Category: Manga

Ongoing Investigations: Case #039

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I just got the third hard cover special edition of Black Jack. It’s Black Jack therefore it is awesome. As with any episodic series you will have you ups and downs. Some stories are amazingly powerful or stunningly cool. Other are quickly forgettable or even downright uninteresting. I have yet to see a bad review of a Black Jack book and you won’t see one here. The real question is whether or not the limited edition is worth the additional eight dollars. They are but there is no reason to pay through the nose when they become rare. The hard covers are well designed and you get a little hard to find bonus story in each book. But the extras stories aren’t that amazing if you have to pay a lot more to get them. Black Jack as a whole is worth what ever you have to pay to get it but there is no need to get crazy. And unless you can’t get over Osamu Tezuka’s old school art style, there is no reason not to go out and read Black Jack.

I am slowly going through all that CMX has to offer by manga-ka Nari Kusakawa. I read the first book of Palette of 12 Secret Colors. It is about an island that houses the most beautiful birds in the world. Along with them they train wizards (called palettes) who use the birds’ bright colors to change ordinary things, like cloth and rocks, into precious treasures that are sought the world over. We follow Cello, a wizard in training, who is anything but ordinary. Her magic doesn’t work like anyone else so she has a hard time learning the basics (she is so bad she has been held back a year in school) but her unique abilities get her into some interesting situations. Cello is a great lead, she is positive, funny, and easy to love. Dr. Guell, who is obviously the love interest, is blunt but funny and caring, so much so you can’t help but root for these two to come together. It continues to show her ability to weave fantasy, romance, and a little comedy into a charming combination. This series is after Recipe for Gertrude and you can really see her art style becoming more refined. I am looking forward to getting the rest in the series.

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Ongoing Investigations: Case #038

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Caught up with the English release of the D.Gray Man by reading books nine through twelve. We get fully into the new arc which includes a big transformation for Allen. This also starts really dealing with who the Noah and the Arc are. The intensity seems to have kicked up which didn’t seem possible! There are some major battles with some major deaths. The art has fully evolved and it’s striking and well done. It feels like I have an affinity for shonen fighting that doesn’t get as much attention and this is one of those titles that gets overshadowed.

Since Narutaki and I are trying out a three month subscription to Crunchyroll, I decided to take a test drive a few series. The first series was Gintama. Gintama always interested me just for its odd premise. A comedy series set in a Edo era Japan that has been visited by aliens and forcefully made to open up to these invaders echoing actual Japanese history. Being set in this period can only mean one thing: Shinsengumi. The Shinsengumi are not main characters but they seem rather important to the overall plot. Gintoki Sakata, Shinpachi Shimura, and Kagura take odd jobs but otherwise live in poverty. The first two episode drop you right into the action with the main cast already acquainted which threw me off. However, It works well for an episodic comedy like Gintama. It is a quirky and amusing but never really made me laugh out loud. I like Kagura because she is so delightfully horrible but rarely malicious. Unfortunately, she happens to be one of those “lets make fun of the Chinese” characters the Japanese love. Can’t say I want to rush out and watch more but I would watch it at say an anime club or with a friend.

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Manga of the Month: April

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X-Day by Setona Mizushiro

This is a very short title that came out a number of years back. It easily caught some attention with the surface premise. Four people, three students and one teacher, come together through various  tragedies and decide to blow up their high school. But rather than being a look at an anarchistic plot, it is a story about the meaning of friendship. Rika was high on the social ladder till her injury and her break-up with her boyfriend. She no longer views her world the same way. As she tries to adapt she stumbles across a chat room where she meets three people who change her indefinitely. These people bond together and no one is more surprised about it than themselves. As the story goes on, and as the characters better learn about themselves, the plot against the school takes a backseat to them helping each other. This is a good short story, just two books, which is able to develop its characters in the limited amount of time.

Addicted to Curry by Kazuki Funatsu

Addicted to Curry is definitely a senien manga. Koenji Makito is clearly a senien hero because he basically starts off as a godlike curry chef. He might perfect his craft slightly or learn a minor lesson but he’s already an expert. You also have more of the healing manga setups than tournament manga ones. This means someone will have a problem and Makito will show them the answer with one of his dishes. That is not to say that there aren’t cooking battles. They are just more one on one battles over some point of ideology than tournaments. Being senien manga also means more fan-service and racy content but it’s nothing prevalent.

We start with Sonezaki Yui whose father, the owner of a curry restaurant, has disappeared after saying he was going to sharpen his skills. Despite her best efforts she will soon have to sell the restaurant due to mounting debt. On the way home she finds Koenji Makito starving on the street and accidentally throws food at him when trying to feed him. When he tracks her down it turns out he is a friend of her father and was hoping to work at his restaurant. He soon agrees to be the curry chef until her father comes back. It is going to take a lot of work for Yiu and Makito to get back into the black. There also seems to be an evil corporation that wants to buy the curry house and will do anything to buy the land.

Most chapters have a full recipe for whatever was made in it so you can make your own dishes. It is always nice to see a cooking manga that teaches you while entertaining you at the same time.