SEAN: Did you enjoy your quiet month? Good, cause February is back to business as usual, and every week has some chunky bites of manga. Let’s look at next week. FYI, Diamond Comics has every Viz title coming out 1-2 weeks earlier than usual, for some reason – I’m ignoring that. And JoJo’s was delayed.
ASH: Oh, no! JoJoooooo!
ANNA: I do not approve of this.
SEAN: Dark Horse has the 7th Blood Blockade Battlefront, which I understand has an anime coming out soon.
Seven Seas gives us a 5th volume of oddball slice-of-A Centaur’s Life.
And the 10th volume of Haganai, whose cast still doesn’t have many friends.
The rest is all Viz. We have a new Assassination Classroom, filled with attempted death and heartwarming lessons.
ANNA: Bring it on!
SEAN: We have a 3rd volume of Black Rose Alice, and I’d like to remind the Manga Bookshelf team that they can’t pick it two weeks in a row. :)
MICHELLE: I won’t, but I am still super happy to see it!
ASH: I’m happy to see it, too!
ANNA: I might pick it again! You can’t stop me!
MJ: Heh. I didn’t pick it last time, so it’s up for grabs!
SEAN: Bleach 63 features, I’m guessing, fights.
Food Wars 4 also features fights, but of a culinary kind. Save the Megumi!
MICHELLE: I have developed a serious fondness for Food Wars.
ANNA: I do not yet have a serious fondness, but I like it much more than I expected to.
SEAN: The 10th and final volume of Happy Marriage?! wraps up next week. It’s been a very up and down series, but overall I’ve enjoyed it.
MICHELLE: It’s not something I can picture myself rereading, but it has been entertaining.
ANNA: Me too. I’m glad to have read it, but I don’t think I’ll be rereading it.
SEAN: High School Debut has its 5th and final omnibus. The big news is that it has lots of material that never came out in print before – I believe Vols. 14 and 15 are unique to this volume! It’s also print-only, so go get it.
MICHELLE: !!!!!!!!!!!!1 (Heh, I swear that typing that 1 was legitimately an accident, but I’m leavin’ it!)
ANNA: Woah! I’ve got to pick this up!
MJ: Ooooooooooh.
SEAN: If you thought Honey Blood was over last time, well… it was. But Tale Zero is an epilogue, or prologue, or pilot. Or something? In any case, this is the last Honey Blood-related product.
MICHELLE: I have a vague memory of one of the author’s note sections during the series proper mentioning that this would contain the original oneshot. Not sure about that, though.
ANNA: I’d like to see more from this author eventually.
SEAN: We have the 25th and final volume of Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan. I enjoyed this a lot more than I’d expected, and probably more than it really deserved, but way to go, mid-range Shonen Jump title. You were licensed when many other 20-30 volume Jump series were not.
One Piece has its 11th omnibus. It’s in Water Seven now, one of its best arcs.
Spell of Desire hits Vol. 3, and I hope manages to resolve the rather icky cliffhanger Vol. 2 left us with.
Voice Over has its 9th volume, and seems to be slowly, very slowly, meandering towards its climax.
MICHELLE: Here’s another title I’ve grown to love unexpectedly.
MJ: I need to check back in with this series.
SEAN: World Trigger has Vol. 4, and is another on the list of ‘series I should know more about’.
Did you miss Yu-Gi-Oh! the first time around? Here’s an omnibus to catch up on.
And Yu-Go-Oh Zexal 6 gives you more Yu-Gi-Oh than human nature can possibly stand.
There’s a lot of ‘meat and potatoes’ shonen and shoujo here. What suits your fancy?
AshLynx says
January 29, 2015 at 8:26 pmHow on earth can you have two entire volumes only coming out now? That seems like a huge oversight!
Anyway, it’s a pretty good week for me! I’ve excited to see where Black Rose Alice goes, since the first two volumes were so different, tonally and story wise. Assassination Classroom v1 was awesome, though I just can’t figure up what’s with that one kid’s hair, is it just like that? Is it tied up? I decided to have the internet spoil me on that one. Voice Over and World Trigger will round it out for me. Also, when did shonen go from “go around the world and beat things up” to “special shonen schools”? Was it Naruto that started that trope? Harry Potter maybe? I mean, Blue Exorcist, World Trigger, Seraph of the End, even American stuff like RWBY. Or if they don’t go to a school, they join a special organization where they go on missions and hone skills anyway (Tegami Bachi or D.Gray-Man). I’m starting to prefer shonen where they don’t go to a special school (they don’t necessarily have to go around the world beating things up, but Magi and Blood Lad really hit the sweet spot with me). I’d be interested to see what you guys thing about that with an article about the main sub-types of shonen, which you prefer, best of each type, etc. or something
Sean Gaffney says
January 30, 2015 at 4:28 amBasically, there’s usually lots of post-series side stories and epilogues in the weekly/monthly magazines, and when these are enough to make a volume, it comes out as an ‘extra’. Usually these either a) aren’t covered in the original NA contract or b) aren’t popular enough to justify more expense, so we don’t see them over here. Also, I think these came out after HSD debuted over here. With HSD, when the contract was redone for the omnibus, they presumably added the other two that had come out since the original release.
Rachel says
January 30, 2015 at 9:41 pmHigh School Debut!! …But I ordered it along with Jojo’s v1 so I have to wait a little longer for it):
I also have to get the new Black Rose Alice when I get the chance. I’m still not quite sure what to expect from it, but Setona Mizushiro’s a must-buy author for me and I’ve enjoyed the first two volumes.