SEAN: With only ten new volumes, this is the lightest week of the month. Let’s all enjoy it.
First off, one I missed from last week, mostly as Amazon just announced they were shipping it early a few days ago. The second Whispered Words omnibus, containing Vols. 4-6, is out this week. If you like a well-written yuri story with lots of fun and angst and romance, this is the book for you.
ASH: The story is great! And it has karate, too! (I just hope the copy editing has improved with this volume…)
MICHELLE: Me, too. It was seriously bad.
SEAN: Now for next week. We’ll start with Dark Horse, who have the 16th Bride of the Water God volume, which is on my list of “I always forget this exists” titles.
MICHELLE: I actually forgot Whispered Words existed, so don’t feel bad.
MJ: I’d almost forgotten both, and that makes me sad!
ANNA: I didn’t know anything about Whispered Words, but if more high quality yuri is being translated into English, that can only be a good thing.
SEAN: Kodansha releases the quotation mark challenged Say “I Love You”, so I will put them back in. This is Volume 4.
ANNA: I really enjoyed the first two volumes of this. Time to get caught up!
ASH: I’m enjoying this series as well.
SEAN: SubLime has a new Blue Morning volume, a series that I believe our Manga Bookshelf team has enjoyed in the past.
MICHELLE: I really enjoy both of these series, and will be reviewing both of these in brief form in the coming weeks.
MJ: Blue Morning is definitely on my list for the week.
SEAN: Vertical has a new series debut with Volume 1 of Ajin. You can also see this on Crunchyroll’s manga site. It’s from Kodansha’s good! Afternoon magazine, and seems to be quite dark. I suspect this is more in the Wolfsmund vein than the Chi’s Sweet Home one. One of the creators also has High-Rise Invasion coming out via Manga Box.
MJ: Interesting!
ASH: I’m very curious about Ajin and am looking forward to giving it a try.
SEAN: And we also have the 11th and final Flowers of Evil, which proved to be a lot more popular than anyone had expected, I think, though never an easy, friendly read.
MJ: I fell out of this a while back, but I kind of miss it.
ASH: I’ve been saving up all of the volumes of the final arc to read all at once, and here it is, the series end. I’m preparing to be devastated in one way or another.
SEAN: With the 52nd volume of Case Closed, you now have one volume for each week of the year if you want to do a reread.
Deadman Wonderland has a 5th volume, and I suspect the plot has really begun to pick up by now. (Look, sometimes these are generic. I can’t read everything.)
I do read Magi though, and love it to bits. Buy Volume 8. If not for me, then for Viz, who needs another big Shonen Sunday title.
MICHELLE: Magi is excellent, with capable storytelling and character development. I think MJ, in particular, should read this one! :)
ANNA: I have a couple stray volumes of this sitting around my house, and need to fill in a bit before starting to read this series. I’ve only heard good things though, and I look forward to reading it!
SEAN: Lastly, we have another big series ending, as the 19th volume of Vampire Knight is so important that Viz released it apart from the other Shojo Beat titles. It also comes in regular and deluxe versions, with a mini-artbook for the latter. I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to, but I’m glad it’s ending, as it was running out of plot.
MICHELLE: I think the last volume I read was 13, but I think I’ll make a push and finally finish this one up. For the sake of completeness, if nothing else.
ANNA: It might seem odd to people who are familiar with my love of vampire-based shoujo manga, but I haven’t read this complete series. I started reading it, got about 5 volumes in, stopped, and have been piling up sporadic volumes here and there with the intention of doing a big series read at some point. One day, this will happen!
SEAN: Anything strike your fancy here?