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Vol 2 Issue 6
[MANGA REVIEWS]


shonen sunday.
1997 Issue 36-37
Shogakukan
Update by Eri Izawa

What is SHONEN SUNDAY? SHONEN SUNDAY is one of the largest weekly manga magazines in Japan. Containing some of the latest and hottest boys' manga series in Japan, Sunday has hosted such notables as RANMA 1/2 and the currently popular MEITANTEI CONAN.


Selected News from this Issue

This week's magazine boasts a full-color section on singer and media idol Nishida Hikaru, who has recorded, among other things, the ending theme for the animated version of RECCA NO HONOO (The Flame of Recca). Hikaru fans can find a poster and several pages of her modeling various sports uniforms, plus even a sweepstakes for winning various pieces of sports apparel.

Selected Overview: KARAKURI CIRCUS
Author: Fujita Kazuhiro

KARAKURI CIRCUS is a series that has only recently begun in SHONEN SUNDAY.  Its author is Fujita Kazuhiro, better known for his previous SHONEN SUNDAY series USHIO TO TORA.  Like USHIO TO TORA, KARAKURI CIRCUS promises to be a bizarre, action-packed, but fundamentally good-natured manga.  As a sign of this, the word "karakuri" implies tricky mechanisms or gadgets.
  This new manga focuses on three somewhat unusual people:  Katou Narumi, a skilled kempo fighter who has a strange illness that requires him to make others laugh (or else he will asphyxiate); Masaru, a young boy who is the heir to a lot of wealth, and whose lineage is somehow tied into the making of complex karakuri puppets; and "Shirogane," a French circus acrobat who has the ability to control a powerful puppet named "Arurukan."
  The characters, though already odd enough on their own, find themselves pursued by a mysterious organization that uses lifelike puppets to try to kill them.  Between Katou's martial arts and Shirogane's puppet, they have so far managed to escape.  However, all is not well with the trio.  Shirogane, who is Masaru's appointed protector, does not trust Katou while Katou cannot stand Shirogane's arrogance.   Masaru, meanwhile, wants to know why they cannot get along together.
  KARAKURI CIRCUS's episode 5 starts with Shirogane cooking dinner for Masaru, and stubbornly refusing any help from Katou (even though they are in Katou's house).  Shirogane has frustrated Katou again (as usual); this time he is angry that she has accused him of being a busybody.  But listening to Masaru's story sobers him.  Even though the boy is currently the heir to a fortune, he is actually an illegitimate child, and had lived in poverty for a long time with his mother.  Only recently, after his mother's death, did he discover he was the heir to his father's family holdings.
  This week's story ends with a stereotypical manga scene in which Katou accidentally walks in on a naked Shirogane as she helps an obviously embarrassed Masaru with his bath.  Meanwhile, though, a puppeteer has arrived outside, complete with a sinister new puppet.
  Despite the familiar elements of the bathroom gaffe, or even the usual interpersonal friction (with occasional moments of mutual respect thrown in), KARAKURI CIRCUS has a style all its own — or rather, all Fujita's own.  His art still has the "fresh" feeling so often lacking with authors who have developed a set formula for their work. This new series is also lighthearted in a way that the later USHIO TO TORA episodes are not, or perhaps cannot be.  All this makes KARAKURI CIRCUS worth looking into.


continued...


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