Manga Bookshelf

October 17, 2017 By Sean Gaffney

The Faraway Paladin: The Lord of the Rust Mountains

By Kanata Yanagino and Kususaga Rin. Released in Japan as “Saihate no Paladin” by Overlap. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by James Rushton. I’m reviewing this as one giant book, but it actually came out as two books here, called ‘Primus’ and ‘Secundus’ – in fact, Amazon thinks that those are the titles, and forgot about the whole Rust Mountains thing. It works better to see them as one big book, though, which is what the author intended. The first volume simply stops, and the second picks up right where it left off – there’s no real attempt to separate them. As for the plot, our square-jawed hero and his elf friend are here to take down an ancient dragon, helped out by some old friends…

October 16, 2017 By Ash Brown

My Week in Manga: October 9-October 15, 2017

My News and Reviews Last week at Experiments in Manga I posted the Bookshelf Overload for September which includes lists of some of the manga and other books that I picked up last month (along with some brief commentary). Looking forward to future manga releases, Vertical Comics recently announced two new titles: Pop Team Epic by Bkub Okawa and The Delinquent Housewife! by Yoko Nemu. Seven Seas also had an interesting announcement to make. In addition to two licenses–Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs by Tadahiro Miura and World’s End Harem by Link and Kotaro Shono–Seven Seas is launching Ghost Ship, a new imprint for the publishers’ more mature titles. Quick Takes Captain Harlock: Dimensional Voyage, Volume 1 written by Leiji Matsumoto, illustrated by Kouiti Shimaboshi. Although I immediately recognize…

October 16, 2017 By Michelle Smith and Sean Gaffney

Bookshelf Briefs 10/16/17

Ace of the Diamond, Vol. 5 | By Yuji Terajima | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – It’s been a while since the last volume of Ace of the Diamond and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy it! Eijun, who began the series as a hothead, has matured without losing the emotional side that makes him sympathetic. Seeing him not only grow from Chris’ tutelage and execute one truly amazing pitch during their last inning of play together but then bawl his eyes out when he makes varsity and Chris doesn’t is, honestly, pretty darn sweet. He may be brash, but he’s a good kid. Even better, we get more insight into Furuya, who is currently stronger in pitching but lacks in people skills. I love that he doesn’t see himself…

October 14, 2017 By Sean Gaffney

Juni Taisen: Zodiac War

By NISIOISIN and Hikaru Nakamura. Released in Japan by Shueisha. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Nathan A. Collins. I wasn’t sure what to make of this when I first heard of it, and now that I’ve finished it, I’m still not quite sure. It was written two years ago, and the anime is just coming out now, so it seems like it wasn’t written solely to be a TV tie-in (Nisio has done those before, writing books in the Death Note and xxxHOLIC franchises). But honestly, it doesn’t have the same strong authorial voice that I’ve grown used to from the Monogatari and Zaregoto series – if nothing else, it has far fewer puns. If I’m going to be honest it feels like it’s a book…

October 13, 2017 By Katherine Dacey

From the Vault: The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You to Read

During the month of October, I’ll be digging into the vaults and sharing excerpts from and links to horror-themed reviews I’ve written at The Manga Critic and elsewhere; expect one or two of these blast-from-the-past posts each week from now until Halloween. First up is Jim Trombetta’s excellent The Horror! The Horror! Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You to Read (Abrams ComicArts, 2010), a fond yet analytical look at a forgotten era in American horror comics: The first third of the book provides a historical overview of the genre, tracing horror comics’ roots back to the popular crime serials of the 1940s. The rest of the book explores the numerous subgenres and tropes found in series such as Tales from the Crypt, Tomb of Terror, The Thing, and Dark Mysteries. Each chapter is…

October 12, 2017 By Sean Gaffney, Ash Brown, Anna N, Michelle Smith and Melinda Beasi

Manga the Week of 10/18/17

SEAN: There’s a little something for everyone next week, though let’s start with something announced too late to be on last week’s list. Kodansha continues to defy me, so their new digital release is already out: Kokkoku: Moment by Moment, an award-nominated thriller that ran in Morning Two. Seems to feature time stopping? MICHELLE: This one looks pretty interesting! MELINDA: This is the one thing on this week’s list that possibly interests me. ANNA: I agree, I am intrigued by this title. ASH: It does seem to have great potential! SEAN: In titles actually out next week, J-Novel Club has the 4th volume of the runaway hit (at least comparatively) How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom. Back to Kodansha, which has a whole pile of ongoing digital: new volumes…

October 11, 2017 By Katherine Dacey

H.P. Lovecraft’s The Hound and Other Stories

If you admire the fecundity of H.P. Lovecraft’s imagination but not the turgidity of his prose, you might find Gou Tanabe’s manga adaptations of The Hound and Other Stories an agreeable alternative to the originals. Tanabe sticks close to the source material while pruning away the florid language characteristic of Lovecraft’s writing, offering more polished — and, frankly, unnerving — versions of three early works: “The Temple,” first published in 1920, “The Hound,” from 1922, and “The Nameless City,” from 1921. Tanabe is no stranger to literary adaptations; he’s also tackled works by Maxim Gorky (“Twenty-Six Men and a Girl”), Franz Kafka (“A Hunger Artist”), and folklorist Lafcadio Hearn (“The Story of O-Tei”). Lovecraft’s writing, however, occupies a unique place in Tanabe’s oeuvre, as he’s published adaptations of other Lovecraft…

October 11, 2017 By Sean Gaffney

Spirit Circle, Vol. 1

By Satoshi Mizukami. Released in Japan by Shonen Gahosha, serialized in the magazine Young King Ours. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jocelyne Allen, Adapted by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane. I greatly enjoyed Mizukami’s last series to be published over here, Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer, and so was definitely looking forward to this. The first volume is very much a manga of two halves. In the first half we set up the situation and meet out heroes and find out what grudges they may have against each other. That said, this is also a tale of reincarnation. And so the second half of the manga is seeing Fuuta’s past lives, which are various types of tragic so far, and seeing him grow as he slowly starts to…

October 10, 2017 By Anna N

Yona of the Dawn, Vol. 8

Yona of the Dawn Volume 8 by Mizuho Kusanagi If I had to come up with a brief phrase to describe this volume of Yona of the Dawn, it would be “clever subverted expectations”. Kusanagi explores this theme in a couple ways, first with a brief introductory story focusing on the Yellow Dragon, and then followed by a closer look at King Su-Won. I was fully expecting another detailed quest storyline as Yona and her companions sit around debating how to search for the Yellow Dragon, but then a mysterious man shows up at their campsite, announcing himself due to his intense stomach gurgling. It is Zeno, the Yellow Dragon, and he is hungry! What follows is one of the comedic interludes that livens up the series as everyone attempts…

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