Category: Reviews

Aishiteruze Baby, Just the two of us.

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Yoko Maki was one of the first manga-ka I discovered in the wondrous world of scanlations. Yoko Maki’s work often have fun female leads with a little bite and cute boys abound with a focus on friendship and budding romance. She also draws in the somewhere between simple and complex with a perchance for the sweet and cute. As I read more of her pieces she quickly climbed my charts for a wonderful shojo manga artist that remained untranslated (and all of her pieces besides this one remain so).

But it wasn’t until later, when VIZ picked up her (what was at the time one of her most recent works) sweet series about a boy who finds himself with a new responsibility in the form a cute little girl, did I actually get around to finishing this story.

Unlike Narutaki, my interest in Aishiteruze Baby came from a more unusual direction.

The last manga review on Anime Jump before it went into hibernation was a review by Chad Clayton for Aishiteruze Baby. What interested me was the odd dichotomy in opinions. I had heard quite a few enthusiastically positive reviews of Aishiteruze Baby. They usually involved some combination of sweet, funny, and heartwarming. But while no one was claiming it was high art the reviews almost always said that is was refreshing and delightful shojo dramedy.

Chad’s review on the other hand was pure venom. It was the complete and total deconstruction of the plot of the first book that makes the series out to be an artificial calculating monstrosity that was more emotional torture than entertainment. So I went into reading the manga with a great deal of anticipation. I had had long been curious where my opinion would come in on the matter. While I was pretty sure I was not going to love it as much as it’s most die hard fans I was also pretty sure I could never hate it as much as its extremely harsh critics.

What I was wondering is what side would I lean towards in the end and how much would I lean towards it.

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Zeta Gundam, Punching people in the face = Saying hello.

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When it was announced that Yoshiyuki Tomino was coming to NYAF Narutaki and I jumped for joy, it was without a doubt a dream come true. While it was fantastic news it also meant we had to radically change our viewing schedule to accommodate watching one of Tomino’s most respected works, Zeta Gundam. While Zeta Gundam does not go without criticism it is one of the few parts of the Gundam franchise that gets universal approval by all but a few heretics. So this is one of the few Gundam series I went into with high expectations.

Even if I wanted to go into Zeta Gundam without expectations, it was virtually impossible. After I watched Original Gundam, all I heard was talktalktalk about Zeta and chastising for putting it off as I have. Well, that is all over! I have watched it kids, and though we aren’t doing a full run down of the show, we are sharing some choice thoughts from the series.

Seven years after the One Year War things are very different. While Zeon has been defeated, remnants still remain after all these years and plan to overthrow the Federation. In response the Federation created the Titans a task force given extraordinary powers to root out any Zeon or other anti-federation forces. But with extraordinary powers can come extraordinary abuses and the Titans have abused their power to the extreme. The Titans do what ever it takes to ruthlessly crush anyone who gets in their way including people who speak out against them and any bystanders. Zeta starts when Kamille Bidan helps the Anti-Earth Union Group steal three new Gundam Mark II prototypes. Soon Kamille is caught up with the AEUG’s three way battle against the corrupt Federation forces and the Axis Zeon forces.

Taking the Federation and making them the ones with the crazy plans this time around was a nice change. This also helped press the idea from Original Gundam that both factions have people in positions of power who abuse it. In conjunction with this it was great to see characters switch sides even if some of them happen very abruptly. One problem I found was that the opposing side didn’t really have a rival for Kamille considering Jerid is more of a joke and usually only survives by the skin of his teeth. There was tension there due to many deaths of many characters for each of them but I never wondered who was going to be victorious. So while many of the plots of the Titans put things in dire straights, the personal factor of suspense was sometimes lost. Though such was not the case in the final episodes when characters square off and it’s a coin toss to see how it was all going to lay out after the dust settled.

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Manga of the Month: September

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Team Medical Dragon by Akira Nagai and Taro Nogizaka

I have to give credit where credit is due, it was actually Narutaki who discovered Team Medical Dragon and an excellent discovery it was. Team Medical Dragon is basically what happens when you take Say Hello to Black Jack and make it an insanely over the top critique of the Japanese medical institution. Or if you want a western analogy take Gregory House and make him sexier and crazier. It seems like crazy talk, I know. I will let you try to imagine that and then come back.

Asada Ryuutarou was a genius surgeon until politics and apathy forced him out of his medical profession. Katou Akira gets him to come out of retirement as the first step in having him help perform her radical new heart surgery technique. So Asada returns to medicine in Japan but insists on practicing his way causing him to be too good to get rid of easily but too brazen to get along with anyone conservative. Ijyuuin Noboru is an intern that Asada recruits whose main purpose is to whine about how they have to follow the rules so Asada can kick logic to the curb and do the impossible. Oh, and he is also sort of there to learn to be a great doctor but mostly the first part. Miki Satohara is a hot nurse who is mostly there to be hot and bad arse (which is a good combination).

The first chapter will tell you right off the bat if you want to continue reading this manga or not. If you read it and think that guy is cool I must read more of his insane medical madness then continue on because it only goes up. If you think that the first chapter is too crazy then stop right then and there. Those mere 40 pages or so have sex, action, over the top but well researched medicine, character conflict, political drama and just plain fun. As it goes on the fun just continues, I mean Asada jump starts a patient’s heart in the street with a car battery. He gets audience commentary during surgery like he was playing Mahjong or participating in a fighting tournament. It is just good crazy with a healthy dose of valid Japanese medical criticism.

Kagen no Tsuki by Ai Yazawa

This short 3 book story may be a bit unusual if you know Ai Yazawa’s more popular works. This piece combines the supernatural, friendship, love, mystery, redemption, and tragedy into a striking tale. One day, a girl named Hotaru chases after a cat, which she has mistaken as her own missing one, into a beautiful but abandoned house. After she realizes her mistake, she is drawn by a haunting melody which she follows to its source. There she discovers the house isn’t so abandoned after all and meets Eve a pretty young woman who says she is waiting for her boyfriend to return. Hotaru and Eve become fastly acquainted but when Hotaru brings her friends to meet Eve it becomes apparent that only Hotaru sees the mysterious woman. The rest of the story centers around these 4 friends as they uncover the mysteries of just who Eve is, why Hotaru sees her, and what exactly caused it all to happen in the first place. Hotaru is spunky and determined which plays off her friends who are in turn earnest, intelligent, and carefree. Through the increasingly strange information they unearth their bonds of friendship strengthen and young love blossoms. The story has a very dark undertone that only gets more pronounced as it goes on to the point of being spine-tingling at moments. Ai Yazawa’s signature style is ever present here with some added spice and doesn’t fail to intrigue to the very last page.