Category: Manga of the Month

Manga of the Month: Yamada and the Seven Witches

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Yamada and the Seven Witches (山田君と7人の魔女)
by Miki Yoshikawa

As I don’t read Japanese it is extremely hard for me to be any sort of taste maker when in comes to manga. By the time I usually know about a series it is fairly in the thick of things in its run. The rare exception comes when I know to check out a series because I have enjoyed something by the author in the past so I know to keep an eye on their current work. In a previous Manga of the Month I talked about Miki Yoshikawa’s Yankee-kun to Megane-chan. It is a great comedy series but it can be hard to recommend because you are asking for someone to commit to reading 23 books. But with a new series you can read a handful of chapters and be up to date. Since Yamada and the Seven Witches started in February it is a great time to start a Miki Yoshikawa manga.

Ryu Yamada and Urara Shiraishi are as different as night and day. Ryu is a rough a tumble delinquent while Urara is the class brainiac. One day the accidentally kiss as they fall down the stairs and discover they can exchange bodies by kissing. When the student council vice president get involved with their little secret they learn that they can exchange bodies with other people as well. So the three of them restart the school’s supernatural club to figure out why this is happening. But how long can the three of them keep this under wraps?

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Manga of the Month: Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro

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Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro (棺担ぎのクロ。～懐中旅話～) by Satoko Kiyuduki

Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro had the pleasure of showing me there are 4-koma manga that I like! But then again, Kiyuduki doesn’t use the format in a traditional sense. Her low-key humor and simple but precise art makes this series a real charmer.

Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro follows the story of a haphazard group of travelers headed up by the mysterious, coffin-carrying, black clad, girl going by the name Kuro. She along with a bunch of bats (one snarky one in particular, Sen) pick up two little cat girls along the way. Where they are headed remains a rather amorphous concept though they do seem to be looking for someone. Along the way we learn bits of pieces of character’s past. Each traveler plays off the others; Kuro being none too talkative while the kids are little balls of energy and mischief. The series has a melancholy undertone, not unlike Kino’s Journey but also not that heavy, though it is balanced out by the adorable art style and banter.

The way Kiyuduki plays with the format is of particular interest from using one giant panel to tell a story to expanding an adventure to two or three times that of usual 4-koma. At times she is using the format merely as a structure but still these adventures feel like quick bites. The printing is also nice with many color pages to enjoy.

Manga of the Month: GTO: The Early Years

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GTO: The Early Years aka Shonan Junai Gumi (湘南純愛組!) by Tohru Fujisawa

Since I already did GTO: Shonan 14 Days as a Manga of the Month it is only natural that I recommend GTO: The Early Years as the companion piece. Shonan Junai Gumi is where Eikichi Onizuka’s adventure started. I always had a vague feeling there was a longer story that occurred before GTO when I first read the series. Characters make quick reference to old stories and grudges. Characters would pop on to the scene with minimal introduction. Ryuji Danma and Onziuka seemed to have had a tremendous amount of back story. But I did not think much about it and just assumed Tohru Fujisawa liked it hint at a greater story than he was telling. But when I learned that GTO was a sequel to an equally long manga called Shonan Junai Gumi it all made sense. So I was thrilled when Tokopop started releasing the original series and crushed when they closed up shop leaving the manga unfinished. Thankfully Vertical has licensed recused this series and is putting their own signature polish of the title.

Back before he was the greatest teacher in Japan Eikichi Onizuka was just a teenager with his friend Ryuji Danma and they both had a dream. To finally lose their virginity. It just so happens these two goofy teens are also the toughest delinquents in all of Japan. So the Oni-Baku has to fight all stripes of insane thugs, miscreants, yankees, criminals, and psychopaths to keep their reputation while trying to find love (or at least satisfy their lust) with some lucky ladies. They build quite a gang for themselves in the process.

It is great to get the end of the beginning of the Onizuka legacy when it seemed like this part of the story would not see a full licensed release in the US. While this part of the story is a bit cruder than later parts of Onizuka’s story it also has its own energy that is not present in the later iterations as well. The art and story telling is a bit less refined but I feel the humor is a bit ruder, the action a bit wilder, and the stakes a bit higher. As Tohru Fujisawa goes on in his career his work gets much more refined but he loses a bit of spontaneity in the process. This is the raw and uncut Onizuka. I would like to see this do well because then Vertical can go back and redo the old Tokoyopop versions of GTO: The Early Years and maybe even GTO itself. If you want more Onizuka there is the new Ino-Head Gargoyle that continues the GTO legacy with Saejima Toshiyuki who has been with the GTO franchise since Shonan Junai Gumi as well.