Category: Supernatural

Manga of the Month: Yamada and the Seven Witches

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Yamada and the Seven Witches (山田君と7人の魔女)
by Miki Yoshikawa

As I don’t read Japanese it is extremely hard for me to be any sort of taste maker when in comes to manga. By the time I usually know about a series it is fairly in the thick of things in its run. The rare exception comes when I know to check out a series because I have enjoyed something by the author in the past so I know to keep an eye on their current work. In a previous Manga of the Month I talked about Miki Yoshikawa’s Yankee-kun to Megane-chan. It is a great comedy series but it can be hard to recommend because you are asking for someone to commit to reading 23 books. But with a new series you can read a handful of chapters and be up to date. Since Yamada and the Seven Witches started in February it is a great time to start a Miki Yoshikawa manga.

Ryu Yamada and Urara Shiraishi are as different as night and day. Ryu is a rough a tumble delinquent while Urara is the class brainiac. One day the accidentally kiss as they fall down the stairs and discover they can exchange bodies by kissing. When the student council vice president get involved with their little secret they learn that they can exchange bodies with other people as well. So the three of them restart the school’s supernatural club to figure out why this is happening. But how long can the three of them keep this under wraps?

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Manga of the Month: Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro

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Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro (棺担ぎのクロ。～懐中旅話～) by Satoko Kiyuduki

Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro had the pleasure of showing me there are 4-koma manga that I like! But then again, Kiyuduki doesn’t use the format in a traditional sense. Her low-key humor and simple but precise art makes this series a real charmer.

Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro follows the story of a haphazard group of travelers headed up by the mysterious, coffin-carrying, black clad, girl going by the name Kuro. She along with a bunch of bats (one snarky one in particular, Sen) pick up two little cat girls along the way. Where they are headed remains a rather amorphous concept though they do seem to be looking for someone. Along the way we learn bits of pieces of character’s past. Each traveler plays off the others; Kuro being none too talkative while the kids are little balls of energy and mischief. The series has a melancholy undertone, not unlike Kino’s Journey but also not that heavy, though it is balanced out by the adorable art style and banter.

The way Kiyuduki plays with the format is of particular interest from using one giant panel to tell a story to expanding an adventure to two or three times that of usual 4-koma. At times she is using the format merely as a structure but still these adventures feel like quick bites. The printing is also nice with many color pages to enjoy.

Manga of the Month: D.Gray Man

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D.Gray Man (ディー・グレイマン) by Katsura Hoshino

Every time I get a new volume of D.Gray Man, I think to myself why don’t more people read this? I realize it is not an unpopular series but it also doesn’t seem to have really stuck around. This may be partially due to it moving from the prominent Weekly Shonen Jump magazine to the monthly Jump Square. There is a lot of shonen fighting manga out there, so it is easy to miss one. And besides that, picking and choosing what is worth settling in the long haul with can be difficult.

D.Gray Man combines supernatural powers and occult lore with the shonen fighting formula. The gothic and macabre designs are well utilized giving life to everything from the obvious horror to less imaginable whimsy and humor. The art overall is a real treat in the series; the details in the European setting to costume and architecture are wonderful. Allen Walker possess a power called Innocence that can be harnessed to defeat demons and the like. The organization known at the Black Order recruits people with these gifts in an ongoing war against the Millennium Earl and his dark minions. Even before Allen joins their ranks, it is clear that there are many secrets to each side and to Allen himself. Allen is a positive lead who has a lot of charm about him; he is very honest and possesses a lot of heart. He isn’t the type of character who you forget about to concentrate on the support personalities. But he does have an electric group of people around him. The series utilizes everyone and the setting well, even pushing the grotesque monsters and violence pretty far at times. And it has a lot of mystery in the undercurrent which slowly reveals itself.

At just 22 volumes so far, D.Gray Man isn’t too much of a commitment compared to its brethren. (And VIZ is almost in line with the Japanese, releasing the 21st volume in November.) Within its pages is a solid journey that doesn’t drag and reveals its twists and turns in good time. Add in a good cast and artwork that begs to be looked at in detail and I find I can’t resist D.Gray Man.