Category: Manga

Ongoing Investigations: Case #062

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Read through Palette of 12 Secret Colors books 2-5. This series is just delightful, it never fails to make me smile. Things progress quite nicely between Cello and Dr. Guell through a series of mostly humorous incidents about town and involving the birds of the island, random students, and old friends. There are some particularly hilarious chapters focusing on Yoyo, Cello’s bird, and Olga, Dr. Guell’s companion, both of whom have it in for their masters budding romance. Also, Olga takes it upon herself to sort of boot camp Cello in studying to be a palette. From this I learned the saying “Four pass, five fail,” which is apparently a very common saying in Japanese schools by which it means four hours of sleep (spending the other 20 presumably studying) and you will pass your tests. I also found the friendship between Dr. Guell and Cello’s dad ceaselessly amusing. Besides these sort of trip ups on the road to love, I am pleased to say there haven’t been any love rivals. Looking forward to book 6, which is in the mail, to the surely funny but sweet conclusion.

Saki has been a fun little series with varying degrees of mahjong and yuri fanboy relationship fanservice. I think Narutaki summed it up quite well with, “Men are so easy.” I still stick by my guns and state that I liked Saki more for it’s mahjong than for it’s pandering but part of me wonders if almost everyone who watches Saki says that. And how many of them are lying? That being said the mahjong is usually pretty fun in Saki. It is not the crazy intense madness of Akagi but sucks you in. If Akagi is all about the razors edge life and death struggle of the professional gambler taken to a melodramatic extreme then Saki is about the friendships and passions of team mahjong taken to a melodramatic extreme. The fact that most of the characters are pretty well fleshed out for the amount of screen time they get helps this as well. Since you care about all the characters playing the games they become that more more intense. Unsurprisingly this seems to be popular among the otaku crowd in Japan so there are hints that a sequel is in the works provided Gonzo does not go out of business before that can happen. The ending is full of scenes from later in the original manga filled with hints that the mahjong only gets crazier. I will admit I always get the urge to eat tacos after watching Saki. And that is hardly a negative. Still it was a fun ride and I would easily watch a second season. Continue reading →

Nagi Sanzenin: In Praise of the Ota-Queen

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My favorite character in Hayate the Combat Butler is without a doubt, Nagi Sanzenin. Not that I don’t love Maria with all my heart. Maria is exactly my type of character: strong, smart, independent, and willing to speak her mind while still being supportive and kind. But for a wide variety of reasons I actually like Nagi more. I am more romantically attracted to Maria but Nagi speaks to me as both a changing character and someone to root for. But despite being an excellent and thoroughly enjoyable character there is a good deal of hate out there for Nagi and I just can’t understand why.

Nagi Sanzenin is a 13-year-old orphaned heiress to a multi-billion dollar estate. This has made her the target of frequent kidnapping plots and assassination attempts. Because she is so often the target of ne’er-do-wells she has grownup strangely and has become reclusive to the point of being a hikikomori also making her a major cynic. She has also grown into quite the otaku. In fact, she has several rooms in her mansion filled with nothing but doujinshi and several others devoted to every video game system. She is scholar and aficionado of anime and manga of all stripes and she even draws/writes her own bizarre “ultra high level” manga called End of the Century Legend: Magical Destroy. Nagi can be stubborn, spoiled, lazy, and quite naive about how the actual world works outside her own bubble. However, she is also strikingly sharp, fiercely loyal, and adamantly determined.

I will admit that one of the main reasons I like Nagi is I feel a very strong kinship to her. I see many of my strengths in Nagi as well as many of my weaknesses. We are both hardcore otaku. We are both types who want to be friendly outgoing people but find our inherent mistrust of others always keeping us back. We can both be very sullen and withdrawn;  sarcastic and cynical; and selfish and self-absorbed. And we both can be very lazy when it comes to things we are not a fans of, skipping chores and drudgery but throwing ourselves completely into the things we loves. Is that not the hallmark of the otaku? On the positive side we are both quite intelligent people. Both of us go above and beyond for the people we love. I see much of myself in Nagi and it makes me sympathize with her.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #061

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Without a doubt Taisho Baseball Girls has been my favorite anime of the summer of 2009 and it was a strong summer lineup. Baseball Girls does just about everything right. Each episode left me feeling great afterward. It is comedic where it needed to be comedic and dramatic where it needed to be dramatic. There are great strong female characters that grow together and as individuals. But Taisho Baseball Girls makes sure to have a decent amount of male charterers that get screen time and development, too. Other than possible a little yuri fanboy pandering there is nothing objectionable about the series. The only real fan-service is writing so good it’s sexy and plotting so tight it’s scandalous! The ending is suitably dramatic and fulfilling. If you have not started watching Taisho Baseball Girls I suggest you at least watch the first episode and see what your missing out on. It’s a long shot but I would like to see someone pick this up in the States. It’s everything good sports anime should be. I would also love to read the light novels and the manga but I realize when things are pretty much unlicensable in the current market.

I read the last two volumes of Fruits Basket and found it very satisfying. The 22nd volume wraps up the main story with the curse and then the 23rd moves each relationship along its merry way. While I think everyone knew where the story would end, the series keeps the heart from start to finish and readers will be decidedly engrossed. Though some may be disappointed in the fate of characters who they feel have slighted many others on the canvas. If ever you want a story to be definitive this one is like a yes-we-will-be-together-now-and-until-we-are-old-and-die together type. This is a series that I had been following for quite sometime so it was a very emotional ride. But here at the end I can say it is one of my favorite series to date.

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