Crown, vols. 1 and 2
Written by Shinji Wada
Art by You Higuri
Rated OT, for Older Teens (16+)
Go! Comi, $10.99

When I first looked at the cover of the first volume of Crown, my heart sank a bit. Could you get any more cliched than that—two hot guys with a girl in the center? Then I turned to the title page…

… and I literally laughed out loud.

And that’s Crown. Written by veteran shoujo manga-ka Shinji Wada and illustrated by the superbly talented You Higuri, Crown is an enjoyable spoof of the many clichés of shoujo manga. It starts out with a girl who is so sweet that the book should come with its own insulin pump. Mahiro is left alone when her mother dies and an evil family kicks her out of her house, but she works two jobs so as not to be a burden on anyone. She is at her night job, as a flagger at a construction site, when two guys scoop her up, toss her into a limo, and drive away.

They are not kidnappers, however, but hardened mercenaries from another country, and the blond one is Mahiro’s older brother, Ren. It seems that Mahiro and Ren are actually a prince and princess, but their evil stepmother conspired to have them killed so she could inherit the throne. They were just spirited away instead, and the queen has just learned that Mahiro is still alive. She wants to assassinate Mahiro, but Ren has sworn to protect her; his partner Jake is along for the ride because of a poker debt, but also, we eventually learn, to fill a greater emotional need.

There is plenty of action in this story but it’s all tongue in cheek. Ren and Jake are super-mercenaries, the best in the business. They dispatch the evil family who took over Mahiro’s house, then take her out to dinner even as the queen’s mercenaries are surrounding the building; they follow up their gourmet meal by blowing up an entire section of Tokyo. And they leave bodies scattered everywhere. Soon another mercenary gets dragged in: The Condor, who is fired ignominiously after he fails to capture Mahiro and ends up being so captivated by her sweetness that Ren and Jake hire him as her protector. Oh, and there’s a cross-dressing assassin, too, but I don’t want to give too much away.

Wada and Higuri have a lot of fun with the clichés of manga. Ren and Jake are impossibly good at what they do, calculating their opponents’ moves to the split second. They wear full camouflage uniforms under their impeccably tailored suits, and they are fond of striking the sorts of poses you usually see on movie posters. Also, they shower together and generally act like seme and uke, except there is no sexual tension (or sex) between them. Mahiro, for her part, is so cute and naïve and generally obliging that by the second volume Higuri has started to draw her with puppy ears and a wagging tail. She fixes elaborate breakfasts, cheerily greets Ren’s one-night stands, and drags Condor off on a shopping spree. She and Ren also display an unnatural amount of affection for one another. All the characters act out stereotyped manga roles, but they are completely clueless about it; it’s as if Wada and Higuri are winking at us over their heads.

Since both creators are old hands, it’s no surprise that this manga is very well done. Higuri’s art is outstanding, although Mahiro’s moe-ness gets to be a bit much after a while. Her attraction to Ren is a bit icky, but it’s played as mostly unconscious and hopefully it will be resolved in the usual way (“What? You’re adopted?”) in vol. 3. (It’s hard to believe they could resist that cliche, having included most of the others.) The story is entertaining and completely over the top, but if you’re willing to suspend disbelief, it’s an enjoyable ride.

(This review is based on complimentary copies provided by the publisher.)

Hell Girl, vol. 1
By Miyuki Eto
Rated OT, for Older Teens (16+)
Del Rey, $10.99

Nightmares for Sale, vol. 1
by Kaoru Ohashi
Rated OT, for Older Teens (16+)
Aurora, $10.99*

Presents, vol. 1
By Kanako Inuki
Rated M, for Mature readers (18+)
CMX, $12.99

One of the most interesting mini-genres of manga what John Jakala brilliantly named “comeuppance theater,” in which we get to watch someone behave badly and then pay a creative and usually bloody price for their sins.

There is something viscerally satisfying about watching a bad person being punished for their evil deeds. “The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small,” Longfellow wrote. The “slowly” part is the catch; we often see people get away with reprehensible things in real life, from the driver who dents a car in the parking lot and drives off to the CEO who runs a company into the ground and picks up a huge bonus check on his way out the door. They may get their just desserts, in this world or the next, but we don’t get to see it.

That’s why it’s fun to read books like these. They compress time and strip away all ambiguity, leaving a single story arc: Person does bad thing, person gets punished. In real life there are gray areas, and victims (especially of con games) are often complicit in their suffering. In fiction, such messy considerations would ruin the fun. What it boils down to is an innocent victim, an evil tormentor—and, hopefully, a creative storyteller.

Hell Girl is a particularly pure example of the genre. Each of the five stories in volume 1 features a truly awful villain—a girl who frames a classmate and then bullies her, a baker who steals recipes from his student and spreads rumors about her shop, a vet who neglects the animals in his care (except for those that belong to celebrities). It’s formulaic evil that never gets realistic enough to be disturbing. In each case the victim is driven to despair, unable to solve the problem, and—this is key—no one else believes her, so no one will help.

Then she hears about a mysterious website that can be accessed only at midnight. The website calls up Hell Girl, a huge-eyed, kimono-clad dispenser of justice. She strikes a hard bargain—the price of vengeance is that the victim will be sent to hell when she dies. Oddly, no one seems to be bothered by this. Once Hell Girl is hired, she really delivers the goods, interrupting the evildoer’s enjoyment of their ill-gotten gains to inflict a custom-tailored version of hell.

The book is very formulaic, down to the very words that Hell Girl says and the blurry chrysanthemums that she calls up every time she shows up to deliver justice. On the other hand, the torments are nicely designed and fit the villains quite well. The book isn’t really that scary, but it’s troubling that no one seems to be in the least bit bothered by the prospect of eternal damnation. Most simply enjoy getting the status quo back and resolve to enjoy the here and now.

Nightmares for Sale throws some really different twists into the revenge scenario. Creator Kaoru Ohashi squeezes six stories, one a two-parter, into volume 1, and each story follows a different path. In this series, the intervention is supplied by a supernatural pawnshop staffed by a loli girl (who is apparently much older than she looks) and a lovely boy, but their role is less straightforward than Hell Girl’s. Some of the stories involve a transaction with them, but in others, they simply stand around and the characters come in and tell them things.

The first two chapters are pretty straightforward tales, one of a bullied girl getting revenge, the other of a vain fashion model getting what she wishes for (which is never good in these books). After that, the stories get more interesting and twisted. People still get punished, but things are seldom what they appear to be on the first page, and most of the stories end ambiguously, with a hint that the dark forces are only temporarily banished. The writing is really quite clever, especially considering how short the chapters are. The art is uneven, however; some chapters are drawn in a very spare, linear style with toning substituting for shading and backgrounds, while other chapters are more fully developed. Often the art has a pale look because of the dependence on toning. Ohashi does some interesting things with the panels, often letting the story unfold in a series of thin vertical slices and using strong diagonals to keep the action moving. The production quality is almost too good—the high-quality, very white paper makes the thin lines and light toning look even paler, and the binding is rather stiff. Still, it’s a nice book and a decent read.

Presents is a series of cautionary tales, most beginning with a gift and ending with horrific death. Most of the characters are schoolchildren, and greed is the chief sin in the book: One greedy girl snatches presents away from the other kids, only to find that each box contains a different way to die; another pays little attention to the gifts she is given, until they gang up on her; and a woman who is only dating a guy for the bling he brings her gets a final delivery from beyond the grave. The chief actor in these stories is a little girl who didn’t get any birthday presents, thanks to a mean classmate’s trick, and therefore stays young forever. She pops up in different ways in each story, sometimes to help the victim, sometimes to deliver a gruesome judgment.

The style of Presents seems old-fashioned; the figures are rounded, with bug eyes and simple hair and clothes. This makes for some jarring contrasts—the stories all start out like children’s stories and end in madness, with melting faces or spilled guts. It’s all very imaginative, though, and it’s amazing how many different kinds of evil manga-ka Kanako Inuki can come up with, and how many different retributions she can confect, all based on the same theme.

Presents also has a greater degree of interior-ness than the other books; Hell Girl doesn’t care about the souls of the people she punishes, she’s just out for revenge. The little girl in Presents, on the other hand, is punishing people as much for their flaws—their greed or callousness—as for what they have actually done.

Of the three, Presents is definitely the most interesting read, with the most imaginative stories, although the art will probably not appeal to everyone. Nightmares for Sale has interesting stories but some weak points in the art, while Hell Girl is the most simplistic and formulaic, although the art is slick and professional. But all three deliver the solid satisfaction of watching bad things happen to bad people.

*Aurora has all their older titles, including this one, on sale for $5.00 if you buy through them.

These reviews are based on complimentary copies supplied by the publishers. But obviously, I’m not easily bought!

Yokai Doctor, vol. 1
By Yuki Sato
Rated OT, ages 16+
Del Rey, $10.99

In Japanese folklore, yokai are unseen, often mischievous spirits that interfere in people’s lives in unexpected ways. They aren’t just vague spiritual entities—yokai usually have an odd mix of human and animal characteristics and often have very specific functions, such as cutting mosquito netting or licking out pots.

Yokai figure in a number of manga, including Koge-Donbo’s Kon Kon Kokon (unfortunately abandoned for other projects) and Nina Matsumoto’s Yokaiden. So the idea of a manga about a yokai doctor, someone who understands these odd creatures and knows what makes them tick, sounds like it would have to be a winner.

Unfortunately, Yokai Doctor falls somewhat short of greatness. It isn’t terrible by any means, but the creator relies too much on slapstick and fan service for cheap laughs at the expense of developing the story and the characters.

Kotoko Kasuga is a 16-year-old girl who can see yokai but doesn’t have much power over them. Her grandfather was an exorcist, and she seems to have inherited some of his abilities, but she hasn’t done anything to develop them. However, because her schoolmates are interested, she puts on little performances for them. Kotoko is no Einstein and doesn’t seem to realize that messing with spirits could be a bad idea.

Kuro Gokokuji is a quiet, bespectacled guy who, as only Kotoko can see, is always covered in yokai. Kuro appears to be rather standoffish and has no friends. He is also totally obsessed with women’s breasts, beyond even the norms for manga characters. Kotoko sees that Kuro has supernatural abilities yet has trouble fitting in with his fellow students and extends a hand of friendship to him. Too bad Kuro can only think about her panties.

Did I mention that Kotoko is not too bright? She leads a group of schoolmates up into a haunted forest, and before you know it, they are all embedded in a huge cube of jelly, and Kotoko is facing down a huge, hairy yokai. Just when it looks like all is lost, Kuro shows up, traps the yokai in a net, and explains that it isn’t bad, just sick. And then the truth comes out: Kuro is a yokai doctor, and to Kotoko’s great unease, he seems to side with yokai more than humans.

That’s the bones of the story, and it’s not a bad start. The storytelling, though, is jerky, full of gaps, and hampered by too many digressions into pointless fanservice. This is one of those stories where people are constantly going all spastic, knocking each other over or exploding over the least little thing. The fanservice is played for laughs, but it’s tiresome and intrusive. It’s one thing for Kuro to be obsessed with girls and to have that be part of his character. It’s another to have gratuitous locker-room scenes or panels that are framed with upskirt shots that don’t even pretend to be relevant to the story. Like all spices, fanservice is best applied with a judicious hand, and this particular soup is way over-seasoned.

A worse flaw is that the basic conflict of the story, humans versus yokai, is not well expressed or thought out. Kuro is a human who was raised in the yokai world, although how this came to be is never explained. (The scenes of him as a young child with his bare-breasted but nipple-less (and faceless) mother makes his preoccupation with boobs seem rather icky.) Kuro’s mother was killed by humans, yet he feels compelled to go out into the human world, although again, no explanation is given, nor does he seem to have any particular goal in mind. This doesn’t make sense: If he just wants to be a yokai doctor, he could spare himself a lot of discomfort by staying where he is. If it’s the boobs, well, that’s a pretty stupid premise for a story. There are hints that Kotoko harbors a dark power within her and may wind up being Kuro’s mortal enemy, but she is portrayed as such a bubblehead in most of the book that it will be hard to make this credible if it does develop as a plot element.

One aspect that I did think was good was that the key episode in which Kotoko faces down the yokai in the forest is told twice, from her point of view and then from his. The second retelling reveals new information about Kuro and puts the whole story in a different light without being too repetitive. Only a few scenes are repeated between the two stories, and each time, some information is added.

I was also intrigued by the way Kotoko’s emotions get shifted onto yokai. One yokai that tails her is a long, hairy monster (yes, it does appear somewhat phallic) that turns out to be a cute puffball gone horribly wrong. And what caused this? It has been eating Kotoko’s negative energy for years. When she was bullied as a child, this little monster kept her cheerful by literally swallowing her anxiety, but the bad vibes turned it ugly and hairy (although still kind-hearted underneath). Kuro purges it, reducing it to a small plushie whom Kotoko must now nourish, presumably by only thinking good thoughts. In another chapter, a yokai gives voice to all the negative thoughts that teenage girls put onto themselves—Kuro is not good at what she does, nobody likes her, etc. The resolution to this story is fairly obvious, and it ends on a happy note. This is all a bit troubling—is the creator saying Kotoko doesn’t own her own emotions and must censor her feelings to make another creature happy?—but it at least gives some food for thought. Kuro, on the other hand, doesn’t have particularly complex emotions, and while yokai are his companions, they don’t seem to affect his psychic states.

While the human characters in Yokai Doctor are as conventional as manga characters can be—Kotoko is your classic busty high-schooler, Kuro is that guy with glasses who pops up so often in girl-oriented stories—Sato conjures up an interesting batch of yokai in a variety of different styles, from the simple blob who seems to be Kuro’s constant companion to complicated dragons and other spirits. I’m guessing that he is drawing from other source material, though, as the yokai appear in a variety of different styles and the images don’t always hang together as a whole.

As far as production values go, Del Rey gets full marks. The translation is by Stephen Paul, and while I can’t speak to its accuracy, it certainly reads well, without hiccups or awkwardness. Furthermore, there’s a nice set of translator’s notes at the end of the book—always a good idea when you are dealing with yokai. The paper and print quality are good, which matters with art like Sato’s, where toning is kept to a minimum and areas of pure black and white define the page.

Despite my complaints, I thought that Yokai Doctor was a good read. I can see the series becoming increasingly episodic, with Kuro and Kotoko encountering one yokai after another and solving their problems. In that case, the lack of a backstory probably won’t matter much. If the story is to continue to develop, those gaps need to be filled. And in either case, everyone needs to calm down a bit, keep their clothes on, and stop hitting each other. Still, with the whole world of yokai as its potential guest cast, Yokai Doctor shows a lot of promise.

Travel
By Yuichi Yokoyama
PictureBox, $19.95

Travel is true sequential art, a series of visual meditations presented in manga format. In lesser hands, this could be overly pure (read: sterile and boring) but Yokoyama is better than that. Reading Travel is like taking part in a witty conversation: It moves fast, there are lots of (visual) puns, and every time you get something, you feel smarter. It also feels an awful lot like taking a train ride.

The story is simplicity itself: Three men get on a train, find a seat, ride for a while, and then get off. The manga is wordless—another boringness alert!—but don’t be dismayed. In Yokoyama’s case, each picture really is worth a thousand words, maybe two, and this is that rare comic that you can read over and over, seeing more each time.

The journey unfolds in a series of small events: The travelers buy their tickets, board the train, then pass through a series of cars, each one with a whimsical theme of its own, in search of a seat. The train passes over bridges and through tunnels and alongside all sorts of intricately patterned bits of industrial and natural scenery.

And yet, there is so much more than that. While the narrative is simple, the book is full of images that range from vaguely menacing to just plain odd: The three drivers of the train, in their conical hats; train stations draped in some sort of vegetation; a group of travelers all wearing some sort of uniform, including caps with an enigmatic insignia; a stranger who boards, glances around, and reaches into his jacket to produce… a book. Yokoyama doesn’t provide any more information than surface appearances, yet it’s impossible to read this book without speculating about these scenes or making connections between characters. In this way, he brings out the inner storyteller in every reader.

Yokoyama’s art is energetic and kinetic. He uses strong diagonals, both within the panels and as the shapes of the panels themselves, to create a sense of dynamic motion. He also works some interesting variations on the classic example of one-point perspective, train tracks vanishing into the distance, adding interest with curves and different shapes. Stylized speedlines signal the motion of an object within a panel, varying slightly to show a door opening and the same door slamming shut. Everything is in motion, and everything moves quickly and emphatically: The traveler snatches his ticket from the machine, the doors snap open and slam shut, the three men stride purposefully through the train, gravel flies away from the wheels, raindrops streak across the windows.

Motion is also implied as events unfold in sequence. Sometimes Yokoyama breaks down a single action, such as getting a drink of water from a dispenser, into a series of small panels reminiscent of an instructional diagram. Sometimes the sequence is more subtle, as when a passenger or vendor is seen from a moving point of view, and the background and profile shift as the point-of-view character moves around and past them. The scenery really flies by in the second half of the book, and Yokoyama has obviously ridden a lot of trains, because he really nails the feeling of watching the landscape speed by, especially that moment when the passenger’s gaze is focused on the middle ground and something close to the train comes along and breaks the view.

Yokoyama cheats a bit on the wordless aspect by putting notes in the end of the book. Sometimes he plays the puckish artist, pointing out some obscure detail in the picture or making a deliberately abstruse comment, and that’s just annoying and pretentious. On the other hand, sometimes the note puts the whole frame into perspective or adds a bit of information about a puzzling image, such as the cigarette lighters that look like Pez dispensers to the uninformed eye.

Yokoyama’s evident fascination with depicting speed and filling his panels with modern technology suggests a passing familiarity with the Italian Futurist painters, but where the Futurists dissolved their images into pure motion, Yokyoama stays resolutely concrete. The landscape goes whipping by, but the canals, water treatment ponds, and electric power lines always remains recognizable as such.

Travel uses the full power of sequential art not just to tell a story but also to explore a variety of visual concepts—motion, light and shade, interrelated shapes, built and natural landscapes, inside versus outside. It’s a long, strange trip, but it’s an interesting one as well, and one that the reader may very well want to take again and again.

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

The Manzai Comics, vol. 1
Story by Atsuko Asano
Art by Hizuru Imai
Rated T, for ages 13+
Aurora, $10.95

Manzai is a type of standup comedy, popular in Japan, that features a straight man and a goofy guy who misunderstands everything the straight man says. It’s a shame that the Aurora folks didn’t think to put in a translator’s note to that effect, because while I figured out pretty quickly that manzai was some sort of a comedy routine, I didn’t really get the whole concept until I looked it up.

The Manzai Comics is a curious mishmash of broad comedy routines and high-school drama. The story opens with an example of manzai, when Takashi, a high school student, asks Ayumu, the new kid in school, to “go out” with him. “Do it with me!” he pleads. Naturally, Ayumu thinks he’s being asked out on a date, when in fact Takashi is asking him to be his comedy partner.

If you think that’s hilarious, well, this is the book for you, as the real-life misunderstandings and the manzai routines blend into one another. I didn’t find any of it side-splitting, myself; perhaps manzai is an acquired taste.

But there’s more to The Manzai Comics than comedy. It’s really yet another story about fitting in and being accepted, with some interesting twists on the standard storyline. Ayumu is anxious to the point where he has trouble attending school, and he spends a lot of time worrying about being normal. Takashi, on the other hand, thinks Ayumu’s quirks make for good comedy material. Upping the angst level is the fact that Ayumu’s father and sister were killed in a car accident after quarreling with his mother over his inability to be “normal.” Naturally, Ayumu blames himself, and his mother is a nervous wreck. Other characters turn out to have serious family and romantic issues as well.

The Manzai Comics doesn’t shy away from cliché. The basic storyline revolves around the class play, part of the student culture festival, and Ayumu’s class decides to do a manzai version of Romeo and Juliet in which—wait for it—Ayumu is compelled to dress as Juliet. Still, the story works pretty well, mainly because of its dynamic cast of side characters: Takashi’s mother, who runs an okonomiyaki restaurant and fusses over Ayumu because he’s so cute; Kotomi, the super-intense class officer; and my favorite, the super-cute shoujo girl Meg, who constantly gets pushed aside because nobody is interested in her beauty and sweetness. To me, the most entertaining part of this book was watching Meg show up, all stars and sparkles, and immediately get pushed aside because everyone was interested in something (or someone) else.

It’s hard to write comedy and it must be hard to translate it as well. There are a few real clunkers in this book, as when Takashi’s mother comes out with expressions like “True dat!” No, please, no! Aside from that, though, the translator and adapter do a decent job of translating what must be tricky material—after all, manzai depends heavily on wordplay.

Imai’s art is sketchy but expressive. He relies on strong lines and distinct areas of black and white, with very little toning, and a lot of diagonals and zigzags give the art a feeling of energy. He also tilts the picture quite a bit, putting an individual character or a whole scene at a diagonal, a device that is best used in moderation. Each of the characters has a very distinct personality that is carried through in the art—this is not one of those manga where you have to study the niceties of hairstyle and costume to tell one person from another.

At 165 pages rather than the standard 200, this book feels a bit skimpy. The Aurora folks have done their usual good job of production, and the bright white paper shows off Imai’s art to good effect. Some translator’s notes would have greatly enhanced this volume, however, as the very concept on which it is based will be unfamiliar to many readers. A page or two about manzai, and maybe a bit of information on okonomiyaki, would have rounded out the book nicely (and added a bit of physical heft as well).

The Manzai Comics works better as a story than as comedy. Like Hitohira, another recent Aurora release, it presents a misfit who finds friendship through a drama group. I liked The Manzai Comics better, though, because the characters are more solid and the storyline has more interesting quirks. Where Mugi is wimpy and painfully shy, Ayumu is actively struggling with his affliction, and partially succeeding, with the help of a likeable group of friends. Overall, it’s an entertaining read, particularly for younger readers and those who enjoy the Japanese-culture aspects of manga.

Bonus links: Here’s an interesting article about the history and evolution of manzai and a video (in Japanese) so you can see what it looks like. Iwai’s homepage (also in Japanese) has a sample of the art and some character sketches.

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

Hitohira, vol. 1
By Idumi Kirihara
Rated T, 13+
Aurora, $10.95

“Some things just aren’t meant to be,” a character exclaims toward the end of Hitohira. “They say that if you work hard, you can do anything. Well, that’s complete bull!”

“Sssh!” responds another character. “You’re contradicting the message of this whole manga!”

Indeed, the story of Hitohira is the story of an apparently pointless struggle against incredible odds. Mugi, the main character, is so shy that she loses her voice whenever she is embarrassed or tense. So naturally, she joins the drama club. It’s either disastrous or brilliant! Since this is manga, we can expect some of each.

The story relies on that hoary manga cliché, the dueling high school clubs. In this case, Kumataka Art Academy has two theater clubs, but only one will survive. There’s the regular Theater Group, which is officially sanctioned, and the splinter Theater Research Group, which has only three members when the story opens: Takashi, Risaki, and their leader, Nono. The assertive Risaki dragoons her kid brother Kai into joining, but they must recruit one more member in order to exist at all. When they hear Mugi belt out her delight at passing the entrance exam… well, a plot is born. Nono asks Mugi to join the club, and Mugi has a panic attack and signs the paper just to get everyone to go away.

The stories and complications that follow will seem familiar to anyone who has lived through high school or read a shoujo manga. Fears are overcome, girls from rival groups become friends, former friends become bitter enemies, etc. There is a schoolgirl crush (on another girl) and a possibly debilitating but certainly not fatal disease. By the end of the volume, the characters have begun to take on definite personalities and the story has been set up. There is just one story that is a disappointing: Nono bets the club’s funding that the members will all score in the top fifty on their exams, but when the results come out, Risaki simply runs off with them and the story is never really resolved. Aside from that episode, Hitohira is a solid high school story that brings the reader into a circle of likeable, if somewhat bland, characters.

Unfortunately, the art is rather weak. Kirihara relies too much on barely modulated tones, which makes the drawings look flat and cartoony. The figures are shaky, particularly in the first part of the book; although the poses are ambitious and lively, the anatomy doesn’t always quite hang together. This does get better as the book goes on, however. What doesn’t improve is the difficulty of telling who is who and who is speaking; Kirihara’s character designs are too similar and her word balloons don’t always point at the speaker. There are also a few obvious bloopers, where a piece of the background is visible through a figure—appropriate in a ghost story, but not here.

In terms of production values, Hitohira is very basic. The print quality of the cover and the interior are pretty good, and the paper is decent, too—which is just as well, because rough newsprint would kill all that toning. There are no color pages or translator’s notes. The book does wind up with a series of 4-koma comic strips about the characters, which is a nice little coda but possibly not enough to justify the extra dollar. In fact, at under 200 pages, the book feels a bit thin.

Hitohira is a decent shoujo title that entertains without demanding too much of the reader. The story is well told, and Kirihara does a nice job of drawing the reader into high-school life. It may not be great literature, but it is a fine way to kill an hour or two.

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