Tag Archives: shonen jump

Review: Psyren, Vol. 1

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A few weeks ago, I talked about the way that Shonen Jump was changing in a review of the first five volumes of Blue Exorcist, one of the latest series from Viz Media‘s Shonen Jump line. Now that the transition to Shonen Jump Alpha has had a bit of a rocky start it has been an interesting reading experience for me (as a reader who has never read the anthology before in my life). I find myself a little out of sorts with all of the stories running in the magazine currently – they are either far ahead of where I am reading, or I gave them up after a few volumes, meaning that while I can enjoy the moment, I have to play a lot of catch up. This is not a bad thing, but I already have quite a bit of reading to do!

In the interest of beginning new things, another new Shonen Jump title has recently crossed my review stack – the first volume of Psyren. This manga focuses around a punk Ageha Yoshina who “helps people out” to the tune of 10,000 yen ($100). This generally involves kicking the crap out of some gang of losers or roughnecks. Ageha is a good guy with a Robin Hood personality, but he’s rough around the edges. After a run-in with a local stalker, Ageha hangs out with some friends and has a strange hallucination which leads him to a pay phone and a red Psyren phone card. While at first, he doesn’t think much of it, he soon discovers there is a lot more to this phone card than he initially thought. Ageha learns of the Psyren secret society and that people are willing to pay any amount of money to get their hands on the cards. But this isn’t fun and games. The first volume of Psyren shows Ageha exactly how dangerous this Psyren phone card is. Strangely, one of his friends from school, Sakurako Amamiya, also has a Psyren card, and I won’t spoil the big first twist of the volume, but it’s a whopper. Let’s be brief and say that Ageha gets to put his fighting skills to good use as he fights for his life, and the lives of a few other unlucky souls who have entered the Psyren game.

Psyren has the advantage of coming out of left field in a number of ways – it develops in a very unexpected way, and it has some really stellar art for the style of story it is trying to tell. The art is rough, sometimes sketchy, and it is very telling that this is only the second work for Toshiaki Iwashiro, (his original was another Jump comic, Mieru Hito) but he commands his style in a way that is either indicative of a sure author or a skilled editor, or some combination of the two.

My initial impressions were that Psyren was going to be a very odd conspiracy manga, something like Maoh: Juvenile Remix, a comic I originally gave high marks to, but I fell out of reading after a lull between the third and fourth volumes. The idea of a secret Psyren society and these magical red phone cards was a very interesting setup for a conspiracy thriller. But what Psyren actually delivered was something about as high energy, high violence as shonen manga can get while still being cerebral. The first volume of Psyren is a complete 360° that feels neither ratings-inspired or editor forced.

I really enjoyed this volume of Psyren, and am looking forward to reading more of the series. Having recently ended in Japan at 16 volumes, I hope that future volumes will be just as entertaining.

Review: Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, Vol. 1

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Written and Illustrated by Hiroshi Shiibashi
Publisher: Viz Media’s Shonen Jump line
Age Rating: T for Teen
Genre: Action/Horror/Shonen
Price: US $9.99, CAN $12.99,
ISBN: Vol. 1 – 1421538911

One of the things I dislike most about reading, to an extent, is the ways in which certain experiences disappoint you. For example, when I started reading Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, and I finished the first novel, Storm Front, I was certain that the entire series was going to be completely gangbusters. For the most part, it is, but some of the volumes certainly aren’t what I would call great. In the same way, I expected Nura, Rise of the Yokai Clan to be a pretty fun shonen book. The series was making waves in Japan, constantly hitting the BookScan results, and was made into an anime, so I had a certain amount of expectation for the opening volume. To be certain, Nura, as a first volume, is pretty mediocre. A lot of that has to do with its unimpressively slow start.

This is not necessarily always a bad thing. Some stories need a slower opening. One Piece does not hit its stride until the ninth volume, and Cross Game needed a good three volumes to get warmed up. Still, there is something to be said about the way these two series are structured. In Cross Game, the first three volumes set up a complicated cast of characters and give us one hell of a backstory. In One Piece, it is not as though the first volume is not interesting; the series just offers a great deal more in later volumes than in the first nine. Books like Alive: The Final Evolution and Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan need a book to get you introduced to the idea of the rest of the series – just, unlike Nura, the introduction is interesting.

Only one thing is true about shonen manga, it is this; the main character has to be interesting enough to continue reading about, and I think that’s half of the problem here. Nura, Rise of the Yokai Clan meets this criterion only half of the time: the main character, Rikuo, is an absolute bore, and his second half, the future commander of the Nura clan is a powerful and enigmatic specter. In a normal shonen manga, this would be what we call the sidekick/main pairing, except in this case Nura has the perfect sidekick to stick with the perfect lead, but unfortunately they cannot exist together on the same page. Together, they make up a mess of a lead. Rikuo is both not that fun to read most of the time, and the times when he transforms, he is fairly… unspectacular. His yokai form is not very flashy, (generally he just kills things or drinks sake) nor does his transformation give us any really useful information.

The yokai of the series spice things up a bit, but really, if you’ve read any manga about yokai, you’ve seen this all before. The imps are ugly, the kappa are bald, and besides a few bad eggs, the yokai are more tricky in nature than demonic. Rikuo’s love interest is a diversion from the dull writing, but she’s not really a commanding presence on the page, and the exorcist who intervenes in the last half of the book is a pretty flimsy character.

The art of the series is also fairly uninteresting. I like the designs of the characters and the yokai, but the illustrating and use of screen tone is haphazard, and sometimes what is supposed to be an action-packed sword, blood, and guts-fest turns out to be a grungy ink-smear. Shading throughout the first volume is also fairly poor.

Certainly Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan is not the worst shonen book I have ever read, but it does not impress me. I am not certain whether or not I am inclined to keep reading right now – I might let this percolate for a while longer before reading it in earnest.

Review: Tegami Bachi, Vols. 1-3

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Having moved all over the country for the better part of a year working one-month stints as a pharmacy student, I have come to appreciate the postal system. It has often been a physical link to family and friends when I was in an unfamiliar location. When everything was an unknown to me, I was always able to get a good-luck letter or care package in the mail, send a post-card, thank you note, or birthday wish. That sense of closeness despite my distance from what I know and care about has been a source of comfort in some pretty dreary times. The lengths that the postal service will go in order to deliver packages to me has also impressed me, especially during this harsh and unforgiving winter. However, just because I like getting mail and I don’t complain all of the time about the post office being a government-sponsored monopoly doesn’t necessarily sell me on a manga that is focused on these ideals. But, they say you can write comics about anything, and Tegami Bachi is one that does its darnedest to prove it.

The series features a young man named Lag Seeing in a perpetually dark world called the Amberground. Man-made stars are the only source of light in the world, and the rest of the Amberground is darkness and Gaichuu, monsters made of plate metal and bad intentions. In order for people to communicate with one another, they must send letters using the Letter Bees, a group of men and women who valiantly traverse through dangerous territory in order to make sure mail and other packages reach their intended destinations.

The setting is vibrant and beautiful. Hiroyuki Asada is an excellent illustrator, and uses the thick black lines and swaths of black and white to infer depth and shadow, instead of specifically drawing it. This is unlike most art in manga, where the artist uses screen tones or cross hatching to develop depth. The art really sets Tegami Bachi apart from other books in the Shonen Jump imprint.

It is unfortunate that the writing that accompanies the great art of Tegami Bachi is not nearly as strong. This book took a while to get going, and while the setting adds a lot of interesting twists to the story, for now, it seems like the only things happening in the book are:

1.    Killing Gaichuu
2.    Crying
3.    Delivering Letters
4.    Proclaiming that Lag is going to work hard and become the Head Bee
5.    Some combination of the above

While the specific missions have a bit of backstory, they aren’t that interesting, and Lag Seeing is one of the least interesting heroes in a shonen manga currently being published in the USA. Far more interesting is the enigmatic and talented Gauche Suede, a character who delivers Lag to his family in the boonies from the City, and becomes Lag’s role model and reason for joining the Letter Bees.

Asada is not talentless when it comes to writing. He adept at slipping little notes of discord into moments that wouldn’t normally have them. He drops hints about things not necessarily being as they seems, so a sense of ambiguous foreboding as well as the bizarre premise of the book keeps you turning the pages. He also has the ability to create truly touching stories, and while he hasn’t hit all the right notes with some of his more poignant tales, he has gotten fairly close.

Tegami Bachi is a bit of a mixed bag, but it proves that you can write a manga or a comic about anything. I love flipping through the pages and looking at all the wonderful art; that said, I can’t recommend it for those who need their shonen manga to have a strong main character or find Lag’s crybaby antics annoying. Still, Tegami Bachi has a sort of unique charm not normally found in shonen manga, and Asada’s writing may improve over time, so for now, I will keep reading.

Review: Bakuman, Vols. 1-2

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I think that many readers and reviewers have pet genres they like better than others. Some anime and manga reviewers may prefer a moe manga like K-On! compared to a dramatic, violent seinen piece like Gantz. Hopefully, my dear readers, you will have noticed that I prefer slow-moving work that takes its time to fully explore its fictional world and the characters we experience that world through. I am not necessarily averse to other types of manga, and I love a good action flick, but my favorite movie is, and shall forever be Lost in Translation with Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson.

Volunteering to review Bakuman was not that difficult, then. I knew what I was getting myself into, especially since Shonen Jump in Japan was debuting the manga to English speaking countries as it was released in the anthology as part of its 75th anniversary celebration. I had gotten a taste of the “manga about making manga” series from the creators of Death Note, and I was interested to see more. However, I had some reservations when I first read the translation on the Shonen Jump website. Surely the translation was bad – did that character just say “Men have dreams that women will never understand?”

Turns out, that’s exactly what she said.

One of the most interesting things about Bakuman is that it’s written by two manga creators who have done gangbuster work together before with a series that seemed to defy the shonen stereotypes at every turn. Death Note was dark, gritty, oftentimes violent and disturbing, and a really intelligent thriller. It wasn’t exactly something you would expect to come from the pages of Shonen Jump. Bakuman follows the exact same trend, but in a completely different direction. Yet again, the series is distinctly different than the manga you would expect to read in Shonen Jump. Still it is obvious that Bakuman is written for 14-year old boys.

Let me explain.

Bakuman is a story that looks at the world of creating manga from the perspective of a 14-year old boy. The series hits that mark fairly clearly. The main characters are both 14 years old, both go to the same junior high, and both (with a little prodding of the main character) have “BIG SHONEN DREAMS.” What these characters say, and what is said  to them is indicative of what a 14-year old thinks about the world. In this way, we see some pretty sexist themes pop up in this series. Case in point; the main female lead, Asuki, essentially only exists to fulfill the romantic dreams of the main character, Moritaka. She is effectively a pretty face and an empty character. Another example; Moritaka’s father allows him to become a manga-ka (manga artist), and when his mother protests, she is given the following line, “Men have dreams that women will never understand.” Moritaka’s partner in manga, Akito, picks a girlfriend that supports his dream, and dismisses a girl who tries to persuade him that he should give up manga and be normal. Asuki agrees to wait forever for Moritaka, emphasizing that she has no will, and the outcomes of his endeavors are what are most important in their budding relationship.

Does that insult me as a 23-year old man? Yes. Quite a-fucking-bit in fact. Would that insult a 14-year old boy? Hell no. This is how he perceives the world. Parental units are always being accused of “not understanding me.” Girls are their to cheer their boyfriends on at sporting events. This is more of that same crap. Whether or not this written with tongue firmly in cheek is another matter. If so, it makes some of the ludicrous statements more palatable, but still, this is the kind of stuff that would make people toss a book into the garbage (I’ve placed manga in file 13 for lesser offenses).

Now, for the part I don’t really want to say: I actually liked this series quite a bit.

I don’t consider myself a sexist, and I really don’t like the way women are portrayed in this manga. I abhor the parts of the series where these sorts of sexist statements are made. The female characters in Death Note were likewise weak and mainly existed to fulfill the needs of male characters. These admonitions being said, Bakuman is an intriguing slice-of-life story. It hits all the points I want it to, explaining things like how manga series are rated in anthologies, how a manga creator pitches their ideas to a publishing company, how the editing process works, how manga get published, etc. There is a bevy of information, but it’s handled in such a way that it flows along with the story. Tsugumi Ohba also has a knack for writing storylines that don’t feel contrived, and the conflicts that the two male leads get themselves into seem natural and a mere progression as their involvement in the manga creation process grows.  The main characters also develop pretty well, despite the female characters being pretty weakly created.

Along with being a good slice-of-life comic, Bakuman is also simultaneously the best illustrated shonen manga currently in print in English. Takeshi Obata has developed as an artist since his manga first started getting published. His progression through Hikaru no Go has made it clear that he has developed his skills immensely, and he is in top form for Bakuman.

At the end of the day, I’m conflicted. I want to recommend Bakuman for its no-holds barred look at the process of manga creation, and for showing a slice-of-life that hasn’t really been illuminated for non-Japanese speaking readers until now. At the same time, I can’t really recommend the series because of its backwards views of women and the weak, sexist writing.

Maybe, in time, we will come to understand whether or not the reservations I have with Bakuman will make the comic unreadable, or will be small stumble in a largely entertaining series. For now, I am willing to withhold total condemnation; whether or not Bakuman makes the grade will have to be determined by future volumes.

One-Shots in the Western Manga Market and Reader Surveys

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Last week, I received the November edition of Yen Plus, and in it was a cute little story by George Alexopoulos called “Prom Night”, a Western independent artist/comics writer who has a nice little web portfolio you can check out. Earlier this year,  Yen Press published a one-shot by Queenie Chan which was surprisingly interesting. These two writers are just a small pinch of the talent out there that’s trying to get work published as independent comics writers.

George’s story reminded me of a little fact – that anthologies, like in Japan, are perfect for one-shots. In Japan, contests exist throughout the year that allow new and aspiring authors get their work into an anthology and have it graded by the readers. Readers pick what they like and what they don’t, and those stories that they end up liking the most oftentimes get turned into long-running manga series. For example, if the readers of Yen Plus liked “Prom Night,” they would be able to vote it up and see what happens. While “Prom Night” is a fairly one-minded short, its characters, who are all cute, awkward, and lovable, could definitely be part of a longer running series.

The question is though – what is the point of a one-shot manga in the US? The publishing world in the West is a lot different than the publishing model in Japan, and making one-shots available to the general reading public isn’t nearly as important if you aren’t going to do anything with them. Showcasing talent is an okay use of space, but I really want to read more of “Prom Night,” and I’m fairly certain that I’m not going to get to.

It interests me that anthologies like Yen Press and Shonen Jump have surveys that have ranking systems like the original anthologies, but I wonder if they use the information they get from the surveys is used to influence publishing decisions. As an aside, the survey in Yen Plus is a page of the anthology that you need to tear out and fill in and mail to Yen Press. It’s pretty flimsy paper (because the anthology is printed on low quality paper) so it doesn’t hold up very well.  It would be a better system if they could get one of the post-card inserts that sells subscriptions to be a survey card. I would definitely fill that out and put it in the mail. Survey postcards would be sweet, but digital works too – give readers a slip to vote in an online poll and offer a small prize (maybe a copy of an upcoming manga release) to a randomly-drawn participant (Viz does this with Shonen Jump, but Yen Press doesn’t do this with Yen Plus).

When Shojo Beat went down, it concerned me that manga anthologies might be going the way of the dodo here in the US, and I think that giving readers a say in what gets published and what gets cut is an essential move for any anthology. If, in some imaginary world, I was a Japanese manga reader and the Japanese version of Yen Plus released “Prom Night,” I could vote on it and know that my votes would count to whether or not it got published again. That’s power for the reader, and it increases the investment that your anthology subscribers have to your brands, as well as your manga licenses.

Getting this to work would require some tabulation and extra work for each publishing team, but the trade-off is a strong idea of the popularity of each series in an anthology within weeks of its publication.The strength of such a series popularity survey is unmeasurable – letting readers have a say in what they read is just another way that manga publishers can interact with the community, change their content for the better, and sell more copies.

The Implications of Shojo Beat’s Demise

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Well, it’s official; it’s been way too long since I’ve updated my blog, but finals and heavy coursework will do that to you. I’m in finals week here at University, so my free time is going to increase very soon (more time to read manga! yay!!). In the meantime, I have been working hard at http://www.eyeofthevortexonline.com, and the May edition is finally ready for your viewing pleasure. We’ve got a ton of great features this month, so check it out.

I clicked over to ICv2 earlier this afternoon and was shocked to see that Viz Media is canceling their Shojo Beat anthology magazine in light of economic issues. This disappoints me for a number of reasons, which I’ll get to in a moment, but I think it’s safe to say that overall this is fairly disheartening, especially for anyone that had subscribed to the magazine. I cannot say that I was one of those people, but it’s akin to when Newtype USA was canceled; something you enjoyed every month is now missing.

The most difficult issue with economic downturn is that you start to see what portions of a company’s business are profitable and which aren’t. This normally isn’t a problem, but when the product is something you’ve invested in emotionally, it can get a bit hairy. Viz is traditionally known as a manga publisher with a very strong shonen lineup, including the chart topping Naruto, Bleach, and Black Cat. Their shojo line is also strong, but doesn’t get near the amount of attention that the shonen does.

The strange thing is though, that manga as a whole, is a comic s0ld to women (at least in your major book retailers). Shojo Beat is the heart of the girl’s comics movement, a collection of the “normal” girly magazine stuff with comics specifically written to be enjoyed by girls. And, when most of your bookstore market is the young female audience (who doesn’t have Twilight to distract them this summer), it seems like an inopportune time to cancel the anthology. More appropriately, it would seem, now is the time to give the anthology more press, more promotions, and try to tie it into product lines and get it into the hands of its chosen audience.

In contrast, Shonen Jump has received a lot of tie-ins with other products, giving it some cover recognition in stores, with its Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and other promotions. It also has Saturday morning cartoons to back it up, giving it more eye appeal to the younger crowd. Can we say that for Shojo Beat? Did it ever really get its chance to shine? Or was it more of a background player to the antics of Naruto and his other shonen buddies?

One of Viz’s interesting moves is that they’ve promised to send all Shojo Beat readers a free copy of Shonen Jump, which is well intentioned, but for the most part, seems misguided. The people who enjoy shojo and shonen are completely different, and the subject matter in Shonen Jump is far different from the content of Shojo Beat. You may get a few converts, Viz, but the people that would read both anthologies are probably already doing so anyway.

While I’m sure funds are tight in manga world right now, I don’t know that Viz is doing bad enough that it absolutely needed to cancel Shojo Beat. I’m sure Shojo Beat wasn’t profitable. I’m not actually sure that Shonen Jump is profitable. I think it was probably the right business move.

But as I say this, we see the loss of a very specific, important piece of the manga puzzle. Manga is meant for anthologies, like fish are meant for water.  It has been my joy to subscribe to Yen Plus, and I’m currently looking at Shonen Jump, because I think the anthology is so key to the way manga is written and should be read.  In losing Shojo Jump, we lose a part of that experience, and we lose a quality publication which has inspired and entertained consumers since it was originally published.

Viz has promised to continue the series in the magazine through their paperback manga volumes, but the effect is certainly not the same.  It seems like such a tragedy that such an important portion of the manga industry in Japan is so lacking here in the USA, and the loss of Shojo Beat further removes manga from its traditional format here.

Jumpland and Bokke-san

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A while ago, Brigid at MangaBlog mentioned that Jumpland, the website for Japanese Shonen Jump, was releasing Bakuman for free to readers who could download their reader platform. Unfortunately for Mac users, it’s a Windows platform, so anyone using an Apple is kind of out of luck.

A few months ago, I decided to check out Bakuman, and I have really enjoyed it thus far. It’s a very interesting series and it seems much more down to Earth compared to Obata and Ohba’s last published work, Deathnote. On the other hand, it certainly isn’t the best of the manga available on Jumpland. That distinct honor belongs to the fantasy suspense drama, Bokke-san. Without much hubub, Bokke-san has continued to impress me since the first chapter was released. A story about ancient gods called the Bokke that have come to wreck havoc on the unsuspecting human city of Matsuroba, Bokke-san pits grotesque and amazingly original gods and demi-gods against the main-character Hinomiya, a chaotic cat-god Bokke who is trying to defend the human side of Matsuroba.

My hope is that Bokke-san makes it across the Pacific, as well as Bakuman. Heck, I even liked Meister and Kuroko no Basuke, the two sports manga that also debuted (They’ve been removed from Jumpland proper, but you can still find them if you look hard enough). Getting to read Bokke-san has had me checking the Jumpland site every week or so. It’s definitely a comic I could sink my teeth (and my wallet) into.

While this squential release has gotten me interested in the series, it’s almost like a red herring; yes, its cool that you’re showing us these manga, but what does that mean for them in the future? Will a company like Viz care to publish a manga that’s already been sequentially released on a website? What does this kind of pre-liscenture activity do to the viability of Bokke-san? There are books that have gotten a lot of press because of scanlation; books like Gantz are a perfect example.  However, just because the book did well as a scanlation doesn’t necessarily translate into sales for the compiled book.

So, what does the manga online mean for these series down the road? I can’t say for sure. My hope is that it means more exposure, and liscensure. It could also be an un-witting death sentence.

Review: RalΩGrad, Volume 1

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(Original, abbreviated version posted at http://www.comicsvillage.com. )

RalΩGrad, Volume #1
Written by Tsuneo Takano and Illustrated by Takeshi Obata
Viz Media’s Shonen Jump Advanced
Rated OT for Older Teen (16+), USA $7.99
216 pgs.

RalΩGrad is an interesting manga set in the Blue Dragon universe, where humankind has been under seige by the Shadow World for 15 years. Humans can have their shadows possessed by inhabitants of this world, called Shadows, which can then take shape in the human world. Ral, the main character of the story, is one of those people. When he was an infant, his shadow was possessed by the powerful dragon Shadow Grad. This manga details his adventures as he challenges the Shadow Queen Opsquria and her minions to restore the balance between the Shadow World and his own.

RalΩGrad is a mix between ecchi comedy and action, and both are on full tilt as this novel progresses. Ral’s misunderstandings and fondness for bossoms give this manga quite a few funny moments, but perhaps for some readers, this content is more offensive than humorous. When Ral isn’t trying to fondle someone’s breasts, he’s fighting Shadows working for the Shadow Queen, and Obata imagines these fights in great detail. The art is breath-taking.

Viz is one of those companies that kind of irks me when it comes to book quality; I’m fairly certain that some of these pages were meant to be full color, and the paper quality is something a little better than pretty bad. The price is set to please, but I don’t know that the books will last for as long as other publisher offerings might.

The story progresses fairly linearly, as Ral and his friends Ms. Mio and Aia move closer to the stronghold of the Shadow Queen. There’s never a true lull in the action, and Ms. Mio, who acts as a teacher to Ral, helps to explain some of the more complex details of the Shadow World in the form of lessons to Ral. This style of writing is good for both Blue Dragon fans and for readers new to the setting. As a reader who had never heard of Blue Dragon, the manga was informative but it didn’t bog me down, which was appreciated.

It’s interesting, but after a few bum reviews of the first volume, this series got put on the back burner. Only after people started clamoring for the book later on in the year did they make plans to publish the next few volumes. At one time, I had even heard that the series was cancelled. It really shows you what a difference a year makes. I’m glad Viz decided to give this manga a second chance, because it’s worth the time to read it.

If, however, you aren’t a fan of ecchi comedy, I suggest staying away from this one. It’s about as crude as it gets. At one point, Ral even titles himself, “Ral, Squeezer of Tits.” It’s not for the sensitive eyes, and it’s not young at heart. But the raw humor is enough to make me laugh, and I enjoyed the jokes.

RalΩGrad may not be for everyone, but it is a startlingly good read, with just enough fantasy battle sequences to lure you in, and a plot line that will keep you reading. However, if you’re not a fan of ecchi humor, leave this one on the shelf.