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Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Latest Picks

May 29, 2023

Pick of the Week: Don’t Call It Mystery

May 23, 2023

Pick of the Week: So Much Stuff

LATEST FEATURES, ESSAYS, COLUMNS, ROUNDTABLES, & REVIEWS

May 30, 2023 By Sean Gaffney

Sasaki and Peeps: The Psychics and the Magical Girl Drag the Death Game Crew into the Fight ~Alert! Giant Sea Monster Approaching Japan~

By Buncololi and Kantoku. Released in Japan as “Sasaki to Pi-chan” by Media Factory. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Alice Prowse. I observed as I was reading this new volume of Sasaki and Peeps that I felt the author had read a lot of the Bakemonogatari Series. Their writing style isn’t anything like NISIOISIN, but this is a story of a guy who saved the world while being surrounded by underage girls, and it also has a tendency sometimes to actively drive its audience away. There’s a scene halfway through the book where Sasaki is trying to rescue the first prince, a rival to Sasaki’s group in the other world, and comes across the aftermath of a sexual assault, which is described in detail. This then…

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May 29, 2023 By Sean Gaffney

High School DxD: Ouroboros and the Promotion Exam

By Ichiei Ishibumi and Miyama-Zero. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Haydn Trowell. This contains spoilers for the end of Book 11, but not till the third paragraph. High School DxD remains one of the most shonen series ever written, because it’s absolutely filled to the brim with what makes a shonen series – on both sides. On the one side we have the shonen battle manga, with lots of powerful enemies, dealing with almost certain defeat, discovering that the person you just struggled to take out was merely the weakest of the ones you have to fight, etc. It’s the classic old-school “you defeat the bad guy by everyone in the cast shouting the hero’s name in unison as…

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May 28, 2023 By Sean Gaffney

Baccano!: 1935-D Luckstreet Boys

By Ryohgo Narita and Katsumi Enami. Released in Japan by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Taylor Engel. At last, we are forced to discuss the elephant in the room. This volume came out in Japan in August 2016, and there has not been another one since. Ryohgo Narita has been battling a lot of health issues. He’s also been writing another Bleach novel series, which was licensed in North America, and an ongoing manga series, which was licensed in North American AND got an anime. And, most importantly, there has been Fate/strange Fake, a light novel spinoff of the super duper popular Fate series, which began in 2014 but has had five new light novels since the last Baccano!, the most recent being this…

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May 27, 2023 By Sean Gaffney

Reign of the Seven Spellblades, Vol. 8

By Bokuto Uno and Miyuki Ruria. Released in Japan as “Nanatsu no Maken ga Shihai suru” by Dengeki Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Andrew Cunningham. I have grown used to this series casually killing people off. It’s easy to guess when they’re one of the people on Oliver’s hit list, but we’ve also seen the glorious death of Diana Ashbury and others. The author knows this, of course, and plays with it throughout this book, making me assume once or twice that we were going to see yet another tragic student fate. Because, well, every student at this academy has a mission just as important to them as Oliver’s, a mission that they will kill for (OK, maybe not Guy, I can’t see Guy turning…

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May 27, 2023 By Sean Gaffney

Maiden of the Needle, Vol. 1

By Zeroki and Miho Takeoka. Released in Japan as “Hariko no Otome” by Kadokawa Shoten. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Kiki Piatkowska. This book’s plot and characters have a familiar feel, to the point where the biggest surprise I had in the first volume is that the male love interest has a goatee. So permit me to talk about one of my pet problems with light novels in general, which is that the writers don’t feel content to have antagonists be bad people, they’ve got to be THE WORST PEOPLE EVER. Sure, you could have a simple parent who favors one daughter over the other and just, y’know, frowns when she walks by, but why do that when they can starve her to death, lock her…

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May 26, 2023 By Sean Gaffney, Anna N, Michelle Smith and Ash Brown

Manga the Week of 5/31/23

SEAN: It’s the 31st of May, so get back indoors, you filthy people. (Sorry, Jonathan Coulton joke.) ASH: I lol’d. SEAN: Airship debuts, in print, There’s No Freaking Way I’ll be Your Lover! Unless… (Watashi ga Koibito ni Nareru Wake Naijan, Muri Muri! Muri Janakatta!?), whose digital edition came out last month. If you like protagonists who tell you how much they dislike themselves, you’ll love this. Also in print: Disciple of the Lich: Or How I Was Cursed by the Gods and Dropped Into the Abyss! 5, She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man 7, and The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary 8. In early digital, we see Free Life Fantasy Online: Immortal Princess 3 and Though I Am an Inept Villainess: Tale of the Butterfly-Rat Body…

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May 26, 2023 By Katherine Dacey

The Manga Review: Simply the Best

Words like “icon” and “legend” are so overused today that when a true pioneer dies, it’s hard to describe their legacy. By any reasonable measure, though, Tina Turner was both an icon and a legend, a ground-breaking figure in R&B and rock music whose expressive voice and commanding stage presence radically transformed American popular music. Her voice could be seductive or powerful, heart-breaking or soul-stirring, embodying the real emotion behind even the most banal lyrics. (Who but Tina Turner could make “River Deep, Mountain High” into something glorious?) That she had her greatest success in her forties is perhaps the most astonishing part of her story. At an age when women are often pushed to the margins of the popular music industry, Turner packed stadiums around the world, sold millions…

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May 26, 2023 By Sean Gaffney

How to Win Her Heart on the Nth Try

By Ichine Kamijo and Yu Shiroya. Released in Japan as “n-kaime no Koi no Musubikata” by Kadokawa Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Judy Jordan. Years ago, in the pre-light novel days, it always seemed that manga brought over to English speakers was written purely for teenagers in middle school and high school, and the romances all revolved around school clubs and walking home after practice. I would wish that for once, just for once, we could get a romance about grownups, in real jobs, and dealing with grownup concerns. So! I have good news and bad news. The good news is that this is definitely a book for and about grownups, with grownup concerns, and they have white-collar office jobs. The bad news: if you,…

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May 25, 2023 By Sean Gaffney

A Pale Moon Reverie, Vol. 1

By Kuji Furumiya and Teruko Arai. Released in Japan as “Tsuki no Shirosa o Shirite Madoromu” by DRE Novels. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Jason Li. This is definitely one of those series where you can sell it to others by simply saying who wrote it. For the right reader, “from the same author as Unnamed Memory” is quite the draw, and this series has a lot of the same strengths that made Unnamed Memory such a compelling work. Most notably that it feels like a “normal” fantasy work, rather than one filtered through Japanese light novels and webnovels. It’s refreshing these days to read books without stats, adventurer’s guilds, and the rest. This series is creating its own world, thank you very much, and the…

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More Features & Reviews

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LATEST POSTS – SITEWIDE

  • Sasaki and Peeps: The Psychics and the Magical Girl Drag the Death Game Crew into the Fight ~Alert! Giant Sea Monster Approaching Japan~
  • Pick of the Week: Don’t Call It Mystery
  • High School DxD: Ouroboros and the Promotion Exam
  • Baccano!: 1935-D Luckstreet Boys
  • Reign of the Seven Spellblades, Vol. 8
  • Maiden of the Needle, Vol. 1
  • Manga the Week of 5/31/23
  • The Manga Review: Simply the Best
  • How to Win Her Heart on the Nth Try
  • A Pale Moon Reverie, Vol. 1

From the Archives

May 26, 2017 By Sean Gaffney 1 Comment

Manga the Week of 5/31

SEAN: Believe it or not, under 20 releases is now a quiet week. Welcome to the Manga Boom, here’s ...

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April 26, 2013 By Michelle Smith

The CMX Project: Cipher

MICHELLE: Hello, and thanks for joining us for the second installment of The CMX Project, in which ...

[Read More...]

October 9, 2017 By Ash Brown

My Week in Manga: October 2-October 8, 2017

My News and Reviews Last week at Experiments in Manga I announced the winner of the Assassin's ...

[Read More...]

January 17, 2014 By Ash Brown

Discovering Manga: Podcasts, Part 3

Over the last few years, I've made an effort to track down podcasts that feature manga. I haven't ...

[Read More...]

January 21, 2016 By Sean Gaffney 1 Comment

Manga the Week of 1/27

SEAN: It’s time to bury you in manga releases once more, folks. What do the companies have up ...

[Read More...]

More Posts from the Archives

DRAMA DIARY

By Anna N

Skip Beat! the drama

I recently marathoned 14 episodes of the Tawainese live action version of Skip Beat! which is airing now on ...

[Read More...]

By Anna N

Drama Diary: IRIS Episodes 1-5

I tend to watch mostly romantic comedies when I am viewing k-drama, but IRIS is a bit different. This is a ...

[Read More...]

MORE DRAMA DIARY

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