When last we checked, there were 43 Viz Select Titles Viz had decided to resurrect from the clutches of TOKYOPOP’s past.
There’s now 44. We’ll keep doing our best to bring you a review of the imprint, or waste our souls trying…
Samurai Girl Real Bout High School
Justin: I’m mostly convinced this is intended to be more of a comedy than actual fighting shounen manga. The problem is neither were actually any good. As far as I can gather from the basic plot, Ryoko is a Daimon High School student who can kick ass and take names, and the school she’s in houses many potential fighters. She’ll basically be doing some fighting, which would be exciting if it was good to look at, but it instead looks messy, and hard to really be satisfied at supposed perverts getting annihilated in seconds. You’ll have to look harder to find a comedy and action manga with a female protagonist, because this isn’t a good one.
Read the free preview of Samurai Girl Real Bout High School.
Someday’s Dreamers
Justin: Someday’s Dreamers, by Norie Yamada and Kumichi Yoshizaki, immediately strikes the right tone by sending a countryside girl off into Tokyo to…get better at magic. Not that it’s a bad thing, but I was hoping this had nothing fantasy related when I dived in. Still, the actual content is solid, as it features a girl who dislikes men to the point where she can’t speak with them, but is a pretty powerful magic user. She’s going to learn and harness that power under a teacher, and also it seems learn more about herself and the people around her. With some nice, soft art and potential storylines at play for future chapters, I’d like to read more of this and see what’s going on.
Read the free preview of Someday’s Dreamers.
St. Lunatic High School
Justin: I read Mikansei No. 1, and that was a funny volume that I had read. So when I learned Majiko! did another manga, I had to go check it out…that turned out to be a mistake. This manga stars a human named Niko who has to take night classes with demons, and, well, it does not turn out very well for her. The only time I chuckled was when Niko’s brother gave her the puppy eyes look that convinced her to try harder at making friends with a skull and other weird demons…this after they tried to establish that this is the 100th job for someone that doesn’t look like he’s 50. I’m not even sure 50 year olds can have 100 jobs (how often is the firing rate?!?), so it goes for the absurd, but the setting and story go against telling these types of things, making it unfunny and a waste of time. Very disappointing.
Read the free preview of St. Lunatic’s High School.
Mouryou Kiden -Legend of the Nymph-
Muse: Written and drawn by former CLAMP member Tamayo Akiyama, Mouryou Kiden has the same visual style as a lot of CLAMP’s earlier works, but also has the group’s confusing plot style. After an intro telling the reader that this will be a “star-crossed lovers” story, there is an immediate double page info dump about the backstory of the world. What seems to be important in the first chapter is that there are two warring factions and a demon princess who is trying to break the seal on her evil goddess mother’s captivity. She’s stopped by a boy with a flute, but despite the fact that they were at odds only a few pages ago, they act civil to each other and the princess immediately falls for the boy’s “deep” eyes (the manga’s words, not mine).
The rest is a confusing mishmash of things, and I’m not sure what’s going on or what any of these characters are trying to accomplish. In fact, I have no clear visual on the world as well; aside from a few platforms and a pillar, the visual focus is on the character designs. They are gorgeous, but not having a sense of how the characters are moving through space just made things even more confusing. Mouryou Kiden felt like it was trying to do too much at once, and as a result I won’t be reading any further.
Read the free preview of Mouryou Kiden.
GOTH
Muse: This title comes with a parental advisory warning, and with good reason! GOTH deals with self-harm right off the bat and then adds in a murder mystery about someone who kills people and removes their hands. I won’t say much more than that, since I don’t want to spoil it for anyone interested in reading it.
Even though this is not my wheelhouse when it comes to manga, I enjoyed it! The preview chapter worked well as a one-shot, and while not all of my questions were answered, it was as enticing as it was disturbing, which is a hard balance to strike. I’m not sure if the rest of the volume has stand-alone chapters or continues following the characters introduced in this first section, but if you’re a fan of psychological horror, this one is pretty good!
Read the free preview of GOTH.
Red Hot Chili Samurai
Muse: I picked this title to review based off of the fact that the title made me laugh, so I was expecting something a little more off the wall. Instead, it looks like the title comes from the fact that the main character has an obsession with peppers and eats them constantly. Otherwise, this felt like a typical setup for the kind of manga that can’t decide whether it wants to be a comedy or act serious.
The main group appear to be some kind of peacekeepers, but their plan to stop a group of gamblers in the preview chapter didn’t make much sense—they spend most of the episode sneaking in, but then dramatically reveal themselves and fight everyone anyway. That made me wonder why they didn’t just storm the place, since it would’ve given them the same result, but I digress.
There’s not much to go off of here, so I’ll say that it may be worth the look if you’re into samurai-era comedy. Otherwise, it didn’t distinguish itself enough from other titles with a similar approach.
Read the free preview of Red Hot Chili Samurai.
