Polly and the Pirates, v. 1

by Ted Naifeh
Published by Oni Press



Slugline: Polly, the long lost daughter of the Pirate Queen, is far too prim and proper for the treacherous world of pirates -- or is she?

This one jumps high on my list of books I would hand to any kid, any where, any time, and tell them to read. It lands, in fact, right next to the Courtney Crumrin series, also by Ted Naifeh.

Both Polly and Courtney have excellent adventures, NOT oversimplified, NOT oversweetened, just the right mix of cleverness and honor and humor for all-ages readers.

Polly is whisked from her boarding school into the world of pirates and treasure maps and at first she wants nothing to do with it. She even betrays her mother's former crew before she comes around. But she does show her true colors and outfox the foxes, find the treasure and mend her mistakes.

Ted Naifeh is a San Francisco resident, so he works nice historical bits like the Emperor of the United States into the story (though it's not set in San Fran.) And the art is lovely and whimsical, but I could live without the written brogues a few characters speak in. It's a minor quibble, though, in an otherwise excellent read.



- Miranda

Pastel, v. 3

Created by Toshihiko Kobayashi
Released in the U.S. by Del Rey Manga



Slugline: For a traditional fan-service-filled relationship comedy, they manage to keep things surprising.

Every time this title is about to move into standard territory, it flirts with it, and then moves away. Quite frankly, while I can tell how any particular scene is going to go once we are in it, I can't really tell which scene will be next. Which, for this type of manga, is actually kind of interesting. But while I am entertained on the macro level, the individual scenes are less interesting simply because I have seen it all before, just not in this order. I usually find fan service amusing in small doses, but these fan service titles turn me off, and I would be rating them somewhere in the one or two star territory. So this is actually pretty good for this kind of title, for me at least.

The love triangle that was set up last volume? Broken before it had time to form once the old friend realized the main characters' attraction to each other. The standard cool guy trying to move in on the girl? The girl lets him take her to a movie, then goes off by herself back to her guy. Just when you think the male lead is spineless, he goes on a maniac trip to make sure the girl is all right, bullying his friends to go with him. It would be interesting to see if he could form a spine when talking to the girl, but then this would be a very short series.



- Ferdinand

Q-ko-chan, v. 1

by Ueda Hajime
Published in the U.S. by Del Rey Manga



Slugline: If the Powerpuff Girls were alien robots... looking for pilots... fighting alien octopi...

This series is from the creator of FLCL, so right off the bat you know that things like "sanity" and "explanations" are not real high on the priority list. However, v.1 does make more sense than any given episode of FLCL and there are interesting moments and situations... they just aren't the main focus of the story right now.

The main focus of the story is what failed to grab me. Our hero, Kirio, specializes in blasé, and it's contagious; I find myself very blasé about him. Thus, I don't much care why Q-ko-chan focuses on him or why more robots drop out of the sky for his friends to pilot. Or whether they're aliens or somebody's toys and what exactly Kirio's mom's role is. I can barely bring myself to write a whole review for this, I'm so blasé.

Yes, the robots are cute. Heck, the alien flying octopi are cute. But Q-ko-chan really does just remind me of Powerpuff Girls and makes me want to see the movie again. (Buttercup rules!) Maybe that will dispel the blasé.

So give the book a try... or don't... or just rent FLCL... or Powerpuff Girls...



- Miranda

Aoi House, v. 1

Written by Adam Arnold with art by Shiei
Published by Seven Seas



Harem titles. Some people like them, sane people don't. Urgh, sorry, my prejudices are showing, but I just find them, well, maybe on occasion amusing, but it just strains credulity to that so many women would find one guy, especially the dopey guys that they seem to find to be the male leads of harem comedies, so irresistible. I wish that being shy and studious was all that was necessary to draw to women to me. Then again, despite being surrounded by beautiful women, the insurance premiums must be murderously high due to the constant beatings they endure.

Thanks to Seven Seas we have the logical response to harem comedies, with two college guys surrounded by yaoi-obsessed fangirls. Ah, sweet justice. Thanks to a minor sign failure that turned Yaoi House into the more innocent sounding Aoi House, these two anime fans, Alex and Sandy, and their perverted hamster find themselves in Aoi House, filled with scantily clad women whose only interest is seeing how long the guys can keep their hands off each other.

Aoi House is a fast-paced fun little story that knows better than to take itself too seriously. And knows it should make the jokes that never seem to be made in the more traditional harem comedies. Strong recommendation and a reminder that Aoi House is the Seven Seas webmanga, so you can preview it at their website, www.gomanga.com.



- Ferdinand.

Airgear, v. 1

by Oh!great
Published in the U.S. by Del Rey



Slugline: Gangbanger Itsuki starts to discover the magic of Air Treck and his four female roomies as a way to beat the big, bad gang in town.

There are many sound, well-known laws of physics surrownding flight and human beings. This book ignores all of them. It's easier to think of the Air Treck rollerblades (yes, rollerblades) as magic flying talismans because no amount of mumbo jumbo is going to convince me that rollerblades can give you that kind of altitude without blowing out your knees and/or leaving you with serious road rash. I don't care if you weigh 50 pounds and are made of rubber, as Japanese teens seen to be.

That said, these kids live in a fantasy world of no grownups, no responsibilities and no reality checks. Itsuki's motivations are no deeper than a puddle of testosterone, with the occasional heroic moment, and his cronies are all too eager to adore him. The four girls, like most bestowers of power, aren't inclined to tell him much about the magic rollerblades in an attempt to make them more mysterious. And the bad guys all come out of a cookie cutter, your usual gang of terrorizing sexual molesters -- which is not why Itsuki wants to beat them, by the way. He just wants revenge for his own ass-kicking.

So it's hard to take this story seriously or sympathize with anybody. There's a grand total of three interesting moments that keep this from being a Dishonorable Mention blurb.



- Miranda

Our other manga reviews

Just a reminder, I also do manga reviews for the Comic Buyer's Guide, and just posted one on Fullmetal Alchemist at the Reviews and Retroviews forum over the Comic Buyers Guide website. This is in addition to my monthly column in the newstand edition of the Comic Buyers Guide, which this month is about how manga handles traditional European style fantasy. -Ferdinand

Her Majesty's Dog, vol. 1

Story and Art by Mick Takeuchi
Published in the U.S. by Go! Comi



Her Majesty's Dog, despite the rather provocative name, is not quite the fetish-laden story that the title would make it seem. Well, no more than most other manga titles. Still, there is little fear that it will be found shrink-wrapped or up on the top rack where you need a step stool to reach it.

Her Majesty's Dog is a cross between a horror and a shoujo title. While being set in a high school, and featuring a couple who are involved, it is more than the typical high school relationship. While Amane is distant from the rest of her classmates and often bullied, she has a good reason to be a little off. She grew up in an isolated village with the power to be a powerful priestess. Still, she wanted to experience the outside world a little, and thus went to high school. Her village, concerned about the risks, insisted on sending her guardian with her. Hyoue is a typical pretty boy who is always sneaking kisses from Amane, but he is also a spirit creature that needs the energy transferred by touch to him by her to function. The fact that he has managed to convince Amane that the energy needs to be transferred by a kiss is only a bonus from his viewpoint.

The early stories of this collection are more along the lines of straight horror, including some disturbing images of a dog, but as the book progresses more typical high school concerns emerge, though they never completely submerge the horror. From my understanding, the later issues of the series does trend more toward the typical high school stories.

And as for the title, since Hyoue is dependant on Amane, he's a bit of the underdog in the relationship.

(UnderDOG, get it? I crack me up.)




- Ferdinand

Old Boy, v. 1

by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi
Published in the U.S. by Dark Horse Manga



Slugline: After being mysteriously imprisoned for ten years, our hero is set free and starts looking for answers.

I saw the Korean-made movie version of Old Boy (it's out on DVD now) so I have the disadvantage of knowing how it ends (maybe/probably.) It's not a gory movie, but it's violent and mean-spirited. (Some people compare it to Pulp Fiction... which may be true in attitude, but not much else.)

That attitude is laid out in the manga, but more dilutely. In v.1, our nameless hero is released from his captivity and only just begins to start looking for answers. Meanwhile, the bad guys are keeping an eye on him.

The movie is tightly paced and efficient, in the tradition of revenge thrillers, but the manga shows every sign of moving at a distinctly more manga-ish pace. The art and writing are perfectly competent, but it lacks a sense of urgency, for me, and the novelty of the situation can't be re-created because I've seen the movie. So my rating may be biased, but this manga just doesn't stand out enough to be above average.

If you haven't seen the movie and you like dark thrillers, check Old Boy out in manga form and give it a chance. If you did catch the movie, get the DVD and enjoy it again, with extras.



DVD:


- Miranda

Bizenghast, Vol. 1

By M. Alice LeGrow
Published by TokyoPop



Slugline: Gothic-inspired dreams challenge two friends in an old New England town that's a perfect backdrop for their adventures.

Bizenghast is the story of Dinah and Vincent. Dinah's parents died when she was very young and she is in the care of her aunt, who lives in an old New England town called Bizenghast, in a former asylum/burned-out boy's school. Needless to say, the traumas make Dinah a bit "fragile" and make Vincent protective of her, which she resents and needs at the same time. When exploring the woods surrounding the town, they come across a mausoleum, and Dinah is forced into a contract to free the ghosts from their dreams by the caretakers of the mausoleum.

Bizenghast's art is very much in the gothic Lolita style, very pretty, with intricate designs that seem very fine and detailed. As if smearing the ink with your fingers would ruin the entire page rather just a few details. My concern is the story, because this graphic novel feels disjointed, cut up into episodes dealing with various ghosts. They skip some of the challenge scenes, and it seems otherwise disconnected. It may be the continuation of the dream logic of the story into other areas, but it still rough.

Also, the timing of story seems off. At the end of the book, there is an introduction to a new character who explains the story background. It is an weird place to end the book, on a distinctly low note, and feels like it should have been at the front of the next book rather than at the end of this one.

I like the story and love the art, but I can't shake the feeling that the story logic is a aching tooth in your jaw, nagging at you when you least expect it.



-Ferdinand

Pichi Pichi Pitch, v.2

by Pink Hanamori
Published in the U.S. by Del Rey



Dishonorable Mention

Just plain sloppy writing. All else aside, it's just plain sloppy.

A series of disjointed scenes, transparently convenient coincidences, and cookie-cutter pre-teen melodrama do not a story make. I can see how it might work -- barely -- in an animated show, but television shorthand does not work in printed media, especially not black-and-white.

- Miranda

Dokebi Bride, v.1

by Marley
Published in the U.S. by Netcomics



Slugline: Sunbi, who grew up in a small town with her shaman grandmother, has to move to Seoul to live with her estranged father and his new family.

The plot isn't yet clear, or this would've been a 4-star book. Volume 1 covers Sunbi's childhood in flashback and the problems of growing up with a shaman's ability to see the spirit world. And even though no goals are laid out -- her mother died because of spirit trouble, but Sunbi doesn't seem motivated by it, and the guardian spirits of the small town are leaving, but then again so is she -- I enjoyed the story very much.

Partly because of the dragon. I haven't seen many traditional Eastern dragons in manga, strangely enough, so it made me smile when a shaman from out of town accidentally summoned the town's guardian sea dragon. We also meet traditional Korean goblins called dokebi and learn a little about guardian spirits. Maybe this is all old hat in Korea, but it's the sort of thing that makes me devour a book even faster.

By the end of the flashback, we know a bit about why Sunbi has moved in with her father and stepfamily, but there isn't any conflict to speak of. Not yet. I expect this title will be climbing in the ratings as the story continues, because the writing and the art show a great deal of promise.



- Miranda

GTO The Early Years, v.1

by Tohru Fujisawa
Published in the U.S. by Tokyopop



Slugline: Meet Eikichi Onizuka and his pal Ryuji Danma as teenage thugs desperate to get some tail. This is a prequel to Great Teacher Onizuka, but fandom of that is not a requirement.

I'll be honest -- I don't like this art style. Never have. And I'm not much for the toilet humor or the mindset that women are puzzles to be solved for a reward of hot monkey sex.

So it's a bit of a miracle that I didn't hate every page of this huge volume. (344 pages, Amazon says.)

Masturbation, diahrrea and STDs are played for laughs and there are plenty of street fights to go around. But Eikichi and Ryuji manage to do something resembling the right thing at the end of each of the storylines. Oddly, at 16 their biker days are already in their past -- they're making an attempt at finishing high school -- which makes me wonder how young biker gangs are in Japan. 15? 14? Don't you need a license to drive those gussied-up choppers?

(For a hilarious example of gussied-up motorcycles -- and a hilarious movie in general -- check out Kamikaze Girls, if you can find it.)

Eikichi and Ryuji's chances of getting laid are slightly worse than a snowball's chance in hell, but anyone who's seen GTO already knows that. It's not my cup of tea, but I'm still giving it three stars and I'll go so far as to say that the train scene after Eikichi gets a Buddha haircut was funny.



- Miranda

Summer vacation

No post tonight... it's a long holiday weekend, Ferdinand is at Anime Expo and I need a break.

There will also be no posts on July 21 and 24 because we will both be at the San Diego Comic Con (which I highly recommend if you can get to it, for both Western comics and manga, and scifi/fantasy/horror/niche genre movies too.)

No post August 4th as we will be at Otakon wallowing in manga and anime, and that will be the last scheduled day off until November.

Stay cool, everyone.

- Miranda

New Lanchester Strategy, v. 2 & 3

New Lanchester Strategy: Sales and Marketing Strategy for the Weak vol. 2
New Lanchester Strategy: Sales and Marketing Strategy for the Strong vol. 3
Written by Shinichi Yano, illustrated by Kenichi Sato and translated by Connie Prene
Released in the US by Lanchester Press, Inc



Slugline: Learning to beat your business opponents, manga style!

I thought I would try something a little different from what you are used to. A business theory manga. The Lanchester business theory deals with how to beat business opponents by focusing on their weak points and so on. This has been used in Japan as one of the theories employed in their post-WW 2 recovery. This title was translated by a small specialty press in the late 90s that focuses on Lanchester theory works.

The reason I chose to review this particular title is that it is one of the few examples I know of a non-fiction manga, showing the width and breadth of the medium. Because it's not just about which titles tell good stories, it's about what kind of information manga can be used to communicate. And the answer is anything, because stories are just information, theories are just information. This sort of manga has not reached our shores yet, but I hope this can show what other sorts manga can turn up if the market keeps expanding and demanding material, even material that we may not yet realize we want.

This is a three part manga series, but right now only the last two are available via Amazon. The story is told through the eyes of a group leader, striving to do his all for his company, facing opponents both within and without the company. He talks to friends and fellow company members, each time illustrating one particular point of the business theory in an accessible, commonsense way. Nothing really earthshattering about the theories, but it does take some interesting approaches on understanding and applying business theories, both offensively and defensively.



- Ferdinand

p.s. Now seriously, you thought manga was all sailor girls and bishonen, didn't you. As boring as this manga might sound, imagine how much more boring it would be without pictures...

- Miranda

Our other manga reviews

Just a reminder, I do manga reviews at the CBG site, and just posted one on Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days at the Reviews and Retroviews forum over the Comic Buyers Guide website. Never mind my monthly column in the paper edition of the Comic Buyers Guide.

School Rumble, v. 1 & 2

by Jin Kobayashi
Published in the U.S. by Del Rey Manga



Slugline: Tenma love Oji. Kanji loves Tenma. Despite their best efforts, there's not a single clue between the three of them.

The writer has grouped the short, self-contained chapters into "sharps" and "flats" (as in the musical notations) -- the sharps are about Tenma and Kanji's wacky attempts to get the attention of their crushes. The flats are about Tenma's sister Yakumo, who is far more serious and has some psychic ability.

It's an interesting juxtaposition. Tenma's and Kenji's stories are amusing in their desperate, doomed frenzy, and Yakumo's more insightful stories about deflecting attention balance them out. Otherwise, it would just be light and amusing but prone to repetition and sympathy fatigue.

Don't expect anything to come of the romances -- everyone's far too thick-headed and hapless -- and don't be surprised that the writer uses some torturous series of coincidences to pull the jokes off. For a high school comedy romance, School Rumble keeps it light and short and funny, rather than trying to build elaborate misunderstandings that could be solved in two seconds. And I appreciate that, having sat through quite a few of the latter in both English and Japanese.



UPDATED!: Series Update for School Rumble here.

- Miranda

Devil May Cry 3, v.1

by Suguro Chayamachi
Published in the U.S. by Tokyopop



Slugline: Dante, who ought to find a new job if he hates this one so much, is set on a collision course with his long-lost brother.

Let's face it, there's a reason why video games are not known as good source material for books or movies. It's because even the most story-oriented game is required to provide the players with fight sequences, level bosses or something to do. Like a summer blockbuster, the plot structure is well established and allows only a little room for the other three elements of the story: character, dialog and worldbuilding. Like summer blockbusters, they can be amusing but they won't do much more than that.

DMC3 is very much caught in the game plot structure. Dante shows up, fights, then goes somewhere else and fights some more. Things are told to him, and the reader by extension, but he is a passive receiver of it all. Strange, perhaps, to say that the guy with the two guns and the kung fu is passive, but he only goes where the story requires him to be and does what the story requires him to do. There's a little snarking on the side and a dollop of angst, but it's not much spice, to my tastes.

The art is competent and fans of the game may enjoy reliving their favorite sequences, but for the rest of us it's just some nice pictures and rather obvious use of Lewis Carroll characters. I ought to be able to hand out yellow cards for that sort of thing.



- Miranda

Kuro Gane, v.1

by Kei Toume
Published in the U.S. by Del Rey Manga



Slugline: A samurai prodigy is resurrected as a clockwork man by your friendly neighborhood Dr. Frankenstein and returns to his home town to settle some debts.

Or, at least I think he's a robot -- he gets stabbed a couple times and bleeds. (oils?)

Jintetsu was found dying and picked up by a wanna-be mad scientist (he's a bit too nice to be a mad scientist.) Waking in a very retro-robot body, he finds he has no voice, but he's alive. The scientist uses Jintetsu to get revenge, but dies in the process, leaving his creation to take a talking sword and head home to get some revenge of his own.

The art is rough and there is some allusion to Jintetsu's memories and being demon-haunted, but not much comes of that in v.1. The sword does his talking for him and carries on one-sided conversations trying to figure out the robot's motivations. (He can't be bothered to even nod yes or no, apparently.)

The plots are fairly standard, but the characters are likeable, especially Otsuki, his former girlfriend. This is very much an introduction to the world, as no long-term goals are set and each of the three stories are resolved. So I'm curious where the writer will take this idea in v.2.



- Miranda

Our other Manga reviews

Just a reminder, I do manga reviews at the CBG site, and just posted one on Angel Cup at the Reviews and Retroviews forum over the Comic Buyers Guide website. Never mind my monthly column in the paper edition of the Comic Buyers Guide.

Last Fantasy, v. 1

Written by Creative Won with Art by Yong-wan Kwon
Published in the U.S. by TokyoPop



Slugline: Two brothers try their best to be real in a fantasy world which conspires against them.

Last Fantasy is a clever little take on fantasy stories and gaming, with the characters showing all the traits of classic Monty Haulers, grabbing anything of even marginal value to be sold at the nearest town that has disreputable merchants. Tian (the magical one) and Drei (the brawny one) seek their fame and fortune, mostly fortune, yet never really make the big time. Meanwhile, a dangerous presence lurks the background, planning something not nice.

Sometimes it is hard to create real characters in a parody/humor title, since they are used for such broad purposes that you don't really need to create that much detail in them, and too much detail actually makes it hard to believe that they would act in such broad ways. But this title does play around with some of the fantasy tropes in an interesting way, and the only reason it doesn't rate higher is because I think they are setting up some conflicts, and I am not sure how those later conflicts will play out.

It is interesting that this manwha was written collaboratively, according to the end comments, in a deliberate attempt to rectify a perceived weakness in the overall writing of manga/manwha. Which to a certain extent I can understand, for there has been an interesting argument in US comics (see Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics) that the disciplines of art and writing have been moving apart, and when you try to reintegrate them together, there is bound to be problems. People tend to focus on the art, since that is what you can tell immediately whether or not it is any good, while "anyone can write." Of course, writing well is another thing.

What, did you expect a writer, even one of reviews, not to stress the importance of writing?

We may be biased, thinking that most manga is well written, but let's face it, the bad stuff never gets translated, so we are seeing the top ten percent of manga and thus may be missing the hordes of beautiful but horribly incomprehensible stories. (You can find the comic-book versions of those in any comic book store, though.)

And, oh yeah, after all that, I do think they have put together a pretty strong story. So at least that problem has been solved with them at least.



- Ferdinand