Aoharu x Machinegun, Vol. 1

A stiff translation that seems barely edited and a story line highly influenced by Ouran Host Club make this manga falls flat. Hotaru Tachibana is a girl who passes as a boy in her daily life, and likes it that way. She’s the hero that women need, but when her quest for justice ends up causing damage at a school club, she becomes indebted to Masamune Matsuoka, her unpleasant new neighbor. He’s into the Japanese version of competitive paintball, and quickly drags Hotaru in as the third leg to support his team, which is trying to make it to the top of the national circuit. The setup sounds promising, but the book can’t decide on a genre until the very end, and the characters don’t deliver. The art’s acceptable, and there’s potential for later volumes by the end, but references to various other franchises in the manga world in place of original content makes it seem more like a half-baked fan work. (Oct.)