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Love’s Reach, Vol. 1

By Rin Mikimoto | Published digitally by Kodansha Comics I am an enormous fan of Kodansha’s digital offerings, so it pains me to admit that I can’t find anything to recommend about Love’s Reach. Sixteen-year-old Yuni Kururugi, a “genius ice queen,” excels in every subject except for English, which is taught by her 24-year-old, supposed-to-be temporary homeroom teacher, Haruka Sakurai. He’s flirty and unprofessional with his students, and though Kururugi likes the way he looks, she finds everything else about him unpleasant. When he calls her to his office after school one day, he creepily backs her against a wall and says, “Have you been getting answers wrong on purpose? Maybe you’re really just trying to get my attention.” The briefly gratifying fact that Kururugi smacks him and says, “Let…

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Generation Witch, Vol. 1

By Uta Isaki. Released in Japan as “Gendai Majo Zukan” by Ichijinsha, serialized in the magazine Comic Rex. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Jill Morita. Adapted by Janet Houck. It’s been nice to see the ‘slice of life’ genre move, to a certain extent, beyond ‘a bunch of female students living their everyday high school life’ in recent years. We’re seeing slice of life manga with actual twists, and one of the more current ones, fitting in with manga’s current obsession with anything supernatural, is “slice of witch life”. Flying Witch is an example of the ‘pure’ slice of life genre, with regular characters and an ongoing plot, but now we also have Generation Witch, which is more of an anthology series, each new chapter featuring…

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Behind the Scenes, Vol. 4

Behind the Scenes Volume 4 by Bisco Hatori I thought the first few volumes of Behind the Scenes were ok but a little rough just due to the somewhat frantic pacing of character introductions and the episodic nature of the plot. I enjoyed the forth volume very much, because it gave me more insight into the background of many of the characters. The volume opens with difficulties as everywhere Ranmaru goes he seems to be trailed by an eccentric group of people. It ends up being his family in town for a surprise visit. After seeing his lolita sister, his mother the former spy, and his father who is obsessed with social networking and western culture, it is easy to see why Ranmaru fits in so well with the extreme…

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Manga Giveaway: The Royal Tutor Giveaway

It’s once again the final Wednesday of the month which means it’s once again time for the monthly manga giveaway here at Experiments in Manga! For this month’s giveaway, everyone participating will have a chance to win The Royal Tutor, Volume 1 by Higasa Akai as published in English by Yen Press. (The series started out as a digital-only release, so I was very happy when a print edition was announced, too.) As usual, the giveaway is open worldwide! While I have almost no interest whatsoever in the lives of contemporary royal or imperial families, I find that I actually do have a significant fondness for fictional stories, historical or otherwise, that deal with royal dynasties and their courts. Generally, what particularly captures my attention is the seemingly inevitable court…

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Mixed Bathing in Another Dimension: The Ancient Seawater Baths

By Nagaharu Hibihana and Masakage Hagiya. Released in Japan as “Isekai Konyoku Monogatari” by Overlap. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Sophie Guo. Last time we had a large focus on the adventures of Haruno’s party; this time they’re absent (except to get mentioned in the cliffhanger) and the focus is solely on Touya and his party. To be honest, for the first half of the book I wished we’d cut away a couple of times – while fighting mutant hermit crabs and stopping scheming merchants at an auction is all very well and good, there’s no denying that the volume tends to meander for over half the book till it gets to the plot it came here for. One it does hit that plot, though,…

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Bookshelf Briefs 7/25/17

Dreamin’ Sun, Vol. 2 | By Ichigo Takano | Seven Seas – First of all, I get what the author is trying to do with Zen, and yes I know there are guys like that in real life, but oh my God I want him OUT OUT OUT of this manga, he is making me very unhappy. Aside from that, this was a decent second volume, mostly focusing on Shimana’s burgeoning love, though there are signs of a larger plot, mostly involving Taiga, who remains the only adult in the room (which is sort of sad, given I’m sure we haven’t even begun to dig into his own issues). Shimana herself can be hard to take, but she grows on me as the book goes along. You can tell this…

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A Certain Scientific Railgun, Vol. 12

By Kazuma Kamachi and Motoi Fuyukawa. Released in Japan as “Toaru Kagaku no Railgun” by ASCII Media Works, serialization ongoing in the magazine Dengeki Daioh. Released in North America by Seven Seas. Translated by Nan Rymer, Adapted by Maggie Danger. Warning: the first paragraph of this review, above the picture, is spoiler-free for the most part. After that I will not only be spoiling the volume itself, but also A Certain Magical Index 15, which comes out in May 2018 from Yen On. Most Index fans know this spoiler well, but for the casual readers among you who have only read Railgun, stop after the first paragraph. This is a solid Railgun volume, with thankfully little to no fanservice (Kuroko is absent, which helps). It’s a book of two halves,…

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My Week in Manga: July 17-July 23, 2017

My News and Reviews Although I’ve started to include Quick Takes of novels as part of the weekly My Week in Manga feature, it’s been a little while since I’ve actually written and in-depth review of a novel here at Experiments in Manga. However, last week featured my review of Tomoyuki Hoshino’s ME, one of my most anticipated literary releases of 2017. Much like the rest of Hoshino’s work available in translation, ME is challenging and can demand quite a bit from the reader, but I found it to be worth the effort. The novel is an incredibly surreal but thought-provoking exploration of identity, self, and society. Hoshino’s fiction definitely isn’t for everyone, but I hope to see even more of it translated in the future. Last week there were…

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Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest, Vol. 2

By Ryo Shirakome and Takayaki. Released in Japan as “Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou” by Overlap. Released in North America digitally by J-Novel Club. Translated by Ningen. This is definitely a stronger volume than the first one – as with many authors, you get the sense that this is the story he wanted to tell all along, only he had to spend an entire volume giving us actual plot and backstory. But Hajime has hit world’s strongest already, and together with Yue he can pretty much carve up anything. So what’s left is the two of them snarking their way through various confrontations, beating nearly to death anyone who wrongs them, and attacking their second dungeon, which thankfully is very different from the first – in fact, the dungeon may…

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