manga review: Yowamushi Pedal

In an excerpt for a manga review for the Daily Yomiuri by Hiroshi Hirai, the review is for the title “Yowamushi Pedal”:

Otaku boy Sakamichi Onoda has just entered high school in the Chiba Prefecture suburbs of Tokyo, and he plans to join the anime club. In middle school, Onoda didn’t have any friends with whom he could talk about anime, games, Akihabara and other otaku things, and he is hoping he can make such friends in the anime club.

Although this club is mentioned in the school’s club handbook for freshmen, Onoda learns that it has been disbanded due to a decline in membership. A note on a bulletin board says the club will be reestablished if five members can be recruited, so he starts trying to find out if there are any other students who might join the club.

Since he was a little boy, Onoda has ridden his mamachari–a bulky bicycle with a step-through frame mainly used for short rides, such as for casual fun or to pick up groceries–to go to Akihabara every week to check out or buy otaku things. (The word mamachari comes from “mama,” for mom, and “chari,” a slang term meaning bicycle.)

Meanwhile, Shunsuke Imaizumi, another freshman at the high school, has been competing in bicycle road racing and joins the bicycle club.

While Imaizumi is training on a steep hill road behind the school, he sees a boy riding along on a mamachari, singing an anime song. For Imaizumi, pedaling his road racer, it is surprising to see a mamachari also going up such a steep road. The boy on the clunky bike is Onoda, and the sight sticks in Imaizumi’s mind.

A third key player in this manga is Shokichi Naruko, also a freshman and road racing cyclist, who has just moved from the Kansai region. One day, Naruko visits Akihabara, the famous otaku district in Tokyo, to get some Gundam plastic models for his younger brothers. There, he meets an interesting boy who catches his attention because of the boy’s cycling skill on mamachari.

Again, the boy is Onoda. He and Naruko later find out they have entered the same school.

manga review: Gantz

In a recent manga review for the Daily Yomiuri, Tom Baker recently reviewed the manga “Gantz”. Here is an excerpt from Baker’s review:

“What a jerk.” I’m not sure whether I said the words out loud, but this was my first thought upon being introduced to Kei, the main point-of-view character of the manga series Gantz.

He’s a smug, self-centered high school kid standing on a subway platform and looking sideways at the other commuters, thinking disparaging thoughts about them. When a little old lady asks for directions, he deliberately misleads her just to make her go away. Kei is no Boy Scout.

“I may look stupid,” he thinks, “but to tell the truth I know I’m better than everyone else in the world.”

Masaru, a childhood friend whom Kei hasn’t seen in years, is a better specimen of humanity. By coincidence, he happens to be standing on the same platform, and when a drunk falls onto the tracks, Masaru leaps to his aid.

In a scene that establishes a significant motif, dozens of other people on the platform remain uninvolved–wringing their hands or looking the other way, but doing nothing to help.

Kei thinks it’s cool that he may get to see someone die, but when Masaru spots him and calls him by name, Kei is momentarily shamed into climbing down to help.

Seconds later, they are both dead, smashed to bloody pieces by a train just after heaving the drunk out of harm’s way.

But the story has just begun, as the pair find themselves not in heaven or hell, but in an unfurnished Tokyo apartment with several other people who have just died. One is a teenage girl who committed suicide in a bathtub, and who materializes before Kei’s goggling eyes in the nude.

Manga Review: Swan

The following excerpt is from manga review of “Swan” on the Daily Yomiuri by Mieko Sasaki:

Kyoko Ariyoshi’s hit manga series Swan, about a teenager determined to become a great ballerina, proves shojo manga can stand alongside great works of literature. Though the story contains the melodrama typical of shojo manga, a much wider age range than its genre might suggest is enthralled with the manga. Granted, the audience is still comprised mostly of women, but the real themes of the manga are universal subjects about life.

Swan revolves around Masumi Hijiri, a 16-year-old Hokkaido girl who is miraculously accepted to the newly established Japanese National Ballet School after entering a special ballet contest. Told in the form of a graphic novel, it depicts the hardships Masumi must overcome after her acceptance, with an emphasis on the rapid succession of auditions and competitions in which she participates at home and abroad.

In Moscow, she studies the basics under Alexei Sergeiev, a star dancer of the Bolshoi Ballet, as she has flaws in her technique that could end her career. In London, she becomes aware of the importance of creativity and expressing inner strength through dancing. In New York, she is exposed to an entirely different approach to dance, with which dance is used to visualize the music without expressing any emotions.

In a sense, her struggle to improve as a dancer might be shared with artists in other genres. And that makes one grow as a human being as well. It is amazing to observe how tough and self-confident Masumi becomes.

Particularly stimulating are the interpretations of the dances and roles presented by the dancers. One excellent example is Masumi’s performance in Swan Lake, in which she gives the classic ballet a new break from tradition. As the Black Swan, Masumi doesn’t deceive the Prince by masquerading as the White Swan, but instead has him vow his eternal love for the Black Swan because of her own enchanting beauty. As the White Swan, Masumi implies that she foresees the Prince’s betrayal at the start and therefore does not blame him for his weakness–and even shows her compassion for him in the end.

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manga review: Kino Nani Tabeta?

In a recent manga review of “Kino Nani Tabeta?” for the Daily Yomiuri, Kumi Matsumaru wrote:

Kino Nani Tabeta? (What did you eat yesterday?) is an interesting piece of manga as it offers readers many flavors, even beyond pondering an answer to the title.

The manga, which has been carried on a monthly basis in the weekly comic magazine Morning, published by Kodansha Ltd., is about the daily life of a gay couple in their 40s, Shiro Kakei and Kenji Yabuki. What makes the manga distinctive is that, as suggested by the title, it elaborately depicts scenes of cooking by Kakei, a 43-year-old, good-looking, highly able lawyer who is dedicated to and finds consolation in making tasty dishes, to a degree that almost turns the comic into a recipe book.

Protagonist Kakei is a man who does not like to do things halfway, either at work or in his private life. He takes pleasure in finding foodstuffs at great prices and thinking of ways to effectively use them in a balanced diet for himself and Yabuki, the laid-back, sweet-tempered 41-year-old beautician with whom he shares an apartment. Kakei tries to keep their monthly food bill under 25,000 yen.

The lawyer wonders–even while enjoying minestrone and chicken salad for dinner–what he should do with the celery left over after making the dishes. (With a hint from a colleague whose parents once ran a restaurant, Kakei safely is able to finish the vegetable by cooking stir-fried beef and celery with oyster sauce the following evening.)

Mangaka Fumi Yoshinaga’s depiction of ingredients and cooking processes is elaborate enough to allow readers to fill their own dinner tables by reading just one episode. This reviewer often found her mouth watering as she read, especially in the episodes with dishes such as spinach lasagna or rice cooked with chestnuts.

Of course, the manga is about more than the enjoyment of cooking. Although a heterosexual reader can imagine there are things that gay people would find uniquely annoying or troublesome in their relations with their colleagues, friends and families, this reader felt strong resentment toward some characters, presumably heterosexuals, who automatically think another character must have a special interest in any man as soon as they find out that character is a gay male.

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manga review: Bat-Manga

In a recent manga review by Tom Baker for the Daily Yomiuri, Baker reviewed “Bat-Manga”.  Here is an excerpt from his review:

Chip Kidd has blown it. The widely admired book designer has done some great visual work and also some good writing in the past, but his recent high-profile project called Bat-Manga! is a flop.

The book is mainly an English-language anthology of Japanese Batman comics from 1966-67, and partly a color album of Batman toys and ephemera from the same era.

The original comics were drawn by mangaka Jiro Kuwata, hired to create them for Shonen King magazine as a tie-in for the Japan airing of the 1960s Batman TV series from the United States.

The stories are extremely simple and straightforward, as is Kuwata’s artwork. Frames often depict only the characters in action, with little or no background. To the extent that visual details are added, they are generally devoted to the villains, such as shape-shifting Clayface, whose multiple forms include a pterodactyl and a giant beetle.

But one of the most promising villains, a gorilla temporarily endowed with superhuman intelligence, goes about his dastardly work in a dome-shaped helmet, gloves and floor-length cape, hiding what could have been interesting visual features.

The dialogue is clunky–at least as rendered in English. Kidd writes in the book that “the translation, by Anne Ishii (and finessed by yours truly)” was done in a particular spirit. “We are certainly not trying to make fun of the Japanese grasp of English, but at the same time, here and there we wanted to preserve its undeniable charm.”

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BLACK CAT VOL. 1 (A J!-ENT Manga Review)

© Black Cat image courtesy of SHUEISHA Inc.

MANGA TITLE: Black Cat Vol. 01: The Man Called Black Cat

STORY AND ART BY: Kentaro Yabuki　(矢吹健太郎)

FIRST PUBLISHED IN JAPAN: By Shueisha on January 11th, 2001 (ISBN4-08-873065-8)

PUBLISHED IN USA BY: VIZ Media, LLC.

RATED: T FOR OLDER TEENS

PAGES: 208 PAGES

Train Heartnet, also known as “Black Cat,” was an infamous assassin for a secret organization called Chronos…until he abandoned that cold-blooded existence to live on his own terms as an easygoing bounty hunter. But is Train’s past as far behind him as he thinks?

Black Cat is an action-packed series that has beautiful art, action, humor, and both characters and a story that are appealing to both male and female readers.

In the year 2000, a young manga artist named Kentaro Yabuki’s series Black Cat was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump in Japan. The series quickly gained popularity and in the end would have 20 volumes. In 2006, the series began publication in the US through VIZ Media.

The main story revolves around Train Heartnet, also known as Black Cat who was a former assassin turned Sweeper (a bounty hunter) who works with his partner, Sven Vollfied. They go from town to town “sweeping” for a living, collecting the money for their bounties to make a living. Train may seem like a very care-free and pretty silly character, but in reality he is quite skilled as a Sweeper. The series does an amazing job combining action and humor, making the series not too serious but not too silly at the same time. As a series, Black Cat ends up having many prominent characters, but the story mostly revolves around these four characters, all who appear in the first volume:

Train Heartnet: The main character of the story. He is currently working as a Sweeper with his partner Sven Vollfield. Train is a very skilled gunman, excelling in speed, strength, and marksmanship. He wears a bell around his neck and has a XIII tattooed on his chest, which matches with the XIII engraved into his gun. As revealed in the first volume, he used to be an assassin who worked for the organization, “Chronos” and was known to bring “bad luck” to those who crossed him. Two years ago, he left the organization to become a “stray” and was thought to be dead. Since then, he teamed up with Sven and has been sweeping for a living. He wears a bell around his neck to remind him of something from his past…

Sven Vollfied: Train’s partner in the Sweeping business and a former agent. He is the slightly more serious and the cool one of the two and someone who prides himself in being a gentleman. Because he is a gentleman, when he meets Eve he finds that he can’t leave her alone when she is lost and makes an instant bond with her. He is also very skilled as a Sweeper and randomly dabbles in making gadgets.

Rinslet Walker: Rinslet Walker is a world-class thief that has worked on both sides of the fence, working for both the government and the mob. She uses her charms to use men and to get what she wants. She teams up with Train and Sven to infiltrate Torneo’s compound to get her next target.

Eve: A little girl who seems harmless at first sight, but is actually Torneo’s personal bodyguard. She is actually a bio-weapon of Torneo’s creation and can morph her body parts into various things such as knives, which is what she uses the most in volume one. Despite being made to be a weapon, inside she is a little girl who doesn’t seem completely content with being a personal weapon. When Train first infiltrates Torneo’s compound, she realizes that he smells like blood just like her. She leaves the compound looking for him but coincidentally runs into Sven instead, who treats her like a person instead of a weapon and shows her that there’s more to the world than she ever knew.

The first volume acts like an introduction to the four main characters, but already puts the reader into the action.

Chapter 1: This chapter is an introduction to both Train and Sven and their daily lives as Sweepers. They are in a small down doing a sweeping job and they meet a man named Harry, who ends up being a bounty as well. Harry comes along peacefully but just asks for one last request, to see his wife and daughter that he hadn’t seen for 7 years. Train accepts but it seems that Train’s past isn’t the only one coming back to haunt them…

Chapter 2: As Train and Sven are waiting to catch another one of their bounties, Train’s past catches up with him in the form of an old colleague. The assassin from Chronos gives Train two options: come back peacefully with him to rejoin Chronos, or die…

Chapter 3: Train and Sven head back to one of their old hideouts and meet up with an old friend, Annette who runs the Café Cait Sith. While they’re catching up, a mysterious young woman runs in asking for their help, as she is being chased by a group of thugs. Train first declines because he’s hungry but then realizes that the group is causing a scene outside so he quickly takes care of them. It turns out that the group was hired by the young woman to cause a scene and so they confront her. The woman reveals herself as the world class thief, Rinslet Walker, and tells them that she has a job offer for them.

Chapter 4: Rinslet explains the job to Train and Sven. She wants them to do their job as Sweepers and get a man named Torneo, a famous weapons dealer and smuggler while she does her job and steals secret information from his lab. The two accept the job and Rinslet slowly realizes that Train and Sven may not be easy to control after all.

Chapter 5: The three meet up once again for Rinslet so they can discuss their plan to get into Torneo’s compound. However, Train decides to go off on his own and get a look at the compound before they carry out their plan. While looking around on his own, he sees Torneo, a few of his henchmen, and a little blonde haired girl in the courtyard. Train soon realizes that the little girl isn’t as harmless as she looks…

Chapter 6: Torneo sends his men after Train and Eve decides to follow him as well. Train causes a distraction and Eve ends up leaving the compound, thinking that he actually left when in reality he actually didn’t leave and hid. Sven then coincidentally runs into her on the street and saves her from a thug.

Chapter 7: Eve realizes that she is lost and Sven tries to help her out. Eve sees the outside world for the first time and realizes that there is so much she doesn’t know. As Sven tries to help her find her way home, they run into Torneo and things take a turn for the worst…

Chapter 8: In the last chapter of the volume, Train, Sven, and Rinslet regroup to infiltrate Torneo’s compound to get their targets and save Eve.

The manga also includes pages where Yabuki explains the various terms used in the manga such as “Sweeper”, and a page that explains exactly how Eve’s power works. At the very end of the volume, there are a couple pages of silliness drawn by the assistant artists that work with Yabuki.

When I first originally read this series in Shonen Jump many years ago, the first thing that caught my attention was the beautiful art and interesting looking characters. The character designs are beautiful and I think the art appeals to both male and female readers. The backgrounds may be overlooked because of all of the action in the first volume but is full of detail as well. The details in the characters’ clothes and in their weapons, especially Train’s gun, is amazing too.

The story is exciting and action-packed. You learn bits and pieces of history of each of the characters and you want to learn more about them. Next to the beautiful art, the characters are a main attraction to this manga. Each of the main characters are interesting from Train being a former assassin to Eve being a little girl being forced to live as a bio-weapon. Train has a very lovable personality despite his past as an assassin. His silliness combined with his amazing skills as an assassin and sweeper makes him very intriguing. In the first volume, I think the next most intriguing character is Eve. You see a little girl who has lived her life following orders and has killed people, and you realize that she doesn’t know how to be a normal little girl at all because of her life with Torneo, but you also get the feeling that she’s not evil especially after her interaction with Sven when she gets lost.

Another great thing about this series is the fact that there are strong female characters. Rinslet and Eve even in the first volume show that they can definitely hold their own, which I think will appeal to female readers as well.

Black Cat is indeed an action-packed series, but it has a lot of fun and uses humor quite well. The balance of action and humor in this series is fantastic. Train himself, as I mentioned before, is a great balance of both. The characters of Black Cat are a strong part of what makes this series so interesting, but it doesn’t take away from the actual storyline.

A random little thing I always had fun with reading this series is looking for the random little white cat that appears in most if not all of the chapters throughout the series.

Black Cat has been one of my favorites for years now and is always one of the first series I recommend to manga readers looking for a new series. As I mentioned earlier, art is one of the first things that attract me to a series. But of course, art only goes so far. If the story of a manga is boring, it loses its appeal even if the art is amazing. Thankfully, Black Cat doesn’t disappoint at all and at the end of each volume, I think readers will find themselves wanting to know what happens next just like I did when I first read it. I find myself recommending the series to a diverse audience because this series has so much to offer to various readers.

Volume 1 acts just as an introduction to what readers can look forward to in the upcoming volumes so I hope that readers definitely pick up volume 2 and on. If they liked the first volume, they won’t be disappointed.

honey and clover Vol. 1 (a J!-ENT Manga Review)

“A fun manga about five college students attending art school.  They have parties, they have fun, they find love and everything in between.  A lot of humor, beautiful artwork and an all out fun, award-winning manga by Chica Umino.”

(C) Image courtesy of Chica Umino.  All Rights Reserved.

MANGA TITLE: honey and clover vol. 1

STORY AND ART BY: Chica Umino (羽海野 チカ)

FIRST PUBLISHED IN JAPAN: SHUEISHA, Inc.

PUBLISHED IN USA BY: VIZ Media, LLC/Shojo Beat Manga

RATED: T for Older Teen

Takemoto, a sophmore art student in Tokyo, thinks his greatest worries in life are finding ways to eat more meat and getting to class on time.  But with friends like his, life is never going to be that tame.

Beautiful, fun… Definitely a lot of positive things you can say about this Kodansha Award winning manga series by Chika Umino.

Having spawned an anime series, a live drama and film, it’s no surprise that many men and women have enjoyed “honey and clover” and now available from Viz Media via their Shojo Beat imprint is “honey and clover”.

Part of my interest in wanting to read the manga is that I enjoyed the film but I felt that there were much back story of the characters that I figured, if I really want to enjoy this series, start with the manga.  And so, after reading volume 1, I was surprised how different the manga series and the live film were.

In the manga series, the story revolves around three guys who live in an apartment complex and attend an art school.  They are:

Yuta Takemoto: One of the primary characters, Takemoto is the youngest of the guys and majoring in architectural design.  He seems to have a ho-hum life but is the normal guy of the group who has taken a liking to the gifted artist Hagumi.

Shinobu Morita: A carefree, does whatever he wants type of guy.  Very cool but very strange.  A gifted sculptor who has attended the University for years, has not graduated but tends to make money doing freelance work and constantly on the move.  He is drawn to Hagumi because she reminds him of a Koropokkur (a leprechaun or fairy) that he actually takes pictures of her in situations and puts it on the Internet and promoting her as one.

Takumi Mayama: Mayama is the quiet type.  A senpai for Takemoto and works at a design firm in which he likes the owner Rika.  Although he knows that he’ll never get that close to Rika, he somewhat does what he can for her.  He is also the guy that Morita turned to when he needed help but now Mayama has passed the duty on to Takemoto.

Characters also featured are:

Hagumi: A shy, gifted  sculptor who is being taken care of by her uncle, Professor Hanamoto.  She is not very talkative and very, very short.  She is almost like a little girl but she’s actually 18 and her cuteness makes everyone in a good mood.  She does have a hard time knowing that so many people expect a lot of things from her because of her talent but also knows that because of dedicating her life to that talent, she doesn’t live a normal life like the other girls in school.

Ayumi Yamada: Yamada aka “Iron Man” is another gifted student at the art school who is madly in love with Mayama.  She knows that he is not interested in her but she takes it hard and sometimes can’t tolerate his attitude but she does because she’s so in love with him.  She’s very blunt, very beautiful, very athletic but also can get very violent (ala her karate moves).

What I found quite charming about this storyline is that it’s life of a college student.  Trying to do your best at school, not knowing your own future after school, not having enough money and just the fun that people have amongst friends.

Chapter 1 is more like an introduction to the characters but you can’t help but laugh when you see Morita making Hagu pose as a Koropokkur.

Chapter 2 features a guy coming to the University to see if the Koropokkur is real and the guys learn that Morita is making money off his popular website but Hagu is not to thrilled about what Morita is doing that he does something nice for her.

Chapter 3 is how the guys can’t understand why all the girls give him so much attention.  Especially since he’s lazy, oversleeps and uses the public faucet to shower and you get an idea of how far out Morita really is.  In one point, Morita needs clothes, so he grabs the curtains from Professor Hanamoto’s class and wears the clothes like Moses from the “Ten Commandments” with no shame.

Chapter 4 features the guys really hungry and haven’t eaten any meat for a long while because they are broke.  They survive by the noodles brought home by one of the guys who live in the apartment but things change when Lohmeyer-san returns back on campus from the family farm and brings so much ham, sausage and vegetables for the guys that Takemoto learns why everyone loves him.

Chapter 5 features the guys and Hagu going out for some fun and light some fireworks and Takemoto gets to see a kind side of Hagu.

Chapter 6 features Mayama getting a phone call from someone and Takemoto suspects that he may have a girlfriend.  Meanwhile, Morita is contacted to do a high paying job and Takemoto tries to make himself look great in front of Hagu and tells her that he’ll create something for her, since he is an architectural major.

Chapter 7 introduces Ayumi Yamada and how she is in love with Mayama.  Meanwhile, Takemoto finds out who the girl that called Mayama is.  Her name is Rika, a colleague of Professor Hanamoto and Mayama’s boss and that Mayama was just doing a lot of work for her.  But Mayama does like her and Yamada takes it very hard.

Chapter 8 focuses on Hagu and how the pressures of being a talented sculptor and not having a normal life like the other young women on campus starts to make her depressed.  The pressures of life start to drain her emotionally.

Chapter 9 is about Christmas and Morita invites everyone to Hanamoto-san’s office for a Christmas party.

The final pages feature a bonus manga diary titled “Life of Umino” and a glossary of terms used in the manga such as words like what is “Koropokkur” or what is a “system 6″ operating system.

I really enjoyed this first volume.  Similar to young novels or manga (or even dramas) such as “Asunaro Hakusho”, “Wakamono no Subete” or “Hakusen Nagashi”, I really enjoy stories that cover young adult life.  From the parties to just hanging out with friends, meeting new people, career choices to finding love (or not finding love),  “honey and clover” is one of those series that is realistic in the sense that many people can related to these characters.  So, you really take an interest towards the characters and I really liked the overall development of the characters through the course of the nine chapters.

Umino’s artwork and her storytelling is enjoyable, beautiful and has a good balance of entertainment through humor and that occasional love triangle drama that pulls you in.

So, I was very surprised of the differences between the life film and the manga.  With the film, there’s so much that can’t be done in a film under two hours from a manga series that has many chapters of storyline and character development.  I can see why so many people were entertained by this manga series.  It’s very entertaining and artwork that is just beautiful look at.

This is one of those stories that appeals appeals to both men and women and overall, the first volume is quite entertaining thus far.  Definitely check it out!

manga review: AIR GEAR

In a recent manga review for the Daily Yomiuri, Tom Baker reviewed “AIR GEAR”. Here is an excerpt from that review:

Air Trek skates are marvels of engineering. Operating on a principle similar to that of spring-driven toy cars, these amazing roller skates gather their wearers’ kinetic energy in a way that allows them to accelerate quickly enough to actually take flight.

In the manga series Air Gear, Air Trek skaters can leap short buildings in a single bound, and they can skate right up the walls of tall ones. As a character remarks in Volume 1, “the city skyline is all concrete–it’s all road.” Thus, a limitation is turned into a means of liberation, getting the series off to a conceptually exciting start.

Unfortunately, the series doesn’t do much to explore the concept. The main characters are a gang of middle school students who are involved in an underground skate-fighting league. They stage one duel after another as the series goes on, with an especially long battle running from late in Volume 7 to the end of Volume 9. We rarely see the skates put to any other use.

The series is at its best when its focus is on relationships among the characters, but the rules and mythology of Air Trek dueling become more and more detailed with each volume, until they completely take over. It’s what the Harry Potter series would have been like if J.K. Rowling had written about nothing but Quidditch.

Manga-making can be a fluid process, as many artists respond to reader feedback as their serialized works progress. But Air Gear has a more improvised feel than most.

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manga review: Black Jack

In a recent review for Daily Yomiuri, Tom Baker reviews “Black Jack”.  Here is an excerpt from his review:

A woman lies at death’s door, and only a mysterious surgeon named Black Jack can save her. But his services don’t come cheap. He refuses to begin the operation unless her grown son, with whom she has a strained relationship, agrees to pay 30 million yen.

This is a typical scene from one of the 26 stories collected in the first two volumes of Vertical, Inc.’s new English-language edition of Tezuka Osamu’s manga Black Jack, which initially ran in Shukan Shonen Champion magazine from 1973 to 1983. The doctor has stunning skills and shocking fees.

At first the patient’s son in this particular story goes wide-eyed and rigid at the price. But when the doctor quietly asks, “Can you pay?” the man begins to shout. “I will! Whatever it takes! If it takes my whole life!”

Black Jack smiles grimly. “That’s what I wanted to hear.” And with that, the story ends.

There’s plenty of medical melodrama in these tales, which feature frostbite, cancer, disfigurement, radiation burns, earthquakes, traffic accidents and severed limbs galore. But that’s just what’s happening on the surface. Many of the Black Jack stories have deeper layers.

Though he does the seemingly impossible–even transplanting a brain in one story–Black Jack also suffers from devastating failures, and in at least one tale he loses a patient whom he cared about deeply. The reader can never be sure how a particular operation is going to turn out.

Although he is widely condemned as greedy, he sometimes displays a softer side, helping in tragic cases for free.

Some of the stories are both sentimental and ghoulish, such as one in which a young sushi chef loses his arms–while on his way to his elderly mother’s house, where he was going to make her sushi for the first time.

The stories are often ambiguous or open-ended. In the story of the 30 million yen, it is not entirely clear what Black Jack is up to. Has he simply helped the man to recognize the preciousness his mother’s life? Or does he really intend to make him a debt slave for the rest of his days?

How you answer that question depends on your sense of his character, which is only gradually revealed. Also doled out in small doses is the story of his origin, including how he wound up with two different skin colors on his face. Two volumes in, there are still a few things I would like to know. Luckily, Volume 3 is due out in January.

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manga review: Love Roma

In a recent review for the Daily Yomiuri, Christoph Mark reviews “Love Roma”:

Being too honest, or merely saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, can destroy a relationship that might otherwise be written in the stars. Anyone who has ever been in love with somebody has surely done so, and no doubt regrets it.

That is, unless you are a high school boy named Hoshino-kun or the love of his life, Negishi-san, the two protagonists of Love Roma, a story about blossoming love between two teenagers, one of whom always manages to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Yet somehow, the two stay together.

Hoshino-kun starts out as a very formal, very polite freshman who seems to be missing that switch most people have in their brains that tells them what not to say and when not to say it. In fact, Love Roma begins with such an instance, as Hoshino-kun confesses his love to Negishi-san, a girl who doesn’t even know his name, in front of her entire class. Embarrassing enough in private, it is downright terrifying for her when it’s done in front of her pubescent peers.

The two begin to date, with the stiff Hoshino-kun spouting off plenty of romantic prose, only to inappropriately cap it off by announcing to her classmates that he wants to touch “her boob,” or openly telling a reporter for the school newspaper that he wants to sleep with Negishi-san and that he has secret desires about her.

Time continues to go by, and their relationship continues to grow despite these constantly embarrassing interjections by him, and her usual response to them, which includes a slap or a punch to the face.

The five-volume series is surprisingly funny, often laugh-out-loud–though half the time is laughing with the comic; the other half laughing at it. The intended humor is funny on its own, but the stiff, almost comical translation left me wondering whether the low quality was intentional. In addition to bizarrely literal uses of perfectly translatable Japanese expressions (“sweet candy and whip” for “carrot and stick”), the use of the third person in reference to the person spoken to, though acceptable in Japanese, is annoying and possibly a form of mocking in English.

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