Make Love and Peace 1

Age Rating: 18+
Genre: Romance
Price: $10.95

College student Ayame's boyfriend is the handsome police detective Koichi.  After what seemed like a destined meeting, Ayame and Koichi are a couple who want nothing but a lovey-dovey relationship with plenty of hot sex to spice it up.  However, having a police detective for a boyfriend naturally implies that constant troubles won't be far behind.  Between battling injustices in society and indulging in sexual passions in bed, there is never a dull moment in their relationship.  Though wanting some peaceful time together is understandable, can you really complain when you have to settle for hot and spicy sex?

Make Love and Peace reminds me very much of Cotton Candy.  It's light and fluffy, and fun while it lasts, but I wouldn't want to eat it all the time.

The plot of this series is pretty light.  It's a slice of life that shows the ups and downs of the relationship between a college freshman and a cop with lots of sex scenes thrown in for no real apparent reason other than to titillate.

The actual plot and execution isn't bad.  College freshman Ayame is dating police detective Koichi and has doubts about their relationship.  A lot of these doubts are typical for a romance title.  She worries about him getting hurt or killed on duty, but also doesn't want him to worry about her.  She wonders if he is serious about her beyond the sex and if he would want to have children.  She even has to deal with the obstacle of the cute younger brother that tries to tempt her.  It's all very standard and safe.

Each chapter introduces some problem such as a panty thief, attempted rape, and an abandoned child, with the problems being solved at the end.  Then there is a sex scene to finish things off, so to speak.  The scenes seem to want to make the reader believe that this is the way Ayama and Koichi show their feeling for each other, but they actually come off as more gratuitous.  The scenes are fairly graphic and distracts from the over all story.  Once every other chapter or so would be more believable.  Like the plot, the art is average, but not displeasing to the eye.

Make Love and Peace might have been more interesting as a josei if there wasn't so much sex.  The relationship between Ayame and Koichi builds up nicely over the chapters.  The characters are interesting, and I liked them despite being rather 2-D-ish.  The stories are fun with a rom-com feel to them.  Ayame's grandparents added some nice humor as surrogate parents, with her grandfather being the typical over-protective father.  But the inclusion of so much sex makes it a difficult title to take seriously.

not simple

Publisher's description: Complex, powerful, and emotionally wrenching, not simple is a novel told in visual form by one of the most acclaimed creators at work today. R to L (Japanese Style). Ian, a young man with a fractured family history, travels from Australia to England to America in the hope of realizing his dreams and reuniting with his beloved sister. His story unfolds backwards through the framing narrative of Jim, a reporter driven to capture Ian’s experiences in a novel: not simple. A story within a story, a book within a book, a tale about the searchfor family, for an emotional home.

I found this book very affecting, yes, but neither as brutally disgusting as Tucker Stone, nor as frank and "phenomenal" as Christopher Butcher seems to have. Instead, I fall somewhere in between.

When I first saw the cover image, I fell in love. Seriously, I probably drooled a little. And the look of the book is gorgeous. It's a great size, with subtle colors and linework on the cover unique among it's manga brethren. In fact, the interior art, the pacing, the characterization-- it has much more in common with independent American art-comics published by D&Q or Fantagraphics of the last decade than it does with any manga, even the art-comics manga from D&Q, Fantagraphics, etc.

That's probably what drew me in, and, to be honest, sustained me, even as the difficult story seemed to be embracing dull, empty characters completely numbed to the entire world and their own suffering. Yes, it gets difficult. At one point, I considered returning the book to the store where I bought it. Thankfully, though, I held out.

This is a subtle book, and it's struggle is not necessarily an easily discerned one. Yes, the framing narrative is clunky, as many folks have pointed out, but necessary. The emotions and changes of the characters are as fine and fragile and the linework Ono uses to draw them, and you don't even realize what they've lost or become beaten by until sometimes it's too late. Which, ultimately, may be the point. Yes, a sad book, and not for the sqeamish. And by squeamish, I mean that in an entirely non-manga way: there are none of the typical manga tropes here. No tentacles, no fan-service, no grotesque violence. In fact, none of the reactions we expect.

I think, ultimately, this makes these characters more real, and thus what they go through more scary  to read. Thus, not for those of us who aren't ready to get slowly emotionally crushed. But in a way that you'll love. I promise.

Ultimately,  I guess I feel like Shaennon Garrity. Ono's work is tremendous, and can only make me ache for what else she might produce in the future.

Shinobi Life Volume 1

Genre: shoujo/action/fantasy/romance

Age rating: T/Teen/13+

Price: $9.99

I bet no one would believe this story if I told them. A ninja fell from the sky in a sudden downpour of rain and saved me, a girl who wanted to die to spite her arrogant father. Pretty much anyone would say I'm crazy, huh?

In the grand internet battle between ninjas and pirates, I've always favoured ninjas. But although I prefer Naruto to One Piece, I don't always find the frantic action and profound angst of the world's most popular ninja manga to be suited to my mood. Sometimes I want something a bit less high-powered, a bit less epic, a bit softer, a bit more... well... girly. Still with the shurikens and ass-kicking, of course, but played in a different key. Enter Shinobi Life, in which teenage romance and ninja action intersect to delightful effect.

Kagetora is a ninja charged with protecting the princess Beni; while escorting her from a battle, he falls through a vortex in time and finds himself in the 21st century. By chance or by fate, he happens to have fallen on the roof of a building where a girl who looks exactly like Beni, and is herself called Beni, is arguing with a kidnapper. She falls off the roof, and Kagetora saves her -- and is immediately berated, because this Beni actually wants to die. Kagetora is convinced that all the trappings of the modern era -- skyscrapers, mobile phones, television -- are a sorcerous illusion wrought by the enemy, and that he must still protect his "Beni-hime-sama", even if she insists she doesn't need protection and behaves completely differently from the princess he knows.

Kagetora's fish-out-of-water position in the modern world makes for a few good laughs -- he's indignant at the sight of Beni's G-string sticking up over her jeans because "a lady should not wear a loincloth!", and when he sees Beni's family dog he immediately asks for some faeces, to Beni's disgust, because he thinks it's a wolf, and wolf faeces is apparently good for signalling. (Before I read Shinobi Life, I didn't know that. Never let it be said that manga are not educational!) But there's more to the story than that; the core of it is the development of Beni and Kagetora's relationship from pure feudal loyalty on his side and bemused tolerance on hers to something closer and more equal. There's a plot beyond the relationship, involving kidnappings and Beni's rich father and Kagetora's clan and a bit of time travel, but it develops in a slightly choppy, stop-start way -- although, that said, the choppiness comes across as the kind of ground-clearing, orchestra-tuning-up stuff that a lot of manga have to do in their first volume to establish their premises and the main characters' relationships. The story all fits together and makes sense -- which is pretty rare with time travel stories -- and it serves to sharpen the focus on Beni and Kagetora, and on the differences in their personalities that make them oddly well-suited to each other.

Conami's art is smooth, fluid, and very attractive; the character design for Kagetora is particularly easy on the eye, and she seems to take pleasure in putting him in different outfits (a motif I'd be glad to see continued). Overall, Shinobi Life is a fun and charming twist on the ninja concept, and I'll be watching out for the next volume.