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.

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.