MAOH: Juvenile Remix

Nothing like a pervy businessman groping a timid schoolgirl to kick off a shōnen series. Unless it’s a teenager with mind-control powers making said timid schoolgirl scream accusations at said businessman in front of the entire train car. Now that’s a manga I can get into.

A shōnen manga with a slightly dark atmosphere, MAOH: Juvenile Remix focuses – at least in the beginning – on Ando, a high school student who has the strange ability to make people say what he wants. More than anything, Ando wants to just be normal but when he gets particularly angry or upset his power has a way of coming to the surface. During a run-in with some thugs, he comes face-to-face with Inukai, the mysterious and charismatic leader of a vigilante group known as the Grasshoppers. At first Ando dismisses him as a pretty boy blowhard, but is impressed by the way he takes on the leader of the gang.

As it turns out, Inukai seems to have an agenda of his own. In chapter two he butts heads with the councilman about his city revitalization plan and announces that he will be the one to save the city, and in the first panels of chapter three we see that the councilman won’t be standing in Inukai’s way.

Kingyo Used Books

The publishing industry is seeing hard times these days and manga publishers are no exception. Viz Signature IKKI was created to fill the seinen niche in sort of a different way. The idea is that readers can find and read new manga online before they buy it, and the manga that gets enough interest – reviews, comments, etc. – will be turned into a tankoubon. With that high-tech approach in mind, it’s kind of funny that out of all IKKI’s current selections I like the one about the old-fashioned used manga store the best.

Kingyo Used Books (金魚屋古書店; Kingyoya Koshoten) is a nice little slice of life series about a used bookstore that predominantly carries manga and the customers that shop there. Each chapter follows a different person and how manga makes a difference or plays a part in their lives. The store isn’t the focus of the stories themselves, it is simply the unifying element, and the shopkeeper Natsuki is always more than happy to help her customers find what they need.

Arata: The Legend

Arata: The Legend (アラタカンガタリ) is a new offering from one of my favorite manga-ka, Yuu Watase, that is currently being serialized on Viz’s new Shonen Sunday website.

In an alternate world of tribes and gods, only a girl from the Hime Clan may become the ruling princess and receive the protection of the 12 Shinsho. Unfortunately for a young man named Arata, the Hime Clan hasn’t produced a daughter in 60 years. Rather than condemn his grandmother and himself to death he agrees to dress as a girl to buy some time and attempt to become the ruling princess, not expecting there to be another agenda at work in the shadows. At the same time, another Arata in our world is being bullied and shunned by his classmates. On his way home, wishing he would disappear, he somehow steps out of his own world and into the world of the boy who shares his name.

Rin-ne

Many years ago, the first exposure that I and many budding otaku my age had to manga was through Rumiko Takahashi in the form of Ranma 1/2. It was one of the first widely distributed manga series in the United States and whether they loved it or hated it, just about everyone had read Ranma. Later, Inu-Yasha would become a smash hit, and her other series such as Maison Ikkoku, Mermaid Saga and One-Pound Gospel also did well. There’s only one problem as far as I’m concerned – these days she doesn’t know when to quit.

Rin-ne (境界のRINNE; RINNE of the Boundary) is about a high school girl called Sakura Mamiya, who is able to see ghosts after being spirited away when she was a child and her classmate Rinne Rokudo who is half-shinigami and helps souls break their attachments to this world so they may be reincarnated.

Jack Frost

Jack Frost is one of the manwha that is featured monthly in Yen Plus. True, it’s the only manga magazine I subscribe to now that Shojo Beat is gone but I had been starting to lean in its direction for a little while now due to the diverse assortment of stories it features. Korean, Japanese and English all under one roof in a double-sided magazine – what’s not to love? For me, it’s this series.

The story is a little confusing from the start – the heroine is Noh-A Joo, a normal everyday schoolgirl who has this recurring nightmare that she has a run-in with a man she refers to as “Nasty Smile” and in the ensuing brawl between him and an enemy at her school, her head is cut off and she dies. This is usually where she wakes up, but this time it seems that she’s died for real. Sort of.