I finished this month’s Harta!
ハルタ ９１号
A 新連載 this month is キラキラとギラギラ by 嵐田佐和子, an author with a couple of past series in the magazine. It’s got a cute premise - it’s essentially about a Shojo manga protagonist transferring to a rough Gekiga-style school and reconnecting with a boy from her past. It provides a lot of room for the author to flex both styles! Should be a fun one.
Another is 八百万黒猫速報 by 浅井海奈, set around the turn of the (previous) century, about a 妖魔 who’s secretly one himself and an odd reporter. The setting and yokai stuff seems very cool - curious to see where it goes.
Another new thing is 魔法少年マモル始まらない！ by 大武政夫. This is the author of ヒナまつり, and they’ve given them a lot of fanfare on their return, with a short in January’s Terang, this six-part limited series, and then plans for a full running series after that.
This is a pretty short introduction to the premise of the limited series - a boy gets a Sailor Moon style magic companion, even though it’s his sister who’s into that kind of thing, and it just sort of uselessly causes trouble for him. Has a bit of a cynicalish humor that makes me wonder if thing’s get dark by the end of the six chapters.
母と呼ばないで by のがみもゆこ is a memorable 読切 about a nice girl named 岡一, whose nickname becomes おかあさん, and her struggle to either embody that or break away from it.
The author of 煙と蜜 is out with a hernia and so serialization of that is suspended and they ran the original 読切 in place of this month’s chapter. It’s interesting to see - in standalone form there’s a lot less wiggle room for me to hope for later twists or plot developments that would make the premise something other than exactly what it looks like - “a romance about a young girl and her much older adult betrothed fiance.” A premise I continue to have misgivings about!
In any case – I hope the author recovers soon!
In this month’s installment of ホテル・メッツァペウラへようこそ by 福田星良 there’s a fun sequence of Jun happily cleaning, and an interesting story about him attracting suspicion and distrust from a guest who saw his tattoos.
Manga report:
- ヴァンピアーズ (2-6)
I finished the rest of “Vampeerz” that’s out! It’s a really fun series - I would have expected it to be darker or more brooding, but it’s the kind of book where new characters show up all mysterious and seem threatening and then it turns out they’re goofs who join the comic dynamic of the main cast (カラ’s super fun), only occasionally dipping into outright drama (which are the parts I like less). Sort of like Fruits Basket, actually, but like, with lesbian vampires. I also like that there isn’t really any sense of the human protagonist being predated on (I mean other than I guess literally in terms of the blood thing) like is usually an element with vampire stuff - she’s very much the instigator in the relationship.
On the perviness scale… well, it’s not zero. Characters tend to wear skirts and then fall over at particular angles to the camera, for example. And there’s a lot of casual nudity later on. But I’d say on the whole it works well in the context of a story about these character’s romances and their own desires, more like a well-written romance novel for teens than like, ecchi.
I’ll likely pick up new volumes as they come out. I’d be curious if there will be a ton more? I could see it maybe wrapping up with the next one or two, or maybe not. - ハクメイとミコチ (1-3)
This is both a Harta catch-up series AND a “returning to manga I was checking out from the library” series! I had read the first volume in English right before I switched to manga only in Japanese, and remember being surprised at how good it was. The series is very very pleasant - basically two tiny women live in the woods together. And it’s about the people they meet, the crafts they learn (one makes food to sell to a store, the other repairs tools and does carpentry and the like), the places they visit, etc. All of it’s stuffed with fun detail and there’s an easy-going vicarious experience to it too - as Hakumei and Mikochi are quick to buy things, try food, play games, etc., occasionally encountering obstacles but not really any that really threaten to stop them doing those things. When Mikochi forgets her wallet - everyone likes her enough to give her free samples, that kind of thing. It gives the feeling of a “tiny little life in the woods” but definitely in an idealized (and fun) way.
Volume 3 dipped a bit into more actually adventurous type stuff with peril and confrontation and I didn’t like that as much - my favorite parts are the people they encounter, like the necromancer in 1, the hairdresser in 2, or the mouse photographer in 3. - ふしぎの国のバード (7)
This is a really good volume! It marks a major development for the emotional core of the series so far -Maries’ intense overflowing love of ChristmasBird and Ito growing into full-on travel partners who trust and rely on eachother, and includes a nice look back at their journey so far. A nice coincidence since it was the last volume we were going to read together! Not really journey’s end as they’ve still got a ways to go, but definitely a satisfying conclusion of this phase. - 大ダーク (1)
This is the current series by the author of Dorohedoro (which I heard really good things about, read the first volume maybe before I was totally ready language-wise and wasn’t quite on the right wavelength for, and mean to go back to at some point). I’d been picking these up from Kinokuniya because the physical volumes look really cool with a tinted transparent cover and some colored pages inside. It’s really good! It may be 大 dark stylistically, but it’s definitely not grimdark story-wise. A fun goofy adventure about a plucky kid who everyone’s trying to kill and his talking backpack, that happens to take place in deep space and everything’s weird or made out of skeletons or insects and stuff. Death also seems very fun so far. Will likely read more very soon.