A death-metal legend who just wants to write tender pop songs. A stony-faced child solider who works the illegal arms trade. A teenage girl who discovers she’s the sole heir to the Tokugawa throne  — these are just a few of the characters who feature prominently in this week’s Short Takes column, which focuses on manga for the over-eighteen crowd. First up: volumes two and three of Kiminori Wakasugi’s rude, raunchy, rock-n-roll comedy Detroit Metal City (VIZ). Next on the agenda is volume one of Keitaro Takahashi’s Jormungand (VIZ), a high-velocity thriller set in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. And last but not least is volume two of Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku: The Inner Chambers (VIZ), an alternate history of Tokugawa Japan in which women run the show.

DETROIT METAL CITY, VOLS. 2-3

BY KIMINORI WAKASUGI • VIZ • RATING: MATURE (18+)

There’s a fine line between stupid and clever, and Kiminori Wakasugi toes that line with the expertise of a high-wire acrobat. Though Detroit Metal City earns plenty of laughs skewering the excesses of heavy metal culture — rabid groupies, fan lore, band rivalries, death-obsessed lyrics — some of the most inspired moments in volumes two and three come from Negishi’s desperate efforts to impress his friend Yuri, who edits a trendy lifestyle magazine. In the third volume, for example, Negishi agrees to help Yuri and her pals run a booth at a flea market. The “cool gods” smile on Negishi for a little while, allowing him to blend in with Yuri’s friends, chat about his favorite pop bands, and propose that the group form their own “United Nations of Cool,” an organization “devoted to maintaining peace and coolness in the world.” Yuri’s friends embrace the idea, allowing Negishi to briefly bask in their approbation. When Yuri’s ex-boyfriend Yutaro arrives on the scene, however, it doesn’t take long for Negishi’s joy to curdle into jealousy, prompting him to engage in DMC-style theatrics to express his disapproval of Yutaro.

As with all stories that hinge on secret identity, Detroit Metal City occasionally tests the reader’s patience with scenarios that almost — but not quite! — reveal the hero’s dual nature; an author can only go to that well so many times before the supporting cast seems hopelessly stupid. (Actually, many of Negishi’s cohorts don’t strike me as very bright, so perhaps that isn’t a failing on Wakasugi’s part.) I’ll admit that some of the sexual humor pushes the envelope a little too hard for me to feel completely comfortable laughing, especially as it becomes clearer that the distance between Krauser’s misogynist antics and Negishi’s possessive, rude behavior is quite short. Still, Detroit Metal City’s jokes hit the mark far more often than they miss, whether Wakasugi is parodying rap or poking fun at celebrity role models — the sight of Krauser bringing a gift basket to a bedridden fan is just too sublimely silly to miss.

Review copies provided by VIZ Media, LLC. Volume two of Detroit Metal City is available now; volume three will be released on December 8, 2009. For a review of volume one, click here.

JORMUNGAND, VOL. 1

BY KEITARO TAKAHASHI • VIZ • 192 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)

After losing his parents in a military airstrike, Jonah becomes a child solider, eventually falling in with a band of mercenaries led by tough-talking arms dealer Koko Hekmatyar. Jonah’s rationale for joining Koko’s organization is unclear. He professes to hate weapons and the entire military-industrial complex that produces them, but is perfectly willing to profit from their sale and waste dozens of enemies with the cool efficiency of the Terminator. Therein lies the main problem with Jormungand: manga-ka Keitaro Takahashi wants to tell a story that acknowledges the horrors of war while milking the violence for its entertainment value. His have-cake-and-eat-it-too strategy might be more palatable if the action sequences were artfully rendered, but his sketchy, rough style doesn’t lend itself to exciting shoot-outs and car chases; thanks to a proliferation of speedlines, it’s nearly impossible to figure out what’s happening once the characters draw their weapons. The characters themselves never rise above the level of action-movie type: Jonah is taciturn and stony-faced, Koko is garrulous and profane, and the villains are over-confident. Unless your local Blockbuster is fresh out of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, I suggest you skip this cliche, exploitative bore.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC.

OOKU: THE INNER CHAMBERS, VOL. 2

BY FUMI YOSHINAGA • VIZ • 242 pp. • RATING: MATURE (18+)

Fumi Yoshinaga reminds me a bit of Woody Allen, as she loves to populate her stories with the kind of smart, chatty characters that are a staple of Allen’s films. Such a conversation-driven approach to storytelling can be delightful when the characters’ convictions are revealed naturally through the ebb and flow of dialogue — think Flower of Life or Annie Hall — but excruciating when couched in platitudes or stilted prose. Yoshinaga’s period dramas often fall into the second category, as she struggles to dramatize the social and political issues of the day through clumsily “antiqued” dialogue. Though Gerard and Jacques is a more egregious example of this tendency than Ooku: The Inner Chambers, both feel flat and artless when compared with Yoshinaga’s best work.

It’s a shame that Ooku’s dialogue proves so distracting, as the second volume is more vivid and engaging than the first. Yoshinaga jumps back in time to reveal how women assumed control of the shogunate in the aftermath of the redface pox. The tale plays like a mash-up of Kagemusha and Outbreak, abounding in court intrigue, copious amounts of blood (and pus), and that old Kurosawa stand-by, the female aristocrat who’s more shrewd and ruthless than the men around her. As in the first volume, most of the action is viewed through the eyes of the newest addition to the Ooku — in this case, Arikoto, a handsome monk who reluctantly abandons his spiritual path to become a Groom of the Bedchamber. Though the circumstances surrounding Arikoto’s arrival are different than Mizuno’s, Yoshinaga’s decision to use the same framing device for both volumes underscores how the insular world of the inner chamber “feminizes” its denizens. This observation — that the powerless resort to gossip and harassment — is one of the few points that Yoshinaga makes without directly expressing it through her characters’ speech; one hopes she’ll exercise similar restrain in future volumes and let the action speak louder than her very talky characters’ words.

Review copy provided by VIZ Media, LLC. Volume two of Ooku: The Inner Chambers will be released on December 15, 2009. Click here for a review of volume one.