Sleep Is For the Weak

PG-13 for romantic hijinks, a little violence, and completely inappropriate adult behavior/jokes at times; official series website

I wrote Tokyopop’s scripts for the original Kamichama Karin series, but the sequel series, Kamichama Karin Chu, is being released by Del Rey and has nothing to do with me. That means I can now praise/hate as much as I want and still stay ethical. How can I not, when this is such a rare chance?

For those of you who never read the original series (or saw the anime), Karin is a middle school cutie pie who’s given the powers of a god by her zombie cat. There’s a lot of screaming, shiny things, cross-dressing, and a love quadrilateral made more complicated through completely unexpected cloning technology. Oh, and I think somebody’s sister is a bird. It’s basically a magical girl story if said story were conceived while its mother was smoking crack cocaine and its father was King Poseidon, Lord of the Seas.

Kamichama Karin Chu takes place after the 7 volumes of the original series. I’m pretty sure this ran in a different magazine than the original series in Japan, so the first volume of Chu is almost like “a second start” to the series, featuring new goals and characters in addition to most of the old favorites. This ends up, actually, being mostly a bad thing, since some of the interesting plot points from the end of the original are completely ignored in the first volume of Chu, and the new characters just get in the way of the character development between the old characters. Not to spoil the end of the first series or anything, but these kids still needed a very long time to talk and work through the crazy reveals in Volume 7. In the first volume of Chu, they’re trying to have conversations while practically tripping over new magical babies and pop stars who demand their attention. Funny, admittedly, but it would have worked better if this volume were a bit more satirical than it is.

So what we end up with is a series somewhat unsatisfying for old fans and difficult to penetrate for new fans. Nobody wins, really. I will admit that there are two moments in this volume that truly shine: the first is a full page of panels dedicated to a slow, innocent, beautiful little kiss, which is very sensual for a little girl’s comic without being too explicit and/or sexual. This doesn’t excuse the other adult jokes thrown into the book, including toddler on toddler sexual assault (dear God, I wish I were kidding), but still. The second is a joke involving Karin tampering with someone’s passport so he’ll look like Francis Xavier and get held up at customs. A manga aimed at little girls having its talking animal sidekick say “This is an illegal act called ‘forrrgery of official documents’”? Excellent work, I say.

Initial impression: It has its moments, but the beginning of this sequel series is so ill-conceived that it’s probably maxed out on the number of readers who will not want to read it. Fans of the original series, try it but prepare to be at least a little disappointed. And to anyone else…if you’re still planning on buying a copy, I already said I didn’t work on this one, Mom. (Lianne)

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