Category: Manga

Ongoing Investigations: Case #120

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Ah, Toradora!, chronicling the eternal struggle between Tiger and Dragon in the form of a spitfire of a tiny girl and a clean-freak boy with the face of a delinquent. Two misunderstood people come together to help each other with their respective love interests, but wind up getting what they never knew they needed: each other. Despite that last sentence, Toradora! is a comedic romance but there truly are very poignant moments. Of course, this is my impression from the anime, the manga maintains a similar feel, and I assume will follow a similar course. Right now it feels better than average, but nothing is particularly moving in this first installment, though I did enjoy Ryuuji catching Taiga on the stairs. Taiga has a bit of a light switch feel at the moment, she is misunderstood but she isn’t wholly unlike her reputation either so I hope that evens out. The cover of the Toradora! vol. 1 manga is striking for its style and design; the interior art is a bit more generic but still well executed. There is also a bonus chapter for Ryuuji’s mom, and in general she has more fan-service in here than the anime. My biggest complaint for Toradora! is how verbose the manga is, this isn’t the most complex of stories so it is unnecessary. In line with this, there is a lot of repetition from Ryuji’s narration creating a showing and telling of many scenes; can probably chalk this up from it being a light novel first.

Manga adaptations of popular series tend to be some of the most mediocre things you can read. So I went cautiously into the Toradora! manga hoping for the best but braced for the worst. My general feeling was it is nowhere as bad as it could have been. I have never read the original light novels but I did watch the anime so I found myself comparing it to that. Ryuji and Taiga’s antagonistic friendship and budding romance is captured fairly well. There is a greater use of minor incidental classmates in the manga so it feels like people exist outside of the 4 main characters. On the down side we see much less of Minori and Yusaku so it is harder to see why our main characters should be crazy in love with them. Minori and Yusaku were not super prominent in the anime so when you cut their time they even become more plot elements and less characters. The character designs are very different from the manga. The girls are clearly done by a different style but you know who is who if you watched the anime. The guys on the other hand look like completely different characters that just happen to have the same name. The biggest complaint is that while there are clear differences so far if you have watched the anime you have read the manga. It is the classic dilemma of what happens when you do an extremely close adaption. If you are a mostly manga fan who is curious why anime fans keep talking about Toradora! this is a good place to see a very well executed shonen romance. Toradora! does not do much new with the genre but it does it in a well executed and lively fashion. For everyone else it is matter of how much you want to reread what you have already seen in a new art style.

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April’s Manga of the Month: Kekkaishi

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Kekkaishi (結界師) by Yellow Tanabe

With the recent news that Kekkaishi will be wrapping up its story in Shonen Sunday this month, I just had to talk about the series.

Even since I found the series, Kekkaishi has remained a favorite, and in my opinion one of the best, of recent shonen fighting titles. The story revolves around the sacred land of Karasumori which attracts a lot of attention from monsters seeking power and the two families who guard it. Yoshimori is a meld between your typical shonen protagonist who posses a lot of raw power but can’t fully control it yet, and some personal quirks like using his defensive technique aggressively, being a cake-baking otaku, and possessing a compassionate soul. His partner and rival Tokine is a strong female who starts the series leagues ahead of Yoshi and continues to grow along side him. Their techniques are similar but their strengths are different causing the best battles to occur when they work together using ingenuity and teamwork rather than a power up. As the series goes on family secrets, rival organizations, death, friendship and betrayal, and deadly power all reveal that Karasumori and everyone surrounding it is a lot more complicated than initially suspected.

Kekkaishi balances a lot of wonderful elements in its story beyond the assumed action and drama. Interwoven throughout is an amazingly organic romance, I hope I don’t have to emphasize how rare this is in the genre, that underlies many scenes while never overtaking them and more importantly never appearing for plot convenience. Family also has a grand role to play in Kekkaishi creating wonderful tension. And perhaps the most surprising part of all is the cast remains fairly small never straying far from our leads. Kekkaishi is a fresh yet familiar series that hits the right notes with precision.

The Day After

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As I write this Japan is still experiencing the effect of aftershocks and bracing themselves for possible additional damage due top more tsunamis and their crisis with the nuclear reactor. But just like the fact the sun also rises the Japanese people will recover and things will go back to normal. That which is lost will be mourned, things that are broken will be fixed, and the maybe even some light will be shed on existing problems so they can be improved upon. It might seem trivial faced with such current events but I still think questions about the entertainment industry are relevant. My question is what sort and long-term impact will this tragedy have on the Japanese entertainment industry that we are fans of.

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