Raijin Comics goes monthly instead of weekly with this issue and all I can say is thank goodness. 200+ pages of manga every week was damn near impossible to keep up with, even if I enjoyed every feature equally, and a monthly schedule should be much easier to maintain, reading-wise. Rather than diving into my enormous pile of Raijin back issues, I decided to put issue 37 to the accessibility test, seeing if a new reader who hadn't picked up the last couple months' worth of comics could still get into the book. The answer, as with almost everything concerning a giant anthology of such varying genre and approach, is yes and no. Some of the features are accessible, some a little impenetrable. Some thoroughly enjoyable, some merely OK and some just not my cup of tea at all. What remains true, however, is that this is a great sampler of manga, and on a monthly basis, it's still a pretty good bet for any manga fan.
As always, the toss-up for favorite personal manga for me comes down to Slam Dunk and City Hunter. In this particular issue, it's City Hunter that was my favorite, as writer/artist Hojo Tsukasa subverts the often borderline sexist nature of his protagonist with a smarter, sexier female detective who has him wrapped around her finger and a situation that causes the women to have all the power of Saeba Ryo for a change. It maintains the same comedic action movie approach that has made me like the book, but the addition of a little gender balance has solved one of my few complaints about the series. Tsukasa's approach is somewhat slapstick, occasionally bordering on outright goofy, but it's likable, and the action is solid.
Slam Dunk, meanwhile, seems to have moved more into the basketball arena of late. The last time I read the feature, Sakuragi was still in training, but now he and rival Rukawa are taking on another basketball team in a game. The transition isn't jarring, though, which speaks to the accessibility of the feature even as the situations and characters change. Sakuragi's arrogance, which comes off as comically unaware of his actual skills and surroundings, continues to be a defining element of the feature, but the underlying skill that he mysteriously possesses is a part of it as well. I'd like to see Sakuragi starting to mature and grow at a slightly faster pace, but otherwise, Slam Dunk continues to be a lot of fun.
Also in the familiar, if not as well-liked, category for me are Baki the Grappler and Fist of the Blue Sky. The latter is hit and miss in installments for me, and this one is mostly a miss. Neat ideas, that someone has mastered a martial art that can challenge the King of Death, and it's clear that a lot has changed since I last read, but in attempting to make the fight scene graphic and bloody, Tetsuo instead makes it hard to follow, which is a shame. Meanwhile, for a manga based on underground combat, Baki's fights are too vanilla, focused on the psychological impact of fighting rather than blocks, strikes and other aspects of martial arts, which render the fights a little dull for me. Revenge of Mouflon also continues, and it's clear that the story has taken a lot of twists and turns, turning into something of a Tom Clancy-esque tale of terrorists and a lone noble hero, but I find a popular comedian an unlikely hero in this context, and both the action and the politics aren't very clear to me.
There are a variety of genres covered in Raijin, which I like, but they also take on some of the more common genres of shoujo and shonen manga. They have two samurai sagas running through the book right now, the tale of ronin Nemuri Kyoshiro, which I hadn't read before this installment and found damn near incomprehensible, and the tale of dandy samurai Keiji. I wasn't impressed with the first couple installments of Keiji, but this one, which finds Keiji facing down a group of ninja including the man who once loved his dead beloved, really struck a chord with me. It's a nice mixture of explosive action and character development, and the confrontation between Keiji and Bat, made up mostly of verbal sparring, makes for gripping storytelling.
Filling out the features are two stories that I had though fell largely into the romance genre, and while I'm a fan of the genre, I've rarely found what I like about it in the pages of manga. Guardian Angel Getten remains, like similar features Oh My Goddess or Onegai Teacher, just not for me, but Bow Wow Wata has changed a little bit and I find it a little bit more engaging. Focusing more on the world of animals and how they interact with humans as opposed to a burgeoning romance between the selfish Tasuke and the saintly Misato makes for a more intriguing tale, although it's still not a favorite.
