on to hit every shojo stereotype: she's swept up into a competition, there's two guys competing for the lead role, they suddenly transfer to her school, several people are clinically insane and obviously unqualified for the powers they're wielding, we go to a hot springs resort and play towel games, people keep asking about Nina's hairstyle, and on an on and oh, wait, this all happened because she accidentally swallowed the magic pearl. You know what? It should only take about 24 hours for this problem to fix itself.

This book is rated for 13+. I'd like to think that 13-year-olds are smarter than this.



Mamotte! Lollipop vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

The Gentleman's Alliance Cross, v 1

Story and Art by Arina Tanemura
Released in the U.S. by Viz Shojo Beat



Slugline: Is being sold really that fun for tween girls?

Okay, bankruptcy laws in Japan must be horrible, because so many of the characters in anime get into their situations because of debts and so on. Either that or lawyers in Japan have an even worse reputation there than I thought. Plus, Japan must have not only imported European school systems, but also European concepts of nobility (despite having their own already.) Though their nobility is a very American one, you are rich because you are good, therefore if you are rich you deserve to be in charge. Ugh.

The only somewhat redeeming feature that the main character Haine has is that she can occasionally kick ass. But it's a aspect of her sordid past, something I wish she would have kept because she has every right to be angry at her situation, even angry at the boy she likes because he pretended to be gay to avoid entanglements.

The details of the world are well constructed and the art is nice, but it is like a building with no rules, or asking "How did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?" There is no real point. Maybe it cleans up later in the series, but this is one of those manga that I had to force myself to finish, and whose details immediately started fading from my mind as if to protect itself as soon as I put it down.

I don't give out Dishonorable Mentions like Miranda, but this is as close as I have ever gotten to giving one.



The Gentleman's Alliance Cross vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand

King City, v.1

by Brandon Graham
Published by Tokyopop



Slugline: The future of slackerdom is full of strange tech and cool cats.

The art has a retro feel and it's set in a future that is weirdly different, yet the characters are completely human and familiar. Joe and his cat, and his friend Peter who wears Mexican wrestling masks, hack their way through life doing errands and odd jobs on the fringes of organized gangs and larger evils. Joe's ex-girlfriend Anna and her new boyfriend make cameo appearances that are sure to be a set-up for later adventures.

The cat in particular is a bit of strange, unexplained fun that must be taken at face value or not at all: the cat is alien, smart, and with a juice injection can do almost anything. In fact, a great deal goes unexplained in King City, but since our characters are so easy to get along with, I'm quite willing to wait until later volumes.

This is an OEL book, left-to-right reading, and the art is a funky manga-by-way-of-R. Crumb that contributes to this book's quirky science-fiction flavor. I'm pretty annoyed that Amazon doesn't have a cover to show you. Hey, T'pop, fix that!



King City vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

The Devil Does Exist, v. 1

By Takanashi Mitsuba
Released in the U.S. by CMX



Slugline: A girl chooses between two guys and makes her intentions clear to them?!? Is this even a manga?

Kayano is about to admit her feelings to Yuichi in the standard shoujo form of a letter when the school bully, Takeru, intercepts said message before delivery. Takeru is untouchable in the school because his father is the principal. (Which makes me wonder about Japanese schools: is there any particular reason a school principal would need Men In Black?) Unfortunately, Takeru's father and Kayano's mother are dating and have become engaged, which will make them siblings. Start the hapless confusion music here, as the standard romantic triangle follies begin. But Kayano admits to herself that while they may be fun to read about in manga, they suck when you are living through them and she makes a decision and starts implementing it by the end of the first volume.

Yes, the girl makes a solid decision. Like I said, is this even a manga? I'm glad they skipped the endless vacillations that are often the whole point of shoujo and make the girls seem weak-willed and the guys like saps for putting up for it. And then making decisions that cause just as much tension, if not more, than not. Now we get to see what the characters are really made of, how driven they really are, when what drives them is not some genetic imperative (like how some girls in manga are always perky no matter how depressing the situation) or constant indecision. There are some interesting little artistic devices, but the author is trying something interesting here, which bumps this above most other shoujo in my opinion.



The Devil Does Exist vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand

Tactics, v. 1

by Sakura Kinoshita and Kazuko Higashiyama
Published in the U.S. by Tokyopop



Slugline: Kantarou and his enslaved spirits try to pay the bills by... well, they actually only do one exorcism, if you can call it that...

The back of the book says this manga "influenced the popular anime" so I'm guessing whoever wrote the anime had a better grasp of story structure and somehow managed to make Kantarou sympathetic. Because one bishonen tengu isn't going to carry loosely plotted stories with annoying and/or cardboard characters very far.

The tengu himself, Haurka, is the only real bishie in the book and he spends all his time either throwing hissy fits or whining about his tea bowl. Kantarou has no qualms about manipulating these spirits that he has enslaved, and he claims that he is trying to help spirits as a whole. But as I said, he really only helps one person -- maybe two, if you overlook all of the religious flimflam that was involved.

What saves this from a Dishonorable Mention is folklore content, even though it's revealed in awkward bits in between awkward plotting. The translator's footnotes at the end are especially informative, to the point where I have to assume the dialog is crummy because the translator didn't have much to work with.



Tactics vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

Murder Princess, v. 1

By Sekihiko Inui
Published in the U.S. by Broccoli Books



Slugline: For a title called Murder Princess, she is not doing a lot of murdering, and technically she isn't even a princess, she is a queen.

Murder Princess does suffer from one really silly conceit in the beginning: that by falling and bonking their heads together, a tough-as-nails female bounty hunter and a princess fleeing a coup would end up exchanging souls. Sure, I am willing to take some weirdness, but it is just there, dropped into the story. If we can get past that, there is an actually a not-half-bad story here, though for some reason it does feel more like a Saturday afternoon special than anything else. You have the recurring villian, a mad scientist who has created two incredibly cute but incredibly deadly robots disguised as children to do his bidding. Whenever we need a random threat to illustrate some aspect of a character's personality, said trio conveniently show up to wreak some destruction before having to flee.

There is some sort of prophecy being floated that Falis, the bounty hunter in Alita's body, is going to destroy the kingdom, but it doesn't really seem to drive the plot, and how she ends being paid to help protect the kingdom is a little threadbare. The action scenes, on the other hand, are decent, and if you are willing to overlook the plot holes, it is reasonably entertaining.



Murder Princess vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand

Paintings of You

By Mia Paluzzi and Chris Delk
Published by Iris Print (Release date: June 6, 2007)



Slugline: Claude likes Ben likes Beatrice likes Hero likes John likes Honey who is actually a bizarre rag doll... okay, that part's a little strange...

Everybody knows the standard relationship-misunderstanding trope: our overwrought hero/ine overhears and/or misunderstands something the Lust Object says, mentally blows it all out of proportion and silently flagellates him/herself for dozens or hundreds of pages because they can't possibly say anything to anybody.

Imagine my shock when not only was the relationship misunderstanding extended to every member of the cast, but our hero (Claude) actually gathers information from Ben's friends (but since they misunderstand too, it's the wrong information) and realizes there's been a misunderstanding.

All this plus good art, snappy dialog and some insightful, honest portrayal of the inner agony of artists (someone is speaking from experience, methinks.) I'm giving this four stars and I don't even like straight-up romances, as a rule, since they all end the same.

Porn content: two boy-on-boy kisses, both well earned. There's no rating on this promo copy, so I'm basing the rating tag on the fact that there's nothing remotely nasty in this book unless you're violently homophobic.



- Miranda

Series Update: Chikyu Misaki, v. 2 & 3

SERIES UPDATE

For a manga, this seems to be a rather short series, done in three volumes. Something I would like to bring up is that the lettering at times seems to have been poorly done, making it hard to read, though that might have simply have been the limitations of the panel layout. The story pulls together the separate storylines into an ending that seems to wrap up most of the major plot points, and at the same time doesn't really answer a lot of questions but handles them in such a way that you don't really think about it until you try to break it down. The secret of Neo is revealed -- and it's something more complicated and more reasonable than just a prehistoric creature -- and how this ties into Misaki's own background. The series ends with a mild recommendation. I wanted to give it a stronger recommendation due to the story and the characters, but the lack of background is holding it back.

Chikyu Misaki vol. 2 and vol. 3 are both available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand

Pleasure Dome

by Megumu Minami
Published in the U.S. by Kitty Media



Dishonorable Mention

This dishonorable mention has little to do with the yaoi rape and torture in this volume of short stories. I'm not into that sort of thing, but I'm sure there's someone out there who is. And it's not the art, because the art is good except for the complete lack of genitals on anybody.

(So actually it's a bunch of well-dressed Ken dolls raping each other.)

The stories are rushed, disjointed, and juxtapose surprisingly dull dialog with images of coerced sex. Good art can carry a mediocre story -- but it can't carry this mess.



Pleasure Dome is available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

Chikyu Misaki, v. 1

by Iwahara Yuji
Published in the U.S. by CMX Manga



Slugline: Is this manga about the Loch Ness monster or Ranma 1/2?

This book is not what I expected it to be, and that was a refreshing experience. Misaki moves to the remote village where her mother grew up and learns there is a legend of a Loch Ness-type monster called Hohoro. Like all manga, said mother is dead, but Misaki quickly makes a new friend at the local school named Sanae, and on the way home they comes across the Hohoro, who they name Neo after a movie character. Hohoro is rather small, but can transform with the aid of a kiss into the form of a ten-year-old-boy that promptly follows them home. Meanwhile, there is a subplot of a rich girl, Tokuko, who has been kidnapped and then returned for the ransom. The kidnappers, including her piano teacher Reiko who was in on the plot, are getting away but crash near the lake, sending the ransom money to the bottom of the lake.

I wish that there was some way I could convey that this plot, in comparison to other manga, fairly bustles along. Things are happening, and no one is truly stupid. For instance, Neo, the human form of Hohoro, is accepted without question by the adults in the story for a day or two before they demand some sort of explanation. It is almost an American- stylestory, which is probably why CMX picked it up. Giving it a rating that reflects that is hard, because it is a competently done story, so far, but by the same token it is doing something that is different to manga readers but not to American readers. That is not to say there are not elements of manga here, such as the lonely rich girl who pushes everyone away, but I suspect that there are more familiar elements here than otherwise.



Chikyu Misaki, vol. 1 is available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand

Thanks for the year

Yep, Miranda noticed this week we have been posting a year, and if you look on the side of the blog here we have very nice stats, with tons of reviews for virtually every company.

...

Okay, back to work we go. Thanks for sticking with us for a year, and we hope you all stick around for many more.

-Ferdinand

The Dark Goodbye, v. 1

Written by Frank Marraffino, Art by Drew Rausch
Published by Tokyopop



Slugline: Noir vehicle takes a right on Lovecraft Ave and hits the gas hard so as to fly over the potholes.

This is a really mixed bag, for me, so I will just list pros and cons.

Pros: It's darn hard to find good Lovecraftian horror, and this is pretty good. The art fits perfectly with the mood. Lots of fast-moving action and flying body parts. The ancient noir stereotypes fit in well, too. And did I mention how hard it is to find decent Lovecraft?

Cons: The speed of the action hides some real plot holes. This is a manga, guys, you can slow down a bit and fill in those holes, don't be shy. And endings are always a problem in Lovecraftian stories, because chanting in made-up languages just doesn't have the impact you need to make a big finish.

So it's enjoyable if you don't pay too much attention to how we got from A to B, and if you know how to pronounce apostrophies. (F'tgh! F'tgh! W'TF?) And I very much hope to see a volume 2 where the writer isn't in such a hurry.



The Dark Goodbye vol. 1 is available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

Series Update: Aishiteruze Baby v. 2 & 3

SERIES UPDATE

You know how I said the first volume of Aishiteruze Baby did stuff that I had rarely seen in manga? Well, never mind that. In the second and third volumes they didn't forge new ground or keep up the inventiveness, but instead just started using all of the cookie-cutter plot points that I have seen before in manga, especially in shoujo style titles. In retrospect, the relationship between the two now seems to spring up fully formed, and this odd relationship that Kippei and Kokoro have now seems to be based on Kokoro's trauma of a lost mother and since her father is moving away with his new wife, well, remember what I said about how most manga characters don't seem to have a full set of parents? True, it has become rarer in real life, but I am not asking for happy shiny people. Still -- maybe Miranda said this -- it appears that the most dangerous occupation in Japan is parenting, since they seem to die with unusual frequency. Does no one get divorced? I know it is infrequent in Japan, but it has to be less infrequent than this...

Short version: what was interesting and special about the first volume of Aishiteruze Baby gets covered up with standard shoujo fare in the following two volumes.

Aishiteruze Baby vol. 2 and vol. 3 are both available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand

Love Circles

by Laura Carboni
Published in the U.S. by Yaoi Press (on sale May 28, 2007)



Slugline: Nerdy boy is transformed into a hottie by the meathead who's secretly nice, and then they fall in love.

Oddly, this has to be the most Western-style title we have reviewed here on Prospero's Manga (short of Making Comics) and it's another Italian import (like Wishing for the Moon). This sort of "ugly duckling to swan" story is not anything new and there are no surprising twists, but it is solidly written and stocked with characters within the confines of its template.

I'm not entirely sure why, but the art just does not appeal to me in this story. I'm a long-time reader of Marvel and DC so I'm no stranger to uber-muscular men, but these guys have such well defined butts that they could lose TV remotes in there. And really, guys whose necks are as wide as their heads have never been my type. Despite the explicit muscles, this is not a hardcore porn and there is no full-frontal nudity.

In its defense against myself, the use of chibi is frequent, effective and generally cute -- and you know, I could have enjoyed the whole story with the chibi versions of these guys.



- Miranda

Series Update: The Drifting Classroom, v. 2 & 3

SERIES UPDATE

Umezu-san's characters react to their extreme situation in realistic ways: some freak out, some keep a cool head, some commit suicide, some act selflessly. And many are willing to follow the lead of a strong (or brutal) personality. The body count starts rising quickly and the sixth graders have to begin taking on leadership roles and dealing with some dangerous grown-ups in their midst. Some discoveries are made about what seems to have happened and exactly how dire their situation is.

And back home, our hero's mother is, understandably, losing her mind. Or is she?

Drifting Classroom vol. 2 and vol. 3 are both available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

Aishiteruze Baby, vol. 1

Story and Art by Yoko Maki
Released in the U.S. by Viz Shojo Beat



Slugline: Cute kids remain cute no matter the language and country, damn their scheming, innocent eyes!

Kippei is that guy you hated back in high school, the one that all the girls fell in love with even though he didn't do anything worthy to deserve it and treats them casually and interchangeably. That all changed one day when Yuzuyu, his female five-year-old cousin moves into their home since her mother left her after Yuzuyu's father died. Kippei is given the job of taking care of her. Okay, besides the point of who in their right mind would make the primary caregiver of a five-year-old a seventeen-year-old who seems barely able to take care of himself, never mind someone else, this is actually a fairly affecting and sweet story.

Kippei doesn't immediately make himself over in order to become the world's best caregiver, but by the same token his attempts to help Yuzuyu are believable and just confused enough to seem reasonable. I am not sure if the whole situation behind getting Yuzuyu is believable, but once she is part of the family, Kippei starts making changes. Not big ones, and not ones he himself realizes he is making, but changes nonetheless. The supporting female character Kokoro has a very reasonable desire to stay the heck away from Kippei, if for no other reason than he seems to use women up like -- well, how can I say this without seeming mean or getting an R rating -- like they weren't real, more like they were masturbatory devices that thankfully did not require much care.

Plus, this is an attempt to show an actual parent-child relationship, not the fake ones that seem to proliferate in manga where one parent is dead and the other is never around. Not exactly the woe-is-me stuff of more typical manga, but still very interesting.



Aishiteruze Baby vol. 1 is available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand