Last week a new manga subscription service launched, and we had some opinions on its rough start. This and next week’s Mangamo articles will focus on the titles that are there! Well, not all of them. Some of the choices will be deliberate, while others at random. But here you’ll know what’s good and what’s not in Part 2 of the Great Mangamo Manga Tour!
TheOASG’s Coverage of Mangamo
[Part 1 | Please Save My Money Column | Part 2 | Part 3 ]
Musuaki’s Devil-Chi
Fuyuki Hino is your typical high school boy — a nice guy, horny, and sociable. Sakijo Yomina however is not sociable — she comes off as unsociable to boys and girls, and no one knows why. Fuyuki finds out though when he accidentally sees her changing her clothes — she has wings!
In other words, Yomina is a devil. Specifically, a succubus.
Devil-Chi does some interesting things — the reveal of Yomina as a devil (a half-devil) was neat from a paneling standpoint. The manga is generally about a character learning how to open up after being bullied, and I like how the author has previews at the end of each chapter (like we’re watching an anime episode). But the premise of devil in high school is simple, and so is this art. Backgrounds are not always necessary in manga, but the ones in here are unimpressive. It teases a past between Yomina and Fuyuki but neither seem to remember it. And from what we know, Yomina did something to his finger when they were kids, but after 6 chapters, that still hasn’t been explained.
So this likely is going to be a manga that has some ok moments but will be largely unmemorable unless we learn what type of power Yomina gave to Fuyuki. And how serious this series wants to actually get.
Kei Ohkubo’s Arte
Arte is a young woman in early 16th Century Florence who loves to paint. The problem is that’s not what she should be doing as a career according to society. So using that to fuel her fury, she struggles to find anyone to take her on as an apprentice until one, after a test, eventually does. Now we’ll see how she grows as a painter in a male-dominated field.
I’m watching the anime, and for the most part (3 episodes in) it’s about the same, with maybe a few additional scenes added to stretch an episode and one exception (there seems to be a chapter moved up in the anime). So there are some slight differences between the two, but the art so far is what stands out in this manga. It focuses on the type of BS Arte has to deal with while making everything look really appealing. So from a story and an art standpoint it’s compelling.
This manga can also be bought as volumes on select digital services, so if you’ve been curious about Arte, you can give it a spin here.
Yonemaru’s The Little Succulents
Akira Hanada is 34 years old, has no job and is very much a shut-in. Because of that he can’t turn down his mom’s offer to temporarily oversee her plant shop. However because he knows nothing about plants, the succulents are gravely concerned about their future. Cue the plant fairy allowing them to talk to the shut-in! Akira doesn’t know how to handle this, but he’ll have to since his mom’s gonna be away for a year!
The Little Succulents is exactly the work I’d be looking to actually read in any format. It combines Yonemaru’s passion for plants and pairs it with a typical concept: otaku/shut-in is now forced to do work. Just throw in a fantasy element and you get plants like an Echeveria and a Giza Giza Heart instructing Akira to take care of them properly or perish. The humor is terrific, and while in certain aspects the art is fairly weak, for the most part, it’s easy on the eyes. Especially anytime Akira gets his hopes up when a hot lady shows up, only for him to find out they’re already taken (or going to be taken…in front of his face).
So yeah, The Little Succulents rocks. It’s super fun.
Hajime Yamamura’s Seven Edge
An event called The Big Collapse occurred that the world is slowly recovering from, but trouble remains. There are numerous groups that exist who threaten to take advantage of this chaos, and we follow one of them with our main character, Sakuya. He’s a skilled marksman and appears to be one of the best on his team, but it won’t matter when the rest of the members are killed…and by who you thought were your friends. Now he meets another unusual organization that wants his services, but can he actually trust them?
Seven Edge is..something for me. The art for some of its action scenes aren’t too hot, there seems to be everyone has to have supernatural skills to win, and the manga will apparently have a lot of factions that don’t like this new government, but I don’t think I care about their motivations right now.
But I got caught by the twist involving Sakuya and who he thought was his friends, and I’m curious about the new faction he’s now gotten himself mixed up. There are only three chapters up for this series, but if it does update consistently, I’ll likely read it further.
Enishi Shiobe’s Eternity of Creation
Asahi loved art as a child, and especially loved his mom’s terrific artwork; when he found out her favorite painter was Claude Monet, he took to becoming a painter just like him. Then he saw his mom get scolded by her mom after she got second place in a competition. After that moment, she’s been unable to pick up her brush. This moment became seared into his mind, and he not only hates paintings but specifically despises Monet.
But in a wacky set of circumstances, Asahi winds up in 19th Century France and meets Claude Monet himself.
Seeing how Claude Monet turns his life around is the draw because the hook is all Eternity of Creation has. Ok, Monet isn’t struggling, but Asahi learns that he doesn’t want to be a painter in this current painting environment. That’s not good news for Asahi, since he theorizes that the only way he can go back home is through the same drawing by Monet. But again, Monet doesn’t like painting.
The manga has us do a lot of logic leaping to understand Asahi’s precarious situation. And I guess that’s fine, but Asahi himself is kind of meh as a character. So it’s really all about Monet, his drawings, and yes, Asahi’s mom, who still has a positive personality but is still scarred from that moment with her mom. I don’t think I like my chances of keeping up with this unless something great happens.