Manga Review: Kodocha: Sana's Stage, Volume 7, by Miho Obana

Rating (Out of 5): ~4

Publisher: TokyoPop (This has always bothered me: is it Tokyopop or TokyoPop? Does it matter?)

Volumes: 10

Spoilers?: Yes.

Buy it here: Amazon. (Out-of-Print)

Goodreads Synopsis:

Take one young actress used to getting her way, add a handful of ruthless bullies, some humorous twists, and a plastic toy hammer, and you've got the recipe for one crazy story Kodocha follows the antics of Sana, a spoiled 11-year-old TV star, and Hayama, a 6th grade Machiavelli who terrorizes both his teachers and his classmates. In their classroom war of wills, Sana and Hayama find there is more to both of them than meets the eye.

Review:

The series is getting closer to the end, so it’s getting more serious, a bit darker. And while it’s a bit of a surprise at times, it’s so exciting. I’m loving it.

The volume starts with Akito asking Sana how she feels about him, and she questions him back, but in the end they both end up telling each other that they love the other. But when they see that Fuka heard all of it, Sana goes chasing after her, and says that it was all in the past and she’s gotten over it now (which is such a frustrating lie). Sana sees Akito once more and officially says goodbye, then she devotes herself fully to her acting, gets a tutor, and doesn’t come to school for a while. A long while.

While she’s gone, Akito gets in trouble with his new teacher, who has a grudge against mean students because he was bullied as a child and so tries getting Akito in as much trouble as possible (also, because Akito told the class that he wears a wig, which, whatever). It’s obvious that, with Sana gone, Akito is reverting back to his old self, and he gets suspended. Surprisingly, his dad isn’t very upset about it, since he was a ‘hoodlum’ when he was in school (this is revealed during a very entertaining conversation--I rather like Akito's father, though).

While suspended, Akito isn’t allowed to take a test for karate to move up a color, and is super pissed, but he goes out with Fuke and Tsuyoshi and Aya. They go to an arcade, and Akito ends up getting in a fight, and then later says some biting words to Fuka. This is where I realized that Fuka doesn’t know about Akito’s violent past, and that she might not be able to handle it very well.

Sana visits with Tsuyoshi and Aya (who are kind of really sweet together; also, Tsuyoshi seems to have matured a bit, and seems just very sweet and adorable), who tell her about Akito getting in trouble, and she gets super upset. One night, on her way to work, Sana sees Akito running (something he’s taken up because of how he has nothing else to do and can’t sleep for not being able to stop thinking about Sana), and chases after him. They share a very sweet and sad moment, seeing as how they still can’t be together because of Fuka.

After this, Sana decides to start going back to school, and has a talk with Fuka. Sana has finally decided that she wants Akito and is tired of trying to make everyone else happy (finally!), and so she tells Fuka that she’ll steal Akito from her if she doesn’t buck up and actually try talking to Akito. Fuka and Akito haven’t been getting along and Fuka doesn’t know how to talk to him and she has a hard time dealing with his violent tendencies, and while it doesn’t even seem like she wants to try talking to him when he is the way he is, she won’t give him up (but she's acting like talking to him is some impossible chore--ugh! just back off and let Sana and him be together!).

This is where I realized the big difference between Sana and Fuka. They’re very similar, but Sana can deal with Akito’s violence. She has a way of calming him down and getting him to relax and not beat people up or be a total jerk. And she doesn’t shy away from him when he gets that way. Fuka, on the other hand, does. Obviously, Fuka needs to just back off already. Which I think she realizes, when she hears his full past from Tsuyoshi, and what part Sana had in it.

Anyway, there's this guy at their school, Kazuyuki, who thinks that he and Akito are best friends, but when he finds out that Akito never even knew he existed, his dreams are ruined. On Sana's first day back, we find out that he's run away and decided to kill himself. Kazuyuki’s mother is freaking out, Akito’s teacher is trying to blame him, Fuka doesn’t know how to deal with any of it, and Tsuyoshi and Sana are trying to help Akito.

Kazuyuki left his journal in Akito’s locker, which mentions how the guy thought he was getting closer to Akito and how his mother isn’t very nice but he wants her approval and pride anyway. And then how Akito betrayed him, and the guy is going to kill himself because of it. Or kill Akito (as you can imagine, I'm not happy about that thought).

Akito knows that the guy just wants some attention, so Akito talks to Sana before getting on a train and heading to where the guy should be, which is when Sana sees the bit about wanting to kill Akito. And, honestly, the ending picture of the psycho Kazuyuki is not reassuring in any sense. Oh, also, before Akito got on the train, he told Sana that he still loved her, and she cried. But, I mean, we all knew that already.

Now, I don’t believe that Akito is going to get killed (I mean, no way), but I am very excited to find out what happens next. It’s sure to be good. I’m not happy that I only have two books left, and am going to be stuck searching even more for the last one, but I do want to know what happens next. I love how the series is getting darker and more serious; the direction it is taking is very exciting.

It still strikes me as odd that these characters are only supposed to be in their first year of middle school. As I’ve said before, while the humor does seem very middle-elementary school, the characters act much more mature than that. It’s just odd to me, but I do like it.

Sidenote: I hadn’t realized that this series was being released at the same time as Sailor Moon, way back when Tokyopop was still releasing it, but there’s an ad for it in the back of the book. It just caught me off guard when I saw it, and I wanted to say something.

Review: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Rating (Out of 5): ~2-2.5

Publisher: (All over the place; it's a classic, everyone owns it. I borrowed the copy I read, and I don't remember what company it was from; sorry.)

Spoilers?: Yes, with warnings.

Goodreads Synopsis:

In American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis imaginatively explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, handsome, and well educated, Bateman earns his fortune on Wall Street by day while spending his nights in ways we cannot begin to fathom. Expressing his true self through torture and murder, Bateman prefigures an apocalyptic horror that no society could bear to confront.

Review:

[There is some light cussing in this review.]

This is another book that I read because my brother wanted me to. Previously, he had raved to me about how good it was, and that I should read it (actually, it had become the book he would tease me about, because of how I refused to read it, without really knowing too much about it). I was over there for several weeks this summer, so I decided to read a couple of his books, and this was the last one I read before leaving. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it, what I was going to think about it at all, and the beginning wasn’t even too bad. And then I read more of it, and that kind of changed things.

Now, I had a good outlook when I started this one. Albeit, before starting it, I had given The Rulesof Attraction, by the same author, a try, and that one had been a big fail*. But I was giving him another chance with this book, especially since my brother also did not like The Rules of Attraction, but loved this one.

So, here: I did not like this book. I could barely stand this book. I think loathed and hated are too strong of words for my feelings of this book, but they’re really close. Some of my feelings of hate and disgust lowered, though, I think, when I finished the book. Perhaps because there was a chapter near the ending that I liked. Perhaps because I was just so happy to be done with this terrible book that I had spent the last, like, five-ish days on.

Now, I’m just happy for it to finally be over.

If you haven’t read this book, it’s about Patrick Bateman. He works on wall street, in high society New York. Where people don’t really notice other people, where they are too stuck in their own lives and gossiping about others. They are all, every single character, too materialistic and selfish and self-centered. And just… They are all just so freakin’ despicable and there was not a single character that I liked, that I even halfway enjoyed reading about.
And, the materialistic thing? It's ridiculous how materialistic Patrick is. You can barely go more than, maybe, two pages, definitely not more than, say, ten, without there being at least a paragraph of description on what everyone is wearing. And so many brand name, high-class labels. I would suspect it were product placement if it didn't happen so often, and if it weren't just a way for Ellis to shove how stuck-up Patrick is into the readers' face.
I am just so done with this book and this author that I almost don’t even want to talk about it anymore. But that’s not what I’m doing here. I am talking about it here, just like I read this book, because I obviously hate myself.

Patrick doesn’t like people, and yet is surrounded by them all the time. He, like everyone else in this book, is somewhat serious with one person, and yet is cheating on her with someone else, all the time. (None of them seems to understand that there is such a thing as being faithful.)

[Spoilers ahead!] Patrick, as is pointed out in the synopsis, has something wrong with him. Which is so very true. He’s going psychotic and killing people (any type of person, really, and even animals) for no reason; and, along with that, he’s a cannibal, and the ways he kills people are, yea, creative and disturbing. But honestly, the violent killings didn't even bother me so much after a point; I was just not surprised anymore. And one thing that bothered me: he’s doing it so openly! He’ll walk around with blood stains on him, he’ll threaten people, he’ll tell people to their face that he’s killing others, and no one even notices.

Which, okay, I get it. That’s a major theme of the book: that no one notices anything around them. No one pays attention to anyone but themselves. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t drive me crazy. Because, you know what? Now, at least, I would like to think that, if someone suspects something it happening, they’re going to call the police, at the very least. And there is no reason for people not to suspect something is wrong with him.

Everything about him is wrong.

But, of course, everyone loves him. He smiles while saying something disturbing and no one notices. He waves some money around and gets what he wants. All the women love him. Everyone thinks he’s innocent or nice or sweet or something the opposite of a killer. It’s so goddamn ridiculous.

God, this book fuckin’ drove me crazy.

Those are, mostly, the things that bothered me. The rating, for how much I disliked the book, is a little high. Here’s why:

The author knew what he was doing. While the way he writes, the long, drag on sentences, and long, drag on paragraphs, with characters that suck, who are doing drugs and hooking up with women and drinking for no reason, I don't particularly like, he knew how to put the book together well. Patrick, while I hated him, was a well-made character. Everything he did, all of his materialistic and psychotic instances, were well done. There was a point to most of it, symbolism and foreshadowing and all that stuff. This book was well put together, okay?

At first, the drag on way of writing kind of annoyed me, but I got used to it. And the fast moving dialogue was usually pretty easy to read, and moved along pretty fast. That doesn’t mean that I enjoyed it, though, because I really didn’t.

Saying that, though, isn’t completely true. There were a couple of chapter that I enjoyed. Not many, but a couple. I liked the one, near the end, where Patrick and a few others guys are trying to figure out what restaurant they’re going to, and end up canceling and making and then canceling reservations, and Patrick accidentally invites two women and can’t remember where he told them to go. Some chapters that I did not like, in particular, were ones that were full of information about some band or singer, with only a little input of what Patrick thought about them. I just did not care enough about Huey Lewis and the News to read eight pages about them. And when he was describing his daily routine, like how he moistens his face and all that crap. I mean, yea, I get it already: Patrick is full of himself. I got that in the first chapter, okay? You don’t have to shove it in my face so much.

[Spoiler ahead!] Oh, and the ending. This is another thing that bothered me. Nothing changed at the end, okay? Just like nothing changed at the end of The Rules of Attraction. He didn’t learn anything, nothing happened to him, he didn’t die or go to jail. He’s still going crazy and killing people. It just made it seem like there was no point, and I don’t like that. What was the freakin’ point of reading about him, about what he does, about all his double-faced crap, when there wasn’t even a good resolution? Just… what was the point?

I’ve given the book an extra star for what the author did. So, without that star, this book would be about a 1-1.5, so it’s bumped up to a 2-2.5. There’s no way I can happily, in any way, round that up to a 3, though. The book started out in a 3 range, but now, it’s not even close.

I’m done with this book now. Once this is posted, and that book is away from me, I am done. I don’t have to read it or think about it anymore. I don't even think I want to watch the movie. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read an adult, romance-ridden, smut-filled book that I will actually enjoy, just to get the taste of this book out of my freakin’ brain.

*I aimed for fifty pages, okay? I got ten. And then I got, I think, forty. And then I just could not read any more. Its standing rating is a one, and barely even that. I’m not officially giving it a rating, because I don’t like reviewing something if I haven’t finished it, but I’m pretty sure I have given up on that book, which is something I haven’t done before. There is a very, very low chance that I will try again, or at least try to finish it, but a higher chance that I will not. I just… I didn’t like anything about it: the writing was bad, the characters sucked completely, there was almost no point to the whole thing. I even watched the movie, in an effort to motivate myself to finish the book, and I didn’t even want to finish that, okay?

Manga Review: Arisa, Volume 5, by Natsumi Ando

Rating (Out of 5): 3.5

Publisher: Kodansha Comics

Volumes: 9+

Amazon Synopsis:

Twin sisters, Arisa and Tsubasa, are separated by their parent's divorce. The twins secretly exchange letters with each other during their separation. They are finally united after three years and Arisa asks Tsubasa to pretend to be her and spend a day in her school just for fun. At school everyone seems very nice to Tsubasa (who is pretending to be Arisa) and everything seemed normal... until she finds a strange note in her sister's shoe locker. When Tsubasa hands over the letter to Arisa, Arisa tries to kill herself by jumping out of a window. Arisa survives but remains in a coma. The letter read, "Arisa is a traitor." After her sister's suicide attempt, Tsubasa is determined to unravel the mystery behind the letter and her sister's suicide attempt so Tsubasa continues to go to school as Arisa... will she find out who sent the note and why it had such an effect on Arisa?

Review:

This was actually a little better than the last one.

So the first bit is about the trip they go on, and has the normal kind of drama. Tsubasa is dealing with Shizuka, who hates her. Tsubasa is trying to get all of the phones back from her, and then Shizuka makes a wish to take something important from Arisa. Tsubasa immediately thinks of Midori-kun, and into a trap set by the King. Manabe comes and saves her, but their class had to wait for her to get back in order to eat, and they think she ran off to spend time with Manabe, resulting in them all hating her and Arisa losing her good reputation. And Shizuka also thinks that Manabe betrayed her.

This was... just whatever. It's the same type of thing that's been going on already. Just more drama to put off the climax that I'm hoping is coming soon. The next part, though, I did enjoy.

The next chapter shows us what happened to Shizuka to this point, and what Manabe knows about it all. Shizuka was immensely competitive with Arisa, wanting to be number one in their class or grades or whatever, becoming obsessed with it. And then she bad talks the King in front of everyone, making them all hate her. (This was a dumb move, of course, on her part.) And it shows how much she relied on Manabe to do everything for her, including things to Arisa that she shouldn't have made him do. All because of some promise he made when they were little kids. And then Arisa, who he'd been getting close to, was going to tell Manabe something, presumably something very important, but Shizuka jumped off the rooftop of their school, interrupting them.

Manabe blames himself, but Shizuka is a little psychotic and obsessive, and she obviously needs help. And I want to know what Arisa was going to tell him.

And in the last chapter, we see that Kudo is up to something, and Shizuka is still hating on Arisa. But Tsubasa decides to follow Shizuka, but instead she gets caught and they start talking. And we find out that her home life sucks. We saw in the previous chapter that her parents died, and she was taken in by some relatives. Which is part of why she was so obsessive over being top of the class, because she wanted to prove to them that it was worth it to take her in. But then she jumps off the roof and now she can't walk anymore. But the people that she's living with are complete jerks to her, don't care about her, and don't help her with anything. Tsubasa gets all defensive, but Shizuka is used to it, even if it depresses her and makes her feel worthless. Shizuka also tells her that a while ago the King came to her, through the phone, telling her that he could help her.

At the end of the chapter, we see Tsubasa coming up to Shizuka, and putting a cloth over her mouth until she passes out. This doesn't seem like something Tsubasa would do, and I'm curious as to what her reason was.

So, I am a little tired of all the drama pushing back the climax. I just want to find out who the King is, and I'm getting annoyed with only seeing a black-shadow-type figure with a weird grin, especially with all the clues it's giving us, only to take them back not long after. And I want to find out what really happened with Arisa. Some more flashbacks (or Arisa waking up,) would be really nice, and I hope that more are coming up.

But, I have the next one already, so the review for it will probably be coming up soon.

Manga Review: Arisa, Volume 4, by Natsumi Ando

Rating (Out of 5): 3

Publisher: Kodansha Comics

Volumes: 9+

Amazon Synopsis:

Twin sisters, Arisa and Tsubasa, are separated by their parent's divorce. The twins secretly exchange letters with each other during their separation. They are finally united after three years and Arisa asks Tsubasa to pretend to be her and spend a day in her school just for fun. At school everyone seems very nice to Tsubasa (who is pretending to be Arisa) and everything seemed normal... until she finds a strange note in her sister's shoe locker. When Tsubasa hands over the letter to Arisa, Arisa tries to kill herself by jumping out of a window. Arisa survives but remains in a coma. The letter read, "Arisa is a traitor." After her sister's suicide attempt, Tsubasa is determined to unravel the mystery behind the letter and her sister's suicide attempt so Tsubasa continues to go to school as Arisa... will she find out who sent the note and why it had such an effect on Arisa?

Review:

I've been wanting to read the next one in this series for a while, and I finally found it. I'm mostly enjoying the series, but I'm still wondering where it's going. As more complications are just about the only thing happening.

At the beginning of this one, Osawa steals the phone from Tsubasa, putting her in a fire in the midst, only for Kudo, the guy that set her up, to 'save' her. Osawa uses the phone to make a wish, because he wants this girl, but then she makes fun of him (because she thinks that he's stalking her, which is possibly true), and so he decides to change his wish to that he wishes she wouldn't judge people by their looks. And so she goes blind. And Osawa doesn't even seem sorry about it! He's a little psychotic, I think.

Only she doesn't really go blind, since Tsubasa blocked her from the glass that hit her eyes. And I'm wondering what happened to Osawa, since Kudo does something to him and we don't see him anymore in this volume.

And then Midori breaks up with Arisa/Tsubasa, because he doesn't think she really loves him. Which makes sense, since she's been hanging out with Manabe a lot. Anyway, Manabe and Tsubasa, and Takeru, are trying to find out who has the two other phones (you know, the phones with the numbers that were chosen by the king). But Manabe is acting weird, and we see that he has one of the phones that Tsubasa is looking for (which I was really confused by, in a way that made me think it could have been done better, but I get it now). And then he's mean to Tsubasa, and we find out that he has a friend who used to go to their school, and who has the phone they are looking for. Tsubasa meets her, is nice to her, but she hates Arisa for some reason. She's been hurt, and is in a wheelchair, but is going on some field trip with their class. And she has all three of the phones, and is obviously planning to do something to Arisa/Tsubasa.

We keep finding out that Arisa has done these terrible things, but have a completely different impression of her from Tsubasa. I'm wondering when (if) she's going to wake up so that we can find out who she actually is. And, I'm thinking that Kudo is the King? (Unless they introduce someone else...) He's up to something big that we aren't aware of. I'm waiting for all of that to hit, for whatever this is all leading up to. I'm hoping that it's good, and that there aren't too many things that are going to come up to prolong it from occurring.

So, I'm enjoying the series, for the most part. And I have the next couple, so I'll probably be reviewing them soon.