Re: Dave's Capsules for June 2025

Hello Dave,
I have subscribed to this group this evening and read several of
your Capsules. Your work wouild be welcome in rec.arts.manga
especially those portions concerned with the manga which i have
seen mentioned multiple times in your capsule reviews.
If you do not want to post there may I copy your reviews of manga
with full attribution to that group. See quoted material  which will
come with the original group attribution as well.
I read a  lot of stuff online but i dropped a review of a new Batman
graphic novel in rec.arts.comics.dc.universe - Batman Dark Age.
It was a refreshing read.
bliss - a fount of nearly useless information about people
who only existed as images poorly printed on cheap paper
and in the minds of countless young victims of cheap presses.
On 6/27/25 19:57, Dave Van Domelen wrote:

                     Dave's Comicbook Capsules Et Cetera
           Generally Monthly Picks and Pans of Comics and Related Media
 Standard Disclaimers: Please set appropriate followups.  Recommendation does
not factor in price.  Not all books will have arrived in your area this month.
An archive can be found on my homepage, http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/Rants
      Rain is nice, but my lawn is too damp for the mowing it now needs.
 

Manga Collections:
       Most of these are "tankobon" or collections of work serialized in a
weekly or monthly publication, although some were written directly for the
collection.  All of them have been translated from Japanese (or maybe Korean,
although I don't think I'm reading any manhwa) into English.  Things with a
manga aesthetic but done in English originally will go in one of the sections
below as appropriate.
       Kaiju No 8 vol 13: Viz/Shonen Jump - This is a gantlet.  Kafka has to
get across several city blocks before Number 9 can assimilate his childhood
friend Captain Ashiro.  9 has gone to a lot of effort to prevent this from
happening as the big battle enters yet another volume.  After several volumes
of the protagonists barely managing to fight back against numbered kaiju
tailored to defeat them, vol 12 ended with the appearance of a truly insane
number of daikaiju...like finally beating a game boss only to have their
health bar refill and get joined by five more bars the same size.
Fortunately, that was just the author having gotten the hang of setting up
cliffhangers for the tankobon, and this volume is full of stuff going
humanity's way, turning despair into faint glimmers of hope.  Of course, as
usual for this series, there's occasional flashback sequences when a
character comes on the scene with a new powerup, not so much to explain how
they got the power as to explore their deeper background and the reason they
willingly throw themselves into combat with monsters.  Recommended.
$11.99/$15.99Cn/#8.99UK, rated Teen.
       Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. vol 8: Viz Signature - While it's been
clear for a while that the real enemy is Capitalism, this volume puts names
and faces on the specific people behind the looming Kaii mutation crisis,
while also establishing who's been an informed participant and who's just
been another pawn.  After a little wrap-up from the shrine story last volume,
this one focuses on MMGI learning of the next stage of the plot, the reasons
behind it, and planning how to cut it off at the pass.  It does get a little
scattered in the reading, I think Sekka Iwata was trying to pull together a
few too many plot threads without dropping any of the ones from vol 7, and
things don't stay on any one character for very long.  Next volume may well
be an extended fight scene as nothing goes as planned for anyone at all
except maybe the bishy guy from last volume (who I thought was a lady at the
time) who seems to be mostly about chaos.  Recommended.
$14.99/$19.99Cn/#10.99UK, rated Teen.
       Tank Chair vol 4: Kodansha - So, the title character's demise in vol 3
followed by a time skip left me wondering what would happen next...and what
happens next is a flashback to several years before Nagi and his sister fled
the Academy.  This does allow some extra camera time for other characters who
didn't survive vol 3, but the main purpose is to introduce a new character
who knew Nagi back before his Tank Chair days.  A secondary purpose is to
provide a possible retcon regarding how Nagi could be so badass and still end
up paralyzed...which feels kind of like backfill after some pantsing by the
writer.  If there's an overarching theme, it's "how do severely emotionally
stunted people raised only to be killers deal with emotions like love, be it
familial or romantic?"  Still no real answers to how the world got into such
a crappy situation, but that doesn't really feel like the kind of question
the author intends to address unless it's just a side effect of Sensei's
immortal quest to create another like himself.  On the high end of mildly
recommended.  $13.99/$18.99Cn, rated Older Teen 16+
       Shy vol 4: Yen Press - While the main conflict in this volume centers on
Spirit, it's also Shy's first real "break out" where she shows she really has
what it takes to be a hero when the energy blasts start flying.  It's much
the same as the virtues she's shown in previous volumes, but she finally
believes in herself enough that her heart is expressed in her powers...which
is pretty much how powers work in this universe.  Beyond that, though, the
climax of the story and its aftermath are an examination of how fundamentally
broken a hero often is.  Denial of one's own needs in order to exist through
service can easily be twisted to villainous ends, as happened with Spirit's
mirror opponent.  Generational lessons in "I only have value to others" can
make you a hero, as happened to Spirit, but they can also just plain break
someone.  After the big story is done, there's a couple of disconnected short
pieces, and in one of them it's clear that Shy herself didn't really absorb
the "you can't just live for others" lesson from the Russia arc.  A little
more of her backstory comes out in the process, though.  The last chapter in
this volume sets up the next longer arc, with a mysterious young woman who
doesn't appear to be connected to heroes or villains but is definitely not a
normal girl nonetheless.  Overall, this volume continues to reinforce my
feeling that Bukimi Miki is relatively inexperienced and was not really
planning things out for stuff like tankobon collections, very much a
"pantser" in terms of plotting.  There's overall themes, largely tied to
following your heart and knowing your own heart and those of others, but the
plot itself is still firming up at this point.  Still, despite the uneven
bits, there's some strong thematic scenes.  Recommended.  $13.00/$17.00Cn
rated Teen LV (but as noted last month, there doesn't seem to be any actual
strong language in the English translation, unless you consider "natto" to be
a foul word.)
       Isekai Samurai vol 1: Yen Press - Okay, this one lets you know right in
the title what subgenre it wants to be part of.  And if you've been reading
my reviews for the last few years, you'll know I do read a fair number of
"Isekai" in part because they're pretty popular and therefore easy to find
lately.  But what is an isekai anyway?  Here's a brief (hopefully)
explanation from my POV before I get into the meat of this particular sample.
Isekai literally just means any story in which the protagonist is in "another
world" (which is the meaning of the word isekai, as helpfully explained in
the appendix of this volume).  That's pretty broad, and could include mundane
travelogues, so it's generally restricted to situations where there's
something fantastical about how the protagonist got there.  Prior to the
current surge of isekai stories, the most common form of this is the "portal
fantasy," in which the protagonist is physically transported somewhere else.
Maybe there's a literal portal, perhaps with "Be Sure" inscribed on it, or
maybe it's a tornado or an explosion or just staring at Mars really hard.
But the character is basically themself in Oz, or on Mars, or in King
Arthur's Court.  They might have some sort of unusual abilities related to a
plot device or the nature of the world (any reasonably fit human on Mars
could do the sorts of things John Carter does, much like for a while Superman
was explained as being native to a heavier-gravity world, possibly inspired
by John), but they have continuity of self.  (Richard Corben's Den is
massively transformed, but again this seems to be just a thing that happens
to humans.)  While there are still some portal fantasy stories in the current
crop of isekai (Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear, to pick an example from my reading
list), most of them go with an alternative: reincarnation.  Where a portal
might go both ways, with Dorothy returning to Kansas between adventures, or
the D&D kids fruitlessly searching for a way home, reincarnation is generally
considered to be one-way.  Often the protagonist is shown dying at the start
of the story (rarely being hit by a truck, despite the cliche), although
sometimes they just fall asleep and then wake up in a new life (e.g. Rei in
I'm In Love With The Villainess).  Now, as to the protagonist of this
particular story, she doesn't die...which is the PROBLEM.  She's a hardcore
samurai who longs to die in battle, but she keeps surviving, and the wars are
winding down in 1600AD when she's from.  So she prays to Buddha in a temple
of reincarnation...and is just sort of moved to another world.  Portal
fantasy of the "a god decided to put me in this world and skip the dying
part" variety like Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear.  (I think the translator missed an
opportunity by not having her react to being transported into the middle of a
fantasy world battle with, "Oh joy!  A FRAY!" though.)  While the portal
fantasy part is a bit unusual, and the "already a warrior in feudal Japan
rather than a modern-day schlub" thing is very unusual, they do stick with
the cliche by having this new world being basically a LitRPG fantasy game
world, with things like B-rank monsters and the like.  Of course, Ginko
Tsukitsuba (Silver Moon-sword guard, roughly) is also not the typical
genre-savvy LitRPG isekai protagonist, so her reactions are refreshingly
different from the usual...if also VERY fight-happy.  She is ecstatic to find
out that "Heroes" exist who can defeat any of the monsters she's already
faced, because maybe one of THEM can kill her in a fair fight!  Yeah, Ginko's
whole gag does risk wearing thin, which makes supporting cast important.
(And to be fair, Groo's still around after more than a generation at this
point, and his gag STARTED thin, deliberately.)  Part of the supporting cast
is a sexy foul-mouthed elf nun who runs an orphanage and appears to be a
retired Hero.  I dunno how long this premise can go without wearing out its
welcome, but I definitely enjoyed this first installment, and laughed out
loud several times.  My sense of humor is a touch skewed, of course, so your
mileage may vary.  Recommended.  $14.00/$18.00Cn, Rated Older Teen LNV (LOTS
of violence, most of the language comes from the nun, and so does all of the
very mild nudity)
 

       Dave Van Domelen, "It wasn't cool of me to force all of humanity to love
me...I'm not Disney." - Immortus, Doom Patrol S4