Starting with a Kiss キスアリキ。(Kiss Ariki.)

NITTA Youka 新田祐克  has claimed in the past that she wouldn’t write an yakuza manga nor a manga with a main character with long shiny black hair (not that long) – but she does so in Starting with a Kiss キスアリキ。(Kiss Ariki.), published in English by SubLime (VIZ) and originally published by b-BOY HONEY (Libre Shuppan), b-Boy Kichiku (Libre Shuppan), and Be x Boy GOLD (Libre Shuppan).

BL and yakuza seem to be a good match in many stories and is one of the main sub-genre’s of BL.  However, Starting with a Kiss キスアリキ。(Kiss Ariki.) really has nothing much to add to the genre.  It’s not as dark, gritty nor has the depth of the Finder (View Finder) series by YAMANE Ayano やまねあやの or No Money お金がないっ(Okane ga Nai) by SHINOZAKI Hitoyo 篠崎一夜  & KOUSAKA Tohru 香坂透 , not as interesting as Twittering Birds Never Fly 囀る鳥は羽ばたかない (Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai) by YONEDA Kou ヨネダコウ  or one-shot NightS ナイツ by YONEDA Kou ニトロ攻鉄, not as fun as Like the Beast ほんと野獣 (Honto Yajuu) by YAMAMOTO Kotetsuko 山本小鉄子, and the list of better yakuza stories goes on.  Still it’s a decent read full of plotting, incest, etc., though not exactly all that memorable.

Unfortunately, Sublime (VIZ) isn’t putting out the 3rd and final volume in a timely manner at all – it’s not expected until June 2015!  There were only 3 volumes and they could have been done in a few short months – not almost a year.  3 long months between volume 1 and 2 (too much) and then 7 months to wait to finish the series – are they really caring for their audience?  Will the audience even put up with it by buying the last volume?  I know that I forgot the plot and had to reread the 1st volume before continuing with the 2nd and it had been only 3 months! (I don’t usually have that problem with a series – so it’s just not so memorable for me.) 

Not sure if I’d want to go on with such a long wait – and there is no need as the series was finished before it started to be released in the US in English. VIZ should have released all the volumes within 3-6 months at most (or better yet, as a bunkobon), not the almost a year.  This doesn’t seem to happen with the shonen or seinen series – once again making women the second class citizens.  I also wonder why they’re releasing such a series, even if the author is very popular, as there are much better series that should be published and don’t even seem to be up for consideration.

A New Season of Young Leaves 若葉の -少年期- (Wakaba no) + June rant

Once again June has started a series and nowhere is there any word when they’ll have the next 2 volumes out to complete the series.  Not only that but A New Season of Young Leaves 若葉の -少年期- (Wakaba no)  story by TACHIBANA Venio 橘紅緒  and art by KITAHATA Akeno 北畠あけ乃  is so bad that I can’t imagine why they’re publishing it.

First, the story is stilted (although could the translation) and boring.  The artwork is bare, many panels with no or minimal backgrounds.  Plus, since June doesn’t seem to be planning on publishing volumes 2 and 3 any time soon, don’t bother.  It’s a total waste of time and money.

June has a very bad habit of obtaining the rights to poor quality stories, or when they do get a good story not publishing it in a timely manner – often years between volumes on the classic and popular manga, or if a great manga, often classic and popular, not enough copies so by the time (even a month or even less after publishing) that you’re ready to buy it you can only get used copies at exorbitant cost and they don’t seem to reprint more copies to satisfy their customers.  This happened recently to me with volume 1 of Twittering Birds Never Fly 囀る鳥は羽ばたかない (Saezuru Tori wa Habatakanai) by YONEDA Kou ヨネダコウ.

I’ve noticed that they’re finally going to publish the final two volumes of BORDER 境界線 by KODAKA Kazuma こだか和麻 , however, no plans to republish the first three volumes which have been out of print for years, and again were not all published together in a timely manner or even when new not enough copies of some volumes to get if you didn’t buy immediately. 

And with The Tyrant Falls In Love 恋する暴君 (Koisuru Boukun)  by TAKANAGA Hinako 高永ひなこ  they’ve taken years to finish this series and it is scheduled to finish mid-year this year, at least at this point.

Although, they do have the rights to several series that I’d love to read with their record I’m not buying the series, some of the series are classics.  But in general, most of the stuff they publish is so poorly written and even poorly drawn I don’t know how they stay in business.  They don’t care about the fans with not publishing good quality all the time, not placing volumes out at a fast pace, and not publishing enough copies for the fans. 

I’m never going to buy a June manga, no matter how bad I want the series due to this.  If I want to read it in English I’m just going to get from the library.  That way I won’t be disappointed too much, except if they send me a bad story like A New Season of Young Leaves 若葉の -少年期- (Wakaba no), and that’s only for wasting my time, not my money.