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Ran the Peerless Beauty, Vol. 1

By Ammitsu. Released in Japan as “Takane no Ran-san” by Kodansha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Friend. Released in North America digitally by Kodansha Comics. Translated by Nate Derr. One of the running themes of this blog has been about how a manga can be good even if it is not original. Trying to describe Ran the Peerless Beauty simply by the plot and characters alone might have a reader who’s very familiar with shoujo rolling their eyes and moving on, or at least asking how much it felt like reading a secret, 31st volume of Kimi ni Todoke. (Answer: a whole lot.) It’s true that the premise does not really surprise. But I enjoyed this first volume immensely. The romance was sweet, both leads are nice people who…

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Bookshelf Briefs 3/19/19

Behind the Scenes!!, Vol. 6 | By Bisco Hatori | Viz Media – This is coming to a close soon, and you can sort of tell—despite the plot complication showing us that Goda still really wants to direct, there’s just not a lot of special effects work here. Instead, we see the romantic pairings start to resolve, though resolve does not, in this case, mean “start a relationship.” I like this, as it shows how it can be difficult but not impossible to carry on working and being friends with someone after you’ve been rejected. Ruka, though, may have a tougher row to hoe here, and I have a suspicion that her arc is going to be the resolution of the series. Which is in the next volume, hopefully coming…

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In Another World with My Smartphone, Vol. 13

By Patora Fuyuhara and Eiji Usatsuka. Released in Japan as “Isekai wa Smartphone to Tomo ni” by Hobby Japan. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Andrew Hodgson. Smartphone continues to be a series with two very different types of interlocking plots. The first is the “main” plot, showing Touya battling the Phrase, deducing what’s actually going on in this world, and traveling to other worlds and having adventures. The second is Touya basically wandering around, goofing off, and leisurely talking with everyone in his kingdom. The problem is that the author is very good at the second thing but consistently falls down on the first. Oh, the Phrase battle was pretty good, except for one consequence which I’ll get to later. But when Touya comes back…

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5 Centimeters per Second: one more side

By Makoto Shinkai and Arata Kanoh. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by Vertical, Inc. Translated by Kristi Fernandez. (This review is based on a review copy provided by the publisher) I hadn’t initially planned to review this, mostly as I’ve never seen the 5 Centimeters per Second movie, and if I read the manga it was so long ago I’ve forgotten it. But I’m familiar with the author from the your name spinoff he wrote, which I enjoyed, and he also has a Voices of a Distant Star novel coming out over here this summer. So I gave it a try, and I’m glad I did. I knew going in from the start that the overall mood of the book would be ‘wistful verging on bleak’,…

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Skip Beat! vol 42

Skip Beat! Volume 42 by Yoshiki Nakamura With such a long running series like Skip Beat! once it has caught up with Japan, the wait between volumes is long enough that I temporarily lose track of of the plot. But within just a few panels, my memory gets triggered and I’m back in the story again. In this case seeing Ren’s reaction to learning that Sho kissed Kyoko made the wait between volumes all worthwhile. It is always amazing how well Nakamura can portray someone attempting to be stoic when they are filled with turbulent emotions. Kyoko meanwhile has her own battles to fight, and Skip Beat! always excels when she has to fight for a role. She’s in the middle of a rigged contest, trying to get a role…

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Captain Harlock: The Classic Collection, Vol. 3

By Leiji Matsumoto. Released in Japan as “Uchuu Kaizoku Captain Harlock” by Akita Shoten, serialized in the magazine Play Comic. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Zack Davisson. Adapted by Snati Whitesides. In many respects this is Daiba’s story more than Harlock’s, and we’ve been following his journey and not really going back to show how Harlock got started, got the crew together, etc. That said, just because we started with Daiba doesn’t mean we get a satisfying ending for him – or anyone. A lot of Matsumoto series, I’ve found, tend to best be described as “a cutout of a larger, more epic tale”, even when they’re being epic tales themselves. And so this volume wraps up with not much having changed, except that we’ve possibly…

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Amagi Brilliant Park, Vol. 4

By Shouji Gatou and Yuka Nakajima. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis. I’m still trying to figure out why I find Amagi Brilliant Park so hard to like but difficult to drop. Part of it may simply be an issue that I have with several light novel series, notably Index: the author is trying to be funny but I’m not laughing. As with the third volume, this book consists of one long story and several shorter ones. The long story gives us a deeper look at Bando Biino, one of the part-time staffers we’ve met before, whose gag was that she always wound up bloody due to accidents. The story behind this could actually be very depressing and chilling if…

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Manga the Week of 3/20/19

SEAN: Thanks to Yen spacing out its releases more evenly this month, we get TWO crushing weeks in a row instead of just one. So what’s in the first crushing week? Bookwalker has a 7th volume of shogi and young girls light novel The Ryuo’s Work Is Never Done!. Dark Horse has, theoretically, Eromanga-sensei 2. (OK, I’ll stop now.) J-Novel Club gives us the 13th In Another World with My Smartphone, a 4th Sorcerous Stabber Orphen, and the 10th Demon King Daimaou. Kodansha is making up for being virtually invisible the last two weeks. First, we have three debuts, two in print/digital and one digital only. We’ll start with Gleipnir, a seinen manga from Young Magazine the 3rd, which is about a young man who discovers that he can turn…

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The Ideal Sponger Life, Vol. 1

By Tsunehiko Watanabe and Neko Hinotsuki. Released in Japan as “Risou no Himo Seikatsu” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Wesley Bridges. Adapted by Jessica Cluess. Well, here we are again with another isekai. They tend to be male power fantasies, but this one’s even more blatant about what it is than most. Based on an (as yet unlicensed) light novel, our hero is a Japanese salaryman working for a shady company and not enjoying his life, until he’s transported to another world! (Not hit by a truck, which is honestly what I was expecting.) There he meets the beautiful and busty Queen, ho explains why he’s there. Due to plot reasons, he has royal blood from…

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