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A letter to Hot Gimmick and reviews of Gestalt 1, Detroit Metal City 1, Children of the Sea 1, Black Lagoon 7 and Black Bird 1.

New manga from Viz is a happy, happy thing. Usually, the anime susperstar brings us all manner of awesomeness, from shonen (Bleach) to shojo (Nana), with a little bit of every other anything sandwiched between (20th Century Boys). And to be fair, this lot isn’t very different, save two titles - Gestalt and Detroit Metal City.

DMC is the tale of a boy who madly wants to be in a cute, poppy kind of band and instead finds himself the lead singer of a kiss lookalike metal band called Detroit Metal City. I’d tell you more about the plot of this manga, but there doesn’t seem to be any. Negishi is a whiney little dork who puts on stage makeup and performs as the king of death metal, the lead singer of DMC. Though he claims to hate being in a death metal band, it is only on stage that things go right for him; the rest of the time, he’s just a dork who gets caught up in one wacky hijink after another, only the hijinks aren’t really all that wacky. The comedy of this books is stale and uninteresting, and for some reason the artist put a red flower of some kind in the crotch of his DMC costume which kind of makes him look like he just got his period. This book bored me to tears, and I definitely won’t be reading further into the series.

Gestalt , at first glance, looks like a thing of beauty. The cover art is simply gorgeous; a beautiful, sexy fantasy girl with pink hair (a selling point for me) giving the series’ title coy eyes speaks well for the book’s insides. Unfortunately, the insides don’t live up to that expectation. Reading Gestalt is like watching a buddy play an rpg; it’s fun and all, I guess, but you’d really rather be playing it yourself. As I read the exploits of Olivier, a priest who leaves his home among others of his kind to search out the legendary land of G, I felt my mind wandering to Final Fantasy, and how long it’d been since I last played FFX. The action in the manga comes accompanied with little menus that show a character’s stats (or an action’s stats), it might be an enjoyably series for some, but not me.

And now for the good stuff:

Dear Hot Gimmick,

I really should hate you. I really should look at your misogynistic plot lines, your utterly weak female characters and the way you gloss over a woman getting hit and loathe you, and yet I don’t. I don’t think it’s a lack of feminism at play here - I kind of think Hatsumi deserves all the crap she gets for not being better able to stand up for herself. And no matter how much my brain tells me that Ryoki is a bully, my soft, squishy heart makes me think he’s just misunderstood. Honestly, I don’t understand why I think you’re the kind of guilty pleasure that makes me swoon and giggle and just adore you. Maybe it’s your vizbig format, the large glossy book packed with three volumes worth of manga, but whatever it is, I loved volume two. I really think that everyone should read you, even if I’m a little embarrassed to tell others that I read you.

Love,
Hopelessly waiting for volume 3

I know I’ve said it many times before, but it’s something that just can’t be said enough: if you like action, then there is no reason on God’s green Earth why you shouldn’t be reading Black Lagoon. Rei Hiroe’s manga about a lawless land called Roanipur and the crime syndicates, drug runners, smugglers and every other manner of bad guy rule is one of the best manga out there right now (honestly, the only other title I look forward to more is Viz’s 20th Century Boys). Revy, Rock, Benny and Dutch are the crew of the Black Lagoon, a group of smugglers. In volume 7 (the cover of which is graced by the dead cool Eda in her nuns and guns garb), the gang is ass deep in trouble stirred up by the return of Roberta, the maid for the Lovelace household, who previously appeared to retrieve a kidnapped charge of hers, the young son Garcia. The last time she was around, she had all the gangsters in town on high-alert, including the seemingly bullet-proof Balalaika (love that name. Seriously, beautiful). Now she’s back trying to figure out just what happened to her master, the head of the Lovelace family, and she has slipped a little more down the nutty slope, which means good times for all of Black Lagoon’s readers. Violence abounds in this series, as well as great story, amazing characters and edge of your seat action. The art is very busy, but it’s the perfect accompaniment for such an action packed series.

On the shojo side of things, we have the first volume of Black Bird, a tale of a high school girl, Misao, who discovers that her blood is tantalizing for demons and will give them great powers. Now demons from all over are coming to drink her blood, or worse, make her their wife! Complicating things further is her childhood friend Kyo, who, it turns out, is also a demon. She might be in love with him (because he’s beautiful, sweet, protective and oh, did I mention beautiful?) but she refuses to be the wife of a demon, even if it’s a demon she has feelings for. This series has a little bit of romance, a little bit of comedy, a little bit of action; all of these things add up to a lot of fun. Volume two will definitely be on my to-buy list.

Lastly, we have a book from Viz’s Signature line (and if you haven’t read a Viz Signature book, then you need to know that Viz Signature = buyitnow): Children of the Sea. CotS is about a pair of mysterious brothers, Umi and Sora, who have a strange relationship with the ocean - they were raised in it. Ruka, the girl who befriends them, gets caught up in their mystery, which encompasses all the creatures of the sea and a magical life force that is changing everything. Though it gets off to a bit of a slow start, this is a book filled with beauty and a story that has the feel of a modern-day fairy tale. Volume one was very good, and I’m really interested to see where volume two takes this salty sweet series.

(Amanda Rush needs an anime\manga twelve step group, or just twelve people to go further into anime addiction with her. Follow her on Twitter: @BrokenAmanda)