Manga Bookshelf

Discussion, Resources, Roundtables, & Reviews

Katherine Dacey

Pick of the Week: Take a Guess

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SEAN: There are a pile of things out this week I’m interested in. The final After Hours, new volumes of Horimiya, Silver Spoon and Yowapeda. But I’m sorry, I cannot resist a croc in a top hat. Especially when it’s secretly a foodie manga. Crocodile Baron is my pick this week.

MICHELLE: And I can’t resist sports manga, so it’s totally Yowapeda for me!

ASH: I’m definitely looking forward to the most recent (and far too infrequent) release of Yowamushi Pedal, but my pick this week goes to The Golden Yarn. I’m curious to see if The Ancient Magus’ Bride holds the same sort of dark charm in prose as it does in manga.

ANNA: I almost have to pick Crocodile Baron just for the cover, but I am nothing but steadfast in my championing of romance, so I’m going to go with Ne Ne Ne as my pick.

MJ: SILVER SPOON! SILVER SPOON! SILVER SPOON!

KATE: At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’m throwing my weight behind Silver Spoon again, if only to remind everyone that it’s REALLY good, and they should be reading it.

Pick of the Week: Visions of Manga

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MICHELLE: It’s a big VIZ week, which means new volumes of many favorites for me. I’m excited for new installments of Yona of the Dawn and Takane & Hana in particular, but it’s the series finales that are primary contenders this week. I have definitely enjoyed reading Kuroko’s Basketball and am a little bummed it’s ending already (30 volumes seems short for a sports manga nowadays!) but, really, there’s no contest. It’s gotta be Kimi ni Todoke. I love this series so very much and kind of can’t believe it’s going to be over.

SEAN: I’m definitely interested in We Never Learn, the new Jump romantic comedy, but yeah, no real contest. The final volume of Kimi ni Todoke is one I’ve been both waiting for and wanting to avoid. I expect it to be very good.

ASH: Viz primarily has my attention this week, too. I’m following several of the series with new releases, but I’ll have to admit I’m a bit behind on just about all of them. Queen’s Quality is probably the manga that’s up next for some catching up, though, so I’ll make that one my pick.

ANNA: There are so many great series coming out this week. I have to pick the manga that I read immediately, it doesn’t even have time to rest in the to-be-read pile by my bed. That manga is Yona of the Dawn which is consistently wonderful.

KATE: My vote goes to the latest installment of The Promised Neverland. Emma is the best reason to read TPN: she’s the big beating heart of this dystopian adventure story, but also its brains. Her courage and determination are hard to resist, making it easier to soldier through the onslaught of grim plot twists.

MJ: I feel like a traitor to Takeshi Obata, but I’m also going to make Queen’s Quality my pick this week. Like Ash, I have some catching up to do there!

MICHELLE: So do I!

Pick of the Week: Here Come the Brides

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SEAN: Tempting as it is to rest on my laurels and pick A Bride’s Story, I suspect the rest of Manga Bookshelf has me covered there. So I’ll pick Katanagatari: Sword Tale, Nisioisin’s new tale about swords. It’s long but very dense.

KATE: At the risk of becoming the most predictable member of the MB gang, I’m going to nominate both Blissful Land and A Bride’s Story. Let’s face it: you can never have enough beautifully drawn manga about life along the Silk Road. My inner historian is salivating at the prospect!

MICHELLE: Even though I’m sure I’ll love A Bride’s Story, the sad fact is that I haven’t yet read it, so I feel weird picking volume ten. I guess I’m going to go with the latest Ace of the Diamond because the most recent volume had the formerly brash protagonist earnestly declaring how much he loves and respects his teammates. I’m a sucker for that sort of thing.

ASH: A Bride’s Story is a lovely tale and visually stunning. (Michelle, you really should give it a try!) It’s definitely my pick of the week, though I am also interested in Yoshitaka Amano: The Illustrated Biography, which should likewise be a beautiful volume.

ANNA: I’ll have to go with A Bride’s Story too, it is such a special series!

Pick of the Week: Shades of Gray

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MICHELLE: Another week with several really strong contenders for pick of the week! Shojo FIGHT! and Beasts of Abigaile will definitely be near the top of my to-read pile, but the big contest is between Ooku and Wotakoi. In the end, I am going to go with Wotakoi this time. I love Ooku a lot, but I know I’ve picked it before, and Wotakoi is appealing from a lifting-one’s-spirits sort of angle.

SEAN: Unsurprisingly, I’m looking at novels this week. I Want to Eat Your Pancreas has the award-winning cred, and though I expect I may get depressed after reading it, that’s my pick.

ASH: For ongoing series, Ooku and Wotakoi are both very high on my list as is the continuation of I Hear the Sunspot. But my pick this week officially goes to the debut of Ran and the Gray World, which looks like it should be absolutely wonderful.

ANNA: I’m going to go with Ran and the Gray World too. I’m going to check it out!

MJ: Fumi Yoshinaga always wins for me, so I’ll be the one to pick Ooku. It’s always a wonderful treat to see it turn up on the list!

KATE: Sorry to be bringing up the rear — I’m in paper grading purgatory right now! My pick of the week is Good Dog, Cerebus! which looks like the kind of cute, fluffy escapism I’m craving at the moment. My second pick — if I’m allowed one — would be PEZ, which looks gorgeous.

Pick of the Week: Yotsuba & Picks!

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SEAN: A ridiculous amount of stuff, as I said. I’m interested in Bakarina, and the final volume of Frau Faust. There’s always a place in my picks for Requiem of the Rose King too. That said, given it’s been TWO AND A HALF YEARS since the last volume, I feel I can only pick Yotsuba&! this week.

KATE: Any week that brings us new installments of Delicious in Dungeon and Yotsuba&! is a good week! ‘Nuff said.

SEAN: Right, and Delicious in Dungeon, which gets more disturbing and dark by the volume (in a good way).

MICHELLE: Oh, man. So much great stuff this week! Since some of my other faves have been acknowledged, I reckon that frees me up to go with the final volume of Frau Faust, which I am looking forward to very much. It wasn’t until I’d read the first few volumes of Frau that I went to check out Kore Yamazaki’s The Ancient Magus’ Bride, and I love it so much that it now makes me sad Frau Faust is so short. Oh well. I bet it’ll be a humdinger of an ending.

ASH: Delicious in Dungeon is definitely one of my favorite series currently been released, but then so is Requiem of the Rose King. It seems like it’s been longer since I’ve had the chance to read Requiem of the Rose King though, so I’ll happily make that my official pick.

MJ: I absolutely have to go with Requiem of the Rose King. I missed my chance to flail with excitement during the last “Manga the week of,” so I’ll do that here instead. *flail*

ANNA: Requiem of the Rose King is such a special series, any week it comes out it will always be my pick.

Versailles of the Dead, Vol. 1

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Kumiko Suekane’s Versailles of the Dead feels like a kissing cousin of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. It’s a clever and handsomely drawn manga that also inserts zombies into a well-known story for shock value: who knew the real cause of the French Revolution was an outbreak of “resurrection illness”? The net result, however, is so intentionally kitschy that it sometimes holds the reader at arm’s length, inviting us to appreciate the imagination and research that went into creating Versailles of the Dead without fully drawing us into the story.

You might reasonably think that the zombies were Versailles of the Dead’s most gonzo element, but you’d be wrong: it’s actually Suekane’s decision to invent a sibling for Marie Antoinette. This sibling — a twin brother named Albert — is Marie’s doppelgänger, a handsome lad with the same high cheekbones and pert nose as his infamous sister. En route to Marie’s nuptials, their carriage is ambushed by zombies, forcing Albert to impersonate his sister after she meets a gruesome end. Albert’s identity is quickly discovered by a handful of courtiers, all of whom are invested enough in preserving the status quo at Versailles that they conspire to look the other way, even when rumors surface that Albert beheaded his own sister.

Watching Albert step into the role of Dauphine is fun; he embraces the opportunity to manipulate courtiers through gossip and flirtation, exploiting rivalries within the court to his own advantage. The supernatural interludes, by contrast, sometimes feel like an afterthought, rather than a vital part of the story. Though the zombies are handled in a straightforward fashion, Suekane relies too much on flash-booms, jump cuts, and smudgy silhouettes to imply that certain members of the French court are possessed. Suggestion is an important tool for generating suspense, of course, but here it feels like a half-baked effort at world-building — what if there were demons in eighteenth century France, too? Not everything needs to be explained in a baldly literal fashion, of course, but the demonic angle feels like one accessory too many on a busy outfit.

If the supernatural intrigue is more afterthought than essential element, the artwork is sumptuous, capturing the opulence of Versailles without overwhelming the reader. Suekane’s secret? Lavishing attention on character designs rather than material objects, allowing the intricacy of the hairstyles, gowns, and frock coats to be the focal point of most panels. That approach gives her breathing room to draw the kind of subtle but important details that help establish the characters’ true natures. Albert, for example, never fully disappears into his sister’s clothes and wigs; the twinkle in his eye and the boldness of his carriage are conspicuous signs of his male upbringing, even though he looks ravishing as a woman. Other characters’ personalities are just as thoughtfully embodied through costume and movement. Madame du Barry, the Dauphine’s great rival, makes a dramatic display of her décolletage, framing her chest in a wreath of feathers that accentuate du Barry’s mature womanhood — a not-so-subtle attempt to assert her power and experience over a teenage interloper.

It’s this level of thoughtfulness that helped me soldier through the more clumsy parts of the story, where characters solemnly explain why Albert’s marriage must go forward for “the good of our two countries,” and Madame du Barry thinks in complete Wikipedia paragraphs. (Her internal monologues are surprisingly dull for such a canny strategist.) I’m not sure that all of the plot lines will eventually converge in a satisfying way — there’s a lot of supernatural silliness — but I find Albert a compelling character, a skilled political operator who revels in his ability to sow discord. Count me in for volume two.

VERSAILLES OF THE DEAD, VOL. 1 • STORY & ART BY KUMIKO SUEKANE • TRANSLATION BY JOCELYNE ALLEN • SEVEN SEAS • RATED TEEN (PARTIAL NUDITY, MILD GORE, VIOLENCE)  172 pp.

Pick of the Week: We Enjoy Wide Variety

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ASH: For me, it’s a shonen sort of week. In addition to a number of ongoing series from Viz that I’m following (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Haikyuu!, and so on) there’s also the new one-shot That Time I Got Reincarnated as Yamcha which looks like it should be a ridiculous amount of fun.

KATE: As hard as it may be for me to say this… I’m not really jazzed about anything arriving in stores on Wednesday. I think this is going to be a tackle-the-stack week for me. But that’s OK — I have new volumes of Dead Dead Demon, Again!!, The Promised Neverland, and Silver Spoon on my nightstand, as well as a pristine copy of My Favorite Thing Is Monsters that begs to be read.

ANNA: I thought the first volume of Shortcake Cake was super adorable, so volume 2 is my pick this week.

SEAN: I’m still greatly enjoying Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, a very funny take on two overly intellectual nerds and their attempts to understand love. I’ll make that my pick this week.

MICHELLE: I’m looking forward to more Haikyu!! and to checking out Shortcake Cake, but it’s gotta be Chihayafuru for me!

Pick of the Week: We Are So Predictable

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SEAN: An excess of Yen Press this week. I suspect my colleagues will be going for Silver Spoon, as they should. And I admit to being intrigued by High School Prodigies Have it Easy Even in Another World, which sounds silly if nothing else. But my pick this week is the 2nd volume of Teasing Master Takagi-san, which is adorably cute and funny.

MICHELLE: I also am going to trust someone else to pick Silver Spoon so that I might weigh in in favor of Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts. I started the first volume this week and it’s pretty fun, kind of like a more light-hearted The Ancient Magus’ Bride sort of feeling. I am enjoying it so far and keen to see how the story develops.

MJ: I will set Sean and Michelle’s minds at ease by openly and wholeheartedly choosing Silver Spoon! Silver Spoon always. Silver Spoon forever.

KATE: I’ll bite: read Silver Spoon! It’s funny and real and just plain awesome, and deserves a bigger, more enthusiastic reception from American manga readers. (How’d I do, Michelle?)

MICHELLE: You get a gold star!

ANNA: I’m going to randomly pick Versailles of the Dead. I haven’t read it at all yet, but it sounds like the spookiest debut manga this week.

ASH: I will not so randomly pick the debut of Versailles of the Dead as I’m very curious about the series, but Silver Spoon definitely continues to be at the top of my list, too.

Pick of the Week: Psycho vs. Piano

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ASH: Were I a reader of digital manga, my pick this week would most likely be the debut of Forest of Piano. Alas, that is not yet to be. Fortunately, I’ve also been greatly looking forward to the release of Mob Psycho 100, so that’s what I’ll be choosing this time.

MICHELLE: Those are definitely my top two pics, too, but I can’t help but feel that by Kodansha releasing so much Forest of Piano at once, I’m already somehow behind on it. Mob Psycho 100 seems a little easier to commit to at the present moment.

SEAN: Actually, given the page counts, it’s 7 omnibuses, so probably 14 volumes. And yeah, I’m gonna be so far behind. Love you, seinen piano manga, but Mob Psycho 100 for me as well.

KATE: What Michelle said!

ANNA: Like everyone else, I’m torn between Forest of Piano and Mob Psycho 100. But due to me feeling extra guilty about being so far behind in other digital titles like Chihayafuru, that just pushes me further in the direction of Mob Psycho 100.

Pick of the Week: Loving the Demon

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SEAN: There’s nothing that screams BUY ME! this week, but there are some ongoing titles I quite like. I will go with the 3rd Dead Dead Demon’s Dededededdestruction as my pick, as it’s reliably excellent so far.

MICHELLE: I’ve already sung the praises of Giant Killing several times, but I continue to enjoy this seinen take on sports manga very much. It’s my pick this week.

KATE: I’m going to shill for Dead Dead Demon again, since it’s currently one of my favorite new series of 2018. For anyone who’s been on the fence about this title, I encourage you to give it a try; it’s dark and funny without ever tipping into misery porn, a la Goodnight Pun-Pun or The Girl on the Shore.

ANNA: I haven’t read Dead Dead Demon yet, but I’ve been stockpiling the volumes. I expect I will like it just as much as Kate does, so that’s my pick too!

ASH: Dead Dead Demon is absolutely worth picking up (and I certainly will be), but for me this week the series also has to contend with the newest Junji Ito manga to be released in English–Frankenstein.

Pick of the Week: Satoko and Nada

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MICHELLE: I am completely unable to resist a tale billed as “a charming tale of friendship between a Japanese woman and her Muslim roommate.” Slice-of-life hilarious adventures involving mutual respect? Yes, please!

SEAN: Same. Seven Seas has done wonders this year to make everyone sit up and pay attention to them, and this is one reason why. Satoko and Nada is definitely my pick this week.

ANNA: This sounds absolutely adorable. Looking forward to checking out Satoko and Nada.

ASH: As usual, there are a few things I’m interested in this week, but nothing else has quite captured my attention like the debut of Satoko and Nada! It should be a delight.

KATE: Ditto!

MJ: I was so determined to find something different and unpredictable to say here, but yeah. It’s Satoko and Nada for me too. All the way.

Pick of the Week: Blue Spring in Fall

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SEAN: My pick of this week is the massive 1500+-page tome, Ao Haru Bleach Exorcist’s Basketball and Volleyball Academia at the Promised Neverland, starring The Water Dragon’s Bride and Yona of the Dawn, with gags brought to you by Pop Team Epic. It’s sure to be an absolute stunner.

(Or, if I don’t massively cheat, Ao Haru Ride. And Pop Team Epic. Oh, and Neverland. And… dammit.)

KATE: Since I’m one of five people in the mangasphere who knows nothing about Pop Team Epic or Ao Haru Ride, I’m casting my votes for the next installments of Again!! and The Promised Neverland. The evil you know, y’know?

ANNA: Surprising no one, I am going to pick Ao Haru Ride, I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time!

MICHELLE: I’ll be reading most of what else has been alluded to, but yes, it’s gotta be Ao Haru Ride for me.

ASH: So many great continuing (and debuting) series this week! I’d particularly like to highlight Captain Harlock as I’m really digging Seven Seas’ line of classic manga.

MJ: Ao Haru Ride! That’s the one for me. How predictable.

The Delinquent Housewife!, Vol. 1

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The Spouse With a Secret ranks among the top five narrative devices of all time, as it lends itself to so many different genres: horror stories, costume dramas, lurid thrillers. The Delinquent Housewife! puts a humorous spin on the concept, pitting a seemingly demure newlywed against her in-laws. Though her husband assures Tomugi that his family will embrace her as a cherished member, she isn’t so sure, as Tohru’s younger sister Yukari seems determined to prove to the rest of the Komukai clan that Tomugi is a poor match for Tohru.

Sustaining this premise is a delicate balancing act; if the author hides Tomugi’s secret from the reader or the other characters for too long, the story might become tedious, but if she puts that information out in the open too soon, the story might lose momentum. Nemu Yoko splits the difference, teasing the reader about Tomugi’s big secret for the first thirty pages before dropping a bombshell: Tomugi belonged to a bosozoku (bike) gang. Yoko wisely doesn’t put all her cards on the table, however, leaving the reader to guess how and why the clean-cut Tohru fell for Tomugi.

Yoko makes another smart choice in removing Tohru from the picture just a few pages into volume one, sending him on a mysterious business trip of indefinite length. Though this plot development is a capital-C contrivance, it serves two important functions: it hints that Tohru may be harboring an even bigger secret than Tomugi, and it forces Tomugi to interact with the entire Komukai clan. In particular, Tohru’s absence exacerbates the conflict between Tomugi and Yukari, who views her older brother in a hagiographic light; Yukari spends several chapters scheming ways to expose Tomugi’s culinary deficits, certain that Tomugi’s terrible cooking will be the demise of her marriage to Tohru.

While many of the comic devices are straight out of Moliere — eavesdropping at the door, sneaking around under cover of darkness — The Delinquent Housewife! never feels rote; Yoko puts just enough spin on familiar scenarios to make the jokes’ punchlines seem fresh. Grandpa Komukai, for example, presents like a befuddled old pervert but turns out to be more perceptive about his new in-law than the skeptical Yukari, while Tomugi’s bosozoku buddies prove a fount of useful information about housework. (Her friend Ami’s cooking lesson is a highlight of volume one, a gleeful marriage of foul language, insults, and no-nonsense tips for mastering kitchen basics.) Perhaps the most surprising thing about The Delinquent Housewife! is that Yoko is unsparing in her portrayal of Tomugi’s immaturity, depicting her as a self-pitying leech who’s still blaming her parents for her shortcomings. Yet Tomugi isn’t a monster; even in her worst moments, her interactions with Ami, Dai (Tohru’s kid brother), and Tohru suggest that Tomugi is, at bottom, someone who’s just looking for a family to call her own, even if she’s using questionable tactics to get one.

If I had any criticism of The Delinquent Housewife!, it’s that Tomugi’s tough-girl talk sounds stilted, see-sawing between Noo Joisey realness and teenage text-speak — a tonal problem that might be an artifact of the original script, rather than a by-product of the translation process. On the whole, however, The Delinquent Housewife! is a welcome addition to the Vertical Comics catalog, an energetic comedy that earns its laughs with thoughtful characterizations, appealing art, and juicy plot twists. Recommended.

THE DELINQUENT HOUSEWIFE!, VOL. 1 • STORY & ART BY NEMU YOKO • TRANSLATION BY DAVID MUSTO • VERTICAL COMICS • NO RATING • 192 pp.

Pick of the Week: Picking Sides

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MICHELLE: Normally, I would be extolling The Girl from the Other Side in this space, and I still fully intend to rave about it, but After the Rain sure looks appealing. I think I’ll favor this debut with my pick this week instead.

KATE: The Girl from the Other Side is my favorite ongoing series right now, so I’m glad I have a chance to plug it again. It’s so good, in fact, that only all-caps will do in explaining how GORGEOUS AND AMAZING AND HEARTBREAKING it is.

SEAN: I love The Girl from the Other Side, but wow is it bleak, so I too will make my pick the debut of After the Rain.

ANNA: The Girl from the Other Side might be bleak, but it is such a unique title, both in story and art, I have to pick it!

ASH: It’s my pick, too! The Girl from the Other Side has such tremendous atmosphere.

Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, Vols. 1-2

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What if the world ended not with a bang or a whimper, but a shrug of the shoulders and a TL;DR? That’s the question at the heart of Inio Asano’s Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, a dark comedy about alien invasion.

Asano buries the lede, however, initially framing his story as a coming-of-age drama about Kadode and Oran, two girls on the cusp of adulthood. We learn about the aliens’ arrival in bits and pieces, through a 2-chan thread, a news bulletin, a string of text messages, and a sign tallying the day’s casualties. We also learn that Kadode’s father — a journalist — disappeared in the immediate aftermath of the attack, an event that has pushed Kadode’s mother to the brink of insanity.

The dramatic impact of these revelations is muted by Asano’s attention to the mundane rhythms of Kadode and Oran’s life: they study for tests, shoot the shit with friends, horse around with Oran’s older brother, and play video games until the wee hours of the morning, marking time until they graduate from high school. Like most teenagers, Kadode and Oran are morbidly curious about sex, fixating on a young teacher who does a poor job of establishing professional boundaries with his students. In private conversations, the girls tease each other about seducing Mr. Watarase, but when Kadode finds herself alone with him, she’s awkward and nervous, unable to carry out her plan. It’s to Asano’s credit that nothing happens between teacher and student, as he recognizes that Kadode’s interest is not in having sex with her teacher but in speculating what it would be like — in essence, she’s trying on the idea of an adult relationship, not actively seeking one.

A similar tension between maturity and inexperience plays out in other aspects of Asano’s narrative. Kadode, for example, is deeply invested in Isobeyan, a manga starring a dim-witted girl and a time-traveling Mushroomian with an “interdimensional pouchette” that yields amazing inventions: a brain bulb, a pair of skeleton specs. Though this manga-within-a-manga offers Asano an opportunity to showcase his technical virtuosity — Isobeyan looks like a Fujiko F. Fujio original — Isobeyan also highlights Asano’s knack for creating convincing teen characters, sympathetically portraying Kadode’s interest in kiddie manga as a survival tactic; she clings to Isobeyan because its jokes and stories offer her the consistency that’s otherwise missing from her chaotic home life.

Running in tandem with these domestic interludes are scenes of the media, government, and big business co-opting the invasion through incessant television coverage, carefully orchestrated public memorials, and merchandise, all promoting the idea that Tokyo should “never forget” about the tragedy while simultaneously encouraging residents to move on with their lives. Both volumes of Dead Dead Demon thrum with the activity of radio and television newscasts; through voice-overs and field reports, we learn the official version of events, but not what really happened on the ground. That same element of hollow reassurance informs a rally celebrating the successful demonstration of a new weapon. As people begin gathering, a chant of “Nippon!” ripples through the crowd. “Why are they all yelling ‘Nippon’?” one girl asked. “I dunno,” her friend replies, “But this is fun, so who cares?”

Asano’s art plays a vital role in suggesting the way in which the ordinary and extraordinary can coexist side-by-side. In this particular image, for example, Asano draws the undercarriage of the mother ship — its cannons, landing gear, and exhaust ports — with the same shapes and lines as he uses for the city below; it’s as if we’re viewing Tokyo on the surface of a pond, upside down and slightly murky:

Then, too, there’s a tension between the hard, industrial precision of such imagery and the soft vulnerability of the principal characters, as is conveyed by this panel in which Kadode and Oran’s view of the sky is completely blocked by the mother ship:

Though Asano’s character designs are naturalistic, capturing that liminal state between adolescence and adulthood with physical accuracy, Kadode and Oran’s faces are preternatually elastic, registering the full gamut of teenage emotions with outsized intensity. Many of the adults, by contrast, resemble Noh characters with impassive, mask-like faces that make them look… well, cartoonish, emphasizing the degree to which deception and denial have robbed them of their ability to express the fear, uncertainty, and hopelessness that the invasion has undoubtedly stirred in them. It’s a technique that Asano has used in other series — most notably Goodnight, Pun-Pun — and it works beautifully here, underscoring the absurdity of the characters’ situation.

What makes Dead Dead Demon more than just a stylish exercise in nihilism is the way in which Asano recognizes the lengths to which people will go to preserve their routines and personal comforts. Asano doesn’t frame that act as heroic resistance or conscious choice, but an atavistic need for order, especially in the aftermath of a catastrophe. For Kadode and her friends, though, that quest for normalcy takes a slightly different form, as they’re not yet old enough to have their own homes, jobs, and families; the things they cling to — like pop music and video games — offer only temporary comfort, pushing them to seek deeper answers about the alien invasion.

Lest Dead Dead Demon sound like a Terribly Serious Manga, it’s worth noting that Asano never falls into the misery porn trap that made Goodnight, Punpun such a punishing experience. Dead Dead Demon is nimble, funny, and sad, buoyed by a vivid cast of characters and a densely layered plot that allows Asano to explore weighty questions without casting a pall over the reader. For my money, it’s his best work to date, the ideal showcase for his phenomenal artistry and mordant wit. Highly recommended.

DEAD DEAD DEMON’S DEDEDEDE DESTRUCTION, VOLS. 1-2 • STORY & ART BY INIO ASANO • TRANSLATION BY JOHN WERRY • VIZ MEDIA • RATED M, FOR MATURE AUDIENCES (VIOLENCE AND SEXUALITY)