SEAN: Remember when the 2nd and 3rd weeks of the month were smaller? (lol)
ASH: Ha!
SEAN: Bookwalker has a 3rd volume of post-war baking adventures with The Combat Baker and Automaton Waitress.
Cross Infinite World’s webnovel licenses are not normally on my radar, but I will admit to curiosity about their latest shoujo novel, Obsessions of an Otome Gamer.
Dark Horse gives us a 5th omnibus of Blade of the Immortal.
ASH: Some of the individual volumes have gone out of print and can be difficult to find, so the omnibus edition is a great way to collect the series now.
SEAN: J-Novel Club has a debut next week. The Master of Ragnarok and Blesser of Einherjar. When the cover shows a smug Japanese teen sitting on a throne surrounded by women at his feet, you know what you’re in for.
MICHELLE: Pass.
SEAN: Kodansha Digital also has a debut next week. Starving Anonymous (Shokuryou Jinrui) is a post-apocalypse survival sort of series that runs in various Young Magazine spinoffs. It’s by the author of My Wife is Wakamatsu-san and Fort of Apocalypse. Expect it to be more like the latter.
There’s also new digital volumes for Aoba-kun’s Confessions (5), Grand Blue Dreaming (7), GTO Paradise Lost (6) (where has this been?), Kokkoku: Moment by Moment (6), Lovesick Ellie (4) and Tsuredure Children (8).
MICHELLE: I finally started Lovesick Ellie. It’s kind of refreshing to have a heroine so openly lustful.
SEAN: Print-wise, Genshiken 2nd Season finally comes to a close with its 12th volume. As a sequel it wasn’t as good as the original, but I’ll still stick around to the end.
ASH: I need to catch up with it, but there are elements in the series that I really appreciate.
SEAN: There’s also, in print, Land of the Lustrous 5, The Seven Deadly Sins 25, To Your Eternity 3, and UQ Holder 13.
ASH: Both Land of the Lustrous and To Your Eternity are beautiful and devastating works, though each in their own way.
SEAN: One Peace has a 7th volume of Kuma Miko.
Seven Seas debuts the Arifureta manga, which from what I understand is not quiet as well received as the novel, but should please those of you who prefer that format.
They also have Devilman vs. Hades 1, which seems like it might be workplace violence judging from the title.
ASH: I’m certainly curious about this Devilman and Mazinger Z spinoff!
SEAN: Lastly, there’s Sorry for My Familiar (Uchi no Tsukaima ga Sumimasen), a good! Afternoon series (so yes, Seven Seas can license Kodansha too) about a demon girl and her middle-aged man. The man is the familiar.
Seven Seas also has a 4th Girl from the Other Side (yay!) and a 13th Monster Musume (whee).
MICHELLE: Yay for Girl from the Other Side.
ASH: Girl from the Other Side remains one of my favorite series currently being released; it’s tremendous.
ANNA: I haven’t read the 3rd volume of this yet, but I am excited for another!
SEAN: SuBLime has a 7th volume of Blue Morning.
MICHELLE: Ooh, I didn’t know this was coming out. I enjoy Blue Morning.
ASH: The series is so good!
SEAN: Vertical gives us more Gundam Wing with a 5th volume.
Viz has a 3rd volume of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a 26th Rin-Ne, and a 2nd Splatoon.
And Yen Press gives us a 15th Barakamon and a 9th Prison School omnibus. Don’t get them mixed up.
MICHELLE: I probably say every time that I will eventually read Barakamon, but it’s still true. I even moved volume one to a different stack recently!
SEAN: So what will you be picking up?
Definitely To Your Eternity for starters, possibly the best new series I read last year. I also will be needing Seven Deadly Sins and Girl From the Other Side. Vol 5 of Land of the Lustrous should also go past the anime (I checked out the manga after the anime, the anime is ridiculously gorgeous and good and I think helped make vol 1 easy for me to follow, and the anime finally made fully CGI anime look like a good idea, no small feat!), and I need more answers!
Wait wait, Seven Seas is able to license Kodansha?! I thought they had like, 4 publishers of randomness there were allowed.