Mangakissa: A Wise Man Sleeps, Missing, and Silver Diamond

A Wise Man Sleeps by Mick Takeuchi

Miharu’s life is a “bad luck buffet” that seems endless.  Her mother is dead and her father disappeared after going bankrupt, leaving Miharu alone and defenseless against the dirtbag creep who not only ruined her father’s business but continuously offers to clear the debt through the use of her body.  Her one consolation is a ring, a tie to the mother who gave it to her before she died.  Just when she thinks her life couldn’t get worse, a strange man shows up and starts to hassle her about the ring.  Rintaro claims to be a World Jewel Preserver investigator and an expert on the phantom jewel, or wise man’s stone, which is the key to eternal life.  It also, he mentions, perfects metal and turns it into gold.  Her mother’s ring is such a stone, he explains, but Miharu isn’t so sure.  This guy isn’t just weird, he is socially incompetent and really unprofessional; wouldn’t a big shot jewel protector have some sort of self-assurance?  When he’s wearing a wise man’s stone, he does; the stone doesn’t just perfect metal, it perfects the human wearer.  He has his own ring and uses it when he finds it necessary to be persuasive, handsome, and intelligent, confusing and annoying Miharu.  They develop a love/hate relationship as Miharu accepts that the stone in her mother’s ring is alchemic.  She swallows it to keep it safe from those who would steal it to abuse its power, much to Rintaro’s chagrin.  He has to stay with the ring, and her, regardless of the verbal abuse she heaps upon him.  Things get strange and bloody as the pair encounters a headless ghost seeking peace, a dead actress out for revenge, and an insane man hiding the preserved bodies of his dead wife and daughter.  There is a pretty steady theme regarding the perils of allowing the past to hold one back from happiness and success in the present and future, along with the amusing wordplay (or foreplay?) between Miharu and Rintaro.  Banter isn’t the only hostile thing between the pair; Rintaro adores his doll Beatrice, who holds a special place in his heart because he made her himself.  He doesn’t tell Miharu that Beatrice is actually a homunculus – she becomes human for short periods of time and drinks human blood.  Miharu, unaware of this and jealous of Rintaro’s affection for Beatrice, throws the figure out in the trash, drawing out a confession from the horrified Rintaro.  Why didn’t he tell her about Beatrice earlier, and would she have believed him if he did?  Hasn’t she had enough to deal with since Rintaro’s grand entrance into her life?

Missing by Gakuto Coda and Rei Mutsuki

Missing is based on a series of horror fantasy novels of the same name in which high school student Kyoichi, a melodramatic boy known as “Count Gloomenstein” and “Baron von Blackheart” to his classmates, suddenly acquires a ghostly girlfriend no one else has seen before.  The other students who spend time with him in the literature club enjoy teasing him but have developed a group crush on his mysterious personality, so they are concerned about this ethereal girl who has a quick and desperate hold on him.  He has openly criticized romance and love in the past, declaring his disdain for time wasted on such trivialities, and going so far as to argue with the snarky Kusakabe, who accuses him of being “blinded by your misogyny” to which he responds, without missing a beat, “your hysteria clouds your vision.”  Ayame, sweet in appearance but not quite whole in some inexplicable way, follows Kyoichi in just the adoring – or is it obsessive? – way he has argued against.  He feels no need to explain his relationship, or Ayame, to anyone.  The pair disappears one night after classmates Ryoko and Takemi, curious and afraid of what they may find, follow them through town on a wild and suspenseful chase.  Their suspicions prove, unfortunately and horrifyingly, true – Ayame isn’t a human girl but a supernatural killer, a stealer of souls to whom Kyoichi has offered himself.  Another classmate offers an explanation: Kyoichi had an encounter with a kamikakushi – a soul stealer – as a child and may have been secretly searching for another ever since.  Should his admirers continue their pursuit when the victim has chosen to join Ayame’s ghostly realm, or allow him the freedom to decide his own fate, as unbelievable as others may find it? 

Silver Diamond by Shiho Sugiura

Rakan loves to cook and clean and wash clothes.  Girls adore him, but he doesn’t have a girlfriend.  He lives alone except for the vibrant jungle-like garden that fills his yard and offers an abundance of flowers for him to take to school to sell each day.  He is a strange young man but a likeable one, so no one asks questions, and he is content with his life as it is, lonely as it might be.  His placid existence is interrupted by a visitor to his backyard who claims that Rakan is a Sanome, an alien being who encourages plant life to grow.  That would explain the out of control garden, but Rakan isn’t so sure about the other world aspect of Chigusa’s chatter.  Chigusa is a handful without his strange mutterings; Rakan has to teach him ordinary behaviors of humans on Earth, such as bathing and eating, which is bizarre because Chigusa doesn’t look like a creature from another world any more than Rakan does.  Chigusa is both plant and human and can regenerate, so when a nasty beast appears from the garden to attack Rakan, as Chigusa fears, he is able to heal himself as he takes the blows on himself.  This is Chigusa’s mission, to protect Rakan at all costs.  When Narushige, another being from the same world as Chigusa – and Rakan – shows up, the situation becomes even more complicated.  A romantic, emotional – but not sexual – entanglement grows between the three, relieved by the humorous exploits of Narushige’s talking sword, er, snake, Koh.  Koh is fascinated by cars, thrilled with the blue sky, terrified by the flames on the gas stove, and absorbed by television.  He is like a hyperactive child, sobered only by his master’s need for his shape-shifting capability as he moves elegantly along Narushige’s arm and turns instantly into a murderous sword.  Rakan admits that his own arrival to the house had been an odd appearance like theirs, as he found himself with his amnesiac mother in the owner’s backyard.  The owner, who assumed the role of grandfather to him, accepted them both as family and the three lived together happily until the adults died, his mother two years before and his grandfather, one year.  His life has been satisfactory but not exciting, and he now faces the fantastic responsibility of the solitary hope to an alien world.  No pressure, of course.