Short Takes: Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs, Rosario + Vampire and Slam Dunk

Earlier in the week, I examined three manga for the under-twelve set; today, I review three seinen and shonen titles. The first, Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs (VIZ), focuses on the Woofles Pet Store, where exasperated owner Teppei works side-by-side with the ditzy but dog-savvy Suguri. (She’s so devoted to canids that she wears a collar around her neck.) The second, Rosario + Vampire (VIZ), plays like a cross between Nightschool and Love Hina, documenting the romantic and supernatural misadventures of a human who accidentally enrolls in a school for monsters. And the third, Slam Dunk (VIZ), is the sports comedy that put Takehiko Inoue on the map and introduced Japan to the pick-and-roll.

INUBAKA: CRAZY FOR DOGS, VOL. 14

BY YUKIKA SAKURAGI • VIZ • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+) • 220 pp.

Let’s face it: Inubaka has flaws the way some dogs have fleas, from a heroine whose naivete comes dangerously close to stupidity to the manga-ka’s over-reliance on traced drawings of fancy breeds. But Inubaka also has plenty of heart, from its on-point messages about owner responsibility to its poignant depictions of human-dog relationships. In volume fourteen, for example, Suguri once again allows sentiment to trump sense, aggressively lobbying Teppei to mate Noa with Lupin. Teppei demurs, pointing to the large number of unwanted mutts in shelters as a compelling reason to neuter Lupin, not breed him. When Suguri persists, Teppei resorts to an experiential learning exercise: Suguri must find a good home for a shy, abused dog before Teppei would consider a Noa-Lupin pairing.

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Short Takes: Case Closed, Slam Dunk, and Waq Waq

This week’s column is all about shonen manga. First up: volume thirty of Case Closed (VIZ), a detective series about a first grader who solves gruesome murders. Next on the agenda is volume five of Takehiko Inoue’s best-selling Slam Dunk (VIZ), a sports manga about a flame-haired rebel who takes up basketball to impress a girl, only to fall in love with the game. The third and final review examines the first volume of Waq Waq (VIZ), a sci-fi series with the curious tagline, “Welcome to a world in chaos!” I don’t know about you, but that blurb doesn’t entice me. Just sayin’.

CASE CLOSED, VOL. 30

BY GOSHO AOYAMA • VIZ • 196 pp. • RATING: OLDER TEEN (16+)

Agatha Christie’s stable of eccentric detectives didn’t include a kid, but if it had, that character would have been a lot like Conan Edogawa, the star of Case Closed. Conan is a neat, fussy first grader whose keen powers of observation help him solve the kind of elaborate, premeditated crimes that were Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot’s bread-and-butter. (N.B. Conan was originally a teenage super-sleuth named Jimmy Kudo, but his enemies transformed him into a first-grader by means of a “mysterious substance.”) In volume thirty, Conan goes toe-to-toe with six of Japan’s greatest detectives to solve a decades-old mystery at an eccentric billionaire’s estate. The set-up is pure Christie: the detectives arrive at the house after receiving cryptic invitations, only to discover that their cars have been tampered with, their escape routes cut off, and the phone lines severed. (In a nod to more recent technological developments, there’s no cell phone service, either.) As the detectives scramble for clues, someone plants deadly traps around the house — and it’s up to Conan to figure out who the killer is and what links him to the original crime.

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Real, Vols. 1-4

Slam Dunk may have been the series that put Takehiko Inoue on the map and introduced legions of Japanese kids to basketball, but for me, a long-time hoops fan who grew up watching Larry Bird lead the Celtics to numerous NBA champtionships, Slam Dunk was a disappointment, a shonen sports comedy whose goofy hero desperately needed a summer at Robert Parrish Basketball Camp for schooling in the basics. Real, on the other hand, offered this armchair point guard something new: a window into the fiercely competitive world of wheelchair basketball. Watching Inoue’s characters run a man-to-man defense and shoot three-pointers from their chairs gave me a fresh appreciation for just how much strength, stamina, and smarts it takes to play the game, with or without the use of ones’ legs.

Much of the series’ appeal lies with Inoue’s superb draftsmanship. As he does in both Slam Dunk and Vagabond, he immerses us in the action, making us feel as if we’re on the court with his characters, bumping rims and talking trash. No detail is squandered; even a close-up of a character’s eyes or hands helps us picture where his teammates are on the court, and imagine how the play might unfold.

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