My Goodreads Review of My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lvl. 999, volume 3 by Mashiro

 First review of the year is one I have been wanting to talk on for awhile.

My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999, Vol. 3 by Mashiro
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A winter storm and black-out means that it was a perfect time for my first completed read of the year. Which is not exactly a re-read, but sort-of is. This volume recounts episodes 7-10 of the anime. I ended-up following the manga and even going back and purchasing a physical copy of this volume because of chapter/part 30 of the manga that ends this volume. To me it is one of the most startling mature philosophical expressions of love that I have seen in anime or manga.

I won't do a full-recap, but to give some backstory: this series is a shoujo romance manga about about a college student named Akane whose life is sort-of a mess after a recent break-up as she falls in love with a professional gamer named Akito Yamada—the title character (her ex was a gamer as well). In this volume she and Yamada are not yet a couple, but we are all but assured by the end of the chapter that they will become a couple (I am currently on volume 8 in which a lot more pivotal things have happened).

I want to highlight this volume because of chapter 30. During the typical "sick day" trope where one love interest becomes sick and the other takes care of them. Akane overworks herself and becomes sick, so Yamada comes over takes her to the doctor and stays by her side while she is resting. When Akane wakes-up and her and Yamada are talking about what happens they come to talk about love. Yamada has never fell in-love with anyone and instead has turned-down many girls pretty-coldly during his life and as he does finally fall in-love with Akane—he feels intense guilt for the people whose feelings he has hurt. Akane, whose ex left her for somebody else he met while online gaming, surprisingly has compassion for Yamada and Yamada questions why given her experience with her boyfriend. She states that she was glad that her ex was up-front to her about the fact that he loved someone else and didn't try to just two-time her (most of what she says here we see in happen in volume 1/episode 1 where she accepts the breakup stoicly and with a pained-smile despite being hurt by it as we would see later, but now we learn what she was thinking as this awkward/painful episode transpired). What she says next is the moment I knew this was one of the best shoujo series I have ever encountered:

"No matter what I said, I knew it wouldn't change anything, so when he broke up with me, I accepted it right away.

If he ever thinks about me or feels nostalgic, I want him to remember me smiling not bawling.

I want him to think that he had a great woman, and that he regrets leaving me. Don't you think it's better that way?"

Yamada thinks over his past, and easily agrees. While Akane is not a perfect protagonist, she is the heroine required for this story. Despite this obviously being a story of the soujo demographic-category, our lead has a lot of shounen hero personality traits. I tell you I was knocked out of my seat when I first heard those lines from above, and I still get chills reading them now. A lot of "serious" novels can't give you insight on how to deal with the end of a relationship that is equal to this. I have much that I can say about this series in its totality, but I just wanted to highlight this pivotal scene which would be a foreshadowing to another scene that would occur later on in the story (view spoiler)[when the two finally consummate their relationship (hide spoiler)]. It was nice looking back on this early part of the story again.

Al Green - For The Good Times
The irony of posting a breakup song on a review of a book that is leading to the main couple actually getting together is unusual, but I feel it works on what I was talking about.

In the Afterword, the author says that this was the volume where it started being a true romance manga. Amen

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My Goodreads Review of The Promised Neverland, Volume 20 (and the series as a whole).

 My farewell to this series. There is always a sense of reward and sorrow when a good series you read or watch come to an end and you are done with it. That is me now with The Promise Neverland. My love of manga is partly because of the franchise so I feel I owe a debt to it. So here are my thoughts:

The Promised Neverland, Vol. 20 by Kaiu Shirai
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Around now, seven years ago...
I was drawing the prototype storyboards of The Promised Neverland that I would later submit to the Shōnen Jump editorial department. I was confident about my idea. But there were many elements of the story that didn't have the standard "Jump" traits. It had a female protagonist, and it was plot driven instead of character driven.
Even as I look back on it now, I strongly believe that depending on the editor, my submission could have been rejected on the spot." - Kaiu Shirai, October 2, 2020

Aquí se Puede

[I will get to the actual volume in this review, but this is the meta-portion:]

The Promised Neverland, along with One-Punch Man & Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, got me to read manga after spending so long avoiding the format despite being an anime fan for most of my life. Now manga makes-up the near-majority of the sequential-art that I read. That was not true in April 2019 when I decided (very correctly in hindsight) not to wait for a second season of the anime and read the manga from where the first season ended. This story was a very interesting look into the dystopian/horror genre in anime/manga. It was also a very interesting look into two things that I tend to note on in anime/manga/light-novels: the depictions of Black people in the format and the use of involuntary servitude (e. g. slavery, serfdom, etc.). The use of those elements in the plot were different and predictable in this story.

To quickly address the former: Despite the standard-line of manga abiding by the artistic concept of Mukokuseki (無国籍), which is to say of no one ethnic o national origin, it has always been clear that in-practice this just meant making characters look generic and white (interestingly, you don't see a lot of characters drawn with "Asian" features unless they are from China or Southeast Asia). When Black characters did appear in the early days of anime & manga, it was usually in the blackface minstrelsy style. This only started changing in the 1980s—and it was a slow change. Nowadays, it is expected of Japanese illustrators to draw more realistic depictions of Black/dark-skin characters—but every so often there are relapses. While I think that the artist Posuka Demizu did a good job at drawing most of the Black characters in this book (this was a very ethnically diverse non-mecha series), I still can't get my head over why she retreated back to the old stereotypes for Sister Crone. The character was dead before I started reviewing the manga, but I was planning to lodge my complaint on that when I reviewed the series in-full.

I have to say I was more fascinated in how it depicted slavery. Technically, it does not really depict slavery as the kids are technically raised as livestock on farms rather than chattel on slave plantations, but the way that places like Grace Field were organized in the story were plantation-adjacent (especially when we learn what their true purpose was). I think The Promised Neverland, along with Shadows House (can't wait to review this book on Goodreads one day. Another dystopian/horror series that uses serfdom instead of slavery), are some of the better analogues to involuntary servitude as oppose to most depictions you see from series originating from light-novels (a Japanese media format with much less quality control) that tend to depict slavery through the lens of male power-fantasy. I think the display of how othered and de-humanized the humans in the demon world were was especially well-done.

[Ok, now on to the actual volume]

With all that said, the finale was less about a final battle, but with the final reckoning of the price of freedom for the stories heroine. While most of the resolutions for the characters are satisfactory (unless you're Isabella), Emma's luck of getting out of all obstacles in the story unscathed ends here, and she is forced to give-up something substantial (view spoiler)[her memories (hide spoiler)] to the deity that controlled the over-arching events of the story in order to obtain the passage of the humans from the demon world to Earth (which in the current day of this volume is uncomfortably looking like where our current world is headed). Despite this price, Emma agrees that the bigger goal of liberation is the most important. The last line from that other comic—The Complete Persepolis—rings true here ("Freedom had a price"). I may have wished for something happier and not bittersweet, but the ending we have here is solid.

I think that The Promised Neverland will always have a mixed reception because of the second season of the anime. If you only watched it through the anime, than you view it along with the Matrix sequels as the sequel tainting the whole franchise or season 2 of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya as one of the great disappointments of anime. But if you only read the manga, or like most people, watched season 1 then read the manga it is one of the greatest series of the 2010s. The "Goldy Pond arc" of volumes 7-11 was the highlight of the series to me (and why I was so disgusted with season 2 of the anime totally cutting it out). While I do think I have read better manga since I began this series (that I have not yet covered on Goodreads), this is the second series where I covered most of it on Goodreads after Demon Slayer which I finished last year and one of the best manga I have covered so far.


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My Goodreads Review of Marvel's Voices: Indigenous Voices #1

 With all the sorrow of this month, I still haven't forgotten to take some time to honor our Indigenous family this month and I have an excuse to read American comic books again—something I hadn't done in a long time. 

Marvel's Voices: Indigenous Voices #1 by Rebecca Roanhorse
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I haven’t read an American comic book since 2021, so I know I was going to be a little rusty on reviewing one now. I am so use to manga now that several times while reading this I had to stop myself from reading the speech bubbles and text box from right to left. The fact is, I still have fairly substantial back-catalog of western comic books that I need to read and given this is November, good reason to read this short-anthology celebrating Marvel Comics’ Indigenous heroes. This is not the first time reading a comic anthology about Indigenous people as I previously read and reviewed This Place: 150 Years Retold an excellent historical narrative anthology on the history of Indigenous people in Canada. Like in that book, the illustrations vary in quality, but the stories are a good introduction/sample. I really wish there was more here to read, but better than nothing.

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