Category: Manga

Darkness is only driven out with light, not more darkness.

2 Comments

I have said in the past that we can be drawn to characters who are similar to ourselves or have the qualities we admire. In contrast we are often most annoyed by the characters who have the same flaws we hate about ourselves. On that note Saori Chiba is a fascinating character to me and a highly personal character. In the Wandering Son anime other than a few flashback she comes off as an outright little monster up until very recently. I find her behavior detestable and pointless as it only hurts herself and those around her. That said I can’t say that I could not easily see myself doing the things she is doing in the show. In fact I have done some of the nonsense that she does so it makes it all the more pertinent, powerful, and painful.

Continue reading →

Ongoing Investigations: Case #117

Leave a comment

While not revolutionary HeartCatch PreCure! was one of the best crafted magical girls series I have seen in quite a while. In many ways, Suite Precure the newest entry in the Pretty Cure franchise, has impossible shoes to fill. I have already seen some negative reactions to this series which I think is slightly unfair. With any series this long you are going to have your ups and downs and some parts are going to be so great that you could show them to anyone, some are going to be watchable only by super fans, but most will be in the middle.  Suite Precure is a simple show where evil bad guys want to capture magical notes to the ultimate song to plunge the world into despair. Hibiki and Kanade are two friends who are recruited by a talking cat to become magical girls and use the notes to make beautiful music together. To enjoy Suite Precure you must go in with reasonable expectations about it. If you are predisposed to magical girls shows I think that Suite Precure is enjoyable. The fights have the energy and fisticuffs the Precure series is famous for which is always very welcome. The main characters are simple but fun. On the other hand other than that it is all very formula and anyone who does not like or is burnt out on magical girl shows is not going to find much to be hooked on. I am curious to see if they will have the plot take any major turns. The series should run about 50 episodes so they have plenty of time to throw in a few curve balls if they want. If nothing else I am curious to see if they add any new girls as the show progresses. There is already a masked girl in the opening who looks like she could easily be a third Precure.

The first three episodes of Suite Precure are fairly typical magical girl fare done very straight-forward. Since I haven’t seen HeartCatch Precure, I don’t have any over-high expectations going into this new series. The world is all music-themed as should have been easy to guess, but it makes for some rather silly names throughout (i.e. the animosity between Major and Minor land). I was led to believe these Precures would be more like rivals and I imaged perhaps some face-offs and competition when trying to collect the notes that have been scattered across the land. But that is not the case, though I do find their strained friendship a little refreshing and not as generally displayed in these series but nevertheless important and true. I really enjoy that they have to transform together and attack in harmony. You can really see the push for understanding each other more so than normal through Suite Precure. At the moment Suite Precure is a good magical girl show, but not excelling in any direction yet. Though with a long run series that can sometimes come a bit later on.

Continue reading →

March’s Manga of the Month: Hayate the Combat Butler

3 Comments

Hayate the Combat Butler (ハヤテのごとく!) by Kenjiro Hata

Hayate the Combat Butler is hardly an obscure series but I wanted to bring it up for two reasons. The first is that as far as a I can tell Hayate, much like many other Shonen Sunday titles is hardly doing gangbusters in the English-speaking world. Viz has already slowed down the release schedule on the series. While I don’t think it will be canceled anytime soon I would like to see its schedule speed up rather than slowed down further.  The other reason is the is the lull between the end of the second season and the movie. Manga seems to generate less conversation when there is no anime running at the same time. So I have decided to hopefully get some conversation going before the movie comes out.

Hayate Ayasaki has the worst parents in the world. One day he comes home to discover they have saddled him with a 156,804,000 yen debt. Through odd circumstances he winds up in the employ of the insanely rich Nagi Sanzenin as her butler. Nagi has  fallen in love with him but sadly Hayate is blissfully unaware of this fact. At first Hayate had to protect Nagi from people who would try to steal her fortune. Recently Nagi renounced her inheritance and is running an apartment complex with the little money she has left. So Hayate tries must keep the apartment complex afloat while dealing with the strange residents within and their equally troublesome friends.

People often ask me why I like Hayate the Combat Butler so much. My answer is that it is refreshing. Whenever I read the newest chapter of the manga I just feel my worries fade away. Kenjiro Hata has a gentle writing style that is both soothing and invigorating. The series is consistently funny and mixes high level otaku humor with your more standard comedy elements. There is also a mixture of romance, action, and drama in the story but every chapter is sure to have some laughs to balance it all out. The other major appeal is that the characters are very endearing to me. While I wrote a whole article on why Nagi is such a great character I could write similar articles on the rest of the cast.  I think since our review of the anime I have realized that the otaku level for the series might be a little too high for some but I think any decently experienced anime fan will find something to enjoy in Hayate.