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The Champions of Justice & the Supreme Ruler of Evil

By Kaede Kikyou and Tobari. Released in Japan as “Seigi no Mikata to Aku no Sōtō” by the author on the Syosetu website. Released in North America digitally by Cross Infinite World. Translated by Jekaterina Bält. As with Obsessions of an Otome Gamer, the other Cross Infinite World title I’ve read, I went into this because the concept intrigued me. Honestly, it sounded like Excel Saga, and I am nothing if not a fan of anything possibly related to Excel Saga. We have a young girl who is trying to take over the world but is a bit of a flake. We have an organization that essentially fills the role of a sentai team trying to stop her. That said, that’s about where the similarities end. Instead of Il Palazzo,…

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Dr. STONE, Vol. 1

By Riichiro Inagaki and Boichi. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz Media. Translated by Caleb Cook. It’s always difficult to judge these Jump titles because the beginning feels like a prologue even when the series takes off, as this one has. Here we have the new series from the writer who brought us Eyeshield 21 and the artist who brought us Sun-Ken-Rock. So they’re both seasoned veterans, and there’s no doubt the new series feels confident. I’m just not sure who I’m supposed to be focusing on. The guy on the cover, Senku, starts the book as the seeming “intelligent sidekick” type to the classic idiot Jump hero-type guy, Taiju. That said, Inagaki has learned his lessons…

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Seven Seas and VIZ Announce New Licenses

The last five days have yielded a bonanza of new licenses, the most exciting of which is Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey, an autobiographical manga by Princess Jellyfish creator Akiko Higashimura. Also joining the Seven Seas catalog are My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Mushoku Tensei: Roxy Gets Serious, and Skeleton Knight in Another World, three adaptations of isekai novels; Creature Girls: A Field Journal in Another World, an R-rated monster-girl series; and Eve x Eve and I Married My Best Friend to Shut My Parents Up, two new yuri manga. In other licensing news, VIZ just revealed plans to publish Snow White with the Red Hair, a shojo fantasy by Sorata Akizuki. The series, which has been running in LaLa since 2006, features a strong-willed, resourceful heroine with — you guessed it — auburn locks.* Yen Press…

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Amagi Brilliant Park, Vol. 1

By Shouji Gatou and Yuka Nakajima. Released in Japan by Enterbrain. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis. In the beginning there was Full Metal Panic!, a long series of light novels that sadly will probably never be rescued but which spawned a long-running anime franchise. Then there was the spinoff, Fumoffu, which was FMP as a gag comedy and featured Sousuke dressed up as an amusement park mascot. As the author admits in the afterword, the design of the mascot was so perfect that the author just poached it outright (with permission) for his new series Amagi Brilliant Park. Sousuke is not inside the costume this time, but fortunately we have Isuzu, who is sort of a gender-reversed Sousuke with about the same amount of…

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Otherworldly Izakaya [Nobu], Vol. 1

By Natsuya Semikawa and Virginia Nitouhei. Released in Japan as “Isekai Izakaya “Nobu”” by Kadokawa Shoten, serialization ongoing in the magazine Young Ace. Released in North America by Udon Entertainment. Translated by Caleb D. Cook. There’s a small subset of isekai series that seem to involve a restaurant that is modern Japanese and yet caters to fantasy characters. This one is particularly odd in several ways, though. It’s based on a light novel series, which makes sense if you think of it as an isekai manga but no sense whatsoever if you think of it in its real genre, which is a “everyone enjoys food and describes it” manga. (I’m not sure it’s technically a foodie manga as there are no recipes. You aren’t supposed to make these yourself.) That…

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Manga the Week of 9/26/18

SEAN: September has ended. Go in peace, to love and serve the manga. Let’s break this down, cause there’s a lot. First of all, Bookwalker snuck out The Ryuo’s Work is Never Done 4 last week and I missed it. Sorry, loli shogi fans! Ghost Ship has the 5th To-Love-Ru omnibus. J-Novel Club has the 7th Demon King Daimaou. Kodansha has its usual pile o’ digital, but print first. We see Kiss Me at the Stroke of Midnight 7, The Seven Deadly Sins 28, and the 6th and final volume of Wake Up Sleeping Beauty. I suspect MB peeps are most interested in the last one. MICHELLE: Yep! ASH: It’s true! SEAN: The digital debut looks amusing. Ao-chan Can’t Study (Midarana Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai), a shonen series about…

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Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, Vols. 1-2

What if the world ended not with a bang or a whimper, but a shrug of the shoulders and a TL;DR? That’s the question at the heart of Inio Asano’s Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, a dark comedy about alien invasion. Asano buries the lede, however, initially framing his story as a coming-of-age drama about Kadode and Oran, two girls on the cusp of adulthood. We learn about the aliens’ arrival in bits and pieces, through a 2-chan thread, a news bulletin, a string of text messages, and a sign tallying the day’s casualties. We also learn that Kadode’s father — a journalist — disappeared in the immediate aftermath of the attack, an event that has pushed Kadode’s mother to the brink of insanity. The dramatic impact of these revelations…

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Outbreak Company, Vol. 5

By Ichiro Sakaki and Yuugen. Released in Japan by Kodansha. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Kevin Steinbach. Every volume of Outbreak Company seems to begin trying its best to irritate me, I swear. It’s as if the creator has to present his bonafides before he gets into the meat of what he actually wants to do. Hence we begin with Shinichi, who has just been kidnapped by this world’s equivalent of Saudi Arabia or something similar, going on and on about moe fetishes for a bit, followed by his summarizing the entire plot for those readers who may have wanted to start with Book 5. That said, this book does show us, even more than usual, that Shinichi is very fond of these fetishes AS FICTION,…

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Gear Drive, Vol. 1

By Kabayakidare and Koutaro Sugi. Released in Japan by Overlap, Inc. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Matthew Warner. Sometimes when I am reading fiction I am looking for something with deep philosophical themes, something that takes the characters on a tremendous journey and teaches the reader something about both the author and themselves. And sometimes I just want to kick back and have a rollicking good time. Gear Drive is definitely designed to be the latter, and I spent most of the book reading with a giant grin on my face. If I didn’t know better I’d swear it was a novelization of tome shonen manga from Jump or Sunday. It’s filled with ridiculous powerups, intense fight scenes, and showing off the truly important things, which…

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