I don't know what to make of Kodaka's lastest manga title, Ihoujin ~Etranger~. It's different from anything she's done before, though the parts are played by mostly familiar character designs. For instance, slut!Kai is paired with young Elvis!Masa. The chapters seem disjointed, the characters oddly detached, the premise a mystery to me. I get that at least two of these characters are eternally youthful incubi, but...um...why? Uncommitted, non-monogamous demons playing house? The story might be pure genius if I could only understand why some people who have sex with pointy-haired Kai die, and some people don't.

There's such a hodge-podge of elements here -- new romance lost to the vengeance of a rejected lover, the pain and boredom of immortality, comic jealousy, goofy lecherousness, chibi cuteness and potty humor -- that the narrative never gels. At first, I thought this was because the story was divided in two sections, but the "tragical-comical-historical-pastoral" genre-mixing is found throughout.

Plot would just get in the way of the wings in Sachiyo Sawauchi's Devil x Devil. Demons and fallen angels walk among us for the express purpose of ... well ... making out with each other. You would think they would at least want to corrupt humans, but we don't have the wings. Although I had seen the first chapter serialized in Gold, I had forgotten how rough the art was. Some elements -- the lank hair? the spindly limbs? the huge shoes!-- remind me of a much less skillful Ai Yazawa (Gokinjo Monogatari). I liked the stories, but I wouldn't recommend this volume to anyone who wasn't a fan of Kou Fujisaki. Copious crabby ukes paired with smugly superior semes. (Sorry for the alliteration. Blame the BL cliche, not me.) Did I mention the wings?

Juuni Kokki 9 - I think I liked the idea of Taiki and his emperor more than the reality of Taiki and his emperor (a little arrogance goes a long way), but I'll reserve judgment until I've seen the animated version. It still disturbs me that the novels don't resolve the mystery of where Tai-ou is and the recovery of Taiki's unicorn powers. I hope the dj-ka address this.

posted at 6:45 PM