Booklog: Manga Dump, Part the First

[nebroadwe]

森 薫 [Mori Kaoru], Emma 5-7 (tr. Sheldon Drzka)

Emma and William meet and correspond, deepening their understanding of one another, but not even William's unconventional mother supports their relationship. When William attempts to break off his engagement to Eleanor, her father, the imperious Viscount Campbell, has no intention of being put to the blush by a social climber, however wealthy. Apprised by William's father of Emma's existence, he takes steps to have her removed, forcing William himself to go his limit on her behalf. I like the way this story ends, without resolving all obstacles with a romantic deus ex machina -- unless you want to count Hakim's intervention (sans elephants, alas!) early in volume 7 to galvanize William's (perhaps improbably sucessful) search for Emma. I also enjoy the way it fleshes out the relationship between William's parents as a comment on the difficulties that attend a marriage across class lines, but also as a portrait of two people whose marital problems did not stem solely from their class differences. The art continues superb; this manga is worth acquiring just for the pictures. I can't wait to see how it translates into animation. Recommended.

John Ostrander & Jan Duursema, Star Wars–Legacy 1: Broken

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Alliance brought down the Empire and restored peace to its worlds ... for a while. Now the Sith have returned, fomenting a civil war and the destruction of the Jedi in order to rule over a reconstituted Empire. Only the last Skywalker can stand against them, but he's seen too much death to care anymore. I don't particularly care myself: I enjoyed the original Star Wars films, but haven't found much enjoyment in the novels, for some reason. I'm also not a fan of cynical young men griping angstily about how destiny has screwed them over -- unless the griping is written very well, I'd rather they just got on with saving the galaxy. For my money, the best scene in this installment is when Luke Skywalker shows up to tell his descendant to get his head out of his fundament. The art's of a style I'm not particularly fond of, either: the kind of realism that pays far too much attention to jutting bone structures and heavy musculature. Yawn. Not to my taste, but not awful, either.

岩永 亮太郎 [Iwanaga Ryotaro], Pumpkin Scissors 3 (tr. Ikoi Hiroe)

Pursuing hints of a drug and weapons cartel operating out of the sewers, Imperial Army State Section III (aka Pumpkin Scissors) finds its investigations literally blocked by State Section I's Claymores, whose orders are to kill the druglords, not interrogate them. Then the action shifts from the battlefield to the ballroom, as Lieutenant Alice Malvin is summoned to fulfill her duty as a daughter of one of the Thirteen Appointed Families and meet her fiancé, Lord Lionel Taylor -- a duty she undertakes reluctantly. The conspiracy hinted at in volumes 1 and 2 gets fleshed out a bit more here, to the extent that it develops a name (the Sterling Wheel) and some Batman-style villains to personify it. Machs' character arc from the previous installment, in which he had to decide whether to trust the taciturn Oland, gets some more payoff here as the two of them descend into the sewers while Alice fights a holding action behind them. Oland himself is nicely conflicted, recognizing in one of their enemies a man like himself, scarred by the experiments that created them both to be more killing machine than human. The art's still a bit clunky, as are some of the tone transitions (particularly the abruptness with which Alice's engagement is introduced). Iwanaga's not much at home among the nobility (or women); his military and lower-class (male) characters have a lot more life to them. But I'm not expecting more from this than entertainment, and I'm getting that. Still provisionally recommended as mind candy.