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What shall we read this week?

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I’m looking at this week’s new releases, including a new volume of Fairy Tail and a new shoujo title from Viz, The Earl and the Fairy, at MTV Geek. At A Case Suitable for Treatment, Sean Gaffney peers ahead to next week’s new manga.

Deb Aoki invites you to vote for the best new Action/Drama manga in the latest round of 2012 Readers’ Choice Awards at About.com.

News from Japan: Nico Nico Manga will run the six-part game-based manga Pokémon + Nobunaga’s Ambition online for free. The game becomes available later this month. Two manga adaptations of novels by Yūsuke Kishi are in the works.

Reviews

Connie on Betting My Life With You (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 6 of Blue Exorcist (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 2 of Buddha (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 1 of Cousin (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 9 of Dengeki Daisy (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Ken Haley on vol. 1 of Drifters (Sequential Ink)
Kristin on vol. 1 of The Earl and the Fairy (Comic Attack)
Connie on Golgo 13: Galinpero (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 4 of Gravitation (Slightly Biased Manga)
Sean Gaffney on vol. 1 of The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer (Hoshi no Samidare) (A Case Suitable for Treatment)
Connie on vol. 5 of Kizuna (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on Like a Love Comedy (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 13 of Mars (Slightly Biased Manga)
Connie on vol. 9 of Natsume’s Book of Friends (Slightly Biased Manga)
Michelle Smith on vols. 1 and 2 of Psyren (Soliloquy in Blue)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 7 of Stepping on Roses (The Comic Book Bin)

Show Us Your Stuff: Lovely Duckie’s Manga Library

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Greetings! This Thursday’s featured collector is Candace, an avid reviewer who writes about manga and anime at her site Lovely Duckie’s Blog. Like many manga fans, Sailor Moon played an essential role in introducing her to Japanese animation and comics. In the nine years Candance has been a collector, her tastes have evolved to include a wide variety of shojo and josei titles — she counts Skip Beat! and Tokyo Crazy Paradise among her favorites — as well as series such as Bakuman, The Drops of God, and Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. Oh, and her library is one of the largest we’ve featured to date, with other 2,600+ volumes. My only question: does she have staff to help her shelve and catalog it all?! – Katherine Dacey

How long have you been collecting manga?

January 2003. I started off REAL slow, I was only able to keep up with a single series at a time. As I got old enough to have a job my collection grew. I used to work one day at a bakery once a week to buy 3-4 volumes of manga every other week or so. Now that I’ve graduated college and have a job I pre-order whatever I want, it’s heaven.

What was the first manga you bought?

I pre-ordered volume one of Sailor Moon (Pocket Mixx) from the Barnes and Noble one town over from where I lived. The next series I tried out was Cardcaptor Sakura, but I was also eyeing Fushigi Yugi. (I didn’t actually read Fushigi Yugi until many years later.) After Cardcaptor Sakura, I had my hands full trying to buy every CLAMP series I could; the only ones I missed out on were Clover (THANK YOU Dark Horse for the re-release) and a couple of the CLAMP School volumes.

How big is your collection?

I’m at 2600+, the list I keep is a bit outdated but you can see most of what I own at this link (http://www.justmanga.com/vmb/13795). I’m in a situation where I can have lots of shelves and easy access to most of my manga, I recently had to pack up two bins and fill the top shelf of the guest bedroom closet because my figures were competing for the space. I decided to cut back on figures to save money and space, so those two bins may be able to be unpacked again, we’ll see. Not going to lie… when it’s time to move to a new home, this is going to be a major inconvenience for me and my significant other. When I moved last time I collected LOTS of wine boxes from the liquor store and packed them in those. Wine boxes are a nice size that makes it so I don’t accidentally make any one box that’s too heavy.

What is the rarest item in your collection?

I’m not sure, once I own the manga (or art book) I don’t really keep tabs on if it becomes rare or not…I’d guess perhaps owning all of Basara is the rarest series I own. Volumes 18-20 seem pretty overpriced at the moment. I also think a few of my Kindaichi Case Files manga volumes are difficult to buy at a reasonable price, back when I bought the set a few years ago some volumes were already starting to be a pain to find. And since Tokyopop is no more, I doubt there are any reprints of Kindaichi. I also own most of the Osamu Tezuka volumes released in the US including all of Phoenix. For art books… my Cardcaptor Sakura (English) #1-3 art books seem somewhat rare, I also have all the (Japanese) Aria art books.


What is the weirdest item in your collection?

It could be my used copy of InuYasha, which the previous owner colored in tops on all of the breasted yokai. There were a lot of harpie-like creatures so he/she had their work cut out for him/her! If an average friend off the street came into my collection room and selected a manga at random…there are quite a few series that I can think of that they would find weird. Hands down the weirdest series for me to read was After School Nightmare; the ending especially was an extremely weird moment for me. Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is another series I love that could be considered very weird, I can think of many scenes that are shocking to someone casually flipping through.

In terms of just items I own (not just manga)…the weirdest item is probably my Franky POP Megahouse Figure, his outfit/character design is extremely difficult to explain…and figure manufacturer really didn’t need to add that much detail to his speedo…darn you Megahouse for your accuracy.

How has your taste in manga evolved since you started your collection?

It was all magical girl stuff at first, then shoujo, then shonen, and now I read just about every genre. My favorite reads are good mystery series. I also tend to favor seinen, and slice-of-life series. I’ve found that if it’s available I prefer to watch the anime of my favorite shonen series over the manga, my all time favorite anime is One Piece, but I can’t say for sure it’s my all time favorite manga. In general I think most action series can be made significantly better by anime because the flow of the action is easier to appreciate, plus sometimes the (Japanese) voice actors breathe even more life into the character on top of the good structure made by the manga-ka.

Who are your favorite comic artists?

CLAMP, Yoshiki Nakamura, Ririko Tsujita, Osamu Tezuka, Eiichiro Oda, Kozue Amano, Fumiya Satō/Yōzaburō Kanari, Kenta Shinohara, Naoki Urasawa, Ai Yazawa, Inio Asano

What series are you actively collecting right now?

Too many to name. But some of the volumes I look forward to the most are Skip Beat!, A Bride’s Story, Higurashi When They Cry, Ai Ore!, Bakuman, Drops of God, Bunny Drop, Alice in the Country of Hearts, Yotsubato, Ikigami, Kingyo Used Books, Kobato, March Story, and Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service.

Favorite Series that were Dropped (US Release) 

The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko, Aria, V.B. Rose, Bride of Deimos, Kindaichi Case Files, Swan, GinTama, Pet Shop of Horrors: Tokyo, The Queen’s Knight, The Stellar Six of Gingacho

Favorite Series that may never make it to the US

Tokyo Crazy Paradise, Sket Dance, Glass Mask, Parfait Tic, Koi Dano Ai Dano


Do you have any tips for fellow collectors (e.g. how to organize a collection, where to find rare books, where to score the best deals on new manga)?

I try and put my complete series in spots that are more difficult to access, because I tend to have to disturb that shelf less often (adding more volumes and pulling down older volumes to re-read before reading the newest volumes). I tend to buy deep bookcases and double layer my manga (so entire rows are hidden from view by more manga), so do as I say and not as I do, if possible openly display all your ongoing series. It’s a major headache to read the latest volume of a series and then not be able to find where the rest of the series is.

Just because the first few volumes of a series are easy to find (and cheap) doesn’t mean the rest of the series will be easy to find too. In fact, sometimes it’s a sign of the exact opposite. If there is a series you’re interested in, go to Amazon and check to make sure no single volumes are out of print (OOP). It’s dangerous to the wallet to get deeply involved in a series that will later force you to separate with excessive amounts of money from a seller for a single volume. If this series has a few OOP volumes that are significantly overpriced, try to find some scans and read them on-line to preview the series. If it’s something you think you’ll REALLY love, then go to eBay and wait to buy the whole series as a set. Plan on having to pay more than the total MSRP of each book totaled, but USUALLY that total still ends up being less than separately tracking down each individual volume. Sure, the first 11 volumes may be available from sellers for 1 cent plus shipping, but those volumes in the teens that cost $50 – $90 a piece will completely suck away all your savings from the previous volumes. Plus if you buy them as a group on eBay you tend to get a set that’s less worn, all the worst condition volumes of manga I own were from sellers on Amazon not accurately describing the condition of the volume. (There is NO SUCH THING as a “like New” ex-library copy of manga in my opinion!) But DON’T underestimate buying from Amazon sellers either, I’ve had cases where I got an entire series at half its MSRP because I bought from lots of different sellers at 1 cent per volume.

If you like to keep up with all your series, and you have a lot of series originally priced at under $10, then use Amazon. If a manga is originally priced at under $10 it will be buy 3 get the 4th free with free shipping (free shipping at over $25 which is around what it will cost). Currently I wait for enough of my Viz  shoujo series to have a bunch of available pre-orders and put them on order all at once. And YES buy 3 get the 4th free does work on pre-orders too, now. But the drawback is that more and more manga is originally prices at over $9.99 these days, so I can’t apply the sale to as many series as I once did. But Amazon does a decent job discounting volumes that cost more than $9.99, too. Right Stuf also seems like a great source of manga. I can’t complain about their service or their available stock, and I REALLY like the catalog they send out.

Some of you might be asking…if you can get chapters scanned why pay for legitimate copies at all!? Some of my ALL TIME favorite series are only partially scanned online, OR not at all. Fan Scans don’t work if the series you love is a big hit in Japan but not so much where you live. Plus, I respect the mangaka too much to not put money in their pockets for their efforts.

Show Us Your Stuff is a regular column in which readers share pictures of their manga collections and discuss their favorite series. If you’d like to see your manga library featured here, please follow the directions on this page.

Dengeki Daisy, Vol. 9

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By Kyousuke Motomi. Released in Japan by Shogakukan, serialization ongoing in the magazine Bessatsu Comic (“Betsucomi”). Released in North America by Viz.

I haven’t done a full review of Dengeki Daisy in a while. It’s been a very rough stretch recently too, as Kurosaki’s past has finally come out and things have taken a relatively dark turn. It may be disquieting for those who were enjoying this manga for its wacky romantic comedy and physical and verbal abuse of the leads. Luckily, this volume not only wraps up the dramatic arc (while leaving room for more in the future, of course), and gives us plenty of laughs.

Sticking with the dramatic for a moment, I liked how this was resolved. The dramatic thrust wasn’t “how will Kurosaki stop the bad guys all by himself”, it was “how will everyone get Kurosaki to stop destroying himself with guilt”. I was therefore not particularly surprised when I saw that a deus ex machina (or rather, deus ex Akira) had taken care of most of what they had to do. This allows Kurosaki and Teru to return to some form of normalcy. In particular, their reunion is pitch perfect, bringing some comedy back to the series at last, and giving some real heart – you really wish Teru was older so that these two lovebirds could finally get together.

As Teru notes, she *can’t* forgive Kurosaki – because right now, he can’t forgive himself, and as long as he can’t, there’s no point in other people doing so. However, he at least now knows that separating himself from everyone is not the answer, and if anything his love for Teru is even stronger. (In a purely platonic sense, of course – this is lampshaded by Riko, who tells him to give Teru physical comfort without giving her physical comfort, if you know what I mean.)

This leads to the second half of the volume, which might be fairly frustrating for those who were expecting that we were nearing the end of the series. After a brief fight/misunderstanding regarding Teru’s emails, the two decide that they will email each other as themselves from now on, and ‘retire’ Daisy – while at the same time realizing what Daisy did for both of them. It’s really sweet. However, when Riko notes that Kurosaki still hasn’t confessed to her, he notes that after everything that happens, it feels like they’re starting over, and he wants to take his time and get closer to her again. This is known as the “your series is very popular, let’s find some new subplots to add” syndrome. Still, I’m not opposed to it when the cast is as fun as these guys are.

I’ve occasionally compared this series with Black Bird, which also features a heroine who seems to be in constant peril, but could not be more different from Teru. Here in North America, you’d have to actively seek out both series to compare and contrast them, so the chance of a crossover audience is smaller. In Japan, though, both run in the same magazine – Betsucomi. This might make it easier to read both of them – you get Black Bird’s sensuous guilty pleasure for 40 pages or so, then you can flip to Dengeki Daisy’s more dynamic heroine as an antidote. (And then they can read We Were There for crushing despair! Though that ended this month.)

Dengeki Daisy is a riveting romance, with lots of emotional rollercoasters, a great sense of humor, and a heroine who rises above her peril to be strong and likeable. Not to mention a handsome, admirable (if grumpy) hero, who is only called a lolicon about 6 times in this volume, which may be a record low. (It’s in fun, trust me.) Highly recommended.

Manga the Week of 3/14

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After an insane week this week, the manga world has decided to take pity on us. Well, mostly. Except for this giant pile of BL. Let’s start with that.

There’s a bunch of stuff from DMP out next week. There’s a volume of short stories by prolific artist Minase Masara, released under the title Ambiguous Relationship. Beast & Feast has smoking hot police officer on yakuza love (or is it the other way around?), as well as a great title. Blue Sheep Reverie hits Vol. 5. (It used to run in Betsuhana! Honest! Can you picture it next to Otomen? Well, yes, actually…) Depression of the Anti-Romanticist also has a great title, and I think that it needs to have a cage match with Beast & Feast to see who’s best. Lastly, we have another volume of the novel series Yashikiden Demon Princess, which I know little of except it’s by the Vampire Hunter D author.

Kodansha Comics wraps up a series, as we get the final volume of Monster Hunter Orage, from the Fairy Tail creator. We also get the 18th volume of Fairy Tail, which I hope to like more than the 17th.

Vertical has a final volume as well, with Vol. 12 of Twin Spica. This contains Vols. 15 and 16 of the Japanese series, and means I finally get to decide once and for all if it’s heartwarmingly uplifting or crushingly melancholy. I suspect I’m going to pick the former. If you don’t get this series, you missed out on something special.

Viz has two Pokemon volumes. I know I give these short shrift here, but… if you like Pokemon, get these! That’s about all I can say.

Lastly, in non-manga news, Fantagraphics is finally releasing the first in a series of collections of the comic strip Nancy, by Ernie Bushmiller. This isn’t the first chronologically – like Carl Barks, they’re picking and choosing what years to begin with – but that doesn’t really matter. The comic we all thought was even duller than Garfield as a kid turns out, when our parents were kids, to have a certain zen brilliance that’s hard to sum up in words. If you like classic comic strips, check this out and be amazed what one artist did with just minimalist art and vaudeville gags.

So what would Sluggo buy this week?

Psyren, Vols. 1-2

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By Toshiaki Iwashiro | Published by VIZ Media

Ageha Yoshina is a first-year highschool student who channels his passion for fighting into helping people (for a fee). When classmate Sakurako Amamiya goes missing, he can’t just ignore it, particularly since she seems to know something about Psyren, a mysterious organization that recently issued Ageha a phone card when he answered a ringing public phone. The quest to find Sakurako leads Ageha to Psyren itself, which is not so much an organization as a place—a dangerous dimension where a chosen few (known as Psyren Drifters) brave the harsh landscape and murderous denizens to reach a particular gate, at which point they return home to be called again in the future, using the interval to learn more about Psyren and hone the psionic skills that Psyren’s atmosphere has infected them with.

I wasn’t sure what to think of Psyren at first. It starts slowly, and neither Ageha nor Sakurako are particularly distinct characters (Ageha because he’s so like every other shounen hero and Sakurako because Iwashiro-sensei is admittedly not aiming for any kind of consistency in her characterization). Once Hiryu—a formerly wimpy elementary school classmate who is now simultaneously hulking and thoughtful—arrives, however, things begin to improve. He provides a foil against which Ageha can be compared, which makes their psionic training sessions (in which Hiryu excels with concentrated effort and Ageha fails time and time again until he unleashes a powerful, uncontrolled burst) pretty fun.

It also helps that the concept of Psyren has elements that remind me of other series: the giant insectoid creatures and dire depiction of Japan’s future remind me of 7SEEDS, the cyborgish enemies remind me of BLAME!, and the contract by which unwitting participants are forced to risk their lives for some vaguely explained purpose reminds me of Bokurano: Ours. It remains to be seen whether Psyren will truly turn out to be as great as these other series, but it does have a dark edge—hinting that one’s performance in the game can somehow impact Earth’s future—that I appreciate.

To be sure, Psyren is not perfect. As mentioned, the main problem is Sakurako. She, quite literally, seems to change personality from panel to panel. At first, I thought that maybe this was happening because she’d used her psionic abilities so much that it had affected her mind, but after Iwashiro’s confession—“I was very careful when portraying [heroine of previous series]’s personality, but I’ve tempered that tendency, allowing for more of a kaleidoscopic view of Sakurako”—that doesn’t seem to be the case. Too, I feel like we’re supposed to find Matsuri-sensei, the concert pianist/biker chick who has beaten the Psyren game, cool and awesome, but she just makes me yawn.

Ultimately, Psyren is better than I thought it would be. It’s also, at sixteen volumes, not a sprawling epic that would require a huge commitment. At the moment, at least, I plan to continue for the long haul.

Psyren is published in English by VIZ Media. The third volume came out this week. The series is complete in Japan with sixteen volumes.

Review copies provided by the publisher.

Combat Commentary: Fairy Tail Vol. 11, Ch. 86-87 – Lucy & Juvia vs. Vidaldus Taka

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The good thing about writing about fight scenes in shounen manga is that I will never run out of material. The bad thing is that I have too many to chose from. When considering which battle from Fairy Tail to write about, I had to eliminate several possibilities, though chances are they will all see the light of day eventually.

Let’s be honest, women get a raw deal in shounen manga. More often than not, the female lead is one of the least appreciated characters. Her prowess is constantly being compared to that of her male counterpart. And with almost no exceptions, she is found lacking by an incredibly picky fanbase.

I could go into detail about how it’s ridiculous to judge a character’s value based on her combat ability, but that seems a little counter–productive for a column focusing on nothing but fights. Instead, let us talk about a series that puts the women on the same playing field as the men, and gives them a fair shot at being just as formidable as the boys.

Erza Scarlet is one of the rare female characters who is consistently stronger than the male lead. But she is not the female lead—that falls on Lucy Heartphilia instead. At first glance, Lucy comes across as the basic female lead in a shounen manga. More often than not, she needs saving, and she’s consistently weaker than Natsu, the male lead. The difference between her and far too many other female shounen leads is that she consistently gets at least one fight per arc in the latter parts of the manga.

Compared to characters like Naruto‘s Sakura (who’s gotten exactly one fight over the course of years of publication), Lucy may not be the most powerful character, and her fighting style isn’t as direct as shounen audiences like. But at least she gets fights, and she usually wins them. On the other hand, she also tends to lose her clothes during the fight. You win some, you lose some.

(click images to enlarge)

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What Happened?
Erza, in a rare case of damsel in distress, is kidnapped by former friends of hers. They take her to the Tower of Heaven, where she and they had been child slaves years ago. There, Erza discovers that an old friend of hers, Jellal, has almost finished the Tower of Heaven, and intends to use the R-System within it to resurrect the dark wizard Zeref.

Natsu, Gray, Lucy, and Juvia make their way to the tower and infiltrate it to save Erza. After meeting up with Erza, who had escaped captivity on her own—damsel in distress did not agree with her—they all split up to take down Jellal. Lucy and Juvia go together, and are confronted by Vidaldus Taka, a punk rocker with the ability to control his hair and make women his slaves.

Eeyup, no subtext here. Just unfortunate translations.

What Happens?
Vidaldus takes control of Juvia, and turns her against Lucy. Juvia beats on Lucy, but her real feelings manage to make their way through. Lucy then realizes she can use the water that makes up Juvia’s body to summon her strongest Celestial Spirit, Aquarius. Aquarius floods the room with water, and Lucy and Juvia combine their magic power into a unison raid to overpower Vidaldus.

What Does it Mean?
Last week’s column brought up the issue of using established abilities vs sudden power-ups in the middle of battle. This is an example of the latter. Lucy and Juvia somehow manage to combine their magic powers, an ability that is never foreshadowed, nor is it ever explained or brought up again.

Clearly, you are meant to know exactly what this prior unexplained phenomenon is!

For all of his ability to create entertaining manga, Mashima is bad at ending things. Whether it be fights, or an entire story. The reliance on a deus ex machina (sort of) power-up is lazy writing, especially when the proper groundwork hasn’t been laid. The difference between a satisfying climax and a deus ex machina is always in the preparation that has been done prior to the climax.

That being said, considering this is the eleventh volume of the series, it’s actually only Lucy’s second proper fight. Fairy Tail does an interesting thing with her character. She starts off as being the damsel in distress more than once, but as the series progresses she becomes more involved in fights and even starts to win them on her own. More or less. She never really fights on her own, much the way a pokemon trainer never really fights his own battles.

I choose you...Dewgong?

If Natsu, Gray, and Erza get the big cool moments, with epic powers clashing against mighty foes, Lucy gets the small cool moments—such as the moment she realizes she can summon Aquarius using Juvia’s unique body structure&mdashwhich makes the random power up at the end of this fight all the more a shame. Lucy is one of the characters who fights differently from the average shounen fighter. She has to use more strategy and take advantage of her surroundings and the unique abilities her Celestial Spirits give her. Generally, her fights are more interesting than most of the other characters,’ which isn’t too shabby at all for a member of a demographic too often neglected in shounen manga.

How about you? Is this shoddy writing at its worst, or an interesting start to a well-rounded character development? Best comment wins cake. Also, if you have any requests for future entries to this column, feel free to submit them here. If I’ve already read the manga, then the chances of it getting covered are much higher. Also, be sure to check out my blog at Burning Lizard Studios.

The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer, Vol. 1

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By Satoshi Mizukami. Released in Japan as “Hoshi no Samidare” by Shonen Gahosha, serialized in the magazine Young King OURS. Released in the United States by Shonen Gahosha on the JManga website.

First of all, I should note that the JManga site lists this under its original Japanese title. Despite the fact that the English title is PRINTED ON THE FRONT COVER. Given none of Shonen Gahosha’s titles have been translated to date, I will assume this is some stupid business rule, but I wish it would change. In any case, when you look for this book, look for it as Hoshi no Samidare. And you definitely should look for it.

At first glance, this may seem no different from many other shonen titles. A young man, Yuuhi, it woken late at night by an animal mascot, who tells him that he must join with other allies to defend his Princess and protect the Earth. It almost sounds like it could fit right in with several Western-type superhero plots you’d see over here. Sure, the animal mascot is a lizard, but that’s probably just an eccentricity of the author. We’re in for rollicking action and fun times. Friendship, Training, Victory, right? Well, not quite. This manga isn’t in a shonen magazine, but a seinen one. The very eccentric Young King OURS, home of Excel Saga, Trigun and Hellsing. And Yuuhi is not your typical shonen hero.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Yuuhi is a nihilist, but certainly he is a young man who does not wish to interact with life. Likewise, the heroine, who is the aforementioned Princess, has declared that it is her desire to destroy the world – rather than save it. And it is *this* – the appeal of simply ending everything – that causes Yuuhi to suddenly gain a purpose in life and pledge his allegiance to her. It’s not really a stretch to say that the conscience of the manga, at least in this first volume, is the lizard (often horrified at Yuuhi’s thoughts) rather than the two leads.

Muxch of this first volume is setting up for what will no doubt be a larger cast – indeed, we see one of them, Hangetsu, show up in the final chapter, and he’s a complete contrast to the pessimistic and grumpy Yuuhi. Most of the time, though, we deal with Yuuhi and his own demons. Yuuhi spent most of his childhood being abused, mentally and emotionally (as well as physically, I’d suggest, given the chains). I would go so far as to say that he’s at his most tragic when he’s smiling, as it reveals to us the fragile facade he’s built up. In my favorite part of the volume, Yuuhi calmly relates the death of his father, his mother’s abandonment, and his grandfather’s abuse, and then simply grins. Neu, the lizard familiar, stares in horror, for he is able to visualize what it must have been like.

As for Samidare, we don’t get as much of a look into her own life – she blithely states she doesn’t want the world to survive after her own death, which is why she plans to destroy it, but that’s not really telling us motivation. After hearing about his past, we can see why Yuuhi wants everything to end. Indeed, he’s very matter-of-fact about it, telling Samidare (in a dream, which the two of them share almost from the start), that he’s binding himself to her so he can free himself from his grandfather’s chains – he’s still bound. It’s not all dark and tortured misery, mind you – Yuuhi’s meeting with his grandfather gives us some hint that there is still compassion inside of him, even if there is no forgiveness yet. What’s more, his determination to be someone who can protect his lady (Yuuhi is an unathletic normal guy, while Samidare seems to have super strength) is admirable, and reaches a peak towards the end in a fantastic action sequence against one of the golems sent to kill him.

The series is 10 volumes long, so we’ve only really just gotten started. It was a cult hit online, and while I had heard some companies making noise about licensing it (Dark Horse and Vertical both said they were aware of the title), the current market really didn’t seem to fit its tone. I’m very happy that Shonen Gahosha and JManga have brought it over. It isn’t perfect – the translation suffers from awkwardness at times, like many JManga titles, and the art style is best defined as ‘striking’ rather than ‘pretty’ – but it’s a fun, gripping read. If you like superhero comics with a kick to them – or you want shonen that’s a little more grown up – give The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer a try. One of the best licenses yet from JManga.

Help choose the main course for the next MMF

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The Manga Bookshelf bloggers hold their weekly Pick of the Week discussion.

The Manga Moveable Feast has become a tradition in the manga blogging community, and Kate Dacey opens the floor for discussion of which books and creators should be included in upcoming Feasts.

Reviews: Ash Brown reviews a week’s worth of manga reading at Experiments in Manga.

Matthew Warner on vol. 6 of Blue Exorcist (The Fandom Post)
Erica Friedman on vol. 3 of A Certain Scientific Railgun (Okazu)
Matthew Warner on vol. 2 of Dawn of the Arcana (The Fandom Post)
Matthew Warner on vol. 1 of A Devil and Her Love Song (The Fandom Post)
Chris Beveridge on vols. 4 and 5 of Highschool of the Dead (The Fandom Post)
Anna on vols. 4-6 of House of Five Leaves (Manga Report)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 55 of Naruto (The Comic Book Bin)
Lesley Aeschliman on vol. 1 of Tsukuyomi Moon Phase (Blogcritics)

Seven years later, still blogging about manga

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MangaBlog had its seventh birthday yesterday, and as we launch our eighth year as (I hope) the morning paper of the manga world, I just want to thank all of you for your support over the years. Writing without readers is like shouting into an empty room, so I really appreciate all of you who have commented, e-mailed me, or just said hi at a convention—and especially all of you who have become friends over the years.

I want to start off the week with a shout-out to James Perry II, the creator of the Tokyopop OEL manga Orange Crows. Like many Tokyopop creators, James found himself with an incomplete series when Tokyopop went through one of its periodic reorganizations; unlike most of his colleagues, though, James managed to come to some sort of agreement and is going to self-publish the rest of the series. Check out his Kickstarter page for a summary of his plans and a link to an online version of the first volume; at this point he has made his goal, but he promises to put any additional funds into the next volume.

Vol. 19 of 20th Century Boys tops the New York Times manga best-seller list, followed by the final volume of xxxHOLiC, vol. 5 of Tenjho Tenge, and vol. 5 of Pokemon Black and White. We are nothing if not eclectic!

Meanwhile, the Sequential Tart staff takes on the question of Is Manga Dying? and comes up with some interesting perspectives on the industry and how it should evolve.

Erica Friedman brings home the yuri with the latest edition of Yuri Network News at Okazu.

Jason Thompson looks at the action-packed manga Golgo 13 in his latest House of 1000 Manga column at ANN.

At Slightly Biased Manga, Connie writes about the October 1978 issue of Comic Jun, an early precursor to the BL magazine June.

Manga Worth Reading will host the next Manga Moveable Feast, which will focus on the works of Jiro Taniguchi.

LC Moran posts the latest con report on MangaNEXT. Animemiz rounds up her tweets from the Tomo Maeda and Makoto Tateno Q&As.

Three Steps Over Japan peeks inside the covers of Manga Action magazine.

Ash Brown is giving away a copy of vol. 1 of King of Thorn at Experiments in Manga. Hit the link for all the details!

News from Japan: The Tokyo Shimbun takes on the question of whether manga rots your brain, and Crunchyroll translates the results. Meanwhile, the Daily Yomiuri celebrates the memory of Junzo Ishiko, an art critic who took manga seriously when no one else did. AstroNerdBoy has some clarifications on recent news and rumors about the end of Negima. Young Ace magazine will run a manga adaptation of Mamoru Hosoda’s anime Ōkami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki (The Wolf Children Ame and Yuki). Eiko Kera is bringing her long-running comedy manga ATASHI’nCHI to a close.

Reviews: Drew McCabe reviews Viz’s Shonen Jump Alpha digital magazine at Comic Attack.

Lori Henderson on vols. 6-10 of Dazzle (Manga Xanadu)
Joy Kim on vol. 1 of Durarara!! (Joy Kim)
Sweetpea616 on vol. 2 of Gate 7 (Organization Anti-Social Geniuses)
Serdar Yegulalp on vol. 11 of GTO: The Early Years (Genji Press)
Kristin on vol. 1 of Hana-Kimi (omnibus)
Leroy Douresseaux on vol. 61 of One Piece (The Comic Book Bin)
Lori Henderson on vols. 1 and 2 of Princess Knight (Manga Xanadu)
Kate Dacey on vol. 1 of Recorder and Randsell (The Manga Critic)
Empress Eve on vol. 1 of Soulless (Geeks of Doom)

Pick of the Week: decisions, decisions

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We’ve got an embarrassment of riches coming in this week at Midtown Comics. Check out picks from Michelle, Sean, Kate, & MJbelow!

MICHELLE: Decisions, decisions! I am definitely keen to read quite a few of the volumes on this week’s Midtown Comics release list, but ultimately I’m going to have to cast my vote for volume 61 of Eiichiro Oda’s masterful One Piece. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and “they” must be on to something, because I’m really eager to see the rest of the crew again after the past few volumes, which featured Luffy on a solo quest to save his brother, Ace. Not only that, we’re about to embark upon the current arc of the series, which is very exciting indeed!

SEAN: We do indeed have an embarrassment of riches this week. My pick goes to Vol. 9 of Dengeki Daisy. A lot of Betsucomi manga tend to have their heroines in constant peril, and indeed that’s exactly what happens in Dengeki Daisy. What makes it work is that Teru does not whimper and wonder why all this keeps happening to her – she’s a very active Penelope, so to speak. This series has been in the middle of an ongoing very serious arc, which has been disconcerting to those who loved the comedic antics between Teru and Kurosaki. But the action and drama has also been skillfully handled, and you keep hoping that all this intrigue will end well so that the leads can live happily – if abusively – ever after.

KATE: Oh, the dilemma! I’m tempted by the first volume of The Earl and the Fairy, even if it sounds like a forgotten Lawrence Olivier/Marilyn Monroe movie, and I’m delighted to see that VIZ is re-releasing the early volumes of Skip Beat! as an omnibus. The title that most excites me, however, is the King City trade paperback. You may remember King City from the days when TOKYOPOP had a robust line of OEL comics. Though widely praised, Brandon Graham’s sci-fi comedy wasn’t a particularly good fit with the rest of TOKYOPOP’s catalog; the humor was too weird and subversive, and the art didn’t strike readers as particularly “manga-esque.” TOKYOPOP put the series on hiatus in 2007, then allowed Graham to bring the series to Image Comics. The TPB collects the entire series — 400+ pages — in a tidy, economical package. If you missed it the first time around, it’s definitely worth a look.

MJ: Wow, it really is a tough choice this week! It’s hard not to go for the final volume of No Longer Human, Usamaru Furuya’s adaptation of the classic novel, which Michelle & I fawned over in a recent installment of Off the Shelf. There’s also a new installment of Chi’s Sweet Home, and this week’s new omnibus release of Skip Beat! finally gives me a chance to get into that long-running series. In the end, though, I guess I’ll be the one to go for The Earl & the Fairy, artist Ayuko’s adaptation of the light novel by Mizue Tani, out this week from Viz. I’m always a sucker for a new shoujo series, and this one looks intriguing. I haven’t always been a fan of light novel adaptations, but having been so thoroughly won over by last year’s The Story of Saiunkoku, and eager to give this one a try!

Readers, what looks good to you this week?