• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Comment Policy
    • Disclosures & Disclaimers
  • Resources
    • Links, Essays & Articles
    • Fandomology!
    • CLAMP Directory
    • BlogRoll
  • Features & Columns
    • 3 Things Thursday
    • Adventures in the Key of Shoujo
    • Bit & Blips (game reviews)
    • BL BOOKRACK
    • Bookshelf Briefs
    • Bringing the Drama
    • Comic Conversion
    • Fanservice Friday
    • Going Digital
    • It Came From the Sinosphere
    • License This!
    • Magazine no Mori
    • My Week in Manga
    • OFF THE SHELF
    • Not By Manga Alone
    • PICK OF THE WEEK
    • Subtitles & Sensibility
    • Weekly Shonen Jump Recaps
  • Manga Moveable Feast
    • MMF Full Archive
    • Yun Kouga
    • CLAMP
    • Shojo Beat
    • Osamu Tezuka
    • Sailor Moon
    • Fruits Basket
    • Takehiko Inoue
    • Wild Adapter
    • One Piece
    • After School Nightmare
    • Karakuri Odette
    • Paradise Kiss
    • The Color Trilogy
    • To Terra…
    • Sexy Voice & Robo
  • Browse by Author
    • Sean Gaffney
    • Anna Neatrour
    • Michelle Smith
    • Katherine Dacey
    • MJ
    • Brigid Alverson
    • Travis Anderson
    • Phillip Anthony
    • Derek Bown
    • Jaci Dahlvang
    • Angela Eastman
    • Erica Friedman
    • Sara K.
    • Megan Purdy
    • Emily Snodgrass
    • Nancy Thistlethwaite
    • Eva Volin
    • David Welsh
  • MB Blogs
    • A Case Suitable For Treatment
    • Experiments in Manga
    • MangaBlog
    • The Manga Critic
    • Manga Report
    • Soliloquy in Blue
    • Manga Curmudgeon (archive)

Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

September 19, 2011 by Sean Gaffney, MJ, David Welsh, Katherine Dacey and Michelle Smith 5 Comments

Pick of the Week: FMA, Zoo in Winter, Arata

The choices are meaty this week at Midtown Comics, and choosing just one has given most of us a bit of heartache. See what we settled on below!


SEAN: As I noted in my shipping post earlier in the week, Fullmetal Alchemist is up to its penultimate volume. And you know what that means. That means the apocalypse is upon us. I had missed this series for quite some time because of a plot point early on that frankly creeped me out so much that I never wanted to go near the thing again (you can probably guess which one), but I have caught up, and am glad I did. With lots of awesome moments (both for men and women alike – FMA has some of the most badass heroines in manga) and a plot that rarely gets sidetracked, we should be headed up to one hell of a finale. If everyone can survive this book, that is.

MJ: I’m really torn this week, because though I feel it’s urgent that someone choose the fourth volume of Natsume Ono’s House of Five Leaves, if I really could buy only one volume of manga this week, it would have to be Fullmetal Alchemist. One of this series’ biggest draws for me is the fact that Hiromu Arakawa has really never strayed from her heroes’ primary objective, which means that we’re truly reaching the climax of the entire series. And with so much work and planning put toward building this up, you better believe it’s a doozy. I decided a long while ago that I was in this series for the long haul, and I’ve never regretted it. There’s no way I’d give it up now, even for the likes of Ono. Thankfully, in the real world, I don’t actually have to choose.

DAVID: It is hard to pass up on either Fullmetal or Five Leaves, but I can never seem to resist throwing my support to boutique publisher Fanfare/Ponent Mon and its mainstay manga-ka, Jiro Taniguchi. Now, I unexpectedly find myself liking Taniguchi’s manly-man meditations, books like The Quest for the Missing Girl, just a little bit more than his more subdued pieces like A Distant Neighborhood. In my perfect world, we’d be getting a new volume of The Summit of the Gods before the debut of A Zoo in Winter, which is basically a portrait of the artist as a young assistant. That’s just splitting hairs, obviously, as anything by Taniguchi hovers near the top of my must-have list, and I know we’ll be getting more Summit before too long. Fans of Bakuman might appreciate this alternate take on the subject, which will probably be more Sundance Channel than Shonen Jump.

KATE: I second David’s recommendation! I, too, like Taniguchi’s manly-man manga, whether he’s paying tribute to film noir (Benkei in New York, Hotel Harbour View) or writing a man-against-nature saga (Summit of the Gods), but I think Taniguchi is at his best when writing about more prosaic subjects. A Distant Neighborhood, for example, was a lovely meditation on adolescent awkwardness, while A Zoo in Winter, his latest, is about joining the world of adult responsibility. There are a few overdetermined moments, but on the whole, it’s a thoughtful, semi-autobiographical story about a young man who discovers that being a manga-ka is a lot more work than he ever imagined. Taniguchi’s art is crisp and evocative, and the script heartfelt but never saccharine.

MICHELLE: I intend to buy every single book mentioned above, but I’m going to have to award my pick to volume seven of Yuu Watase’s Arata: The Legend. I dove into this series just recently and fell in love with it in a big way. It’s got all your shounen adventure trappings—a modern-day teen in a fantasy world who is chosen by the most awesomest sword-god around and tasked with saving the princess—but with a real shoujo flair, as romances gradually develop, past trauma plays a part in present conflicts, and handsome guys regularly walk around bearing their studly midriffs. While I like certain of Watase’s shoujo works—I steered clear of Absolute Boyfriend but positively adore Fushigi Yûgi—I’m starting to think that shounen is where she really belongs!


Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Share this:

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Reddit
  • Tumblr
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest

Filed Under: PICK OF THE WEEK

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Noura says

    September 19, 2011 at 8:25 am

    My pick of the week is volume 26 of Hiromu Arakawa’s Fullmetal Alchemist. One of my favorite shounen titles. It is like no matter how long since I read the previous volume, I get hooked instantly the moment I read a new volume. Can’t wait to get my hands on this week’s volume and the last one in December.

    I already picked volume 7 of Arata: The Legend last week as it has been released then.

    Reply
  2. Angela says

    September 19, 2011 at 9:16 pm

    I ordered my copy of FMA 26 as soon as I remembered it was coming out. I got it today, and read it IMMEDIATELY. This has been my favorite manga since high school. I… I don’t know what I”m going to do after December.

    Reply
  3. themooninautumn says

    September 25, 2011 at 3:36 pm

    I can’t take the wait between volumes for FMA, so I’m going to wait until 27 comes out and read them both. If my willpower holds . . .

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Tokyopop goes on clearance; JManga reviewed « MangaBlog says:
    September 19, 2011 at 7:56 am

    […] The Manga Village team looks over the latest batch of new releases, and the Manga Bookshelf bloggers discuss their Pick of the Week. […]

    Reply
  2. Upcoming 9/21/2011 says:
    September 20, 2011 at 5:51 am

    […] you checked out the Manga Bookshelf Pick of the Week? Then we’re ready for a perusal of this week’s […]

    Reply


Before leaving a comment at Manga Bookshelf, please read our Comment Policy.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

 | Log in
Copyright © 2010 Manga Bookshelf | Powered by WordPress & the Genesis Framework
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.