Momo Tama: Volume 3

by Nanae Chrono, 162 pages

Popular Japanese folk legend tells of Momotaro, a little boy found inside a peach floating down a river. Adopted by the couple who found him, the boy went on to conquer the island of ogres and return home with their treasure.

Flash forward a few centuries to the modern era. The island of the ogres is still under the control of Momotaro's descendants, who now run an academy for youth displaying special powers that may prove useful to their somewhat vague and possibly contradictory purposes. The newest crop of students contains two anomalies: Kashii, a young man who may either have no power at all or more than anybody realizes, and Kokonose, a mouthy, presumptuous, nine-year-old stow-away who quickly makes poor Kashii his servant. But Kokonose isn't just a brat. If what he says is true, he's also heir to the ogre clan, whose ancestral home he has every intention of reclaiming by besting the usurpers at their own game.

In this volume, Kashii and Kokonose have been dropped by the school's current (and scarily inscrutable) head into a real-life survival test to see if they deserve to stay at the academy. At least, that's what they're told. But they may never get the chance to pass, as a hostile take-over of the school (aided and abetted by someone on the inside) threatens the academy's autonomy as well as everyone's lives.

I may sometimes have to go back and reread pages of Chrono's books to catch all the nuance and intricacies of what's going on, but I have yet to be disappointed for my efforts. You just don't want to read anything of hers out of order, as she usually provides little in the way of character introductions or series-to-date recaps, choosing instead to start each book right where the last one left off--often in the thick of it. If you're paying attention, though, you'll be rewarded with intriguing characters whose motivations are obscured and whose interactions entertain. Chrono's artwork is detailed, but with clean, strong lines, giving her characters a visual intensity befitting of their personalities, and she draws from a variety of perspectives, keeping the panels fresh and eye-catching. In this series, she sets the fiery, diminutive Kokonose apart from his more realistically-styled companions, but given his purported origins and over-the-top personality, his odd-boy-out appearance quickly falls into place as a reflection of his inner character.