Manga reviews

I'm generally more a fan of anime than of manga, but I bought a stack of manga at Anime North and figured I might as well post reviews of the books as I finish them.

Azumanga Daioh, omnibus volume Azumanga Daioh is a must-have classic - it's the gold standard of 4-koma high-school comedies, as imitated by, for instance, Lucky*Star. The manga is pretty much exactly the same content as the anime: cute overachiever Chiyo-chan, spacey Osaka, and all; all the same jokes and all the memorable moments. Having it in one volume is convenient. I celebrated my successful PhD defence by reading the whole thing in one sitting over an afternoon while drinking a lot of rye whisky; that may not be a good idea for everyone, but if taken a little at a time the book is suitable for almost anyone.

Boogiepop Doesn't Laugh, v1-2 Scary creatures stalk the night, students are disappearing and becoming insane, and the hard part is determining which are the monsters and which are the universe's immune response against the monsters. I'm a big fan of the Boogiepop franchise, but I think the manga is the weakest entry. The plot generally follows the light novels, with some of the same sequencing used in the movie. It's nice to get yet another new perspective on the characters - each medium seems to show slightly different versions of them. The manga would probably be almost incomprehensible to someone who didn't have some familiarity with the other versions, though; the WTF factor is part of Boogiepop's charm, but the lower bandwidth in the manga caused them to leave out some important details. The original light novels are a lot less taxing on the reader's brain. More nudity in the manga than I expected.

Comic Party "all star jam" v1-3 I'm not sure whether there may also be a "main" Comic Party manga series; the volumes I read seemed to be a sort of extra spinoff series consisting of brief episodes by lots of different doujin artists. They had subtitles of "Party time!", "Another round," and "Last call." Multi-artist anthologies are appropriate to the franchise, of course, because it's all about the trials and tribulations of a doujin circle as they prepare books and sell them at Comiket. I am told that Comic Party was originally an H-game, which I haven't seen; the anime version I've seen doesn't have much of that kind of content, but these manga volumes are a lot closer to those roots. The multiple-author thing is probably the best part, because in each volume we get to see a wide range of styles and different takes on the characters. It does feel like almost the next best thing to having gone to Comiket and gotten a bunch of random amateur stuff. These people were obviously having fun with it. On the downside, some of the segments really aren't all that great; and there's some plot duplication.

FLCL, v1-2 Coming of age in a boring little town that has suddenly become much less boring with the arrival of an alien criminal. FLCL is one of the few franchises where the anime came first and the story was later adapted to manga. It's a very loose adaptation, and the manga story is actually a lot more linear and understandable than the OAV story. Unfortunately, that meant leaving out a lot of the wacky stuff that made the anime great. At first I thought it was down to space limitations - six OAV episodes, three hours of video, into just two volumes of manga - but other franchises typically adapt four volumes of manga into 13 episodes of anime without having to insert anything, and AzuDai went from four volumes to 26 episodes with a strictly faithful adaptation, so I think there's more to it than just space limitations. They deliberately simplified the story, and left out a lot of the best parts. That's the downside. On the upside, the art is very good. Hajime Ueda deserves a lot of credit for single-handedly capturing FLCL's characteristic randomly changing art style that, in the anime, they achieved by getting different lead animators for different episodes.

Najica Blitz Tactics, v1-3 I cannot review this manga because of an unfortunate error by the print shop. It seems they accidentally bound manga covers onto the panty section of a lingerie catalogue.

Rosario+Vampire, v1 The hero flunks all his high-school entrance exams and is consigned to a school so bad the other students aren't even human; they're vampires and werewolves and other monsters pretending to be human while at school because that's part of their career preparation. He becomes involved with a girl vampire - she wants his blood, he wants what boys always want. I was pleasantly surprised at how good this actually is, considering the premise. The art is well-done, there are some clever and subtle details, and the romance plot digs deeper than I'd have expected into whether the main characters are or are not just using each other for their own needs.

Read Or Die, v1-4 Really disappointing. The three-episode OAV is great - I'd classify it as a must-see, even for people who aren't anime fans. Unfortunately, most of what makes the OAV great is missing in the manga. Volume 3 frankly sucks, and the others are only a little better. The OAV is Cute. The best parts of the OAV are scenes like Yomiko leaping from a plane without a parachute to grab a book, fending off a giant bug attack without looking away from the page she's reading, or going all shy and femmy with Nancy. The manga isn't cute; it has a definite nasty streak. There are plot points like an obsessive fan kidnapping a teenage author and planning to rape her because he thinks it'll improve her writing; and a special school where the students and teachers are divided into "class A" (who are sociopathic, and encouraged to be by the school administration) and "class B" (who are there to be victims of class A). I didn't need to see that stuff. Yomiko in the manga isn't the quiet but competent superheroine we know and love from the anime, and the lesbian romance angle is completely absent (as is Nancy). Instead, in the manga Yomiko's an emotional wreck over her partially-suppressed memories of having murdered her boyfriend Donnie - an event which may or may not have actually occurred. Even after reading the manga I can't tell, am not sure I care, and I don't think that was the intended effect. The flashbacks that were supposed to have explained the plot background were full of dialogue like "You mean..." "But..." "Am I..." "You..." and so on. I'm aware of the translation issues behind that, but they don't excuse it. Also, way too many fight scenes.

Read Or Dream, v1-3 Especially after my disappointment with Read Or Die (above), this is welcome. It has teh Cute that was missing from the other series, and isn't nearly so heavy on the fights and downer stuff. Maybe a little more heart-warming sisterhood than is really necessary. Most of the chapters are independent episodes dealing with the adventures of the Paper Sisters Detective Agency - since they don't get a lot of actual detective cases, those adventures tend to be along the lines of running out of money for food and rent because they spent it all on books again, and having to do silly things to get more money. All good clean fun. Note I haven't read the fourth volume yet.

Tokyo Mew Mew A La Mode, v1 I knew very little about this franchise, but I like catgirls, and I was trying to fill up a buy-N discount offer, so I took a chance on this volume. Turns out that both the characters and the intended readership are a lot younger than I'd expected, the story is all about a bunnygirl with the catgirls only making brief appearances, and I could have lived out a happy existence without ever seeing twelve-year-old Tasuku in drag. Wikipedia quotes AnimeOnDVD describing him (though to be fair, they were talking about the anime) as "never annoying." I disagree.