"Black Clover" Review

Hello again, everyone.

 

My apologies for always getting around to this much too late, but I always seem to be busy these days, testing Yu-Gi-Oh Decks online and doing chores and such.  And so, to my devoted followers out there, I say “thank you”.

Now, to my review of “Black Clover”.

In one of your standard “sword and sorcery” world, two boys named Asta and Yuno train against each other for the title of Sorcerer King, sort of the Hokage or King of the Pirates of this world: the strongest and the most respected, the best.  But Asta, for all his training, has no skills in magic whatsoever. Yuno is much better, at least at that, but Asta just wants it more.

One day, a disastrous situation with a wandering bad guy leads to Asta’s being chosen by a certain magic Grimoire, the major source/power item of the mages of this world.  But there’s a twist: this item gives him the power to negate magic, in the form of a black sword.  This, combined with his physical skills gained through training, seems set to make him an entirely new, different kind of Sorcerer King.

(And, for the record, the name of this Grimoire is the titular “Black Clover”.  They say it’s evil, but we shall, of course, see what comes of this in the fullness of time.)

On the day of the magic tests that select only the best for the different divisions of the kingdom’s Magic Knight divisions, Asta is selected and chosen for the black sheep of the four units, the Black Bulls, a colorful collection of eccentric characters (but aren’t they all?).

Yuno, of course, is selected to join the top Magic Knight force, the Golden Dawn.

Now, there are multiple kingdoms in this world, and multiple Magic Knight divisions.  One seems to be the villain force, while they pretend to the outside world to be working with the heroes.  There are also cruel experiments being done, I think by these villains, to create a new kind of magic soldier.

Asta makes for a great classic “Idiot Hero” trope, and his rivalry with Yuno is also pretty classic.  The use of English-y names and Japanese-y names almost interchangeably throughout the work is interesting, and this Yuuki Tabata character certainly does well at writing interesting people.  Basically, I’d say “Black Clover” is like “Naruto” meets “Seven Deadly Sins”, but with a bit more emphasis on action and less on political and science-y stuff like “Naruto” had.  The story is simpler so far, too.

Heck, even the magic in “Black Clover” is similar to “Seven Deadly Sins”.  It’s more like Seven Deadly Sins meets Naruto without the fantasy races (giants and the like), now that I think about it.

I love “Seven Deadly Sins”, but “Naruto” was only fun for a short time, before it got all intricate and political.  I could take or leave it, but I would seriously recommend “Black Clover”.

Toriko Has Guts!

Hello, everyone.  My apologies for not posting for so many months (especially since I've been visiting my local bookstore much more often, due to family issues!).

But, as they say, better late than never.

A long time ago, I followed the manga/anime series Toriko from its very beginning.  I'm talking, back when it first came out in English and all.  At the time, I enjoyed it greatly-it's combination of physical action, wild fantasy and fantastic food description.  I'm a writer, and I've lifted more than a few good ideas from it (with a few ideas changed to avoid plagiarism, of course).  It's a good series for beginners, as well as a good series from the beginning, but after a while it begins to fall apart.

In this world, fantastic creatures like pigs that sweat butter and poisonous spiny tunas the size of whales (just two hypothetical examples I made up; don't look for them in the actual manga) roam most of the world freely.  But the world of everyday humans is only a small part of this massively-expanded planet.  The rest is a savage wilderness known as The Gourmet World.

It is to this fantastic world that Gourmet Hunters like the eponymous Toriko train to one day go, in the hopes of discovering, capturing and, of course, cooking new and undiscovered animals and plants.  A big thing in this world is also completing one's "Full Course Menu of Life", something I wholly support.

It seems to me that it's not only the hardest things you've ever had to hunt down/prepare, but also the things you've discovered on your journey that matter to you the most.

But a hunter needs a chef to prepare this food, so Toriko befriends the world-ranked Chef Komatsu, a hapless normal with incredible luck.  But, in the shadows of this world, a secret evil group known as the Gourmet Corps seeks to gain control of all the world's ingredients, netting for themselves immense power.

Now, you would think that that's that, wouldn't you?  Well, you're wrong.  Halfway through the series, a new enemy force known as Neo appears, leading to the heroes and the Gourmet Corps to work together in order to end the world-wide famine that wound up being caused by them (It Makes Sense In Context).

I dislike this, but I also dislike how the series has moved on from there.  It used to follow the same old formula of "find dangerous animal/food in a dangerous location, go through hell to capture/prepare it, describe the food, power up and move on".  But, for more than 100 chapters or so, it's been all "travel to crazy place, train to reach food, go through hell to capture/prepare it, move on".  No more time is spent on describing the food anymore; it's pretty much degenerated into all battles and a vague ticking clock of a race against time before something terrible happens.

(Spoiler Alert: It appears that alien cells landed on a regular Earth like ours God-knows-how-many years ago and created all these incredible species.  But those cells were just the seasoning for some space monster, and soon the Earth will be ready for it to cook and eat.)

New elements such as Spirit Food (just what it sounds like) and faster-than-light travel are introduced, but not much is actually done with them for more than one arc as the series seems to move forward at almost a breakneck pace, at the expense of many good ideas getting tossed by the wayside.

Hell, Gourmet Corp and Neo have barely even shown up recently!  My advice on Toriko is to stay close to the beginning but try not to get too invested before things start going bad.

(The anime was heavily censored, also, and the currently Japan-only movie was a major flop.  'Nuff said.)

The Verdict Is In!

Hello again.

Summer is heating up around here, so my energy has been low.  Good thing reading manga is a relatively easy job.

Anyway, I thought I saw this at the bookstore once, but, as usual, it took the series actually coming to my library for me to pick it up.  The series in question is Gakkyu Hotei: School Judgment.

I have to be honest with you: when I first saw this series at the bookstore, I thought it was some sort of juvenile gag manga.  I mean, little elementary school kids holding trials and delivering sentences and whatnot?  In keeping with the artist being none other than Takeshi Obata of "Death Note" and "Bakuman" fame, I thought this premise sounded like something his heroes Akito and Moritaka would have come up with when they were running out of ideas for their manga!

(Bakuman fans will get that reference.  If you're not one, then you are missing out.)

But this series falls more under the "mystery story/occasionally dramatic" manga umbrella, with the occasional bits of humor here and there.  (Plus, said humor is much more up-front than it was in "Death Note" or "Bakuman".)

Pictured above is our (debatable) hero, Abaku Inugami, a grade-school aged defense attorney with a talent for arguing people into submission with sound logic.  Needless to say, this
talent, combined with his rotten attitude, does not win him many friends outside of the courtroom.

In this world, grade school students (and possibly all school students) battle in actual courtroom trials to settle conflicts and arguments.  This system was apparently brought about to curb the kind of scourges that we now face from day to day, such as bullying.

Abaku faces off against Pretty Prosecutor Pine Hanzuki, essentially a twelve-year-old Misa Amane Expy (but without the creepy stalker vibes) and her assistant Lolimatsu (a middle-aged man with creepy stalker vibes aplenty), while protecting his own mysterious past.

I've always wanted to write a mystery, and the visual format of this manga makes it easy to follow.  The cases aren't even usually all that "little kiddy" like one would expect from such a manga.  In the first volume alone there's peeping, the violent murder of a class pet, and we're even led into the next volume with the start of a mysterious drug case.

All the more reason not to "judge" a book by its cover.  (Sorry, I'm tired!)

(Oh, and PS, before I forget: I know I usually only review manga series based on the first volume alone, but it occurs to me that I'll probably always give positive reviews with that format, as every series starts off with its best foot forward.  We'll see if I can't review more actual series on a running basis from here on out, but only if you fans agree with it.

If you have any questions or comments, then go ahead and message me!)

Double Posting: Part Deux

And here I am, ladies and germs, posting the second part of that "double posting" thing I promised you yesterday.  Did you miss me?

Anyway, on the same bookstore trip where I discovered "Tomodachi Monster" (still in the mail, by the way), I also ran across a relatively interesting-looking new series called "Real Account".

In a world where nearly everyone is online and linked up near-constantly through a social media site called Real Account, a loner named Ataru Kashiwagi lives alone with his sister, consoling himself with all of his many online friends.  (Gee, I wonder where we've seen that trope before?)

Anyway, all of a sudden, people from all over Japan (and I think the world, too) find themselves sucked into their phones and into a mysterious new world called Real Account (I think).  There they meet our antagonist, pictured above, the mysterious Marble.

In the "real world", Marble is just the cute mascot for the Real Account site.  Here, however, he is a misanthropic, near-omnipotent yet playful force akin to Koro-Sensei from Assassination Classroom (one of my favorites).  One by one, Marble kills and judges the users, slaying them with tentacles at blinding speeds whenever they fail at one of his sick, deadly online games or hits a total of zero followers.

Along the way, Marble exposes online frauds for public shaming and forces the greedy and the desperate to beg on bended knee and promise the world to their followers if they don't unfriend them (but if their online friend dies, the followers will die as well, so it's a sadistic choice if ever there was one).  He laughs at these actions, claiming that "this is how humans really are".

Basically, it's like a cross between "Doubt", ".hack" and "Battle Royale".  We don't know what Marble is or who is doing this or how, but that's just part of the fun.  And there's a really creepy-cool part at the end of Volume One where Marble (up to this point a solely virtual being) appears in the real world to come after Ataru's sister.

The story is the main focus here, really: following Ataru and his fellow users as they struggle desperately to survive through Lord knows how many deadly online games while despairing over who could betray whom.  And Volume One also has a nice scene where a hottie strips down to her underthings and tells all her followers that she'll take it all off once she reaches a certain number of them.

It pretty much hits every target, save for martial-arts fantasy violence.  (Sorry, ladies and germs, but that's just the way it goes.)

Hope you've enjoyed this special double posting, and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Double Posting Time!

Hi, everyone!  I'm sorry I haven't gotten the chance to just spend all day at the bookstore for a while, but I can still remember the last time I went, just a week or so ago.  And boy, do I have some new manga to share with you!

In apology for the lateness and lack of posting, I'd like to try and attempt a "double posting" of sorts.  I have some things to do today for dinner, and not an infinite amount of time to do them in, so I won't actually be posting a double article today, but I will instead be attempting to post articles both today and tomorrow.

(Maybe making this promise will force me to actually stick to a plan for a change...)

Anyway, moving on.

You guys notice our little friend at the top of the page?  You like him?  Well, his name's Peke and he is one of the titular "Tomodachi Monsters" from today's article.  Shy, friendless Wataru Narimiya (I think that was his name) finds him one day in the woods out behind the school.  But only Wataru can see him.  That is, Wataru and all the other kids out there who have similar "Friend" monsters.

This series has been described as a darker, more realistic take on things like Pokemon and Digimon, and with good reason.  It also has some parallels to Zatch Bell (at least, so far): The monsters and children are actively battling to kill each other for reasons unknown.

And man, is it bloody!  One kid with a cutting-type Friend actually slices a girl's head into bits, and we're left with lovely shots of skull and musculature and skin just falling away from the spot where her cranium used to be.  And then there's the kid who gets his neck snapped...and the one whose Friend enables him to control corpses...

Think of this series as Zatch Bell meets Pokemon, with a tiny hint of Magical Girl Apocalypse in there, too.  As well as a hint of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, as it's insinuated that having a Friend and using it to battle slowly kills your own sense of empathy and humanity.

At this point, we don't know what Friends are (though I'd bet money they're at least semi-imaginary), and we have no idea why they're fighting.  But I assume that will all be cleared up soon enough.

This series is the first one in a LONG while that I have actually decided to purchase and own.  Hopefully my Amazon order containing Volume One will be here soon.

My only complaint is that I've seen on the internet that the series has already run its course after only three volumes.  There's so much potential there, and I just hate seeing it go to waste.

But, with any luck, those two remaining volumes will be just as fun and interesting as this one was.  Go out and get yours today!

(Just don't expect any little virtual pet games or keychain buddies...)

No Secret-This Series is Good!

Greeting once again, everyone, and welcome to the New Year 2016!

And, as we're lucky enough to have it, a week or so ago I discovered a new series at the bookstore that I want to share with you.

If you haven't heard of it already (or haven't guessed by the title and picture), today's review is of Eiji Masuda's "My Monster Secret".  (Or Jitsu wa Watashi Wa, if you prefer.)

High school student Asahi Kuromine (another series with cool and unusual names, which I love) is completely hopeless at keeping things a secret.  It's not that he has a big mouth and goes blabbing to people or anything; it's just that his poker face is more like an open book.  If you ask him if he likes somebody, his face will instantly give it away.

You get the idea.

Anyway, one day after school, he encounters the above silent-type schoolgirl Yoko Shiragami.  With wings.  And fangs.  That's right: Yoko Shiragami is a vampire.  Biggest secret ever, right?

Most people would imagine that she'd be doomed now, her secret being kept by the most transparent man who ever lived.  But instead, Kuromine devotes himself to keeping her secret like he's never kept any secret before.  (He likes her.  Plus, if she's ever found out, her father will pull her out of school.)

Attempting to thwart Kuromine's intentions is the sadistic newspaper gossip rag reporter Mikan Akemi.  She is a great villain.  Her paper prints gossip rag fodder, even if it's made up, and not even for the reasons of journalistic integrity; she just wants to see people suffer.  (How she hasn't been found out and fired by the school, I'll never know.)

Also joining Kuromine as characters are a sadist teacher who picks on him just as much as his closest friends and an emotionless rule-enforcer girl who's actually an invading alien robot.  And it looks like there are other monster girls on the way, if the images I've seen in Google Image search are any indicator.  Just how many secrets can Kuromine keep before he cracks?!

As I've said, the characters are well-written and unique, the story is interesting and seems to be going good places, and the not-conventionally-attractive artwork for Shiragami the female protagonist just puts it over the top.  She's not your typical vampire, either, which is good.  And I love how it hasn't yet degenerated into a distracting T&A fest like Love Hina (which was good in its own right) or Monster Musume (which has gotten to the point where it detracts from what little, paper-thin story there is).

I say we pick give this a read, and that we make no secret of it!  (...I'll stop with the "secret" now.)