Kobato is the latest comic from Japanese creator collective CLAMP, and based on many of their past works that I’ve enjoyed (Suki, xxxHolic, Wish, Cardcaptor Sakura, Legal Drug) I figured it was worth a shot. Yen Press chose to release the first two volumes of the series simultaneously in English, and now that I’ve read them I have to say this was a smart move on their part. Had I only read the first volume on its own, I’m not entirely sure I’d have gone back to the store for a second helping.

Most of the first volume of Kobato shows our title character trying to learn how to act like a normal person through a number of tests on everyday life. She’s clearly not normal, having to learn about going to the park, celebrating holidays, and dealing with warm weather. The fact that the person guiding her through these challenges is a blue talking dog that looks like a stuffed animal to everyone else only adds to the strangeness. The problem is, most of these chapters were a bit of a turnoff. It’s easy to fear that the entire series will be nothing but these vignettes, where Kobato misunderstands her task and wacky faux hilarity ensues. Just when I was feeling relieved that I was near the end of the book, though, it changed for the better.

It’s in that final chapter of the first book that Kobato passes enough of the tests that she’s given what she’s been working towards, an empty bottle which she needs to fill by mending broken hearts. It was a different enough shift in the story that it made me sit up a little and take notice. The bottle had been mentioned in earlier chapters as her goal, but it had started to seem so far away that we’d never actually see its appearance. And so, with that, Kobato turns into a much more interesting book. Some other characters from the early chapters become regular cast members of the book, she gets a job volunteering at a local kindergarten, and finds herself mixed up with a loan shark trying to extort money from the owner of the nursery. And while Kobato continues with her share of pratfalls and misunderstandings, on the whole Kobato shapes up immensely. The character interactions work well, and seeing Kobato actually heal some broken hearts makes the book feel like it’s heading somewhere substantial. The frivolity level is much lower than before, and this new mix of serious and light-hearted is a much stronger balance.

The one consistent thing through both volumes of Kobato is the art, which like so many CLAMP works is intricate and delicate. CLAMP pays special attention to Kobato’s hair, letting it hang and flow gracefully through the air as she rushes from one place to the next. There’s a lot of hair on display in general when it comes to Kobato, with Fujimoto’s ponytail dangling down his back, the manager’s daughters Chiho and Chise having huge mops of hair draped over their heads, and even Sayaka’s two locks of hair that frame her face and help it look more innocent. Even hair aside, in general it’s a pretty, carefully constructed style from CLAMP, a big difference to the bombastic and rougher art they used in Tsubasa.

After what felt like a weak start, I’ve found myself coming around to Kobato. Between the plot line taking place at the kindergarten, and the hints of Kobato and Ioryogi’s past and what it has to do with collecting broken hearts, there’s a lot more going for this comic than it initially seems. I’m glad Yen Press went with a double-release for this title; this is definitely a series you need to get a ways into before everything starts to gel.

Purchase Links (Vol. 1): Amazon.com | Powell’s Books
Purchase Links (Vol. 2): Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

It’s a fair statement to say that Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s series Death Note was a huge, career-making hit for them. It would also be a fair assumption by most readers, at that point, to think that Ohba and Obata were set for life in terms of publishers and the world of manga. As their follow-up series Bakuman shows, though, that’s hardly the case in the manga industry. Bakuman is two parts story, and one part manga business world primer, and I am finding it utterly fascinating.

Bakuman has a simple enough premise, with two young students (Moritaka and Akito) that decide to team up and create their own manga series. What Akito doesn’t realize, though, is that becoming a manga creator in Japan is anything but simple, and the end result is a series of lessons in which Moritaka (whose uncle had one hit manga series, followed by a string of failures, and eventually worked himself to death) tries to educate Akito into the ways of the manga publishing world.

Doesn’t sound interesting? Actually, in the hands of Ohba and Obata, it is. Moritaka leads both Akito and us through the real process of becoming a professional manga creator in Japan; how to put a pitch document together, how to storyboard if you’re a writer working with an artist, the kind of reference library you’ll need, the hours put in, the types of pens used to draw manga. At the same time, though, there’s a regular human drama unfolding. Some of Moritaka’s family members are less than pleased with the idea of Moritaka also trying to become a manga artist, and we learn the secret of Moritaka’s uncle and the person that drove him to try and become a successful artist. There’s even a romantic relationship forming amidst all of this, and how it gets used as a lure to try and pull Moritaka forward. It’s a clever series, in part because it never feels like Ohba is lecturing his audience; information is parceled out in a way that feels natural and part of the story.

More importantly, the two main characters have a lot to offer readers. While Moritaka is the romantic and the one with all of the manga know-how, Akito is the instigator and the one with his theories on the rest of the world. Even if you don’t agree with him all the time, it’s fun listening to his theories on topics like the perfect woman, or why it’s important to go to a school that doesn’t match your academic abilities. Akito is simultaneously the comic relief and the voice of the real world, while Moritaka is the more knowledgeable about manga itself. The one character who could still use some fleshing out at the end of the first volume is Azuki, the love interest, who ends up a bit too bland for my taste as she goes along with Moritaka’s slightly ridiculous idea for their potential relationship. I’d like to see her fleshed out a bit, even though it’s increasingly clear that at this stage she’s more of the endgame for the series rather than a concrete, constructive part of Bakuman.

Obata’s art, just like on Death Note and Hikaru no Go, looks great. I love the way he draws characters’s heads and faces in Bakuman, with thick locks of hair and wildly expressive faces. Akito’s face in particular is a direct line into his thoughts and emotions, unable to keep a poker face to save his life. It manages to feel almost stretchy in places, even though Obata never switches into a superdeformed or deliberately exaggerated style throughout the book. Perhaps more importantly, just like Obata was able to make playing a go piece exciting in Hikaru no Go, he’s able to make the creation of manga shine under his own pen. Who knew illustrations of someone creating illustrations could be interesting?

There’s a lot to digest in Bakuman, especially Moritaka’s description of how series are pitched and then survive (or fail), and why almost no one ever gets to rest on their laurels in the world of manga. You get the impression that Ohba is speaking from the heart here, even as he starts up his second published series with Bakuman. If young artists learn a little bit about the manga industry (and indirectly, the comics business culture of other countries, since a lot of this applies elsewhere) I’d consider it a victory. More importantly, though, Bakuman isn’t just informative, it’s fun. This is definitely a series I’ll read more of, and it’s anything but a sophomore slump for Ohba. Ohba and Obata make the mundane seem fantastic here.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

The idea behind Afterschool Charisma has a lot of potential: a school populated almost entirely with clones of famous historical figures, being all raised together. Told primarily through the eyes of the one non-clone (Shiro, the son of one of the professors), it offers up a chance to let us see how given a second chance these characters might either end up the same, or radically different. What we actually get, though, is a book that has a couple of great moments but otherwise ends up feeling more like a clone of far too many other manga series out there.

Kumiko Suekane’s opening chapter of Afterschool Charisma has one of the two better ideas of the series, as the clone of Marie Curie finds herself wanting to study music instead of science. It ties into one of the main themes of the series, the idea of trying to live up to all the potential the clones are told they have and how they respond to that pressure. Based on this initial chapter I can see Afterschool Charisma in some ways trying to serve as an analogy for pressures from parents placed on children, not living up to their expectations. Afterwards, though, it feels like Afterschool Charisma manages to ditch a lot of the more interesting aspects of that first chapters and focus on the parts I didn’t like, with the high school cliques and bullies up against our weaker hero.

When Afterschool Charisma dwells more on the famous clones bickering and fighting amongst one another, it’s really no different than just about any bad high school manga. File the names off of the characters and there’s no difference whatsoever. It’s almost surprising how quickly the book starts to lose its way, playing down some of the clone aspects and bringing to the forefront the most unoriginal parts of the book. It does start pulling out of its tailspin about halfway through, though, with the second of the two better ideas of the series: one of the students is an amiable, helpful Hitler. Now, it’s early enough that Suekane could drop this ball (it’s not like we haven’t already seen other balls dropped in Afterschool Charisma), but for now I found myself actually warming to the fact that Suekane is bringing back the idea that some of the clones will try to turn out differently than their genetic counterparts. It’s an extreme choice of character to do so, but then again he’s one of the few historical figures that people would almost all recognize and understand the importance of from history. With any lesser figure, you run the risk of your audience not comprehending why this is someone shunned by the rest of the school.

Suekane’s art is little more than generic, with its exaggerated expressions, wide eyes, and absent backgrounds. I feel bad saying that there’s such a thing as a "typical manga style" because there are so many excellent artists out there that don’t fall into that category. That said, though, there is certainly a house style that a lot of artists in Japan subscribe to, and Suekane is in that group. What startled me, though, was how little Suekane seems to even try to make these clones look like their genetic parents. After all, if they’re clones, shouldn’t they look the same? Most of these characters look just like average students, with little to no reference material being used to make them appear as they should. It’s disappointing, although it would certainly make a transformation of this series into one without mention of clones that much easier.

Every now and then Afterschool Charisma has an interesting idea or two, like a group threatening to assassinate all of the clones, but Suekane seems at times much more interested in typical high school drama. I wanted to like Afterschool Charisma, based not only its concept but because it’s part of the SIGIKKI group that’s turned out some top-notch series like Saturn Apartments, Children of the Sea, and Kingyo Used Books. For now, though, I’m finding it hard to maintain any sort of interest. I’ll check out some more chapters online to see if things improve, but for now, this book itself is too much a bad clone of a bad genetic parent.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

Drawn & Quarterly, over the past few years, has dipped its toe into translating manga into English, primarily the works of creator Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Books like Tatsumi’s autobiography A Drifting Life and short story collections Abandon the Old in Tokyo have proven to be fascinating, looking at his attempts to break free of genre and industry constraints at the time. So when Drawn & Quarterly announced Black Blizzard, Tatsumi’s debut graphic novel, I was intrigued. (And not just because the creation of Black Blizzard is part of the time period retold in A Drifting Life.) What I found, though, was a creator that shows talent but was still beginning to learn his craft.

Black Blizzard is a fairly typical crime noir story; two wanted criminals on the run, handcuffed together, even as one of them appears to be a genuinely good person. It’s a far cry from his short stories, which are punctuated by unpredictability and a general off-beat nature. At this point in his career, Tatsumi stands out not from inventiveness, but being able to create a tense situations. Black Blizzard is at its best when the characters are on the run from the authorities, with the thrill of the chase. As Susumu and Shinpei run through the snowy wilderness and try to build a fire, you get the sense that anything can happen. And of course, with the ever-present handcuffs connecting the two, the threat of how to get the pair separated looms forever overhead.

The book slows down, though, once we get a lengthy flashback to Susumu’s love story that got him landed in hot water in the first place. While it’s obvious from day one that Susumu wasn’t really a murderer, this hammers it home just in case anyone was doubting. By the time we see the end of this relatively straight forward and innocent story of Susumu trying to help a circus ringmaster’s daughter (and falling in love), Black Blizzard has lost a lot of its steam, and the book never fully rallies back up to its earlier potential. There are a couple of strong moments in the second half, but the thrill itself is so much less that it’s not the same level of fun. Tatsumi himself seems to lose interest in his own story as well, the last handful of pages being told in a matter-of-fact manner, the resolution to the entire story having happened off-panel. It’s a weak ending to a book that started out so well.

Tatsumi’s early art is blocky and crude in places, but there’s an energy about it that helps propel those early pages forward. Watching the duo of wanted men running down the train tracks feels fast-paced, and brings that urgency further to life. It’s probably the best thing about Tatsumi’s art, and certainly goes a long way towards explaining why the flashback scenes don’t work quite as well. There we get the same expression on Susumu’s face no matter what the occasion; it’s definitely not up to the later standards of Tatsumi’s work, and the high quality that readers now have come to expect from him.

Had I never seen anything else by Tatsumi before, I might have felt that Black Blizzard was all right but nothing out of the ordinary. Knowing the growth in his career to come, though, it’s interesting to look at this as a historical footnote, trying to pick out the eventual hallmarks and signs of what he would become best-known for. Tatsumi completists will want to take a look at Black Blizzard, but as an initial introduction to his work, there are much better places to start. Hopefully we’ll get more collections of his short stories down the line; this was a fun detour into the start of his career, but I’d rather see more of his work once he’d become a stronger writer and artist.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

I’ve noticed more and more that in this day and age where we have long-form stories running in comics, books, television series, and anything else you can imagine, audiences seem less inclined to jump into the middle of a series. I know I’ve been equally guilty of that problem, and so when I received a copy of Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit Volume 5 in the mail, I decided to put it to the test and see how well it would read considering that I’d never read volumes 1-4. As it turns out? I must have picked the right series of which to jump into the middle, because I had a blast.

Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit has a creepy premise, where in the future everyone in Japan is inoculated at birth with a capsule. Then, randomly, every day someone is slated for execution and notified within 24 hours that their capsule will activate at a specified and kill them. The idea is to keep people motivated, because you never know when it could be your last day on the planet. Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit‘s main character is a man who delivers these death notices, or ikigamis, to the 0.1% of the population between the ages of 18-24 that will eventually be activated. Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit Vol. 5 has two stories in it, each running three chapters and following the same basic premise. The first chapter introduces the execution target in their every day life, then the remaining two chapters are how they deal with the news of their impending death. Since the premise is spelled out at the beginning of the book, that’s all you need to hit the ground running.

There are numerous flaws with the premise of the book, of course, but Motoro Mase clearly understands that and uses Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit in part to examine those problems. The second story deals with one of those issues, where someone uses their ikigami delivery to start taking revenge on his fellow classmates in a cruel and sadistic way. After all, if you’ve only got 24 hours to live, why not go for broke? The ikigamis in general are tied into becoming "national welfare heroes" by reporting "social miscreants" to the government, and it’s a nasty "turn in your neighbors" society where we see a level of fear and paranoia rising up over the country. And while Mase shows us how people who use their last 24 hours for ill are punished by the system, it doesn’t stop the fact that people can still attempt these things; the problem with the idea of the ikigami is being shown to the reader loud and clear. On the other hand, though, the opening story in Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit Vol. 5 shows the positive side (such as it is), with an artist struggling with the two-faced nature of his family’s business finally being able to break free and create as he wants to, as well as try and inspire others. It’s a strange story when you consider that this isn’t someone who comes to this revelation because of an illness, but rather due to state-sponsored random execution, but it does hit its points.

Mase also has a subplot moving forward around Fujimoto, the delivery man of the ikigamis that we see in both stories. It looks to be following up further the idea of the flaws in the government, and while it’s a slow burn through this volume, because of the nature of the series it’s nice to see some sort of continuing storyline at all. Still, Fujimoto is a little bland, which is something that also holds true for Mase’s art. It’s not bad by any stretch, but there’s nothing particularly exciting about it. Carefully crafted characters, smooth lines, sparse (but present) backgrounds… it’s a completely average style. Still, Mase understands anatomy and movement, and that puts him ahead of the game of a lot of other artists.

Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit Vol. 5 was a nice reminder that one can still jump into a new series and not be utterly lost. Even though there are only two volumes of Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit remaining, I’m curious enough that I’ll probably take a look at them. It’s an interesting premise, and Mase’s following through of the nasty situation he’s created has piqued my interest. The fact that he’s able to do that around the two-thirds mark of the series is a definite mark in his favor as well as the series. It’s good to see someone remember that you need to appeal to new readers at all stages of a series.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

I almost didn’t buy Twin Spica because of the cover. There was something about it, with its creepy little girl holding two glowing objects, while strange lights fell from the sky, that was an instant turn-off. Was it because it felt like a science-fiction version of Children of the Corn? Or a strange reversed-gender riff on Akira? Fortunately, I have friends who are less afraid of strange cover design, and their repeated ravings over Twin Spica made me finally reverse my stance and pick up the first volume. I’m here to tell you that they were right, and I was wrong. If anything, I’m kicking myself for staying away as long as I did.

Twin Spica is in many ways a love song to the idea of space exploration. Named after the binary Spica star system in the constellation of Virgo, it focuses on young applicants to Japan’s space program, and the yearning each of them have towards traveling towards the stars. Asumi is the main character of the book, and Kou Yaginuma includes in her background a space-related tragedy that killed part of her family. At first, it’s easy to think that it exists solely to dredge up some drama for her character. It’s part of why her father initially objects to her going to the academy, and her memories of her mother’s death crop up at inopportune moments. The more you read of Twin Spica, though, the more it begins to look like Yaginuma is using Asumi’s mother’s death to talk about the need among the characters to make it out into space. After all, it was attempts at space travel that killed Asumi’s mother, but even then Asumi cannot shake her devotion toward her life’s dream. It ends up coming across as a powerful urge, and helps solidify the book.

Twin Spica Volume 1 includes several prequel stories that were created before the Twin Spica series began, but which form the basis for the book. They’re odd entries in their own right, glimpses into a dreamland underworld where children get the chance to see their deceased parents before they cross over into the realm of the dead forever. We also see more of the spectral figure that Asumi calls Mr. Lion, a character that in the main Twin Spica chapters appears to be little more than a mental crutch that Asumi uses to help deal with her mother’s death. In these prequels, though, we start to see more about Mr. Lion’s true nature; it’s a mystical-in-nature story (like the other prequel) that is enchanting, but it doesn’t feel like it quite connects with the rest of Twin Spica in terms of content. It’s hard to ignore some of cultural differences along the way in Twin Spica. Most notably, there are several images of a parent slapping a child in this first book, and while it’s clearly not meant to look as being abusive it will probably startle Western audiences where physical punishment of children has become taboo. It’s a clear reminder that Twin Spica isn’t just a comic that happens to be translated from Japanese, but rather a real Japanese comic with all of its own cultural benchmarks and foibles.

Yaginuma’s art is sweet and delicate, all of the characters (even the swaggering cool guy who alternates between jerk and insightful) coming across with soft features and a minimalist approach. This both does and doesn’t work to Yaginuma’s advantage; I think that it makes some of the characters much more sympathetic and likable, but it’s also hard to look at the tiny and childlike Asumi and remember that she’s supposed to be thirteen years old. While there are a lot of pages without backgrounds in the panels, Yaginuma crystallizes the most important moments for the reader; from a child up a temple’s stairs, to the exhausted recruits finishing their first test in the nick of time.

Twin Spica has one final element that pulls everything together, and that’s charm. It’s hard to remain cynical about anything while reading Twin Spica; even in the face of tragedy or failure, it keeps drawing the reader in with the promise of something good for its characters (and the reader) just around the corner. And, inevitably, it delivers. Twin Spica helps restore wide-eyed wonder about space travel to even the most jaded audience, without ever failing to take its material seriously. This is a charming book that you’ll want to read and re-read over and over.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

As you probably by now, in Japan, there are comics about everything. Cooking, tennis, life in the office, true stories of being homeless, you name it, there’s a manga for you. That’s part of the point of Kingyo Used Books, but I couldn’t help but be a little amused that with this manga, there’s a comic about the joy of comics. It’s simultaneously funny and really fantastic, isn’t it? I will warn you right now, though. Reading Kingyo Used Books might cause you to buy more comics, Japanese or otherwise.

The conceit of Kingyo Used Books is a simple one; customers come to the titular used manga store, where for whatever reason the joy of reading manga is either introduced or brought back into the lives of these people. Sometimes it’s about people who started to fall away from the practice, like the young man on the eve of a high school reunion who stops by to try and sell all the manga in his apartment because it’s turning into a bit of a clutter. Other times, it’s a little more roundabout, like an archer who has lost focus in his sport but ends up discovering how gag manga can cure just about all ills. (All right, a slight exaggeration on my part.) The only formula, per se, is that sooner or later someone’s going to enter the used book store and manga will be involved.

Seimu Yoshizaki straddles a line when it comes to a supporting cast for Kingyo Used Books. She understands that the main focus can’t be on the people at the bookstore, because it’s not really about them. At the same time, though, you do need some sort of regulars to help bring the narrative forward, and be recognizable enough that you know their basic character. She introduces three characters to serve as the anchors: Natsuki, the woman who runs the front counter and is the most rational employee; Shiba, the manga-obsessive who freaks out if people say bad things about comics; and Seitaro, their grandfather and the owner of the store. I can’t imagine anyone actually reading Kingyo Used Books because of a deep burning interest in any of the characters. (If anything, there’s a cousin named Billy who shows up later that is actually a slight turn-off because of his unhealthy obsession over a detective-themed comic.) Natsuki’s the only normal one of the bunch, but she’s there mostly to welcome people into the store and occasionally guide people forward in their dreams. It’s not the story of the employees, though; they’re little more than window-dressing.

Yoshizaki is a good artist when it comes to people; she draws people with their hearts figuratively on their sleeves, faces lighting up and collapsing if they’re happy or sad. She’s got the wistful, longing expressions down pat, and I like that her characters have a wide range of ages as they wander in and out of the title; it’s a nice reminder about the strength that manga can have for more than just teenaged boys. Aside from the bookstore itself, though, you should be warned that backgrounds are sparse and more often than not nonexistent. While it does provide a nice focus on the characters, it’s something that will definitely stand out on a re-read.

At the end of Kingyo Used Books Vol. 1 there’s a page on each chapter’s featured manga, talking about its history and significance. I will warn you that it might break your heart to discover that Sarusuberi, a biographical comic about Hokusai, is not currently in print in English. It’s a neat addition and somewhat necessary, especially for a non-Japanese audience, because the books are the co-stars of the comic. Kingyo Used Books is a love song to the joy of reading, and it’s a theme that could be just as easily transplanted into a non-comic story about prose books. Yoshizaki’s stories might not have the most interesting regular characters, but they do make me want to run out and buy lots more comics and keep them around forever. Perhaps not the best comic to read if you’re trying to shrink down your possessions, but then again, I suspect that Yoshizaki would be pleased if her comic made people hang onto their own collections. This is a sweet series that’s worth checking out. You can read select chapters online for free at the SIGIKKI website—definitely go take a look.

Purchase Links: Amazon.com | Powell’s Books

I don’t just dislike basketball. I actually semi-loathe the sport. At my office we have lunchtime discussions that veer off onto topics like, "Which reality show would be your worst nightmare?" and "What sport would you least want to be forced to watch hours of?" And for the latter, I must admit, basketball was a high contender. I mention this because I feel it’s important that you understand how much the sport is unappealing to me, so that you understand the power of the next statement I’m about to make. Real isn’t just a good comic about basketball. Real is one of the best comics being published, period.

If you haven’t encountered Real before, it’s not your average sports manga. Having tackled traditional basketball in his earlier series Slam Dunk, this time Inoue is focusing on the world of wheelchair basketball. The series focuses on three men; one (Togawa) who has played wheelchair basketball for several years, a second (Takahashi) who was a high school basketball star but has just become a paraplegic, and a third (Nomiya) who loves the sport of basketball but no longer has a team and recently was responsible for someone else having to spend the rest of their life in a wheelchair. In other words, it’s not an "easy" set of stories and characters; where other sports manga might be about learning how to get that new kick, or maybe getting faster on the field, a major victory for Takahashi is finally mastering how to maneuver his partially paralyzed body in and out of a wheelchair.

Basketball is the largest connection between all three characters, and it does play an important part in the book. In some ways it serves almost as a primal force that pushes the characters forward in life. The headstrong Togawa has problems with learning how to play as part of a team, a reflection of his own competitive personality and behavior. As he starts to master his larger problems with the team sport, you can find hope that he can apply those lessons to the rest of his life. Nomiya has basketball as his one constant as, expelled from high school, he drifts from one job to the next, never able to find steady employment. Ironically, he no longer has an outlet to play the sport, for now finding himself drawn to Togawa’s team the Tokyo Tigers on the sidelines and watching the players refuse to let any obstacles in their way. And for Takahashi, having given up at first on going through physical therapy and rehabilitation so that he can start to live an independent life again, seeing a wheelchair basketball team is the first time he sees himself actually having a future. It’s a literal lifeline tossed out to someone who had just about given up all hope. Even though my own enjoyment of the sport is normally nil, Inoue writes and draws Real with such passion and yearning that it’s impossible to not get drawn into these characters and their love and need of the sport.

Inoue also wisely never focuses exclusively on basketball. One of my favorite storylines in Real is Takahashi starting to reconnect with his estranged father, who left his wife and son eight years earlier when he gave up his office job for a quiet life focusing on pottery. As his father re-enters Takahashi’s life, watching his father trying to help his son and be there for him again is an almost heartbreaking series of moments. Inoue gives us both sides of the emotional rift; you can see Takahashi’s father struggling to try and fix what he did wrong as he sees the damage he caused, but Takahashi’s pain over the abandonment by his father is impossible to discount or ignore. Inoue isn’t afraid to go for an emotional gut punch in Real, and there are rarely easy solutions offered up. Still, something as small as Takahashi’s father buying a cell phone so that he can text his son and stay in touch is a sweet moment, and it’s hard to not have your heart melt a little bit… and then make you laugh when Takahashi’s father shows his technological inexperience and accidentally sends the same message multiple times.

It’s impossible to mention any creation of Inoue’s without commenting on the art. Inoue is one of the masters of comic art in this day and age, and Real is no exception to that rule. All of his characters are wonderfully drawn and look different from one another; Togawa’s tousled hair and eager expression always set him apart, as does Nomiya’s sedate, heavy-lidded gaze that hides the deep thoughts running through his head. There’s a moment in the latest volume of Real where all of the Tigers have to shave their heads, but even once they all have buzz cuts everyone still looks slightly different from one another; it’s refreshing to see Inoue’s skill at making everyone unique. Best of all, though, is that when characters are working hard in Real you can see it all over. Not just because they have sweat dripping down their faces or chests, but because Inoue draws the struggle on their faces, or in their postures. People who have read Inoue’s samurai epic Vagabond will already know that Inoue is a master of the energetic physical form, and Real is a good reminder of that fact.

I only have one complaint about Real, and it’s that the English language edition has almost caught up with the Japanese publishing schedule. (There is a ninth volume already out in Japan, but that’s it; it’s tentatively scheduled for North American publication this November.) Every time a new volume of Real hits the shelves, I have to buy it instantly because it draws my attention so quickly. It’s become so addicting, in fact, I’m planning on dipping into Inoue’s earlier works and reading Slam Dunk. (I encountered it before several years ago when Gutsoon had the publishing license, but it’s been long enough that at this point I’m going to just start over.) Real isn’t just good, it’s great. It doesn’t matter if you like sports or not, this is one of the pinnacles of comics right now. Highly recommended.

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Viz looks to be making a major push on Japanese comic creator Natsume Ono. Several months ago had the release of not simple, and House of Five Leaves is running on SIGIKKI as well as getting its first print edition later this year. They’re both strong comics, and after experiencing both of them it seemed like a natural to try Ono’s earlier work that just hit stores, Ristorante Paradiso. What I found, though, was a surprise in several different ways.

After reading not simple I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that Ristorante Paradiso is a book with a slightly unsettling familial relationship. Here, we meet Nicoletta, whose mother Olga separated from her father years ago and moved to Rome with a new husband. The problem is, Olga now pretends that she never had a daughter, because her new husband had told her that he would never want to marry someone with children. Now an adult, Nicoletta has gone to Rome to try and confront her mother, and therein lies the problem with the story. On the one side, you’ve got Olga, whose abandoning of her daughter in order to get a new husband is never adequately justified. At best, it makes her a lousy person, at worst a reprehensible one. Her abandonment of Nicoletta never comes across as anything but selfish, and it’s hard to tolerate her presence in the book. And then there’s Nicoletta, who promptly blackmails Olga so that she can get hired onto Casetta dell’Orso, the restaurant that Olga’s husband runs and which is staffed exclusively by handsome men. Ignoring her motives (to get close to Claudio, a divorced waiter who is still unable to move beyond his ex-wife and wears her wedding ring) it’s a book where the main characters seem to have an attitude of, "anything’s fair in the service of love." The problem is, the book never sells that as being justifiable. Nicoletta’s actions might not be as morally dubious as Olga’s (although Nicoletta is originally showing up for the sole purpose of trying to destroy Olga’s marriage), but the fact that she ends up stooping to blackmail shows that in some ways the apple hasn’t fallen that far from the tree.

Ristorante Paradiso is also a slim book, and it was about two-thirds of the way through that it suddenly hit me that it didn’t feel even remotely close to coming to a conclusion. When that moment does happen, it’s so swift and such a non-event that one of the characters even comments, "That was anticlimactic." It could be that there was a behind-the-scenes reason for Ristorante Paradiso ending so rapidly, but unfortunately that still leaves us with an unsatisfactory ending. It’s frustrating, because there are little flashes of good from Ono the whole way through the book; little moments where Nicoletta is falling for Claudio, for instance, or some of the kitchen prep scenes. A manga set in the kitchen of a restaurant has a lot of potential, and it made me wish that Ristorante Paradiso could somehow shed the soap opera nature of its overall plot.

On the other hand, Ono’s art looks to be almost as strong here as in her later works. I love the loose assembly of inks that pull together (almost out of nowhere) to form characters. It’s a relaxed final product, one that draws people in a natural looking way. The biggest surprise for me with Ono’s art was how well she handles drawing an older-looking character while still making them attractive. Claudio looks to be an older, distinguished gentleman, one that isn’t muscular or energetic. He’s also quite handsome, and that’s a mixture of qualities that most artists fail to bring together. Honestly, for that reason alone Ristorante Paradiso gets some points with me; it’s nice to see an artist remember that good looks come in all shapes, sizes, and ages too.

I wanted to love Ristorante Paradiso, but in the end it just felt uneven. With unlikable characters and a hurried conclusion, it feels like this could have been much stronger. Maybe, given additional chapters, it could have come together a bit more. Interestingly enough, there’s a prequel series (also set for publication this year from Viz) called Gente about the founding of the restaurant and focusing on the other kitchen staffers. As the rest of the kitchen staff felt incredibly similar and generic, having each of them fleshed out from a blank slate sounds like it could work well. If I had go to entirely off of Ristorante Paradiso, I’m not sure I would automatically give Gente a try. But having read some of Ono’s other works, I feel like it could still work.

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I remember reading One Piece when it was first published by Viz back at the launch of SHONEN JUMP and enjoying it. But in what was a modern golden age of manga translations, there were so many books being published at the same time that I quickly fell behind, and before long it dropped to the wayside. Now that Viz is putting a lot of publishing muscle behind the book (unleashing a wave of One Piece books to catch the series up to where it is in Japan, like they did before with Naruto, and releasing a series of 3-in-1 omnibuses), it seemed like a perfect chance to catch up with the series and see just what I’ve been missing.

Viz’s omnibuses are in general a good deal (they’re more or less priced at a third off the price for buying each individually), but I think it works especially well in One Piece. With three volumes in a single book, you get much more forward progression of the plot; even in these early chapters, it’s easy to see that this is going to be a series that rambles onwards, moving from one lengthy adventure to the next. So instead of getting just a portion of a single story, the potential is here for multiple stops and trips for the characters as Monkey D. Luffy tries to gather a crew in order to become the greatest pirate ever and find the hidden treasure known as the One Piece.

As these are the earliest chapters, a lot of attention is paid on forming the crew. (A trip to Wikipedia showed me that this is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the full cast of characters.) What’s nice is that at least with these first characters, everyone has their own distinct motivation. Luffy wants to impress and live up to the pirate who helped him when he was younger; Zolo wants to become the greatest swordsman alive; Nami is along for the ride in order to gather money for her own personal purposes. Just having the three of them interact with one another is a fun experience; Luffy’s unbridled enthusiasm doesn’t come with a lot of experience, so Zolo and Nami each have their own skills and knowledge to add to the mix, and presumably further characters will also do the same. As for the stories themselves, I found myself getting into them with a lot of gusto. There’s a strong undercurrent running through all of them, that honesty and dedication always win in the long run; it’s a good message regardless of your age. For all of Nami’s sneaky plans and subterfuge (she’s almost a secondary antagonist in her first story), it’s Luffy at the end of the day who makes it all work out by being up front and himself.

Oda’s art is crisp and clean, a perfect example of a tight animation-level style that is expressive and energetic. It’s the perfect match for a book where the main character can stretch his body like rubber; Oda draws Luffy’s impossible shapes and lengths in such a way that they match up wonderfully with the rest of the title. Oda’s good with the crazier character designs, too; from a head and afro peeking out of a treasure chest to a clown-themed pirate, they’re all larger than life but mesh well with the more realistic looking characters like Nami. You’re never going to marvel at fine details and beautiful compositions from Oda, but as an action-adventure romp it’s just the right kind of style.

One Piece: East Blue 1-2-3 was more fun than I’d expected. I can’t say that I’d want to start buying individual volumes because the series on its own feels a little slight, but in these three-for-one editions I’ll probably pick up some more of the East Blue stories before too long. It’s a nice introduction to One Piece, and I can already see why the series has so many ravenous fans.

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