SEAN: No, it’s not Halloween yet.
MICHELLE: It’s Halloween in my heart.
ANNA: It is also Halloween in my heart!
ASH: One does not just limit Halloween to the end of October.
SEAN: There are no print releases for Airship next week. There is an Only Digital debut. Reborn as an Aristocratic Scoundrel, I Broke the Game and Mastered Magic Beyond Limits! (Taida na Akujoku Kizoku ni Tensei Shita Ore, Scenario o Bukkowashitara Kikakugai no Maryoku de Saikyou ni Natta) is a story we’ve seen a lot recently. He’s a villain mook. He wants to stop being a villain mook. He gets OP.
Also only digital, we see Fluffy Café in Another World 2.
And in early digital, we get The Devil Princess 5.
Alien Books debuts Badducks, a manga from Web Action about a cyborg, a desperate lady, and a baby, on the run.
ASH: Now that’s an interesting and somewhat unexpected combo!
SEAN: AlphaPolis has a print release for A Gatherer’s Adventure in Isekai 3, May I Ask for One Final Thing? 3, and Possibly the Greatest Alchemist of All Time 3.
Ghost Ship gives us Lilia’s Pregnancy Spells the World’s End 3.
There’s a light novel debut from Hanashi Media. The Capital’s One-Man Golem Master Got Kicked Out!? Now Free, I’m Traveling the World with My Beautiful Heroine Disciples to Build the Ultimate Golem! Don’t Ask Me to Come Back. I’m Done! (Outo Wan’ope Golem Master. Masaka no Tsuihou!? ~Jiyuu no Mi ni Natta node Deshi no Bijin Yuusha-tachi to Issho ni Saikyou Golem Tsukurimasu. Modotte Koi to Iwarete mo Mou Shiran!~). The title is the plot.
ASH: Considering the length of the title, I would think so!
SEAN: Ink Pop debuts I Shall Master This Family, a webtoon about a noble girl who dies after her family comes to ruin, then wakes up as a child and tries to avoid that fate. I’ve heard this sort of story before somewhere…
ASH: It does seem familiar, doesn’t it.
SEAN: J-Novel Club has a pile of print. We see Ascendance of a Bookworm: Fanbook 7, Black Summoner 8, Campfire Cooking in Another World With My Absurd Skill Omnibus 7, Infinite Dendrogram (manga) Omnibus 7, Isekai Tensei: Recruited to Another World (manga) 8, My Friend’s Little Sister Has It in For Me! 11, My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me! 12, Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles (manga) 12, and Tearmoon Empire (manga) 9.
ASH: I need to catch up with the various Bookworm and Tearmoon iterations.
SEAN: Two debuts for JNC digitally, both light novels. Genius in the Library: This Bookish Rookie Will Save the Day! (Toshokan no Tensai Shoujo ~Honzuki no Shinjin Kanri wa Boudai na Chishiki de Kuni o Sukuimasu!~) stars a girl who wants nothing more than to sit in a dark library reading books all day. Sadly, she lives in a world with monster attacks! And bureaucracy! Can she defeat both those things?
ANNA: I would also like to sit in a dark library reading books all day, yet my job involves a lot of bureaucracy. Maybe I need to work in the monster attacks somehow.
ASH: Saaaaaame.
SEAN: God Sleeps in Seafoam (Utakata ni Kami wa Madoromu) stars a guy who (try to contain your shock) is born without the cool power everyone in his world has, is thrown out of his family, but discovers a really AWESOME power and finds a new life. It is apparently a bit more serious than I made it sound.
Other light novels: The Amazing Village Creator: Slow Living with the Village Building Cheat Skill 5, The Dorky NPC Mercenary Knows His Place 6, Haibara’s Teenage New Game+ 10, Infinite Dendrogram SP 3, and Zero Damage Sword Saint: I Enrolled in a Magic School and Wound Up in a Contract with the Demon Queen 5.
And one manga: A Late-Start Tamer’s Laid-Back Life 11.
Kana debuts Hideout, a one-volume horror manga from Big Comic Spirits. A man and his wife, grieving the loss of their son, go on a journey to find a fabled waterfall. Unfortunately, well, horror manga.
ASH: I should probably read it, then.
SEAN: Kana also has a 4th City Hunter omnibus.
MICHELLE: Ooh.
ANNA: Nice.
ASH: Always.
SEAN: No debuts for Kodansha Manga, but they do have Gachiakuta Dumpster Season 1 Manga Box Set, which has the first 10 volumes and a tote bag.
ASH: Love a good tote bag.
SEAN: Other print volumes: Drawing From Your Memory 3, The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity 15, Honey Bee & Lemon Balm sweet moment (the third in the series), How to Treat a Lady Knight Right 6, Kirio Fan Club 4, Last Samurai 6, Love, That’s an Understatement 8, Shimazaki in the Land of Peace 10, To Your Eternity 25 (the final volume), and Vinland Saga 15 (also the final volume, it got bumped, though digital is out this week).
ASH: I will take Vinland Saga whenever I can get it. And To Your Eternity, too, for that matter.
SEAN: And digitally we have Am I Actually the Strongest? 20, Because I, the True Saint, was Banished, that Country is Done For! 12, and Koigakubo-kun Stole My First Time 10.
Last Gasp has a new edition of Barefoot Gen, 572 pages, with new lettering and some new color pages. You don’t need me to tell you to read Barefoot Gen.
ASH: I’m not sure how many editions this makes now, but I’m glad to see this series remain available.
SEAN: One Peace Books has a manga debut. The Delinquent Girl Beside Me Suddenly Dyed Her Hair Black (Tonari no Seki no Yankee Shimizu-san ga Kami wo Kuroku Somete Kita) is based on an as-yet unlicensed light novel, and ran in Shonen Ace. A guy mentions he likes refined black-haired girls. The next day, the blonde delinquent who sits next to him shows up with black hair, and acting refined. What could it be? He’s a high school guy, so he’ll never figure it out, trust me.
ASH: Ha!
SEAN: Seven Seas has one danmei release, the 2nd and final volume of Golden Terrace.
They have two manga debuts. Are You a Landmine, Chihara-san? (Jirai Nan desu ka? Chihara-san) runs in Ganma!, and has an anime coming soon. A guy finds his new seatmate is a girl with long black hair, goth loli fashion, and a tendency to stare. Is she one of those obsessive weirdos? As it turns out, she’s one of those sweet weirdos.
Living with My Old Cat (Jiji Neko Kurashi) is a cat manga about life with an older cat. (Sometimes I got nothin’.)
MICHELLE: Heh.
ASH: But you’ve got cat manga!
SEAN: They also have The Babe at My Back Has Her Eye on Me. I’m Done For. 2, The Dragon Knight’s Beloved 10, Free Life Fantasy Online: Immortal Princess 14, It Takes More Than a Pretty Face to Fall in Love 7, The Kingdoms of Ruin 13, Nagahama to Be, or Not to Be: The Second Voyage (or, as normal people would say, 2), and This Is Screwed Up, but I Was Reincarnated as a GIRL in Another World! 20.
Square Enix Manga has Assassin & Cinderella 4, The Emperor’s Caretaker 7, My Favorite VTuber Is Scary IRL 3, and My Isekai Life: I Gained a Second Character Class and Became the Strongest Sage in the World! 27.
SuBLime gives us Black or White 13, Forest of the Rabbits 2 (the final volume), and May I Have a Taste? 3.
Titan Manga debuts Resident Evil: Death Island, a manga adaptation of the CG film. It ran in Comic Hu.
Tokyopop debuts another yuri webtoon. She Is Still Cute Today stars a top student who is rumored to be in love with the #1 boy in class. To stop this, she says she’s in love with the bottom ranked student. Who’s a girl. And was listening to all this. And is now following her around…
Vassalord Deluxe Edition, meanwhile, is exactly what it sounds like, a deluxe hardcover version of the dark BL series.
ASH: Now that’s a blast from the past! This series is somewhat absurd, but I enjoyed what was previously released, so I am pleased by this. (Maybe it means we’ll see the rest of the series translated, too?)
SEAN: Uncivilized Books debut Fire!, a classic shoujo manga from the 1960s that ran in Weekly Seventeen. Aaron Browning is an Ohio teenager in juvie who meets a delinquent who has big music talent. This 900-page book collects all four volumes of his rise and fall. He’s apparently based on Scott Walker. Oh, there’s also an essay on Pink Floyd in here. The manga won an award. Everything about this screams “buy me now”.
MICHELLE: Or else the sun ain’t gonna shine any more!
SEAN: Yes, make it easy on yourself!
ANNA: Well, this sounds amazing.
ASH: Yup. I preorderd this as soon as I learned it was licensed.
SEAN: Viz Media has My Hero Academia: Ultra Artworks, a hardcover artbook dedicated to the popular series.
We also see Beyblade X 7, Case Closed 100, Chainsaw Man 22, Firefly Wedding 8, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Seen 3, Pokémon: Scarlet & Violet 6, Rainbows After Storms 12, Splatoon 3: Splatlands 7, and Yaiba: Samurai Legend 6.
Three debuts for Yen On. Buying a Classmate Once a Week: Our Time Together and the Five-Thousand-Yen Excuse (Shuu ni Ichido Classmate o Kau Hanashi ~Futari no Jikan, Iiwake no Gosen En~) is a yuri light novel about a high school girl who pays her classmate to do things like go get juice, etc… then decides to make the requests more risque. If you liked Adachi and Shimamura but thought their personalities were too normal, this is for you. (BEEP sarcasm BEEP)
See You at That Site of Grace After Work (Shigoto ga Owareba, Ano Shukufuku de) is a one-shot video game tie-in… sort of. A guy who is non-communicative with his co-workers and would rather play games finds his life changing when a young woman asks him to help her get good in Elden Ring. Not a romance, apparently, but a “isn’t Elden Ring great!” sort of book. Note Yen Press releases the Elden Ring manga.
ASH: Huh.
SEAN: Your Castle’s Little Helper: Please Feed Me, I’ll Work! (Anata no Oshiro no Kobito-san ~Gohan Kudasai, Hatarakimasu ~) stars a starving young girl who suddenly finds she remembers her life as a Japanese woman. She tries to stay alive doing odd jobs, and lucky for her she’s in a “isn’t this lovable orphan adorable?” series.
Also from Yen On: Agents of the Four Seasons 7, Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian 9.5, Associate Professor Akira Takatsuki’s Conjecture 7, Bofuri: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense 18, Even a Replica Can Fall in Love 5, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End -Prelude– 2, How to Eat Life 3, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria 15, King’s Proposal 8, Reign of the Seven Spellblades 15, Witch’s Can’t Be Collared 3, and You Can Have My Back 5.
And Yen Press have one book, a debut. Isshiki-san Wants to Know About Love (Isshiki-san wa Koi wo Shiritai) is an ecchi manga from Shonen Ace. (If you don’t know what ecchi means, ask your father.) A cop finds herself very flustered around her colleague, and decides to date him to figure out what this whole love thing really is. This is getting an anime soon.
No, it’s still not Halloween yet. What are you buying?