Manga Bookshelf

September 25, 2017 By Michelle Smith and Sean Gaffney

Bookshelf Briefs 9/25/17

Arpeggio of Blue Steel, Vol. 11 | By Ark Performance | Seven Seas – One of the good things about this series is the way that not all of the ‘traitor’ mental models are changing sides due to love on Gunzou—in fact, almost none of them are. We’re gradually seeing that the mental models, as they gain more experience, are becoming more and more like humans. Which means they can screw up—I laughed out loud at Haruna’s “fake name.” But it also means they can bond with other humans, like Iona and her crew, or save other humans when it doesn’t gain them anything, like the two chibis who help Iori to not die in the engine room. As you can see, I may be very bad at names in…

September 25, 2017 By Ash Brown

My Week in Manga: September 18-September 24, 2017

My News and Reviews I was running a little behind my intended schedule last week (and today for that matter–this seems to be somewhat par for the course lately), but over the weekend I was finally able to post my review of the ninth omnibus of Vinland Saga, an award-winning historical manga by Makoto Yukimura which has become one of my favorite series currently being released in English. Last week I also attend a talk by Hiroshi Yoshioka, a professor at Kyoto University’s Kokoro Research Center, called Hiroshima, Fukushima, and Beyond: Borders and Transgressions in Nuclear Imagination. Yoshioka’s research addresses the portrayal of nuclear power within popular culture, whether that be manga like Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen, Sunao Katabuchi’s In This Corner of the World anime adaptation, other visual arts,…

September 25, 2017 By Sean Gaffney

A Bride’s Story, Vol. 9

By Kaoru Mori. Released in Japan as “Otoyomegatari” by Enterbrain, serialization ongoing in the magazine fellows!. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by William Flanagan. Pariya gets a second cover in a row, which makes perfect sense because this book is still all about her attempts to recover from the fire that devastated her dowry, try to get closer to her possible fiance, and make readers think of her as someone other than “the tsundere somehow trapped in the nineteenth century. That she succeeds admirably is a tribute to Kaoru Mori’s writing, which continues to be excellent. In particular, Mori has a talent for wedding her story and art in a way that few manga artists these days do, something that is especially gratifying given that Pariya’s specialty…

September 24, 2017 By Ash Brown

Vinland Saga, Vol. 9

Creator: Makoto Yukimura Translator: Stephen Paul U.S. publisher: Kodansha ISBN: 9781632364456 Released: June 2017 Original release: 2016 Awards: Japan Media Arts Award, Kodansha Manga Award Having read and greatly enjoyed Makoto Yukimura’s near-future science fiction series Planetes, I was very curious to see how he would apply his character-driven approach to Vinland Saga, a manga with a historical setting. The resulting work is phenomenal–in addition to earning multiple awards, including a Japan Media Arts Award and a Kodansha Manga Award, Vinland Saga quickly became and remains one of my favorite manga series currently being released in English. The ninth hardcover omnibus of Vinland Saga was published in 2017 by Kodansha Comics with a translation by Stephen Paul. It collects the seventeenth and eighteenth volumes of the original Japanese series, both…

September 24, 2017 By Sean Gaffney

Strike the Blood, Vol. 7

By Gakuto Mikumo and Manyako. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Jeremiah Bourque. Let the drums roll out and the trumpets call, strike up the band as well as the blood because I am here to tell you that this is easily the best Strike the Blood to date. It has finally moved above its decent but uninspiring attempts at makework writing and had me say, after finishing this book, “yeah, that was pretty decent”. And it should come as no surprise to find that the main reason for this, in my opinion, is because it doesn’t abide by the formula of the first six books. Oh, yes, the middle section may make an awkward attempt at it, and indeed the…

September 22, 2017 By Katherine Dacey

After Hours and My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness

After Hours and My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness epitomize a small but growing trend in yuri manga licensing: both focus on women in their twenties exploring their sexuality, rather than depicting middle- or high-school aged girls crushing on each other. After Hours is the more upbeat of the two, a sympathetic portrait of twenty-three-year-old Emi, a recent college graduate who’s just quit her job and is struggling to figure out what comes next. A chance encounter with Kei, a twenty-nine-year-old deejay, is a turning point in Emi’s young adult life: not only is she drawn to Kei’s confidence, she’s also intrigued by Kei’s passion for spinning records. As their connection deepens, Emi takes a more active role in supporting Kei’s career, joining Kei’s circle of friends and trying her hand at “veejaying,” selecting…

September 22, 2017 By Sean Gaffney

Baccano!: 2001 The Children of Bottle

By Ryohgo Narita and Katsumi Enami. Released in Japan by ASCII Mediaworks. Released in North America by Yen On. Translated by Taylor Engel. This must have been quite startling to readers at the time, and it’s still pretty startling. The first four books in this series all took place around the same two year period, and there was no reason to expect anything else. Thus suddenly jumping forward to 2001 is jarring, even if you do know intellectually that a large number of the cast are Immortals. Furthermore, Isaac and Miria, bar a cameo at the start (which ended up being used in the anime) and the end, are absent from this book. But that’s OK, because we are introduced in this book to Elmer C. Albatross, a man with…

September 21, 2017 By Sean Gaffney, Ash Brown, Anna N, Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith

Manga the Week of 9/27/17

SEAN: Another final week of the month with far more than we’d come to expect for a final week of the month. Mainly thanks to our friends at Kodansha (yeah, sorry Ash, it’s all digital again). ASH: They may be digital, but at least there’s some really great manga being released! ANNA: It is true, but it also makes me a little wary, having seen plenty of digital manga efforts go under in the past. SEAN: Starting with their weekly Del Rey rescue, Princess Resurrection 18. The first digital debut this week is All-Out!, which is a rugby manga. I’ll repeat that: a rugby manga has been licensed for North America. It runs in Kodansha’s experimental seinen magazine Morning Two, and is, I’ll repeat once more, a RUGBY MANGA. Must…

September 21, 2017 By Anna N

Beasts of Abigaile, Vol. 1

Beasts of Abigaile Volume 1 I make no secret of the fact that I’m generally a shoujo enthusiast, and I also enjoy reverse harem manga. Though the plots may be thin, and the characters may never vary from their highly specific and formalized roles, I still find manga of the genre trashy fun to read, even if there might not be much depth to the stories. As I started reading Beasts of Abigaile I was struck with a strong sense of deja vu, because something about the aesthetics reminded me of some of the older series that were published by Go! Comi. Sure enough this is an Akita Shoten title, so maybe that’s why I felt a bit of pleasant nostalgia as I was reading Beasts of Abigaile. The set…

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