Kiichi and the Magic Books, vols. 1 and 2
By Taka Amano
Rated T, for Teen
CMX, $9.99

The title of this series suggests one of those earnest reading-is-fun kids’ books written by well-meaning adults, which is a shame, because it’s actually much better than that. This is manga, after all, so the books don’t open up new wonderlands; they release demons and wild animals, which wreak havoc in various satisfying ways. The story doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s a pleasant read and the art is unusual and quite graceful in places.

Kiichi is a little boy who is on his own. After his mother’s death, the people in his village noticed a horn sprouting from his forehead, which betrayed his oni [demon] blood, and they shunned him. His overriding emotion is not sadness or resentment but curiosity—he wants to know about oni, and he wants to find someone like him.

Mototaro is a traveling librarian. In a land where individuals are forbidden to own books, he travels around with a portable rental library; when he arrives in a town, he sets up his lantern and spreads out his books. Kiichi sees Mototaro and his traveling companion, a young girl named Hana, summon tiny dancing oni from the pages of a book. Intrigued, he follows them, swipes a book, and in the way these things always go, ends up traveling with them to the Book Depository, where he hopes to learn more about oni and about himself.

So off they go on their journey, which is punctuated by adventures in the various places where they stop. Along the way, we learn the rules: people and animals often pop out of the pages of books, particularly older ones; these materialized figures are imperfect copies whose ink dissolves when it touches water (or tears); and only a librarian can get the living creatures back into the books. It’s an interestingly self-referential concept, when you think about it: The creatures that spring from the books only look realistic on the drawn page, where all the people and surroundings are made of ink on paper as well.

After a few episodes that demonstrate the power of books, including one in which a woman tries to use them to bring her dead son back to life, Kiichi and his companions arrive at the book depository, where the books are kept and defective books are destroyed. Here the story takes a different turn. New characters emerge, and the characters we thought we now start to develop and show new sides of themselves. Having spent the better part of two volumes getting us used to their invented world, the authors throw in a whole new cosmological angle to the story, one that begins to explain the plot and also puts Kiichi in jeopardy.

The characters in Kiichi manage to be likeable without being boring. Mototaro is sort of a stock character, on the one hand a grudging parent figure to Kiichi and Hana, on the other hand, a powerful magician who hides his talent under an unassuming exterior. Kiichi is plucky, if not particularly gifted; he can run fast and jump high, but unlike a lot of other manga heroes, he doesn’t have any extraordinary talents. Hana is a needy little girl, adrift in the world. Traveling with the trio is Mori, a gentle giant from a race called the Amamori, who have a particular affinity for birds. Mori dispenses wisdom and protects the travelers, but there’s something ambiguous about him that brings a bit of tension into the book.

Kiichi is drawn in a standard manga style, but the artist uses very little toning, instead relying on clear lines, masses of pure black and white, and hatching, as well as areas of great detail that function as grays on the page. It’s an interesting technique that usually looks good, although in a few of the larger landscape scenes, the dark masses of foliage just read as disembodied blobs. The animals that spring to life from the books are believable but not very accurate; they really look like old drawings of animals, even as they terrorize the villagers.

Kiichi and the Magic Books is attractive and very readable. The story is interesting and avoids the trap of being too episodic; by the end of volume 2, the characters are well defined and beginning to develop some depth. Younger readers will probably enjoy this story the most, but there’s enough there to hold the interest of an adult who isn’t looking for standard battle or romance manga as well.

(This review is based on a complimentary copy and galley provided by the publisher.)

Yakuza In Love, vol. 2: This book cruises along mainly on the strength of its crack-tastic premise and the variety of males presented for our delectation. Whether you like ‘em big and solid, young and willowy, or fashionable and foppish, Yakuza In Love has something for everyone. The plot is convoluted and almost beside the point: There are secrets from the past, betrayals, beatings, and most of all, a bunch of lonely gangsters who are just looking for love. The art focuses on the men, with plenty of gesture and close-ups of tortured faces. Backgrounds are simple to nonexistent, while clothes and tats are attended to with loving detail. Although the manga is rated 18+, and there are some explicit (though anatomically unlikely) sex scenes, all dicks are tucked discreetly out of sight or vanish into a rosy glow. Not surprisingly, given the theme, some of the sex is mixed with violence, and the final story, about a high school boy who tries to save a classmate from a relationship with a married man, is kind of creepy. Overall, it’s OK if you don’t take it too seriously.

Cy-Believers, vol. 2: This is not just a reverse harem comedy, it turns the whole genre upside down. Our heroine, Rui, is determined to keep her computer club, the Cy-Believers, going, with the help of a pair of bishi computer geeks. Yes, bishi computer geeks. In this volume, Rui’s overly controlling ex-fiance, Natori, puts on a wig and glasses and fools Rui, if no one else; the hunky head of the anime club comes dashing into the picture (and is promptly sedated); and Rui’s mysterious father, who looks like he’s about 17, appears and scatters plot exposition everywhere he goes. The sempai girls who were my favorite characters in the first volume drop out of the club, but Rui persuades the Boys Lost Love Quilting Club to join up. Rui appears clueless most of the time, but her personality starts to emerge toward the end of the volume, as do the outlines of a real plot. Shioko Mizuki’s expressive art is easy to take, and the print quality of this volume is better than the last, which had wispy, disappearing lines. To be honest, this is a borderline book that is probably most interesting to younger readers, to whom the politics of school clubs and cliques will seem more immediate. When the sempai girls quit, I was ready to put it down, but I’m glad I didn’t, as Mizuki’s zany humor does keep it interesting.

These reviews are based on complimentary copies supplied by the publishers.

Amazon.com Widgets

Kieli, vol. 1
Story by Yukako Kabei
Art by Shiori Teshirogi
Rated OT, Older Teen, for language and violence
Yen Press, $10.99

Kieli is a manga about a girl who sees ghosts.

Original, no?

Well, no, but Kieli has more to it than your standard ghost manga. The characters have more depth, the action is easy to follow, and the art is very nice, which makes this a good crossover title for a shoujo reader who is looking for a taste of shonen.

Let’s talk about the setup first. We’re in some fairly modern alternate world that went through a terrible war 80 years ago. The most lethal weapons in that war were the Undying, immortal killing machines made from the corpses of the war dead. “Their hearts are made of a perpetually working power source that gives them abnormal regenerative powers,” explains one character. When the war was over, the country was taken over by a theocracy that eliminated the Undying by blasting their hearts out. Of course, they missed one—otherwise there wouldn’t be a story. His name is Harvey, and he’s pretty cute, and he carries around a radio possessed by the ghost of dead soldier who is trying to get to his final resting place.

The main character is not Harvey but Kieli, an orphaned teenager who has the power to see ghosts, Kieli doesn’t fit in at all in her Church-run boarding school. Her only friend is, in fact, a ghost. What’s more, she’s smart, smart enough to realize that the Church that is running everyone’s lives is really bogus—there is no God at the heart of it.

So, Kieli hooks up with Harvey and they go off and have some adventures. One of the least likeable aspects of this book is the Kieli-Harvey dynamic, which is typical shoujo: She’s enthusiastic and really likes him, he’s cold and diffident (but really does sort of grudgingly like her). Ho hum. Of course, Harvey is technically a reanimated corpse, which could cause some problems if they become romantically entangled down the line.

Kieli, on the other hand, is smart and introspective, and that’s what really makes this book. She thinks about things; she knows what people think of her; she argues with her best friend and then feels bad about it. Also, unlike in a lot of manga, she isn’t being pelted with ghosts all the time, so she has a bit of time to think. There’s plenty of action in Kieli, some of it quite gory, but it’s well paced and easy to follow, and there is plenty of downtime between bouts.

Shiori Teshirogi’s art is expressive and fairly clean, with perhaps a bit too much toning in places. Unlike a lot of action manga, it has fight scenes that are easy to follow. Backgrounds and establishing scenes are fairly minimal; the focus is on the characters, and Teshirogi does give them plenty of expression. I particularly like the graceful flow of the girls’ black uniforms. The paper is clean and white, if a bit coarse, so the art stands up well, although it does get just a touch muddy in the pages with a lot of solid black. There are no extras, other than an author’s note, but this book doesn’t really demand translation notes.

Overall, this first volume presents an entertaining story that’s a bit above average in every way: More depth, better characters, nicer art. It’s accessible enough for those new to action manga and complex enough for the more experienced reader, making it a good addition to any summer reading pile.

This review is based on a complimentary copy supplied by the publisher.

Cy Believers, vol. 1
By Shioko Mizuki
Rated OT, Older Teen, 16+
Go! Comi, $10.99

Cy Believers is a strange little story. It features some of the most unlikable characters I have ever encountered in a manga, set in an incredibly artificial situation, and yet I liked it anyway.

Shioko Mizuki is the creator of the excellent soap opera Crossroad, so naturally I was expecting more of the same, but Cy Believers heads off in a different direction. It’s set in one of those Japanese boarding schools where an elite student government rules everyone’s lives with an iron hand. When I was in high school, student government was a pretty token affair, but in manga, they are more like ruling juntas, with seemingly unlimited power and a special structure of their own.

Such is the case at Domus Aurea, a boarding school where, we are told repeatedly by narrative boxes, freedom and self-determination are cherished traditions. This must be intended as irony, because the very first thing we see is Natori Nijo, head of the Public Safety Commission, wielding a bullwhip as he clears out a student club that hasn’t met his standards. Apparently Natori is consolidating power by eliminating clubs for infractions of school rules. Natori also wants to totally control his fiancée, Rui, but Rui is having none of that; when he tries to rape her, she clobbers him and walks out.

Rui wants to join the Public Relations Club, the most prestigious club in the school, but she is shunted off to the “downsized team,” basically a bunch of losers that the club would like to dump but can’t. The three students who make up this group, called “The Believers,” are one of the funniest parts of this book; they toil unquestioningly under low-watt bulbs, assembling toys to make enough money to keep going. Their other project is providing power and shelter for two bishi computer geeks, Rio and Azumi.

Rui is your typical shoujo heroine, and therefore the least interesting person in this motley crew, but if it wasn’t for her, they would all just sit around and make toys and fix computers. Like all good shoujo girls, Rui is incensed by injustice, and when Natori shuts down the Believers, she starts a new computer club, the Cy-Believers.

And there’s your story. There isn’t much sexual tension or even believable emotion, but Mizuki does seem to be setting up something for the future volumes. What makes Cy-Believers tick is the humor of exaggeration—the hard-working Believers, the power-mad Natori, and Makise, the sex-crazed but agoraphobic student body president.

Mizuki’s art is willowy and attractive, although her characters are not particularly unique. Backgrounds are sparse, and her drawing and composition are serviceable but not remarkable. One distraction is the quality of the lines, which seem thin and wispy and occasionally fade out altogether; I assume this is a problem with the print quality.

This is not a deep book, but it is a funny one, if you enjoy watching exaggerated characters crashing into one another. There is a hint of a deeper plot—the whole school is controlled by a mysterious computer—so it will be interesting to see what Mizuki does with the weird setup she created in this volume.

This review is based on a complimentary copy supplied by the publisher.

Toto! The Wonderful Adventure
By Yuko Osada
Rated T, ages 13+
Del Rey, $10.95

It’s a bit of a stretch to say that Toto! is based on The Wizard of Oz. It’s more like Yuko Osada tossed a copy of that venerable classic into a blender with a recent issue of Shonen Jump, then had the results interpreted by Martians. Which is to say, this is a likeable action manga that makes a lot of references to Dorothy and scarecrows and such but will never be mistaken for L. Frank Baum’s masterpiece.

Our hero is Kakashi (the name means “scarecrow”), an orphan who feels stifled by his life on a small island and longs to see the world. His dreams are fed by the diary left behind by his explorer father, but all his attempts to escape fail ignominiously—until he stows away on a giant airship that just happens to touch down briefly on his island. Kakashi hides out in the hold, where he finds and quickly befriends a puppy that seems to have escaped its carrier. Unbeknownst to him, however, the airship has just been hijacked by the Man Chicken Gang, the kind of gangsters you find only in manga—they’re smart, goofy, and kind-hearted enough to lower the altitude of the zeppelin before throwing the passengers out. The gangsters are less than thrilled when they get to the hold and find Kakashi and the puppy. They try to toss both of them off the ship, but Kakashi persuades them to keep him on as a galley slave.

This is one of those manga where the reader is a bit ahead of the characters in realizing a key point, in this case the fact that Toto is no ordinary dog. Despite their meticulous planning, the Man Chicken Gang are completely unaware of this, and therefore they are caught unawares when the military launches a missile attack on the airship. Everyone parachutes out—well, almost everyone—and Kakashi ends up in the middle of a cornfield, where he and his still-unnamed puppy encounter a girl named Dorothy. I won’t ruin the joke by giving any more details, but suffice it to say that by the end of the volume, Dorothy, Kakashi, and the puppy—now named Toto—have hijacked a motorbike and headed out toward a city called Emerald, with the military in hot pursuit.

Besides the Wizard of Oz twists, what puts Toto! ahead of other action manga is the quality of the artwork. Osada has a nice touch with the action sequences, often using unusual angles to heighten the sense of motion, and all the characters, even the minor ones, are unique and interesting.

The Del Rey folks do their usual good job on production values, justifying the $10.95 price tag with a brightly printed cover, sharp printing inside, translator’s notes, and a preview of volume 2. My only quibble is that it would have been helpful to know from the beginning that Kakashi’s name is Japanese for “scarecrow.”

Emma, vols. 4-7
By Kaoru Mori
Rated Teen Plus
CMX, $9.99

Emma started out slow in the first few volumes and really started getting interesting in volume 3. In the second half, the series escalates into a full-blown Victorian romance, complete with wild adventures, rapturous emotion, and the pageantry and snobbery of the English upper classes. At the same time, manga-ka Kaoru Mori has grown surer of herself and her subject matter, and her art has become more ambitious as a result.

Set in 19th century England, Emma chronicles the romance of William Jones, the eldest son of a wealthy family, and Emma, a prim maid whose quiet exterior belies hidden depths. The biggest obstacle to their romance, of course, is the difference between their stations, which gives even the most sympathetic characters pause.

The course of true love never runs smooth, at least not in fiction, and in these four volumes the reader watches Emma and William reunite, pull back again, struggle with obstacles thrown in their path by others, and ultimately (spoiler alert!!) triumph. The third point in the inevitable love triangle is the young and ditzy Eleanor, who pursues William unaware of his greater passion for Emma. Eleanor’s strong-minded sister and evil-viscount father throw in lots of extra complications, and the below-stairs drama of maids and grooms adds counterpoint and humor.

Mori also delves into the backstory of William’s family: The Jones family has money but no noble blood, so they are still outsiders, invited to parties but subject to snide comments behind their backs. That outsider status causes rifts within the family and adds to William’s father’s determination that his son not throw away everything he has worked for by marrying a maid.

If there is a flaw in this series, it’s the pacing: Things often seem to hang for a few chapters, with little plot development, and then the action ramps up again. In a lesser book this would be more noticeable, but Emma is really an immersion experience. Much of the enjoyment of reading it comes from simply watching the characters go about their business, whether in the drawing room or the scullery. There are nights at the opera, shopping trips in London, and several voluptuous bathing and dressing scenes. In fact, the little bits of business between the main plot elements are some of the best parts of the book.

As far as the romance of William and Emma is concerned, the series has a perfect ending, but Mori does leave a few loose ends dangling. Even at the end of the series, Emma remains an enigma—where did she get her upper-class bearing, not to mention her knowledge of French? Eleanor’s botched pursuit of William is resolved nicely, but Emma’s suitor, the dark and dangerous-looking Hans, simply disappears. Mori has developed a rich cast of supporting characters, and I was hoping to learn more about them; hopefully the three volumes of Emma side stories that CMX plans to publish next year will hold some of the answers.

Emma first appeared in a seinen magazine in Japan, and Mori nods to her male audience in subtle ways. Her gaze dwells lovingly on William’s haberdashery: His shoes, the writing paraphernalia on his desk, even the way his carelessly folded jacket falls onto a chair. Beyond that, the story shifts frequently between William’s point of view and Emma’s. The leading male is often a cardboard character in romances, but William has real emotions. It’s easy to see that this manga was written to be read by men as well as women.

While Emma certainly has a gripping story, the art is the real draw. It’s interesting that Mori, who had never been to England when she started the series, can evoke Victorian England so well. It’s an idealized version, to be sure. The rooms would be much smaller and darker in a real Victorian house, and people didn’t parade around naked as much in the days before central heating. But that’s poetic license. The atmosphere Mori creates, from the busy streets of London to a close-up of a filigreed inkstand, is convincing and inviting.

Her one weak point is faces. Almost everyone in Emma has the same face, and it’s a strange one: an underdeveloped nose that appears to be melting into the smooth curves of cheeks and chin, a tiny mouth that is often just a single line, and some of the oddest eyes in manga-dom. The eyes are big, and they have the requisite highlights, but viewed from the side they appear concave. Emma’s German employers and their staff have more distinct features, but among William and his circle, I sometimes had to look closely at details of the costumes or hair to figure out who was who.

Mori clearly enjoys drawing the female figure, and some of the panels, such as the nude scenes later in the series, look like they could have been drawn from life. Her figures have a solidity that is unusual in any comics, manga or otherwise, and their movements seem natural and relaxed.

Each panel of Emma is as detailed as an illustration in a Victorian picture book, and Mori’s technique even mimics the parallel-line shading of old engravings. Yet the meaning never gets lost in the detail. She uses toning to subtly to set off single areas of shade and keep the hatching from blending into a single unreadable web, and particularly in the below-stairs scenes she uses the flowing black curves of the maids’ uniforms to punctuate the scene and draw the eye forward. Mori breaks her story up into many little panels, often fitting six or more onto a page, but the art never seems crowded; even the small panels are clearly composed, and they often have a monumental feel despite their jewel-like size.

Reading Emma is like stepping into another time and place. While the story alternates between breathless and listless, the little dramas of everyday life in Victorian times lift this book from good to great.

This review is based on a complimentary copy and galleys supplied by the publisher.