Manga Saturday! 'Spiral (Part Two)' & 'Sundome'

'What is the mystery of the Blade Children?' When I read part one of 'Spiral' I decided pretty early on that I wasn't too bothered what the mystery was and put the book down very early on. For some reason though, I decided to give part two a try and see if I'd missed out at all. It turns out that I have missed out and I now need to see if I have part one still in the house. Narumi is still looking for his missing brother and is being drawn deeper into the mystery of the Blade Children. This is only the second book in what looks to be a fairly lengthy series so it's really all about setting up questions that will (hopefully) be answered later on. Having said that though, there are a couple of tense scenes, involving a bomb and killer bees, that really gripped me and the reasoning that went into the resolution was really clever. There was also some nice ongoing character development in Ayumu Narumi (the main character) and his trying to reconcile himself with his perfect older brother (whilst still looking for him). 'Spiral' is now looking promising and I'll definitely be around for the next couple of books at least.

Seven and a Half out of Ten


I should have realised what was coming when I opened the package to find 'Sundome' in it's own special wrapping... The 'Mature' label gave the game away but having read 'Sundome' I wonder if it should have had an 'Immature' label on it instead.
Fifteen year old Hideo completely falls for Kurumi Sahana but his 'physical reaction' manifests at very inopportune moments. Cue an entire book of Kurumi taking advantage of Hideo's feelings by getting him to do pretty much anything she wants in some kind of weird power game. On one level an interesting look at the dynamics of a relationship and the loneliness of being a fifteen year old nerd, on another level it's just an excuse to recreate 'American Pie' in graphic novel format. There's obviously a market for this but I'm not the target audience I'm afraid. 'Sundome' isn't one that I'll be reading anymore.

Three out of Ten