I was talking to John Jakala recently about his Two-Volume Theory of Manga. Basically, John’s position is that you can’t always determine a title’s quality from a single digest.
I’ve had some reading experiences that back that up. Fruits Basket didn’t really kick in until the second installment. Eerie Queerie seemed sensitive and intelligent in the first volume, then went hideously off the rails in the second.
This weekend’s reading stack has offered some interesting variations on the Two-Volume Theory. Take the second volume of Wataru Yoshizumi’s Ultra Maniac. I liked the first one a lot for its magical slapstick and the Lucy-and-Ethel dynamic of its leads, Ayu and Nina. I like the second, too, though for very different reasons.
Yoshizumi downplays the supernatural antics, focusing instead on the characters’ relationships. Ayu and Nina’s suitors, including a new arrival from Nina’s magical dimension, get some interesting layers. Yoshizumi also deepens the friendship of the two leads. When they realize they have a crush on the same boy, the stage is set for some predictable rivalry and antagonism, but Yoshizumi has the girls pick friendship over romance. It’s a refreshing development, and it’s executed well.
Funny farce in the first, effective interpersonal stuff in the second. Who knows where the third volume will go?
I picked up the first volume of Del Rey’s Ghost Hunt pretty much on a whim. With Halloween around the corner, I was looking for supernatural titles for a possible Flipped column, and it’s an adaptation of a series of young-adult novels, which follows up on last week’s installment.
Honestly, Ghost Hunt didn’t do very much for me. Shiho Inada has done some nice work in adapting Fuyumi Ono’s novel, but not quite enough. The manga follows a group of spiritualists as they investigate a potential haunting on a high school campus. Leading the pack is Kazuya, a teen-aged ghost hunter who uses science to investigate spiritual phenomena. He’s joined by a sarcastic hipster monk, a sexy temple priestess, a boyish Australian priest, a psychic schoolgirl (you can tell because she has thick glasses and lank, dark hair), and a popular TV fortune teller. They’re an interesting bunch, and it’s kind of fun to watch them squabble over whose approach is best.
Kazuya also conscripts ghost-story-loving schoolgirl Mai into the investigation when she accidentally damages some equipment (and Kazuya’s usual assistant). Mai is the gateway character, the pair of fresh eyes providing untrained, down-to-earth perspective on the case. Unfortunately, she’s also an exposition generator, asking question after question so the experts can explain what’s going on. It wears thin, as does Kazuya’s Henry Higgins treatment of Mai. He’s incredibly condescending to her, to the point that she nicknames him “Naru-kun” (short for narcissist). She crushes on him of course, though I’m not quite convinced his dreaminess outweighs his obnoxiousness.
The story itself isn’t very scary and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Lots of things happen, but very few of them turn out to be relevant in the end. Inada also tends to draw big red circles around the few useful clues, which undermines suspense.
That said, I’m still curious about where the series will go. I’m not sure if all of Ono’s novels follow the same character set or if it varies from book to book. And then there’s the estimable Mr. Jakala’s theory, which always leaves open the possibility for improvement. We’ll see.