Short Takes: Crown of Love, Itazura na Kiss, and Natsume’s Book of Friends

This month’s third and final “second takes” column focuses on three manga that have garnered good reviews here and elsewhere: Yun Kouga’s Crown of Love (VIZ), a romantic drama about teen idols; Kaoru Tada’s Itazura na Kiss (DMP), a comedy documenting a ditzy girl’s quest to bag the class genius; and Natsume’s Book of Friends (VIZ), an episodic drama about a teen with the power to control demons. Which of the three had strong second volumes, and which ones turned out to be duds? Read on for the scoop.

CROWN OF LOVE, VOL. 2

BY YUN KOUGA • VIZ • 192 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

The premise: Handsome teen Hisayoshi signs away his life to become an idol after meeting the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately for him, Rima, the object of his affection, views him as a threat to her already-established career as a singer and actress and won’t give him the time of day. Eager to be near Rima regardless of how she receives him, Hisayoshi agrees to tutor her for a high school entrance exam. The catch? Rima is petulant and not very bright, making Hisayoshi’s task an uphill climb.

What I said about volume one: “Yun Kouga spins a surprisingly good yarn, filled with complex characters and emotionally resonant scenes that rise well above the usual idol-fantasy fare… Kouga employs a simple, direct style that’s reminiscent of Keiko Nishi’s; stripped clean of the fussy costumes and distracting screentone patterns that are a hallmark of the idol genre, Kouga’s artwork focuses primarily on the characters’ faces, allowing us a glimpse into their turbulent inner lives. It’s this kind of attention to emotional detail that makes Crown of Love so engaging, even when the plot capitulates to genre convention.”

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Short Takes: Black Butler and Crown of Love

This week’s column examines two recent releases: Yana Taboso’s cosplay-friendly, fan-favorite Black Butler (Yen Press), currently the bestselling manga in the US, and Yun Kouga’s pop soap opera Crown of Love (VIZ). Though I can’t say either were high on my “most anticipated of 2010″ list, I was pleasantly surprised to discover just how entertaining both were — two examples of genre fiction done right.

BLACK BUTLER, VOL. 1

BY YANA TABOSO • YEN PRESS • 192 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Behind every great man is a great butler, the kind of servant who not only presses suits and polishes silver, but provides etiquette lessons and dance instruction, selects just the right tea to accompany a delicate breakfast of poached salmon, and handles rude guests and intruders with equal panache. Sebastian Michaelis, butler to the Phantomhive clan, is just such a man. In addition to running the household’s day-to-day affairs, he also serves as the de facto parent and advisor of twelve-year-old Ciel Phantomhive, the family “patriarch” and owner of an enormous manufacturing business specializing in — what else? — candy and toys. When Ciel is kidnapped by a mafioso in a pinstripe suit, Sebastian’s skills are put to the ultimate test: can he rescue his master before dinner and still get a decent meal on the table?

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Gestalt, Vol. 1

After reading Gestalt — a fantasy-adventure about a priest, a mute slave girl, an elf, and a psychic who are seeking a demon so terrible he goes only by the name “G” — I can’t decide if Yun Kouga is incredibly efficient or exceptionally lazy. To wit: the main narrative is frequently punctuated with callouts that identify characters and explain spells in the manner of a Magic card. One might interpret these digressions as an expedient way to help readers understand what’s happening, but I was more inclined to view them as a cop-out, as Kouga never develops her characters beyond what’s spelled out in these lists. (No pun intended.) Worse still, these callouts give the illusion that Kouga’s story is complex and carefully plotted when, in fact, Gestalt reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel, a loose aggregation of scenes with no organic connection to one another.

If the art were exceptionally beautiful, I might be able to overlook such narrative deficiencies. It isn’t. Kouga’s male and female characters are nearly impossible to distinguish from one another, as everyone has long manes of hair, delicate facial features, and a fondness for earrings. To some extent, this ambiguity is deliberate: at least one character’s gender hadn’t been firmly established by the end of volume one. But too often, I was left scratching my head, trying to figure out who was doing what to whom. Kouga’s fondness for busy screentone patterns adds another distracting element to the layout, further obscuring the characters’ identities and making it awfully hard to make sense of the action.

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