Foxy Lady Volume 1 by Ayun Tachibana (amazon)

With a title like “Foxy Lady”, I was halfway expecting this manga to be about the misadventures of an attractive woman in the 1970s. Since this is manga, the book is an example of the mystical girlfriend subgenre of shonen manga, where an ordinary schmo suddenly finds himself with an incredibly hot alien/goddess/demon/magical girl who demands to marry and/or have sex with him. The shining example of this genre would be the sadly out of print Urusei Yatsura.

Jin is the heir to his parents’ shrine. He lives in the deserted dorms attached to the shrine with his friend Sogo, a nearsighted cigarette fiend with a severe pornography habit. Jin is about to defile sacred ground by reading a manual on picking up girls in the shrine when he has has second thoughts. He heads back to the dorms and finds a girl sprawled out over Sogo. She’s Kogane, a half-human, half-demon who announces that she’s come to the human world “to beget” with Jin. After Kogane realizes that Sogo isn’t Jin she quickly switches her affections. She wants to become human, and the only way to do that is to get it on with a mortal boy. If she kisses Jin her ears, tail, and mystical powers disappear for a brief period of time.

The art is slick and attractive, with plenty of shots of Kogane in miniskirts and skimpy outfits. The reader learns disturbing things about Jin’s Dad, as he seems to have a closet full of naughty Santa-girl and nurse outfits. Some of the panels seem overcrowded and cluttered, with too much explanatory text and multiple shots of the characters from different angels. Sogo seems to exist as lecherous comic relief, as he often tries to get together with Kogane or any other female that happens to be in his vicinity only to become violently injured in the process. Jin decides that he has to protect Kogane as part of his shrine heir duties. When the kids go to school, all the sports clubs start fighting over Kogane due to her demon physical prowess. There were a couple amusing details like the portal to the demon road being placed in a linen closet and Kogane’s reaction to fried tofu, but the title didn’t capture my interest. I’m not really a member of the intended audience for this title. There’s plenty of madcap action and jokes about people being perverts, but this is a manga that doesn’t transcend the limitations of its genre to have much appeal for people that aren’t already seeking out titles about girls with animal ears.

Review copy provided by Tokyopop

Hellgate: London Volume 1 by Arvid Nelson and J. M. (amazon)

This is a prequel to a videogame where I guess people fight a lot of demons. In the near future John Fowler wakes up from a terrible dream where he’s menaced by a dark figure in a bird-like plague mask. He’s a scholarship rugby student at Temple Unversity. When he digs up a skeleton as part of an impromptu outdoor archeology class he finds himself with a splitting headache and a mysterious pendant. He and his sister soon find out that their family has a secret – they’re part of an ancient line of Knights Templar that are supposed to protect London from demons. He finds his father’s sword in the attic; it looks like a giant Exacto knife. I assume that’s a detail from the video game.
The art was effective, making the demons and John’s ancient relative look suitably creepy. I appreciated many of the details like John’s brother Tyler and his tendency to make experimental sandwiches, and Lindsey’s prowess using a cricket bat. It was nice that Lindsey was an equal partner in demon ass-kicking.
While there isn’t anything terribly original about a story centering around demons taking over London, Hellgate was much better than I expected a video game spin-off property to be. I suspect if fans of the game are looking for a comic adaptation they’ll find this book entertaining.

Heavenshield Volume 1 by Ryu Blackman (amazon)

This volume introduced so many different characters in the first half of the book that I had a really hard time following what was going on. There’s a guy with a beard who seems to be having flashbacks and doesn’t treat his hookers very nicely. There’s an evil guy named Oz. A government official who seems to treat his hookers somewhat nicely. A crazy girl with a sword. Other government officials. A hooker named Chocolate. The bounty hunter heroine of the book seems to talk normally in the first half of the book and then communicates drunkenly in cockney rhyming slang in the latter half.
There’s plenty of action and women running around in costumes that look like wedgie inducing torture devices, but I had a hard time finding any semblance of a plot, it seemed like there was just too much stuff crammed into too few pages. There’s something off with the flow of action and the paneling in the art for the book that makes it confusing to follow. The book is set in a futuristic world, there’s a wacky religion and some lizard people!? The dialog doesn’t really help to explicate anything. With characters saying things like “Gonna rape you good”, “Mi nah fear di renk beast wen a come fi tess I?”, and “So I gotta ace this gig or my rep on the network is in the gary for good!” there’s not much there to motivate or help the reader make sense of what’s going on. Relying on dialect and rape threats to establish character is poor storytelling and ultimately boring.

Review copies provided by Tokyopop

Tea for Two Volume 1 by Yaya Sakuragi (amazon)

I’ve read and enjoyed You Higuri’s Gorgeous Caratand read a couple other yaoi titles for another reviewing gig. So Tea For Two is probably just the fifth yaoi title I’ve read, and it was pretty good.
Tokumaru is so rambunctious, he’s always fighting or breaking something. His sister decides to force him to attend the tea ceremony club after he breaks one of her picture frames. Tokumaru is extremely dubious about being forced to learn to be refined, but he’s strangely drawn to the cool and collected president of the club, Hasune.
Tokumaru spends more time with the tea club, partially because he enjoys napping on tatami mats. The club room is a perfect place to ditch a few classes. He finds himself reacting in an unexpected way to Hasune’s occasional teasing. Tokumaru finds himself jealous of Hasune’s relationship with Keigo, the sweets supplier for his tea ceremonies. After Hasune engages in a few random ear licks and kisses, Tokumaru concludes that Hasune is madly in love with him, and since he doesn’t seem to mind, he they must be in love too. But things are thrown into question when Tokumaru givs up the tea ceremony for baseball. Tokumaru begins to take sports more seriously, and Hasune starts being slightly less reserved about showing his own feelings.
The art has an angular quality to it – all the guys have jutting chins, broad shoulders, and large knobby hands. Since the character’s personalties were interesting and their relationship showed some evolution and forward progress, I thought this was an above average yaoi title.
There are two brief side stories at the end of the book. One features Tokumaru’s sister Nagomi and Hasune’s sister Kotoko. The other story details the relationship problems of Keigo and another one of his customers. The production quality for the manga is good, with plenty of footnotes sprinkled throughout identifying terms used in the tea ceremony and two color pages in the front of the book.

Review copy provided by Tokyopop.