Category: Reviews

Sumomomo Momomo vol. 1 manga review

The usual “Fiancee Out Of Nowhere” story with bad art, bad comedy, and bad angst right from the very start. I like those stories when the comedy is funny (see: Ranma 1/2) or if it’s very romantic and the characters are nice (see Ai Yori Aoshi), but Sumomomo Momomo is just bad. The girl Momoko has nothing going for her except she’s good at martial arts and she’s supposed to be pure, innocent and ignorant. Oh, and she looks 12 years old but she wants to have a baby with the main character, riiight.

The main character XYZ…I can’t even remember his name and I just finished reading it…ah, Koushi, starts out snarky and rude, wanting nothing to do with his martial arts family and background. But thanks to Momoko reminding him of his childhood through the usual tears and shouting “What happened to you, you used to be so blah-blah-blah”, he finally sees the error of his ways and goes back to being a strong martial artist again…

Or that’s how it was supposed to be, but then he remembers…he got the crap kicked out of him several years ago in front of Momoko and was so traumatized he gave up martial arts. His M.O. after that is figuring out how to get Momoko to do his dirty work for him while he tries to avoid getting married and having babies with her. Oh, and how to keep her out of trouble after she naturally enrolls at his high school. Oh, joy.

Psst, did I mention that several assassins are after Koushi’s life? Just because? All of a sudden? Yeah, it’s that kind of manga.

From the sound of all that, I expected to get a funny, crazy, interesting series out of Sumomomo, but for some reason the whole thing just feels dull, dry, empty and gloomy. I’m not quite sure what to pin it on, but I think it has a lot to do with the visuals not being able to keep up with the comic mood of the series. The panel layout in the action scenes is rather hard to follow, and all Haira Ichiden Musou-Ryuu and Shindara Rettsu Ryuu etc etc terms flying about get a little hard to follow after a while. Character design is odd, the artist goes a little too heavy on the black ink and dark screentone so every page looks really dark…basically this manga doesn’t have what it takes to hold my attention after volume 1.

Nothing to see here, moving right along.

Ibara Hime no Oyatsu manga review

In Japanese Ibara Hime no Oyatsu is いばら姫のおやつ, with a translation provided as “The Thorn Princess has Afternoon Refreshments”. A…seinen-ish, shoujo-ish manga by Ishida Atsuko.

I only finished this last week, but I’ve already forgotten the main characters’ names, so you’ll have to forgive me. I’ve read a number of stories where the extras or side stories were better than that main story, but this is the first one where the difference has been so overwhelming.

The first three chapters of this volume, about the titular thorn princess, are okay, but rather bland. The main character Yukihiro lives next to these two sisters, and one of these is really short and immature (i.e. loli), and in the same class as him in high school. In spite of that she’s already gotten herself a reputation for sleeping with any guy who will ask her out. Meanwhile she seems to have some affection for the main character, who has had a longstanding crush on her older sister.

And there’s some ups, and there’s some downs, and the whole thing ends with the loli leaving for Tokyo to become a model, while the older sister gets pregnant by her married boyfriend. It’s very tedious stuff and I was glad to be through with it.

The really good stuff is the 6 or so short stories that follow all that angst. They’re still angsty, but they deal with interesting topics from modern society. One of them deals with a boy’s feelings of abandonment and betrayal when his dad divorces his mother and remarries. Another deals with a young girl (also immature and loli) who withdraws from society after getting mixed up in a homeless man’s suicide. It’s about how she learns to trust again and put it behind her with the help of her aunt who is dealing with all sorts of conflicts of her own.

The last story (the author’s moralist tract), is the first manga short story I’ve ever read that deals with abortion, specifically abortion by a middle school student. It was very interesting reading. The Japanese have had an image for a while about being cavalier about abortion and using it as birth control. This manga speaks against that (“You’re not a monkey, use some protection!”) while also talking about having some self-respect, and not looking for validation or meaning from relationships but rather finding it within yourself. Words for any middle-schooler to live by.

I hadn’t read anything by Ishida Atsuko prior to this, but I liked her sketchy, clean art and simple, impactful stories, so I’ll be picking up more works by her in the future.

Otomen volume 1 manga review

Asuka Masamune is a man with feminine interests: shoujo manga, sewing, cooking, etc. But having been brought up to suppress this instinct and be manly, can he ever show his true self to his crush, Ryo Miyakozuka?

Uhh, of course he can. Some mangaka might have tried to drag this situation out and have Asuka hide his secret for as long as possible for the lulz, but within a few pages this guy is sewing for Ryo and then cooking increasingly elaborate boxed lunches for her. By the end of Otomen chapter 1 everyone in the school knows about this “secret” and both he and Ryo have decided they like each other.

So obviously, this manga should have ended after chapter one. It would have made a great one shot, with everything was out in the open and nicely wrapped-up by the end of it. After chapter one the rest of the volume was all manufactured drama and forced comedy, none of which worked for me. Also it’s really annoying having that Juta Tachibana “friend” of theirs following them everywhere, getting in their way at every step. They’d be fully dating already if he would just butt out. Three’s a crowd, dude!

Anyway, I like your art but knowing when to stop is part of being a good mangaka, Aya Kanno. Stop milking this cow and get a new one. 4/10

Oh, and on a personal note the typesetting was really annoying. Not only did they use my most hated font, Anime Ace, but they also switched fonts between AA and Wild Words from bubble to bubble and page to page for seemingly no reason at all. Very poor showing, Viz.

5 Ai no Rule manga review – Ichijo Yukari

If I’d known 5 Ai no Rule was incomplete when I started it, I would have thought twice about reading it at all. I mean it was good and all, but it got cancelled right when things were getting good, and that’s always annoying. Luckily the author added an afterword that explains how things would have ended, but it’s still not the same.

Anyway, the story is about a girl named Maho Asano, dirt poor and working for a small publishing office. One day her sister Rie, who wants to be a model, runs into a guy named Takami in a bar who gives her a lot of money. When Maho goes to return the money she discovers he’s a top guy in a PR company, and he offers her a job as a copywriter in the new startup he wants to found.

So far, so good, but then things get complicated. It turns out Takami is an expert user and manipulator who is doing everything out of his own shady motives. To that end, when he discovers that Rie is in love with him, he pits her against his fiancee Yuri, with tragic consequences for both girls. Having discovered Takami’s true nature, Maho decides to stick around (you think she’d just quit her job and go back to the countryside but nooo) and “become a woman worthy of him”, I quote. The story ends with Takami on the verge of success, but having lost something very precious to him at the same time.

As expected of something written in 1976 the art is ancient, but the fashions still look good. Maho is a bland spectator of all the colorful drama going on and the reader never gets into her head, but the crazy happenings in the story more than make up for that. It started a bit slow but it really got going after a while, so it’s just too bad that Ichijo Yukari never got round to finishing it.

If you like afternoon soap operas like The Young and the Restless, this is pretty much the same thing without the sex. Enjoy.

Under the Rose vol 1 manga review

Under the Rose is a rather uninspiring manga by Funato Akira. It’s the story of a young boy in Victorian England named Lloyd King whose mother Grace dies suddenly, leaving him and his young brother Lawrence at the mercy of their angry grandfather. Luckily the boys’ father, a wealthy count, decides to take them in. However Lloyd is filled with bitterness, believing that their “father” had something to with their mother’s death. Lloyd’s lonely battle for the truth begins!

Well, that’s kind of how they describe the manga. It sounded really interesting, and I liked the cover so I gave it a shot. And the result was…decidedly average. The art wasn’t bad, wasn’t good either. The storytelling was okay, more slice-of-life than average murder mystery. The author does a decent job of setting up the atmosphere and easing the readers into it, but it isn’t nearly as engrossing as, say, Kaori Mori’s Emma, mostly due to the less accomplished art.

The real failing of this manga, though, was the characters. They’re very inconsistent, sometimes likeable, sometimes not, so it’s hard to tell whether the author wants you to like or dislike them. Before long you start detesting them completely. Lloyd is the main culprit here. In the beginning you side with him, then he acts like a complete monster so you’re like uhhh…then he gets a little better (and his brothers get worse) so you’re like “he’s not all bad”, then he dissolves into a childish, ignorant, indecisive, weak, easily-swayed kid and in the end you throw your hands up in despair. Several other characters make similar swings from good to bad to good to bad again, all over the span of one volume, so before you know it you don’t care about anybody.

In any case the mystery about Lloyd and Lawrence’s mother’s death is solved in volume 1, and I don’t like the other characters much, so there’s no real point in reading any more of this series, is there? If I do so I may write other reviews, otherwise forget it. Score? 4/10.