SEAN: My pick is fairly obvious, so I will start. It’s well known among Hayate the Combat Butler fans that when Athena Tennos arrives, the comedy gives way to emotional drama with potentially tragic consequences. Vol. 24 of the series features the climax of that story. Not to say there’s no comedy at all – when one of your allies is dressed as a Power Ranger, there’s always something to laugh at. But the stakes are higher here than they’ve ever been, and Hayate fans, unless they hate Athena, should be ecstatic to finally see this in English.
MICHELLE: I’m going to have to go with the Dark Horse omnibus reissue of Legal Drug this week. I’m always delighted to see a former TOKYOPOP title back in print, and now fans can read it without the frustration of its unfinished status, as Dark Horse also plans to bring out the sequel next year! It’s definitely a good time to get on board.
ANNA: I’ll go ahead and pick the concluding volume of Dawn of the Arcana, since we left it off the list last week. This shoujo fantasy series was a delightful read, featured an occasionally sassy heroine, and delved into geopolitical issues much more than many readers would expect. There’s a sudden plot twist at the end that actually does put everything that happened in the previous volumes in an entirely new perspective.
ASH: I’ll admit, the release that I’m most interested in this week is the new Legal Drug omnibus. I still have my old TOKYOPOP volumes, but Dark Horse been doing a nice job with its CLAMP releases so I may end up picking it up anyway. Plus, it’s great to see the series finally available again for new readers.
MJ: It is pretty much impossible for me not to pick Dark Horse’s re-release of CLAMP’s Legal Drug. Yeah, I’m well-known as a CLAMP fan, but this is one of the series’ I’ve waited to see continued with the most verve, and this re-issue of the original series is the first step forward. Additionally, I was a huge fan of Carl Horn’s updated translation of Tokyo Babylon, so that’s something I’m looking forward to in this release as well. I’m really quite excited!