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From Japan: Ao Haru Ride, Fukumenkei Noise, and 7 Seeds

June 29, 2016

Here’s what I’ve currently been reading from Japan for the past few months. I decided to re-read Ao Haru Ride in Japanese. A year or so ago I wrote up a license request for Ao Haru Ride, but the series has not seen daylight here in North America yet. Fukumenkei Noise is a 9 volume series (so far) that needs to be licensed NOW! The anime will be coming out soon, which would be an optimal time for the manga to be sold. 7 Seeds is a long epic josei manga story that has been running in Flowers magazine for over ten years. I do not look for this series to ever be licensed. That doesn’t stop me from loving it any less.

Ao Haru Ride – Io Sakisaka (shoujo)

I finally gave in and started purchasing this series in Japanese. I love it to tears and want to have hard copies of it. I’ve re-read it maybe four times already? That’s how much I love it. Most of you are already familiar with this series, as it ended a year ago. It’s been on my license wish list for a long time now.

Kou realizes that it’s okay for his life to have meaning even though his mom is gone.

I think I love this series so much because I resonate so well with Kou. I know what it is like to lose a parent, and to try to deal with the regret and absence of that important person. To feel empty and not know what you should be doing with yourself. To want to make people happy, but not sure if you yourself should be happy. Kou struggles through all of it. He gets a lot of criticism from readers because he seems wishy-washy with Futaba. I see him as an empathetic person who is hurting very deeply. In Ao Haru Ride Sakisaka paints a very realistic picture of someone struggling with grief, learning to cope, and then finally letting themselves move on. I’ll always come back to it for that reason.

L to R on covers: Nino, Yuzu, and Momo

Fukumenkei Noise – Ryouko Fukuyama (shoujo)

I’ve been reading this off and on in Hana to Yume for a couple years now and decided to get the tankobans. It’s popular enough that it’s getting an anime soon. I can’t wait, because I really want to hear these songs that Inohari, or in NO hurry to shout, have written. I want to hear Nino sing!!

You might be wondering what I’m talking about. Fukumenkei Noise is about childhood love and music. Main character Nino grew up next door to her childhood friend Momo. When the kids were coping with problems they would often sing together out the windows of their houses. One day Momo moves without saying goodbye, and Nino struggles to cope with the loss. She promises she will sing loud enough that Momo will one day find her. A couple years later while singing out to the ocean, she encounters Yuzu, another young boy who composes music and songs. When he hears her sing, he decides she is “the voice” that he’s been looking for. He begins to write songs for Nino. Then suddenly Yuzu stops showing up at their meeting place. Now Nino has lost Momo and Yuzu.

Flash forward several years to high school. Nino has continued to sing for Momo, but has not found him. She is in much pain with no way to express it. She wears a mask over her face to suppress herself from screaming. Meanwhile, Yuzu has gone on to form a band, in NO hurry to shout, that is at the top of the charts. Yuzu rediscovers Nino and promises to help her find Momo by making her the lead vocalist in their band. Yuzu loves Nino and wants her to love him back, but Nino already loves Momo. Momo is also in the professional music industry and will encounter Yuzu and Nino at poignant moments in the story. It’s a fabulous love triangle with music at the core.

Yuzu asks Nino to become lead vocalist for Inohari – he’s the one that usually lip syncs the part.

That’s a lot of summary, but the story is complex and not easy to sum up. Childhood love, with two boys loving the same girl. One boy can’t bear to watch the other hurt her because he loves her so much, while the other loves her so much he lies and runs away to avoid his own influence on her. Ughh, it’s sooo good! You end up picking a side – Yuzu or Momo. Then there’s Fukuyama’s art style that really seems to fit this story well. I love all the costuming and the colored pieces, too. I really, really like this series, and would LOVE to see it get licensed here in North America. We haven’t seen Fukuyama in NA in 10 years – since Tokyopop published Nosatsu Junkie in 2006. Let’s ask Viz to get Monokuro Shounen Shoujo as well while they’re at it. 🙂

L to R on covers: Natsu, Hana, Natsu & Arashi, Fubuki & Takahiro, Natsu & Semimaru

7 Seeds – Yumi Tamura (josei)

Some of you might be familiar with Yumi Tamura from her only series we got in North America, Basara. Basara is licensed by Viz media and was first published in print in North America in 2003, however you can read it all digitally now from Viz media. 7 Seeds currently runs in Flowers magazine and is already up to 31 volumes. In 2007, it won the Shogakukan Manga Award in the girls category. I’m not looking for this to get licensed at all, but I really got hooked into the story.

7 Seeds is a science fiction survival story at its core. *From Manga Updates: In the immediate future, a giant meteorite has collided with earth and all living organisms, including mankind, have been wiped off the face of the planet. The government, who had foreseen this outcome, took measures to counter the worst-case scenario. In particular was Project “7 SEEDS”, in which five sets of seven gifted young men and women were carefully selected and placed into teams called Spring, Summer A, Summer B, Autumn and Winter. Each participant was then put under cryogenic sleep in hopes of preserving the continued existence of mankind. When these young men and women awake, they find themselves suddenly thrust into a cruel world. While bereft and grieved over forever losing their loved ones, they continue on to find ways to survive.

While climbing a precipice for fresh water, Hana thinks of Arashi and grieves what will never be now.

With all the teams there is a broad cast of characters. Some were trained to be survivalists, while others did not even know they would be sent to the future. The government set up a variety of teams: some with talents they wanted to preserve (Winter), some with highly educated people (Fall), some with children who were tested and lived only for the purpose of survival (Summer A), some with prestigious families with strong political influence as parents (Spring), and another of rejects and last minute selections (Summer B). The story begins with Team Summer B and moves from team to team until you have an idea of all the characters at play. Among the cast is a high school couple, Arashi and Hana, who don’t even know for sure if the other survived. That’s my favorite aspect of the story, though. Watching how Tamura weaves the story together so that Hana and Arashi begin to discover the other is alive. They have interactions with other teams – one might be good to Arashi while mean to Hana, and they have no idea that the other person was treated that way. I keep reading to find out when the couple will be reunited – and if the teams will ever be able to establish a place to live and survive.

Do any of these series interest you? Would you want to see any of them licensed?

2 Comments

Thank you for finally being someone that can review Ao Haru Ride in a mature fashion. I lost my mum young so I also relate to Kou and, fictional character or not, him being ripped apart by Touma shippers was hard for me to stomach, let alone understand. It is a beautiful and heartbreaking piece of writing, and the artwork is amazing. An English license would be the dream. My house is already taken over by manga but there is still so much I’d love to have the actual copies of.

Shojobitch Jun 30, 2016
- You’re very welcome. I was in my 20s when I lost my parent, so I wasn’t as young as Kou, but it still had a dramatic impact on my life. I, too, was very annoyed by how readers viewed the relationships in that series, but you can chalk it up to majority of younger readers not having the experience of losing a parent yet. They have no reference for that type of grief. Touma shippers were not considering how selfish he was being – trying to manipulate Futaba into dating him because HE liked her, never mind what SHE was going through and feeling. I told a girl that in another post, and I think it wasn’t well received. Lol. But I’ll always pick the selfless guy (Kou) over the selfish one (Touma).
  
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  Laura Jul 01, 2016