The Ancient Magus’ Bride has proved to be remarkably popular and has led to several spin-offs like this one. Across the pond in New York City, Jack Flash and her changeling “sibling” Larry (she’s the fae one) run a detective agency dealing with crimes involving the magical world or those that threaten to bring the magical and mundane into too-close contact. In the city that never sleeps there’s never a dull day in the office, but that’s exactly how Jack and Larry want it.
Jack Flash And The Faerie Case Files is credited to three people, Yu Godai for the story, artist Maka Oikawa, and original series creator Kore Yamazaki as the script supervisor and I’m curious how involved Yamazaki is in this series. A couple of characters from the main series do show up briefly in supporting roles but their characterization feels a little different; not because of the fact that they’re interacting with different characters than Chise, Elias, and their friends, but because you can feel that their thoughts and actions are being dictated by another writer. That is something to be expected from a spin-off work like this but it still felt a bit jarring.
I’m especially curious of Yamazaki’s involvement because of the basic premise for the story — Jack and Larry are changelings and are very similar to a pair of changelings we meet in the main series, Shannon and Shanahan in volume 5. The dynamics between both sets are very similar, they’re much closer to each other than they are to anyone else in either world, and I wonder if this is true for all changelings in Yamazaki’s world (since, the only people who can understand what it is to grow up in an alien world is someone who went through the same experience) or if it’s just a quirk that these two sets of characters have the same kind of relationship. I found out after reading this volume that Jack and Larry show up in one of the AMB spin-off light novels, The Ancient Magus’ Bride: The Golden Yarn, which I haven’t read so I can at least say that reading Golden Yarn before this volume is not required.
Looking at Maka Oikawa’s art, the character designs look similar (especially if you haven’t read one of the main volumes in a while) but their overall art style is much scratchier and uses far fewer screen tones than Yamazaki does. This gives the entire series a bit of an overall rougher feel, even if the dangers Jack and Larry encounter are far less serious than what Chise seems to deal with in every volume. While AMB‘s rural and wild adventures was right up my alley, I tend to be much pickier about urban fantasy (since I’ve simply seen so much) and Jack Flash didn’t really differentiate itself very much from a number of other urban fantasy manga. Jack and Larry quickly dart from one case to another without much downtime between the cases and would’ve loved for the story to have had some more, quieter moments to flesh out what the magical world in New York looks like, especially since the world building is my favorite aspect of AMB, or just to get to know Jack and Larry better.
I was a little bemused at how American-raised Jack is very much a Japanese-style otaku when it comes to her interests, which is essentially the only bit of characterization she gets that isn’t tied to her work (although at least she gets that, Larry gets practically none). Jack talks about wanting limited edition, Japanese merch of her favorite show and how she wants to go to Comiket for an experience different from AX and, while I know a few otaku like that, I was struck by how the majority of American anime fans I know are usually a little different in their tastes (i.e, I did not see a single Funko pop or fan art from an artist alley in Jack’s little shrine to her interests). This is hardly the first time I’ve seen a Western fan portrayed as a “Japanese otaku”-style fan and I have to wonder if, when Japanese folks are creating these characters, the creators realize how these mis-placed stereotypes reveal more about how they view the world than how their characters do.
As a fan of AMB but not generally of urban fantasy, there wasn’t a lot to draw me into this series and make me want to come back. If I saw volume 2 at the library I’d check it out but it wouldn’t be at the top of my reading pile, although Jack Flash has made me more curious about The Golden Yarn so perhaps I’ll check that one out soon instead.