This week’s column is all about shonen manga. First up: volume thirty of Case Closed (VIZ), a detective series about a first grader who solves gruesome murders. Next on the agenda is volume five of Takehiko Inoue’s best-selling Slam Dunk (VIZ), a sports manga about a flame-haired rebel who takes up basketball to impress a girl, only to fall in love with the game. The third and final review examines the first volume of Waq Waq (VIZ), a sci-fi series with the curious tagline, “Welcome to a world in chaos!” I don’t know about you, but that blurb doesn’t entice me. Just sayin’.

CASE CLOSED, VOL. 30

BY GOSHO AOYAMA • VIZ • 196 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Agatha Christie’s stable of eccentric detectives didn’t include a kid, but if it had, that character would have been a lot like Conan Edogawa, the star of Case Closed. Conan is a neat, fussy first grader whose keen powers of observation help him solve the kind of elaborate, premeditated crimes that were Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot’s bread-and-butter. (N.B. Conan was originally a teenage super-sleuth named Jimmy Kudo, but his enemies transformed him into a first-grader by means of a “mysterious substance.”) In volume thirty, Conan goes toe-to-toe with six of Japan’s greatest detectives to solve a decades-old mystery at an eccentric billionaire’s estate. The set-up is pure Christie: the detectives arrive at the house after receiving cryptic invitations, only to discover that their cars have been tampered with, their escape routes cut off, and the phone lines severed. (In a nod to more recent technological developments, there’s no cell phone service, either.) As the detectives scramble for clues, someone plants deadly traps around the house — and it’s up to Conan to figure out who the killer is and what links him to the original crime.

Case Closed follows the Christie formula to the letter, offering a familiar assortment of red herrings, out-of-left-field plot twists, and tightly choreographed murders, all of which are neatly explained in a final dramatic confrontation between Conan and the killer. The stories are talky but engaging nonetheless, evoking the spirit of British mystery writers such as Christie and Conan Doyle while incorporating tried-and-true manga tropes: exaggerated reaction shots, child super-villains, car chases, mysterious substances capable of turning a teen into a tot.

The bottom line: Don’t be put off by the sheer number of volumes; Case Closed is fun and easy to follow, no matter where you jump into the series. Recommended for avid mystery readers of all ages.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

SLAM DUNK, VOL. 5

BY TAKEHIKO INOUE • VIZ • 196 pp. • TEEN

The fifth volume of Slam Dunk finds Hanamachi off the bench and in the game after Akagi is injured during a scrimmage with the Ryoyan High School team. For the first time, we see Hanamachi recognize the importance of team play; he passes, allows teammates to score points, and scrambles to prevent Shohoku from losing possesion of the ball. Hanamachi can’t quite bench his ego, however, pouting when Akagi criticizes him from the sidelines and overestimating his ability to bring down Sendoh, an experienced center who can drive to the basket no matter how many people are guarding him.

Takehiko Inoue is one of the few artists who can dedicate an entire volume to the final ten minutes of a sports contest and make it work. The game play is dynamic yet easy to follow, as Inoue always gives us a clear picture of how the players move the ball around the court. More importantly, the game play is suspenseful; neither the outcome nor the hero’s personal triumph are forgone conclusions, and the volume ends on a cliffhanger, with just eighteen seconds remaining in a very close game. That said, Inoue’s skillful action sequences can’t conceal the fact that Slam Dunk is a slight premise stretched impossibly thin; if a scrimmage merits two and a half volumes, will playoff games span six or seven?

The bottom line: Slam Dunk is fun but runs the risk of becoming repetitive.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

WAQ WAQ, VOL. 1

BY RYU FUJISAKI • VIZ • 200 pp. • RATING: TEEN

The latest addition to the Shonen Jump line-up is a mish-mash of action, cyborgs, and quasi-religious mumbo-jumbo that’s both confusing and hard on the eyes. The story, as best I could tell, goes something like this: on a remote planet, a red-blooded god named Kami created black-blooded humans and mechanical life forms. Kami’s departure left the humans vulnerable to attack from the machines, so they created the Guardians, an elite force of robotically-enhanced fighters, to keep the machines at bay until Kami’s return. When a young Japanese schoolgirl mysteriously teleports to Waq Waq, the Guardians mistake her for the reincarnation of Kami — they interpret her red blood as a sign of divinity — and begin fighting one another to the death for the privilege of having her grant one wish. Only Shio, the son of an honorable Guardian, can protect her from harm as Waq Waq descends into chaos.

Waq Waq’s problems begin on the very first page, with a battle scene that’s almost impossible to parse; I honestly thought that a pile of rocks was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a sludge monster until I read the plot summary on the back cover. (The rock formation turned out to be Shio’s father in his robo-suit. Could’ve fooled me.) I seldom fault a manga-ka for diving headlong into a story, but if he chooses that approach, he has an obligation to stage events clearly so that we understand what’s happening even though we may not have enough information to fully grasp its significance. Alas, Ryu Fujisaki employs too many fancy camera angles and speedlines to produce a coherent action sequence. Making matters worse is Fujisaki’s heavy-handed approach to screentone; the characters can be frightfully hard to distinguish from background objects, as almost everything seems to be the same shade of dark grey. The dialogue isn’t much better, a collection of vague non-sequitors that do little to advance the plot or reveal character.

The bottom line: Unless you adore Ryu Fujisaki’s Hoshin Engi, skip this hot mess of a manga.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.