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Manga the Week of 11/20/19

SEAN: There’s more November to come, and more manga as well. Bookwalker gives us a 10th volume of The Ryuo’s Work Is Never Done!, which according to LN fans is still the best series that I’ve dropped after reading the first page. Lots of folks seem to have this already, but Dark Horse gives us a 2nd volume of At the Mountains of Madness, the new H.P. Lovecraft manga adaptation. Expect loss of sanity. ASH: I’ve not read the source material to know how it compares, but I found the first volume engaging and plan on reading up more. SEAN: J-Novel Club debuts Altina the Sword Princess, which comes from the pen of How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord’s author, but I will try not to hold that against…

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The Greatest Demon Lord Is Reborn As a Typical Nobody: The Myth-Killing Honor Student

By Myojin Katou and Sao Mizuno. Released in Japan as “Shijou Saikyou no Daimaou, Murabito A ni Tensei Suru” by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jessica Lange. Sometimes I read light novels and feel that, despite the annoying main character, the ludicrous power levels, and the ongoing “horny teenager” vibes, that it’s worth it in the end because the author has something interesting to say behind all that. Sadly, sometimes I do not. Here we have a case of the latter, a series that wants to be “merely entertaining” and succeeds in the sense that I made it to the end of the book, but I was dragging my feet towards the end. Our hero is either frustratingly dense or frustratingly blase, the…

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One Piece, Vol. 92

By Eiichiro Oda. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz. Translated by Stephen Paul. When One Piece was a young, relatively new series, ages ago, it was relatively easy to jump right into, with story arcs that rarely bled into each other all that much. Once they arrived in the New World, though, all that has changed, possibly as Oda realized that a 92-volume series is much harder to have people jump right into with no information. As such, storylines have bled together a lot more than they used to. Law is back again, of course, and the rest of the supernovas seem to be following, as when Luffy is thrown into prison midway through this book, he…

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Short Takes: Levius/est, No Guns Life, and Ryuko

This month’s Short Takes column looks at three series: Levius/est, a sequel to Haruhisa Nakata’s steampunk spectacular Levius; No Guns Life, a sci-fi thriller whose principled hero sounds like Sam Spade and looks like a Remington; and Ryuko, a two-volume series about a yakuza assassin who’s hell-bent on avenging her mother’s kidnapping. Levius/est, Vol. 1 Story and Art by Haruhisa Nakata Translation by John Werry; Adaptation by Jason A. Hurley VIZ Media, 206 pp. Rated T+ (Older Teens) Reading Levius/est is a bit like joining a cocktail conversation midstream: you get the gist of what people are saying, but not the subtleties. Part of the problem lies with Levius/est’s publication history; as the slightly odd title suggests, Levius/est is a sequel. Since it jumped from one publication to another, however, artist…

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The Hero Is Overpowered But Overly Cautious, Vol. 2

By Light Tuchihi and Saori Toyota. Released in Japan as “Kono Yuusha Ga Ore TUEEE Kuse Ni Shinchou Sugiru” by Kadokawa Books. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Matt Rutsohn. This is very much a book of two halves. The first half is very much like the first book. They’re still trying to fight demon generals, Seiya is still rude and appalling, Rista is still screaming at him (and also lusting at him), etc. It’s funny, though not as funny as the first book, and I am reminded why I thought it would be hard to sustain over a long series. Then halfway through Rista realizes, as they head towards a major battle, that Seiya did NOT say “I’m perfectly prepared”, and everything turns very dark very…

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Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest, Vol. 10

By Ryo Shirakome and Takayaki. Released in Japan as “Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou” by Overlap Bunko. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ningen In general, if you’re going to have an unbalanced book, it’s best to have the strongest material be towards the end than towards the beginning. This is a problem for Arifureta Book 10, which has as its first third or so some of the best scenes in the entire series, then tries its hardest to keep it up. Unfortunately, keeping it up would require the reader to feel a lot more sympathy – or a lot less – towards Kouki than they do. This means that we spend a good deal of the last half of the book waiting for Kouki to…

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No Game No Life, Vol. 9

By Yuu Kamiya. Released in Japan by MF Bunko J. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Daniel Komen. This is, despite a few minor issues I had, a strong return to form for No Game No Life, which remembers what its main goal is besides being perverse, writing awkward prose, and occasional outbursts of plot: making the reader laugh. This is a funny volume, particularly if you enjoy seeing Sora suffer. While we do see [ ] in action towards the end, for the most part this is the Ex Machina, another of the Sixteen races and the ones who supposedly killed a God, trying to seduce Sora and get him to make babies with them. As you can see, this ridiculous premise hits on a lot…

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In Another World with My Smartphone, Vol. 17

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. As with so many prior volumes of Smartphone, the lighter and fluffier the series gets the better it is. As such, let’s start with the less light and fluffy stuff, which is mostly towards the end. Touya and company get themselves involved in a murder mystery in another country, one that is – as with many countries we’ve seen in this series – having a succession crisis. Unfortunately, they’re being manipulated on both sides by what’s left of Yulong, the country taken out mostly by the Phrase in a previous volume. They say Touya did it, which he denies….

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Skip Beat 43

Skip Beat! Volume 43 by Yoshiki Nakamura It says something about the enduring appeal of Skip Beat! that even though I have stacks of shoujo to read, whenever a new volume comes out it is my immediate priority. Kyoko has fought through an intense audition process to win the role of Momiji, but as usual in Skip Beat! this means that the drama is just beginning. Part of what made the most recent round of auditions so intense is that Kyoko and Moko had the possibility of working together. When Kyoko finds out that Moko isn’t cast, she has a torrent of emotions and anxiety about how her best friend might be feeling. It turns out that the producer has Moko in mind for a role in another project, and…

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