Precariously Protect Peace, Pointlessly Pursue Pain

Last time, on Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General!

Thank you, General. Volume 10 picks up with Old Fart Numbers 2 and 3 - Usa and Turtle - and Flat-Chested Lady in an Outfit Too Young for Her - Oobaa - still fighting Hulking Shark Man. Carcha decided heroes today are too weak to preserve the peace the 4 of them fought for, so he's going to tear it all down. As the General, of all characters, will later point out, it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to fight hard for peace, then get angry because people aren't being as serious as you'd like in the more peaceful world you created.

Carcha is taken down via some teamwork from X-Chan (the tentacle monster RX's Scientist created) and Licht, the son of the world' premier hero. The two haven't seen each other since the exhausting 5th volume, when there were so many tentacle sex jokes I nearly abandoned the series, but Licht is clearly still infatuated and eager to work with the tentacle girl of his dreams. Anyway, they incapacitate Carcha long enough for Braveman to land one big hit and calm things down. But hey, Mother Justice has got to be pretty impressed with her son, helping to end all this chaos, right?

The battle and resulting fallout on both sides, takes up the first third of the volume. The "Organization" - all 3 of them - are captured, and Carcha is allowing himself to be kept in custody. The Hero League has, you know, I still don't care about internal struggles between faceless (literally, they're just drawn as shadowy outlines) bureaucrats, move on.

The Villain League, despite being instrumental in the victory, are mostly not pleased with how they did. This leads to infighting, and a competition to see which of the non-RX groups can get the most views on a video they posted about their group. The Monster's Benefits Society starts strong, but doesn't nail the landing. The Mecha Mountain Gang inadvertently post a terrifying video. The Rogue Roses, um, violated terms of service with their video, and BDS's video was a complete flop. It's a silly chapter, but it helps highlight the differences between the groups.

Then Jin busts out consecutive chapters at the pool, because he wasn't getting enough fan service in there already with the Rogue Roses' video. The first (Swimsuit Episodes are Always Good, No Matter How Many Times You Do Them) about RX hijacking the city pool for a vacation day and the damn pervy cat trying for a photo of one of his female coworkers after a clothing malfunction. The second (Enough with the Swimsuit Episodes Already) turns into a souped-up water gun war as several of the heroes, planning their own fun day at the pool, discover RX's treachery. It does have a cute ending as Frosty is very happy to be get to have a fun day at the pool. Turns out people typically don't invite the person with ice powers along.

After that, Jin adds another new character, as RX tries to seize on their newfound notoriety thanks to the whole mess with the General-robot, by going on a recruitment drive. This brings the General back into conflict with a creepy lady she met in an early volume. Well, creepy lady got herself a partner, a big lady named, appropriately enough, Eight Foot Tall-Chan.

While incredibly strong, Eight Foot Tall-Chan really just wants to make friends, and the General, for all her many, many, many, many, many faults, can be a friendly and considerate person. So she offers a position in RX. Is this shy, innocent young woman really cut out for a life of villainy or, whatever it is RX gets up to most of the time? Well, it's all in how you frame it, and RX, the pervert cat aside, are a tight-knit group. Boss can't really bring himself to scold the General for running off, and Secretary-San tells the General she wants to come along next time the General goes rogue.

Workplace solidarity is lovely.

Robotic Doppelgangers are Such a Pain

Hope those poor saps are wearing proper protective equipment! That's a lie, no I don't.

Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General volume 9 revolves around the Organization terrorizing the populace with a powerful robot that looks just like the General. The General takes off on her own to hunt them down and, well you saw the note. Outside of a brief run-in with the rabbit-cop's hotheaded partner, Jin doesn't bother showing the General trying to avoid arrest.

Instead, we get a chapter where the General takes refuge with her three clones and is forced to work at their maid cafe to pay off the food she ate. She is, of course, put in a much skimpier, ridiculous outfit than any of the clones wear, which only serves to humiliate her when she tries to play up her sex appeal to a group of guys addicted to pudding. I think there would have been plenty of comedy from the General trying her hand at customer service without the T&A, so it feels pointless. At least the General does eventually get to show some moves when she faces off with the robot.

The Villain League take their own measures to find and neutralize the robot, though we aren't shown any of the preparations, only the execution (which works, up to a point,) but most of the story is focused on the Hero League's efforts. Which are ineffectual and confounding to their members. The people in charge of the League - entirely unseen - don't have a good plan or assessment of priorities. Braveman and his two junior partners are teamed up with an ice-based character who is extremely effective at decisive action, but useless on a mission that involves running around until they encounter the target. Likewise, the leaders have declared both the robot and the General are to be terminated on sight, even though there's no indication the General's at all connected, and it's a pointless splitting of manpower.

This feels like Jin, once again, getting further in the weeds of the Hero League than I have any interest. I don't think this is going to turn out to be a case of villains infiltrating and seizing control of the League, if only because he did that plot several volumes ago. Rather, I think it's going to be a case the executives making decisions don't actually know anything about superheroics.

Or maybe the mistake was organizing at all. "Frosty-shi" observes that the robot is attacking people that are evil but protected by the law. It feels like the argument is, in the attempt to organize and work with the government, the heroes blunted their own effectiveness. The Hero League would never be given permission to attack a company that treats its workers poorly, or punish a slumlord. The Organization, and their robot, have no such compunctions. Similarly, when the Villain League spring their trap on the robot, the Professor laughs about how the robot kept its travel routes over heavily populated places to discourage any attacks by heroes. But villains don't care about that at all, so they can attack to their heart's content!

My guess is, neither did the original heroes - the rabbit-cop, the pervert turtle, the grandma ninja and a 4th character that appears now. They were "vigilantes", which probably makes them more like Golden Age Superman. See a scumbag, whup their ass. Usa became a cop to keep an eye on the Hero League, while "Oba-sama" tried to keep the League on course (the turtle went into the wilderness, either from cowardice or to avoid sexual harassment lawsuits.) Carcha disappeared and has returned to test whether things have gotten better. Are the heroes up to snuff, or are they only fit to get snuffed? Jin really tries to play Carcha up as terrifying, coloring his eyes black, covering the backgrounds in a gloom that seems to drip from the top of the panels, using thick lines like the character's strength is pulsing off him.

Volume 10, which is supposed to be out sometime soon, looks set up to be a fight between Carcha and the other 3 vigilantes, but Braveman and the General are both there, so I expect they'll get involved somehow.

Repeated Rejection

Hey, who wrote this law? *squints at the paperwork* Senator Jim. . .Balent. Well, nothing we can do about it, he's a duly elected official! The system works! *sobs uncontrollably*

Volume 8 of Precarious Woman Executive - I'm not typing the rest of that. Anyway, Volume 8 picks up after the failure of the Hero League and Villain Leagues to stop the "Organization". Both groups feel pretty humiliated and want to up their game so they're better prepared for the inevitable rematch.

With the Hero League, Jin goes the route of bringing in three of the founders to show these young pups how it's done. Except one of the old heads is basically Master Roshi from Dragon Ball, in that he's a bald old turtle-man with whiskers, who is a notorious pervert. He's there to be the butt of jokes, or try and grope various female characters. That is all Jin uses him for. Jokes about how ugly or how much of a coward Master Turtle is, or "jokes" about Master Turtle trying to grab boobs. This is mixed in with discussions of how the hero League can more efficiently organize and disseminate information and resources. That's right, it's an organizational efficiency review! Sigh. Jin is seriously overestimating how much I care about the Hero League.

The Villain League's efforts are more entertaining, in that there isn't as much bureaucracy, and more mad science. This where the manga shines, as usual, with the shorter one-off chapters that focus on a few characters. The General gets herself an upgrade, after several attempts that were declined for being indecent. The various seconds get together for a largely unproductive chat and Secretary-san eating a lot of pudding. The Robot Yakuza agree to take RX's latest invention a maid/secretary/guard robot out for field testing, which results in some awkward conversations with the police. Secretary-san takes the General's philosophy about not risking letting someone else take what she wants to heart, and gets a little forward with their boss.

The most significant development is that we see the moment Braveman decided to become a masked hero, when he saved someone from being crushed by a falling girder and they expressed fright at his face. Later, we see the moment when the General became infatuated with heroes, when a guy with a scary-looking face saved her from being crushed by a falling girder.

The coincidence isn't exactly a surprise, and since neither of them knows they met that day, it doesn't change the dynamic between them in the present. Although Braveman does express a level of relief when the General reappears to harass him after she'd been sick for several days, because he finds routine comforting. But later in the volume, he expresses frustration with her unwillingness to give up, because he feels he needs to grow and become a hero everyone can trust, whether he wears a mask or not.

What is interesting, and probably foreshadows a future development (or re-foreshadows it, given what happened in volume 4), is that the General's remark about her savior's face wasn't meant as an insult, so much as in surprise. As she narrates it, he looked how you'd expect a villain to, but he became a hero and saved her. She wasn't appalled by his looks, but impressed by his actions. It matches how Jin wrote them in an earlier interaction in the series, when the General met Braveman in his civilian identity, and remarked that he might look scary, but he should have confidence in himself.

It feels like there's a real face turn coming for her, as a character who admits she spends 10 minutes on villainy a year. But it hasn't happened yet.

A Do-Si-Do of Dumbasses

Ummm, there is a lot to unpack there.

Outside of three, one-off stories at the start, volume 7 of Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General is focused entirely on the escalating efforts of the mysterious "Organization", which includes the guy the General keeps insisting acts like the Joker.

In this case, the Organization unleashes a horrible stink bomb in a train station, then tells the Villain League, of which RX is a part, where they've placed other bombs, which they have given credit to the Villain League for. Including a police station and a branch office of the Hero League. The villains split up to try and stop the bombs and run into more of the Organization's members. Including a cyborg who is dangerously obsessed with the Joker-like guy.

Nobody covers themselves with glory here. The Organization succeeds in their real plan, but they seem like a bunch of idiots. It's just the Villain League and the Hero League are even bigger idiots. Or really just the Villain League, the heroes are so disorganized they barely even get involved. With how Jin writes most of the cast as a bunch of buffoons or weirdos, the Organization's characters seem to be written as even more obnoxious weirdos to stand out compared to the first two groups.

I mean, just look at that idiot! He tries to do cool poses constantly and that's what he manages! Is that not a character crying out to get beaten to death?!

Or maybe this internecine warfare just isn't very interesting to me. Jin's very good at using his cast for workplace comedy sorts of stories, where the emphasis is on these characters who know each other and, if not like one another, at least tolerate and understand one another. The first chapter, where we meet the General's parents and they get to find out what their daughter's been up to, that was funny. We see where the General gets some of her personality, but also that her subordinates actually like her, even if they don't get her obsession with Brave-Man.

Who Has Time For Super-Villainy

That is. . . an oddly anatomically specific threat.

Two-and-a-half years ago, I discussed Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General, (cripes that title) Volume 1. Well, now we're up to volume 6. Jin has been slowly expanding the fictional world since then. Adding other villain organizations that had loose cooperative relationships with RX, as well as a larger hero organization that Braveman is part, including some trainee heroes. Volume 4 revealed there was another, far more covert villain organization that infiltrated the heroes and crippled them, forcing the General and the rest of the RX Organization (now up to 12 members) to actually save the city.

Then Jin spent what felt like 90% of volume 5 making tentacle sex jokes after Scientist-San's tentacle monster took human form (now called X-Chan) and became infatuated with the rebellious teenage son of one of the city's greatest heroes. Fortunately, Jin mostly leaves that behind in volume 6.

Look, I said mostly. There's only two bits about it in this volume, thank goodness, as Jin seems more interested in setting some things up for whatever is coming next. One of those is that the police have established their own squad to deal with villains and monsters, since confidence in the heroes isn't real high. We only meet two of them, a rabbit in a trenchcoat and fedora, and his partner, a loud, hyperactive lady with superpowers and an extremely revealing costume. I don't care much about that, with the rabbit going on about how in his eyes, the heroes are just as bad as the villains. OK, thanks Gyrich, fuck off.

The other development is that more members of the shadowy villain organization pop up, including a scientist who cloned the General after being impressed with her energy and abilities. Ultimately three of the clones escape and try to decide what to do next. Which leads to them trashing the General's reputation as they are introduced to the harsh realities of capitalism. 

That part works better for me, because the clones, even when they're the focus, don't seem to hijack the story as much as the cops. The rabbit just keeps talking and no one gets a chance to rebut anything. With the clones, there's an opportunity for back-and-forth, which works more to a comedy angle. The rabbit cop and his hyperactive partner aren't very amusing. Plus, it gives the general an opportunity to show that she's not a particularly evil person, just obsessed enough with Braveman to make really bad decisions.

Beyond that, it's a lot of brief one-off chapters, mostly about different relationships between coworkers. One chapter is all the henchmen and Scientist-San's creations having a private party/bull session. Or the General trying to learn hypnosis, and accidentally making Secertary-Sama confess her feelings for their leader. Braveman agrees to test a new energy drink a scientist in their organization devised, which makes him susceptible to suggestion and nets the General a date. A couple of trainee heroes spot the General on her day off, and tail her because they suspect she's up to no good. Basic set-ups that allow for a variety of jokes. Some meta, some lewd, some just people behaving like morons.

For the most part, despite their various hang-ups Jin depicts the RX group as being fairly tightknit, which I really like. The Boss isn't some brutal overlord, he's actually sort of a putz, but one who works a part-time job to try and help fund their schemes. Secretary seems cold and businesslike, but other than certain breaches of etiquette, she handles being surrounded by morons pretty well. They're allegedly villains, but other than the General making Braveman's life hell, they don't really do anything evil. But you can see how the work environment would convince them to stick around, despite everything else.

I was wondering, after volume 5, if I just needed to give up on this series. If Jin was going to spend all his time on tentacle jokes, I was done. This volume was a nice return to form, and hopefully he can build from here in volume 7, which comes out in this fall.

A Lot of People Aren't On Good Terms With Reality

See, I tend to think I look unfriendly, because with my hearing issues I will look at people to make sure I'm not missing anything they might be saying to me, and I figure I look like I'm glaring. In reality, I probably just look like a squinty goober.

Jin, who is the writer/artist for the manga Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General (that's an excessively long title), seems to mean "precarious" in the sense she's unstable or easily prone to collapse, which, yeah. Either that, or he's conflating it with "perverted". She's obsessed with the hero Braveman, and decided the best way to get close to him was join an organization (with a total of 9 members by the end of volume 1) committed to world conquest. She tells him she's a virgin two pages into their first encounter like it's an important piece of information, misinterprets his early attempts to defeat her as foreplay (then passes out), takes a hostage to get a hug from him, you get the idea. She does actually completely demoralize him at one point*, except that wasn't her goal.

That side of things is a mixed bag. The variety of Braveman's reaction to dealing with her hijinks can be funny. He's outraged or disgusted a lot, but gradually moves into mockery or just trying to ignore her. The General claims to be a villain, but admires him so much she gives a pep talk when he appears to have lost heart, or gets outraged when her Boss hears her reports on her first couple of fights and concludes Braveman is really just a pervert. She has the outward trappings and style of a villain, but really she's a stalker doing a poor impression of a villain. The volume is a lot of fairly short chapters, most of them revolving around some half-assed mission of the day. An attempt to use a new weapon, or trying to recruit new members off the street by handing out pamphlets.

There's a lot of fan service, a lot of focus on boobs or characters getting knocked upside-down so we're looking up their skirts. That gets tedious, because it seems to be happening constantly. To the point when they recruit a scientist who created some tentacle plant monster (that phrase will probably do wonders for random people finding my blog through internet searches), the General wonders if the book has become a sex manga in the span of two panels. I was thinking it was a little late to worry about that now.

It isn't like Jin can't do other comedy. I enjoyed the RX Organization, with its total of 3 henchmen, a boss who is kind of a nerd, and his mostly calm, but terrifying Secretary. They do have an HQ, the matching outfits are a nice touch, but that's as far as it goes. That side of things, the way they look impressive at first glance, but are really a complete joke, reminds me of ACROSS from Excel Saga. The General herself reminds me a lot of Excel, actually. Hyperactive idiot obsessed with a guy that wants nothing to with her**.

There's enough variety in their personalities in the broad strokes for them to play off each other well. The General is accompanied by the 3 henchmen on every mission, who offer up a constant stream of commentary about the General's outlook or goals, the difference between reality and her perception of it. Some of the mundane problems, like being short-staffed because one henchman has a cold, or not respecting people's labeled food in the break room fridge. There's a chapter that follows Braveman in his civilian identity, where we learn he has a frightening face that causes him a lot of problems. That made me laugh.

If I thought the fan service would decline in frequency, I'd be more likely to by volume 2, but for right now, not so sure.

* So maybe the Penguin should try this with Batman. It couldn't go worse than his usual schemes. Wait, does the Penguin even scheme to take down Batman any more?

** Although in Excel's case it was her boss. At least she had enough sense to join his organization to try and get close, rather than place herself as his adversary.