Tagged: Manga

This week we’ll be looking at three books with main characters who look like one thing, but are something else.

Nephilim, Vol. 1
By Anna Hanamaki
Aurora, May 2008, $10.95

On a continent with the unlikely name of Elwestland, two political powers – with the is-it-quitting-time-on-Friday-already? names of “The Empire” and “The Federation” – are in a long cold war, having split the land right down the middle. Oh, no, wait! There’s also a nearly impassable jungle right in that middle, conveniently separating the Empire from the Federation. And in that jungle live the mysterious, nomadic Nephilim.

Nephilim appear in one form by day and another by night – this may simply be swapping gender, but the text of the book doesn’t quite say that – and their night-form is the true one. (They’re fertile in that form, among other things.) But if an outsider sees a Nephilim in his/her true form – possibly only if the Nephilim is naked, but that doesn’t seem to be the important bit – The Curse declares that Nephilim must kill that outsider personally, or start to die slowly.

And our plot begins when the dashing Imperial soldier Colonel Sir Guyfeis S. Northenfield, who is also a top bounty hunter, a master of unarmed combat, and probably a deft hand at Parcheesi, too, is charging through that not-nearly-impassable-enough jungle on a mission to retrieve the fair Lady Lia, who has been kidnapped by perfidious Federal agents. He avoids or kills Federals by day, and has a quick run-in with a wandering Nephilim named Abel. (Rolling a fifteen or higher on the Random Encounter table, clearly.) That night, Abel is bathing in a stream, so Guy sneaks up to catch an eyeful – either unaware of the curse, secretly hot for the cute boy he thought Abel was, or just terminally nosy. He discovers Abel is “truly” (by night, at least) female, and she then tries, very badly, to kill him.

(more…)

The two books this week are actually manwha rather than manga, since they come from Korea and not Japan. Other than the reading direction, both of these books are more similar to their Japanese counterparts than to American comics, which I will demonstrate, viz:

Croquis Pop, Vol. 1
Story by KwangHyun Seo; Art by JinHo Ko
Yen Press, June 2008, $10.99

Da-Il is a young man who either wants to be a manwha artist more than anything in the world — because he told his now-dead mother that the only thing he wanted to do with his life was to make pictures that made her happy — or he fell into the job as a high school student because making comics "looked like fun." Or maybe both, since the story tells us both things and gives us no reason to disbelieve either of them.

Da-Il has just come to work for the manwha-ga Ho Go, who has just moved into a big house with his two other assistants, the punctilious senior assistant Ho-Suk Yang and the gorgeous and mysterious Hang-Chu. (Either in Korea in general, or just in this kind of manwha story, the staff of a particular story live with their boss.) But the hiring procedures are a bit lax, since Da-Il can barely draw. (more…)

One of the differences – I won’t say “advantages,” since opinion differs on that subject – of manga from Western-style superhero comics is that manga stories all have endings, eventually. Oh, “eventually” can be a long, long time coming – two decades, in some cases – but manga are created by one person or set of people, and all eventually come to an end, unlike corporate-owned characters, who live as long as their revenue stream does.

Some manga, though, end more quickly than others. Some even end in a couple of hundred pages – a story short enough to fit into one volume. And, by luck, I have two stories just like that in front of me this week.

Haridama: Magic Cram School
By Atasushi Suzumi
Del Rey Manga, May 2008, $10.95

Kokuyo and Harika are childhood friends who both ended up at the Sekiei Magic Cram School – named after its founder and apparently only teacher – studying to be magicians (who, once they’ve climbed the magic ladder as far as they can, we’re told are qualified to open cram schools of their own, which makes the whole thing seem like a pointless pyramid scheme). They’re “Obsidians,” people with only Yin or Yang power – instead of both, like proper magicians – and so they need swords with stones in the hilt to channel their lesser powers.

The other two main characters of this story are Sekiei, their young teacher – there don’t seem to be any other students in the school, in fact – and Nekome, a third-level sorcerer who recently graduated from the rival Torame school. Sekiei pushes Kokuyo and Harika to work harder and achieve more, while Nekome mildly torments them and puts down their abilities. (more…)