MICHELLE: I know nothing about Teppu other than the fact that it’s sports manga, which is enough for me to award it my pick this week.
SEAN: I also know nothing about Teppu, but boy did it excite some people whose opinions I respect, so we’ll go with it.
ASH: I still am print-preferred, so my pick of the week goes to the debut of the Tearmoon Empire manga, but I’m definitely interested in Teppu!
KATE: I’m going to put in a word for Phantom of the Idol, which is the perfect beach read. Six volumes in, it’s still silly, fizzy, and fun, demanding little of the reader other than the willingness to chuckle at a decent sight gag or a music industry joke.
| By Inio Asano | Viz Media – There probably wasn’t a good way that this final volume was going to wrap up for me. Asano’s series have always generally been too depressing for my tastes, and this is the only long-form one I read till the end. To its credit, all the timey wimey stuff happening throughout the series does mean that we get a happy ending of a sort, and the ending is somewhat optimistic, and ties in with Isobeyan. On the downside, I was not at all interested in the front half of this book, which basically involves a lot of freedom fighters and innocent civilians getting brutally murdered to show off what a terrible world this is now. Still, at its best, this series was magical. – Sean Gaffney
