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. I think it’s safe to assume that he has some powers of his own, but for now they’re remaining hidden from both Ando and the reader. I enjoy stories like this, ones that remind me a little of a detective story that crashed headfirst into a dark high school fantasy. The characters are likable as well, even cheerful, carefree Junya and his too-cute girlfriend Shiori. What we’ve seen of Inukai and his Grasshoppers has become progressively more sinister and I’m interested to see how their part of the story plays out. Also, whether or not that’s lipstick in the center of his lips to go with his eyeliner. The guy’s kind of hot in a visual kei sort of way.

MAOH ran in Weekly Shōnen Sunday for two years, and with only three chapters up on Viz’s Shonen Sunday website it looks like it’ll be a while before we see the end unless they decide to pull it and release the tankoubon on a schedule like their current series. I’m already hooked on it and am hoping for the latter so I won’t have to wait another month to find out what happens with Ando’s classmate and the bullies. Creepy.

Kingyo Used Books

The publishing industry is seeing hard times these days and manga publishers are no exception. After discontinuing Shojo Beat, Viz tried something new by launching their Shonen Sunday imprint and website. Not content to stop there, they also created Viz Signature IKKI 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.

There’s not really a storyline, at least not one that I’ve seen yet, but I’m already pretty hooked on Kingyo. Maybe I’m a little nostalgic because I’ve been reading manga for half my life, maybe I just like to compare the way it touches and influences my life with the way it does so for the characters. Either way it’s a very sweet look at how manga, and everything else in life for that matter, never touches two people in the same way. I definitely plan on continuing it and giving it as many votes and compliments as possible, because this is a manga that needs to see print – if only so I can buy copies and force them on my friends that think all manga is Naruto and Sailor Moon.

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. It’s a fantasy manga, which isn’t unusual for her, but it’s also a shōnen manga, which is.

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.

Two chapters into the story and I am really liking it, which really isn’t a shocker considering how much I love Yuu Watase. This is her first attempt at a shōnen manga and it’s interesting to see a more male-dominated storyline, but the signature Watase quirks and character types are still there. The character designs are gorgeous, though, with clothing reminescent of the tribesmen in Ayashi no Ceres and lots of flowing sashes and sleeves.

I’m also enjoying the format of the new Shonen Sunday website despite my initial apprehension. I like being able to sample the manga before I’m committed to buying the tankoubon, particularly since shōnen manga isn’t generally my drug of choice. One of the things I was going to miss the most about Shojo Beat was the previews of new series, but now that I’ve sampled the SS and IKKI websites I’m actually looking forward to the relaunch of the SB website following their format. The only thing I don’t really like is that there’s no set schedule for the new chapters to arrive, unlike RIN-NE. I subscribed to the RSS feed for the blog, hopefully this will do the trick.

As for Arata, I’m looking forward to the next chapter to see how Arata Hinohara handles his sudden introduction to the new world and how Arata of the Hime Clan handles the exposure of his secret and the sudden accusations from the Shinsho. Familiar though it may seem, Watase-sensei’s stories always grab my attention and I’m hoping the story keeps up the fast, exciting pace throughout.

EDIT 9/9/09: The new chapter of Arata was posted online today along with the new chapter of RIN-NE. Still looks good for my liking the series as a whole so far!

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.

What I mean by that is that Ranma ran for 38 volumes (36 in the US) and Inu-Yasha a staggering 56. In Ranma‘s case, a good half of the series felt like filler episodes; a battle in a hot spring water park for a soap that could cure their curses, a cursed mushroom that turns the eater into a child and Martial Arts Tea Ceremony, just to name a few. In a forum post, a newcomer said that they’d fallen out of the habit of reading Ranma around volume 20 and wanted to know if it was absolutely essential to read the rest of them or if they could skip ahead. The answer was a resounding “unless you’re a completist, skip to volume 35 and don’t look back.” Though Inu-Yasha doesn’t suffer from as much of the same malady, there are still areas in the series where it feels like certain arcs could have been condensed without losing the story. Because of this tendency to drag out her storylines, I was planning to resist reading Rin-ne unless something about it really got my attention. And then I read the synopsis.

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. Unfortunately for me, I have this weak spot where Shinigami are concerned. Horrific, adorable, hot and sexy…if there’s a shinigami involved, I’ll give it a shot.

Another notable thing about Rin-ne is that, much like Funimation’s decision to sub/stream Fullmetal Alchemist:Brotherhood mere days after its airing in Japan, Viz has chosen to release the manga chapters online weekly at the same time they are printed in Shonen Sunday as well as the tankoubon. This is a manga first in the United States and it’s almost a sure thing that Rin-ne will do well with the shonen action-adventure set, but does it have real merit? Or is it going to be another Takahashi series that lingers long past its welcome?

After reading the first few chapters online it looked like Rin-ne was going to be more of an episodic manga, where the protagonists solve mysteries and send spirits to the next life, a la Yurara. However, starting with the second volume it looks like there might be more of an ongoing story in the works. Which scenario is better? Either way, it could end up being drawn out for years so I’m still reserving my judgment until I’ve read a few more volumes.

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. It turns out that she’s actually been “transferred” to a school populated by the dead and is the immortal “Mirror Image” whose blood can heal the rest of the world. Everyone in Amityville wants the power of the Mirror Image and many bloody battles ensue with Noh-A often getting an arm, leg, or head lopped off. To make matters worse, it seems that “Nasty Smile” (whose real name is Jack Frost) is going to be her bodyguard. Oh, and also the name of a snowman doll her father gave her before he was killed. What?

While that plot summary may make it sound really interesting, I just can’t seem to get into it. The chapters seem to be completely battle oriented, with very little information set forth that doesn’t pertain to the battle at hand. Noh-A isn’t a very interesting heroine, when you get down to it, and her purpose seems to be more of a tool to be passed around, gloated over and used to revive or repair the other characters. I read each chapter industriously as the issues come out but every month I fail to get really interested in it. Perhaps something will change in the next few issues to change my mind, but until then I’ll be half-hoping that Jack Frost is the next series to go straight to tankoubon format.