To start this review I will reveal that I haven’t read volumes 1-12 of this series. It was a first for me since I usually don’t just jump in on a manga because it can be a headache to get caught up. In all actuality it took me one and a half volumes just to remember who the characters were and after that they threw more characters at me and so I just went with it and stopped trying to sort everyone out… which ended up working out better. I would not start with volume 13 if you are going to throw yourself into this series as I have done. I would start with volume 14. The reason being that 13 is the mandatory festival storyline in which our main male character Raku unknowingly woos a new female suitor. Oh did I mention that this is a harem comedy? It is.
I’m going to pause for a moment on the story and let you know that I have never, never read a harem comedy manga. I watch the hell out of the genre in anime form, but reading one… never. This was strange even to myself and in my head I went back and forth on whether I liked reading a manga of this genre. At times I did, but other times… I really didn’t.
The premise of the story is this: Raku pledged his love to a girl ten years ago when he was a little turd, but of course he has kept that promise and held on to a locket for ten years. He’s forced into a fake relationship with a rival gang leader’s daughter. His father is Yakuza and so there’s a peace treaty of sorts while they date. Raku likes a girl from his class though, but because of the fake relationship he can’t do anything; she also likes him and both women have keys that could open the goddamn locket. Raku is also engaged to be married to the Chief of police’s daughter who has a fucking key as well. The story gets even more complicated as more keys show up and even more fuzzy memories of childhood appear.
Now I will say that the series adds more female suitors rather organically. Each love interest has a friend that is against Raku and his relationships. They dub him a player and they attempt to get their friend to stay away or dive in and whatnot… but then they all fall for Raku as well. My best count is that there are no less than seven women interested in this guy and possibly his male best friend as well… I mean the guy does cat face so it’s hard to rule him out.
As I said, volume 13 is a traditional festival in with Raku ends up paired with Haru, the little sister of the girl he’s actually interested in. She hates him, but after a few times around the square she’s head over heels for this dude. I’m guessing that the series has already spent a lot of time with other characters because Haru gets a lot of page time across the three volumes.
The second half of the volume is spent with Ruri who pulls the classic “tell my dying grandpa I have a boyfriend so he’ll leave me alone, uh-oh I have to produce this boyfriend now?” Of course the boy she randomly picks is Raku… and I do mean randomly since she has a pile of classmate’s photos and that is how she picked her fake boyfriend. It’s a good story, but it was predictable and nothing new.
The 14th volume introduces a new character who is the “childhood friend” character, but not the typical one since she’s “known him longer than you.” She’s also Chinese from what I could gather and in charge of her own gang… but is there to become Raku’s homeroom teacher and win his heart… not run her criminal organization. She reveals that Raku and all of the girls with keys hung out one summer and that she basically remembers everything that happened, but won’t tell them… which is frustrating for them, but really annoying for us as the reader. Not that I think the keys mater, but just get that shit sorted so this dumbass can figure out what girl he actually likes. Not that it matters because you’ve set this up in a way that a mother fucking gang war would ignite if he doesn’t stay with the person he’s with. Her character, Yui, is just whatever. She calls all the ladies out left, right and center which they’re not used to. She also lives with Raku which forces the story to his house a lot.
That’s where the 15th volume picks up as Raku and Yui are left home alone as the Yakuza take a day trip and the rest of the gang show up to keep Yui from getting it on after all of them somehow find out her plan of making Raku hers. Which is just as weird as a dude holding on to a locket from ten years ago and promising his heart to a girl that he can’t remember and not just growing the fuck up and making adult choices, but whatever… whatever. The rest of this volume is spent at the school festival because we had to hit that trope up as well. Haru makes another appearance as her and her sister Kosaki compete in a beauty contest. Don’t worry it’s tasteful with the exception of the worst character in the book who gets DQ’d for wearing a bikini.
My thing with this series is that the keys are an interesting idea if the characters were older and it wasn’t elementary kids that made these promises. That and if you can’t remember shit from that time does it really matter? I mean they all have diaries and shit they refer to, but no one wrote a name down? It’s an interesting premise, but it’s intentionally vague to keep the story going and I don’t like that. It actually works perfect without the keys because of the fake relationship. The keys seem like a carrot that’s being dangle with the possibility of this series actually forcing the main character to pick someone… which it never will. They never do. My point is, the keys could have been cool, but they ain’t.
The art is great for the most part. I had a hard time telling characters apart at first because they were all a little too similar. Mostly because of the festival they were at which is why you shouldn’t start there. Otherwise it’s a really talented style. Very clean, great humor and detail. I liked it a lot, but it wasn’t anything new or different. It’s very “corporate” feeling, but still really fucking good which is probably one of the reasons people enjoy it.
At the end of the 13th volume there’s a popularity vote revealed. I’m sure it’s old as hell, but it was an interesting insight into how the fans of the series see the characters. The character I hated the most and still hate came in second which blew my fucking mind. I don’t even think you’re supposed to like her since she’s only annoying, but hey… it must work for some people or they took pity on a two-dimensional character which is even stranger.
The story teeter-tottered me a lot. I would like to read the next volume because volume 15 was the best in my opinion. There’s only slight differences though so I’m still scoring them all together. What I worry about is that the author is adding too many characters, building too many love interests and that gets tiring because then Raku, the guy everyone loves is reduced to just a few pages here and there. He doesn’t do anything to earn this love and admiration because he’s constantly chased out of the story so that two women can talk about their love for him… which is bad character development all around.
By now you’ve probably already decided to read this or not. I took a chance on it and while I don’t regret it, I don’t know if I’m in love with it. I would give it another volume for sure, but I’m not in a race to track down the other volumes. I’ve been caught up enough on the series that I’m good. It’s trope heavy for the genre that’s for sure, but if you love that then you’ll read it.
Score: 3/5
Nisekoi: False Love Vol. 13-15 Creator: Naoshi Komi Publisher: Viz/Shonen Jump Price: $9.99 Format: TPB; Print/Digital
But the problem with the first chapter of Ikemoto and Kodachi's continuation of Kishimoto's series is that it's literally the goddamn Boruto movie! I don't remember hearing anything about them adapting the movie when this series was announced. The first few pages are like being shot out of a cannon into an unbelievably awesome new chapter of this story and then the reader is blindsided with a flashback to something they might have already seen.
Eventually one of the girls breaks and talks to Kiyoshi who is our main character. They bond over Sumo and she asks if he’ll go to a college Sumo event in a few weeks which thrills him beyond belief, even though he’s actually not that into Sumo. He doesn’t share this with the other four boys though because they’ve given up on relationships and decided to just catch glimpses of boobs and underwear… until the evening when they decide to go peeping in the showers.
The alien city is very strange. Obviously not all of the aliens are bad, but so far in the story that’s all we’ve meet. It seems like a goal of the SSSP’s to shut the place down as well, but because they don’t know where it’s located exactly they can’t spend the resources or something that we have yet to be told.
Black Clover finally ended the arc that started me really singing its praises, with little Marie back home safe and sound. An arc that began with a little girl in danger by way of some minor villains blew up into a major fight featuring most of the magic knight captains against the major antagonists of the series. Going from a small-scale dust-up to a fight with big, far-reaching plot consequences is typically shonen, but admittedly something that is not often executed as smoothly as this. In a lot of series, if something isn't "filler" (not a term I love, but it does designate a certain set of things that don't directly add to a main story) you sort of expect that at some point something important is going to pop out. Tabata just finished an arc that set aside those expectations while still sating the reader's requirement for a plot-driven main thread. While the new premise of chasing magic stones comes off a bit simple, I think Tabata is at a point where he's earned the benefit of the doubt.
Food Wars and Academia were slow this week, with the former wrapping up the results of the first Central shokugeki defeat and the latter preparing us for the attempted rescue of Bakugo to come soon. Black Clover, however, is still reeling from the latest insurrection of the Eye of the Midnight Sun, and we've found out which captain was, allegedly, spying for them. Tabata wrote it so that this captain would have a particularly impressive ability with only one exploitable weakness. And guess who can exploit it? Yup, Asta. Sometimes Black Clover seems a little too easy when it pulls stuff like this, but when the main protagonist's ability is literally anti-magic, it does constantly make sense that he'd be able to counter things that other magic users do. For yet another chapter in this arc we get a hint of the full might of all of the captains in concert, and as the intrigue continues to get ratcheted up, this series is about to get a lot more interesting overall. I'd bet anything that if Tabata can come out of this arc strong, we'll hear a Black Clover anime announcement some time in the next year.
It kind of blows my mind that people like the other characters of this manga. In thinking about, I guess it’s a bit like liking Vegeta on DBZ. Even though that didn’t happen until after Goku had beaten him, but whatever. I’m just a huge fan of Soma and his supporting cast.
Later, after more of the S rank characters are introduced we see that there’s a full on alien invasion going on and that city A has been destroyed in one attack. The S rank heroes scramble to take on the invasion, but while most of them tangle with just one dude, Saitama goes inside the ship and beats the living piss out of everyone he runs into until coming face to face with the leader of the ship.
There’s also a segment with the Dove’s and that kid with the stitches is introduced. I like his character even less here. He’s one of the few elements of this story that seems completely out of place and it’s no different here. If anything he feels more out of place in the manga.
There’s nothing here that’s very original. Extraordinary student going to an average school is nothing new; it’s the classic fish out of water scenario and it’s been done a lot in manga and American comics as well. The only flip in the script is that usually with manga we’re following an ordinary student dealing with the extraordinary student. The convenient writing comes into play when we find out that Mikage’s new master is connected to her old master. It’s a huge stretch of the imagination for her to have stumbled upon the one man in all of Japan that was connected to her former master.
The reason is because of the Deep Sea King who has come to take over the land and stop all the polluting and basically to establish that he and the sea folk are better than us humans. He’s very flamboyant with his presentation and look, but there is something menacing and evil about his design. If Aquaman had a Joker style character, it would be the Deep Sea King… also that’s a great idea someone get that over to DC stat!
The title page on this one was so important (whether it represents a real death or not) and so gorgeous that the editorial team actually made the decision to leave Kubo's original lettering. Granted, given the length of the chapter's title, I think it might have at least partially been a forced choice; still, it was an editorial decision nonetheless, and it's a page I'm grateful to experience nearly exactly as Kubo intended. To end the chapter on the couple of big ink wipes that make up most of my favorite character, Kenpachi, is just too good.
That kind of stunning detail continues throughout this chapter, from the swing of swords, to the splitting of earth, and to one of my favorite things Tabata draws: hair. Hair is a huge identifier of characters in Black Clover, since so many of the characters share this sort of distinctly European look to their faces (at least, European-esque is what Tabata seems to be aiming for to further hammer home the medieval vibe). Some characters stand out, especially Asta and Yami, but even they have distinct crops of hair that make them unmistakable. Hair in shonen manga has a pretty high profile history of defining characters, but Tabata isn't just doing the same old spiky fair: he is taking the time to do somewhat realistic designs. Even when the style is crazy (like Nozel's), Tabata is careful to draw its shape, the way it hangs, and its texture as if you believe that it would at least be possible with some insane amount of time and product to really see a real person's hair like that.
While Punpun is going through physical changes, his family is also going through some changes. The dark comedy kicks into high gear here as Punpun’s dad beats his mom, ends up in jail and she goes to the hospital and never really wants to leave. This essentially takes them out of the story and introduces his uncle as his caretaker. His uncle who is jobless and constantly wanting and not wanting to talk about the existence of god or rather how there is no god.
While Kimetsu no Yaiba continues to get a shoulder shrug from me, another new Jump Start, Bye-Bye Humanity is in Weekly Shonen Jump's pages from Jump Plus. Writer Tzunezo Watanabe and artist Asami Hagiwara write about some type of vague demon-like sickness that spreads evil (and cannibalism, sort of?) between the schoolmates of a young girl raised with a bevy of awkward survivalist tendencies.
Black Clover has cemented itself as a must-read. It's honestly worth it to go back and buy the issues that comprise the current arc just to witness the fight with the mysterious, treacherous bearers of light magic. As I mentioned several reviews ago, a big part of the current fight is the fact that it hinted at an important secret underlying this series: the theft of magic via the genocide of the original magical race. If true, it changes the landscape of this series completely. Yet even independent of the brief but major tease embedded in this fight, the fight itself has been outstanding. Tabata has shown before that detailed magic fight scenes are capable of setting Black Clover apart. This fight, however, features Asta maturing as a swordsman. Adding this dimension to the series is such a huge boon to the series, both dramatically and visually. The sword has been anti-magic and a central feature of the series so far, but hasn't really seen much action as a sword ought to.
Though Gotouge is opting for a more raw-feeling type of line work that belongs in the Jump of a over a decade ago, the thought put into his visual storytelling is ahead of some of his peers. Guys like Horikoshi are freaks of nature: they are wildly talented and creative and can control the pace through the sheer force of channeling shonen goodness through aesthetically strong pages. Creators with more subdued styles are often left to impress with the content of their stories rather than pure aesthetics. I am not sure if content alone will carry Kimetsu no Yaiba; however, I am sure that there are hints here that Gotouge is a mangaka with a lot of potential. There are one or two killer pages that I spent a few minutes on. Given that they were important story pages and I spent my time just sort of staring at them, the visual impact of the page was in lock-step with the story. Having that kind of control over the reader's absorption of the story without simply appealing to your splash pages is always a feat.
Anyways, our hero, Jarra, is as grotesquely disproportionate as his Gunflin kin, sporting a magnificent troll-doll up-fro. Enticed by an opportunity to see the tall, slender and altogether unGunflin-like princess, the usually diligent Jarra and his mischievous friends ditch work to eaves drop on the official council proceedings. The princess seeks the counsel of the Dwarlin Edlers (that is how it is spelled in my copy of the book), hoping these ancient sages can aid in her search for the lost empress. Unfortunately the Dwarlins have gone silent. This silence is one of many mysterious omens surrounding the visit of the princess. Her perpetually guffawed aid does not like it! Not one bit! She will be played by Tilda Swinton in the movie adaptation. The trip turns out to have not been a complete waste, as the Gunflins have discovered an artifact of alien, specifically Ngor, origin. The dialogue hints at the Ngor being a techno-organic race, whose lifeless remain are common in this realm. However, this artifact, which may be the chrysalis referred to in the subtitle, appears to be active. The issue leaves off with the princess reaching out to the glowing artifact.
That’s not the only thing that makes Subaru evil though. Aside from making all of his fall classic match ups Shokugeki, he asks for the challenger’s favorite kitchen knife as a prize. Takumi puts his moon blade on the line and so you can imagine the incredible stakes.
The story isn’t deep. It’s thick with drama and moves at a snail’s pace. I haven’t read the last seven volumes and yet I didn’t feel lost or behind on the story. Sure I had some generic “who’s that”, “what’s going on?” questions, but nothing that really need to be answered in order to read and enjoy the story. It’s just not a very deep world which is probably why I’ve passed on it before. It attempts to be cute and playful because again it’s an action drama trying to capture a very specific audience that basically already likes this style of story and world creation. I would argue that because it chases that audience it alienates new readers looking to just explore the world and not have a formula forced upon them. And sure there’s powers and fighting, but you can get that anywhere so it doesn’t actually hook me on the product.