Basilisk

This highly unrealistic manga takes place during the Shogunate. There are two clans of ninja, the Iga and the Kouga, and they hate each other, even (or possibly because) they live near each other. The Shogun decides that he will have the Iga and Kouga battle each other to the death in order to determine which of his sons will succeed him. Most of the Iga and Kouga are excited, or at least accepting of this idea, because they’ve been itching to slaughter each other. But Gennousuke and Oboro, the young heirs to their respective clans, are in love, and angst over this. Anyway, so there are ten super-powered ninjas on each side, and within the course of several volumes, the rocks are falling and people are dying. The author manages to create a lot of suspense even though it’s just continual ninjas flipping out and killing people, especially since there’s an interest in seeing how they’ll exploit their special abilities, and most importantly, their opponents’ ignorance of them, in order to cross off another name on the list.

 

Narutaru

Narutaru, or Shadow Star in the NA translation (the official translation is not, or will never be? completed) appears at first to be a cute story about a tween girl who finds a powerful, but oh-so-cute, magical critter and the adventures she has. You know the sort. Well, Narutaru is kind of an apocalyptic-psychotraumatic-environmentalist exploration of this theme (although the environmentalism is a muted part, and more part of the worldbuilding than the same old ‘polluting is bad m’kay?’ stuff we often get). The main character, Shiina, is a wholesome, energetic, positive and friendly girl who lives largely happily with her beloved father, a pilot. While staying with her grandparents on an isolated island, she finds a weird little creature shaped like a giant starfish, which she names Hoshimaru. Hoshimaru can’t talk, but he quickly attaches himself to Shiina and shows that he can turn himself into a kind of flying skateboard. Shiina soon meets others who have become linked to similar beings. However… they are not as wholesome, energetic, or as positive as Shiina. To put it mildly.

Readers of Bokurano, let us say, will find the later plot familiar territory, as the rocks really begin to fall, and as things get more and more confusing. Kitou does get points, though, for at least having the worldbuilding be coherent, which is possibly a result of him having, he claims, planned out 80% as the story started (Kitou says that he was told by his editor that maybe he should try coming up with the characters, and then doing the plot, but it turned out he couldn’t do that, and so ended up coming up with the plot and then the characters… His work, though, seems pretty character based, in the sense that the characters change and undergo development and transformation).

 

Shin Angyo Onshi

Probably this is my favorite manwha so far, except for Island (by the same creators). I would like to read more manwha, but when I looked last at what they were translating commercially, a lot of it was… uh, probably licensed quite cheaply.

Anyway, Shin Angyo Onshi, although created by two Koreans, was also serialized in translation in Japan during its run, and this means that there are notes by the author to Japanese readers explaining the folklore references. The story concerns Munsu, a traveling angyo onshi (an official who wanders around the country investigating other officials. As is noted in the manwha itself, like Mito Komon), who is seeking a man known as Aji Tae, the destroyer of the nation of Jushin. Jushin resembles a fantasy ancient Korea, although maybe it would be more accurate to say it’s more of an RPG fantasy world, with summoners and firearms, and stylishly anachronistic garments. Many of the adventures that Munsu has are based off of Korean folktales (although in a highly unorthodox way). I wished I had known more than just the legend of Chun Hyang, though. I should note that also, although the story at first seems to be half serious, half light-hearted, it eventually is pretty… grim, actually. Munsu is not the shounen hero as kid-who-is-cipher-for-reader, but a man with a past, a la Kenshin (tragic lost love) or Guts (loses everything through betrayal). And in storyline set in the present, there is a lot of “rocks fall, everyone dies.” The art is extremely pretty at times, and there are a lot of biseinen and bishoujo, for those of you who like that kind of thing. Although, I couldn’t help but laugh at the extreme skimpiness of Sando’s outfit. XD

With a lot of manga, I feel that the storyline is bloated and goes FAR much longer than the premise warrants, or the amount of cast members becomes ridiculously large in an attempt to get a moe character for every possible demographic reading, but with Shin Angyo Onshi, as in Amatsuki, I actually felt the opposite, that the story went too quickly. SAO is seventeen volumes, but I think it could have just as well gone up to thirty. There were lots of characters I wanted to find out more about, and sometimes the storytelling felt a bit too much like “telling, not showing.” On the whole, though, worth reading.