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Reader’s Corner: Babel (Vol. 4), Honeko Akabane’s Bodyguards (Vol. 5), and Moan: Junji Ito Story Collection
How exactly does one embrace the spooky Halloween mood of the month? Here’s an idea: Try the news Junji Ito collection! Check out our review of Moan below, plus our reviews of other releases, including the first volume of Land and the final volume of Babel!
Life is hard for Ena, even though she has superhuman strength. Trying to take care of her Dad and her younger twin brothers on top of going to work and school, she is just doing her best to get by. However, somewhere along the way, she finds herself engaged to the heir of a famous security company! Sakae, the heir, says they only need to pretend, and he even agrees to pay off her family’s debts! The only thing is that she’ll have to agree to certain conditions and stay engaged for two months! Outside of one groping scene near the end (I was so angry! And no, it was not by the male lead, who has been very respectful!), I deeply enjoyed reading this! I found Sakae’s family to be pretty unhinged and felt bad for Ena more often than not, but I deeply admired her courage and her desire to use her strength to help her family. She’s an amazing heroine who is giving her all, though having to be “seductive” for lack of a better word is not her strong suit, and that’s definitely where a lot of the humor comes from! Though I would say Sakae really does strike the perfect balance as a male lead, because while it’s obvious he can be “seductive” when they have to take “lovey-dovey” photos every day, he always asks for permission before hugging her and just overall respects her. I loved seeing how down-to-earth he is and how he warms up to Ena as a partner (much to both of our leads’ dismay) because the two of them really are such a great couple! I’m eagerly looking forward to the next volume release, as I anticipate this manga to be a wild ride and full of hijinks that I haven’t seen in other manga series I’ve read before! If you don’t mind an age gap and an almost outlandish premise, this is one I would definitely recommend! ~ Laura A. Grace
Medaka Kuroiwa Is Impervious to My Charms, Manga Vol. 9
Mona might be relishing both her victory in the school beauty pageant and the fact that she worked up the courage to kiss Medaka (on the cheek at least) during her “staged” love confession, but her best friend Tomo just dropped a bombshell: This love triangle has become a quadrilateral. Medaka’s clueless charisma got to her too. With the end of the year coming up fast, Mona now has two rivals to contend with for the chance at a coveted Christmas date. A group study session at our leading lady’s house will be crucial if she wants to snag that prize, but she’s going to have to simultaneously play a strong offense with Medaka, run an airtight defense against Tomo, and manage the complete wild card that is her family to make it happen. Forget peace on earth and mercy mild, this December is getting wild… Well, color me impressed at how quickly Ran Kuze turned things around. This volume started by tying up the loose ends of the worst arc in the series and ended with the best arc so far well underway. Instead of painfully contrived fanservice scenarios, we get to see our main pair be cute together. In particular, the chapter where they have to navigate a family dinner with Mona’s loving, supportive, and highly inquisitive parents (and loving but also smart-aleck little brother) is romcom gold. I hope we get to see the rest of the Kawais more often; they’re a fun wrinkle when so many high school romances treat family members as background characters. In short, volume nine is a welcome surprise that doesn’t just stop the bleeding—it gets the series firmly back on its feet. ~ WacOtaku
Medaka Kuroiwa Is Impervious to My Charms is published by Kodansha.
Arakuni was able to identify the traitor within Honeko Akabane’s bodyguards when Kuran tried to set a trap for him during spring term finals but only played right into his counter-trap. She’s now recovering in the hospital after her former yakuza associates “cut her loose,” and her reasons for selling out Honeko were…complicated… So for the time being, Arakuni, Sumihiko, and Nei are keeping her secret between themselves while they lead Class 3-4 against more immediate problems. A showdown with the two largest gangs gunning for Honeko is fast approaching. Even worse, Yamihime Higure, the team’s master swordswoman, is out of commission after an encounter with her abusive parents during the previous mission brought a lot of horrific memories back to the surface. They need her back in action fast, but just telling her to “grit her teeth” isn’t going to do it. Our hero is going to have to get creative to help his classmate break out of her mental prison… Sumihiko may be Class 3-4’s official leader, but Arakuni has become the archetypical “Team Dad” whether or not he or anyone else realizes it. Obviously, he sees his friends as friends and not children, but when outsiders threaten the group physically or emotionally, he starts acting a whole lot like a papa wolf—family gets the paws, enemies get the claws. It’s a mindset that we see in both halves of this volume, in helping the story’s stealth Best Girl process her past and in helping the class as a whole fight its way through an all-out brawl to start summer vacation. It even gives him some good chemistry with “Team Mom” Honeko (who is almost freakishly attuned to everyone’s emotional state despite not having a clue about the real plot of this manga) which makes their relationship more enjoyable to read. Over-the-top, bombastic, and a manga which revels in being a manga, Honeko Akabane’s Bodyguards volume five is another entertaining entry to the series. ~ WacOtaku
Honeko Akabane’s Bodyguards is published by Kodansha.
Kuji Furumiya, author of Babel, brings the series to a close with a satisfying and surprisingly packed fourth volume. Shizuku continues her efforts to teach language to the children who have lost their innate language, and her efforts are starting to bear some fruit. Some nations are also beginning to express interest in her work. But then word comes that some children are actually regaining their lost innate language knowledge—what could be the cause of this? Alas, Shizuku’s work is interrupted when the witch Aviella suddenly breaks her longstanding habit of hiding and appears before the nations of the continent to declare war on them! Now Shizuku and the allies she has accumulated over the previous three volumes have one shot—and it’s a long one—to end the threat of Aviella and the demons once and for all. But at what cost, when doing so might mean the end of innate language altogether? And will Shizuku survive long enough for a chance to finally return home to Japan? Man, this was a good read! The author deftly ties together a number of plot twists, some I saw coming and some I definitely didn’t! It was neat to see a fantasy treatment of how controlling language and historical records allows for the manipulation of thought (remember 1984 and the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?). Oh, and the main character meets King Oltovine, which I kept dyslexically reading as “Ovaltine.” All in all, a fun finale! Now I want to go read the other series set in this world, Unnamed Memory… ~ NegativePrimes
It wouldn’t be October without Junji Ito manga! Moan, the latest release of individual stories by Ito, is to me one of his very best. The atmosphere of each story is effectively creepy, and four of the six stories are excellent, with only the titular “Moan” ending in an unsatisfactory way (it’s too long and “resolves” too quickly). I really enjoyed Ito’s storytelling in this collection, in which he creates really interesting worlds in just a short number of pages. Ito fans and generally fans of classic horror will enjoy the collection. Newer horror and anime fans without such an appreciation may not, however. The more of Ito I read (and also having read his autobiographical manga), the more I think of him as directly in the line of Edgar Allan Poe; and similar to Poe, while I don’t find his work chilling anymore, I still embrace the weirdness, atmosphere, and creativity. Those words describe Ito and Moan very well—and if that’s your expectation going in, rather than thinking you’ll be frightened, you’ll likely have a wonderful time dipping into this strange and grotesque work. ~ Twwk
Moan: Junji Ito Story Collection is published by VIZ Media.
Fraternal twins are born in a land and era where such births are viewed as an evil portend, and the animal-masked priesthood requires that one child be sacrificed to the four giant gods that guard the village and its environs. The father, a widower and himself a priest, abandons one to the elements, but she miraculously survives, adopted into a family of outcasts. The two girls grow up in different worlds, but they share a single name, An. Could it be that their fates, too, are intertwined? This is a monster of a volume—which is quite appropriate, as we’ll see shortly—with not only a solid hardcover binding, but also enough pages to fill four regular tankoban! The world of Land is uncanny and dark and cruelly violent in its indifference toward human suffering, yet it is also sunlit and bright, peopled with regular folk who are just trying their best to survive under the deadly gaze of tyrannical gods. The juxtaposition makes for a persistent, low-key sense of impending peril, keeping you on the edge of your seat even in its more slice-of-life moments. An, the one whose name is spelled using kanji (representative of her belonging; her ostracized sister’s name is spelled with katakana, symbolic of her alien foreignness—a brilliant literary device that is sadly lost in translation), is wide-eyed and earnest and just a wee bit obstreperous in the most charming way, and makes for a lively central protagonist who stands out amid a very wide cast of characters, each of whom are well-formed and distinct. The world-building is rich and detailed, and packs a few surprises. Let’s just say that by the time you hit the midpoint (the equivalent of the end of volume 2 in normal tankoban), it’s pretty clear that things are not as they seem—least of all with the land itself! Can’t wait for volume two so that I can speculate about some of the revelations in this volume and mention which film director’s work this series most reminds me of (*cough MNS cough*). If you like supernatural historical adventures that unfold on an epic scale, this is definitely one to check out. ~ claire
“Reader’s Corner” is our way of embracing the wonderful world of manga, light novels, and visual novels, creative works intimately related to anime but with a magic all their own. Each week, our writers provide their thoughts on the works they’re reading—both those recently released as we keep you informed of newly published works, and those older titles that you might find as magical (or in some cases, reprehensible) as we do.
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