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negima!

Pick of the Week: Pandora Hearts, Doubt, Negima!

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potw-4-21MJ: The shipping list this week is formidable, and while I expect Tezuka’s Unico will get a lot of the manga blogosphere’s attention, there are also new volumes forthcoming of favorites like Bunny Drop and even an intriguing debut series, Doubt. But given my personal excitement over the latest volume of Jun Mochizuki’s epic fantasy series, Pandora Hearts, I’ve got to do the predictable thing and give that series another boost. I got a chance to read volume fifteen this weekend, and I have to say that it’s even more dramatic than I expected; Even as a consistent fan of the series, I’ll admit I’m blown away but several of the volume’s major revelations, and… yeah, wow. That’s all I can really say. Despite the fact that most of my favorite characters barely register in this volume, it’s got me firmly in its thrall. And I may have new favorite characters. This remains to be seen. Oh, Pandora Hearts, you intrigue me so!

MICHELLE: Gah, I don’t even know what my pick is this week. I’m a few volumes behind on Pandora Hearts and I’m feeling a little trepidatious about Bunny Drop these days. So I guess I’m going with Doubt, a series that I know virtually nothing about except that it involves a deadly survival game of some sort.

SEAN: Despite my many issues with its abrupt, inconclusive ending, my pick of the week is going to be the 38th and final volume of Negima!, mostly as I enjoyed the series for so long and it produced so many awesome characters to root for. A series that started as merely “Harem Potter” turned into a very emotional, action-oriented battle manga, even if it never quite abandoned what Kodansha wanted Akamatsu to write: more nude girls. I hope that someday he revisits it to answer a few of the questions the audience still has after this volume.

Readers, what looks good to you this week?

Pick of the Week: Boys, Girls, & Ghosts

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It’s a slow but not quite dismal week at Midtown Comics. Check out the Manga Bookshelf bloggers’ picks below!

DAVID: It’s a narrow but interesting selection at Midtown Comics. In one of my experiments in crowd-sourcing, I ended up pre-ordering Kikuko Kihuya’s Entangled Circumstances, which will consequently earn my Pick of the Week status. I admit that I’m shallow enough that part of this was because I really found the cover design to be striking. It’s also about grown-ups with jobs, which makes my heart flutter, though the protagonists also share a past of some degree of awkwardness tracking back to their university days. I’m really just that easy to please, though: make it look nifty, and make your protagonists old enough to drink or sign a lease.

KATE: Them’s some slim pickings at Midtown Comics this week! But if I had to pick something from the list, I’d choose the sixth and final volume of Time and Again (Yen Press). I admit that I found the first few volumes a bumpy ride, as the script abounded in slangy phrases and anachronistic jokes that detracted from the spooky atmosphere. By volume three, however, author JiUn Yun had a better handle on the material, and the series began to evolve into something more interesting: a character study about a troubled young exorcist. The final volume explores the family curse that doomed Baek-On to a life of lonely wandering, allowing us to fully appreciate the origins of his prickly, detached personality. Oh, and that flashback? It’s a heck of a ghost story, too.

MICHELLE: You’re not kidding about the paucity of options on Midtown’s list! Still, like David, I find myself intrigued by the new batch of DMP releases. Entangled Circumstances has the prettiest cover, it’s true, but some of the others fare pretty well, too, like This Night’s Everything, which definitely doesn’t look like your typical BL. It also involves grown up with jobs—apparently a politician and his bodyguard who coldly handles dirty work—and sounds like it has potential to be an interesting story.

SEAN: I am going to rebel against the Midtown list, as they are apparently involved in some giant Kodansha boycott or something, and make my pick the thirtieth volume of Ken Akamatsu’s Negima!, which Diamond will be shipping to all non-Midtown stores this week. The manga has been in its ‘Magical World’ for about 10 volumes now, and things are finally getting to a big action-packed climax, which will take several volumes and is still ongoing as of this writing. This is the start of it, where Negi finds out the truth about his mother’s so-called treachery and the enemy makes their move against his students. Also, I believe this volume is low on fanservice, so it’s a great one to pick up if you dislike that aspect of it.

MJ: Since Kate’s already put the spotlight on what would have been my pick from Midtown, the final volume of JiUn Yun’s Time and Again, I’ll follow Sean’s lead and go rebel against the list by naming volume eleven of Peach Pit’s Shugo Chara! from Kodansha Comics, which by all appearances should be arriving this week, but isn’t. Shugo Chara! is a long-time favorite of mine, thanks to its feisty, deeply-conflicted heroine, her idiosyncratic team of friends, heart-pounding tween-fantasy romance, adorable artwork, and identity-searching themes that resonate more personally with this forty-something reader than they probably should. This is the final volume of the original series, with volume 12 picking up the published chapters of its sequel, Shugo Chara! Encore!, thankfully continued by Kodansha Comics after being pulled from Del Rey Manga. So if you’ve never tried this thoughtful magical-girl series, this is the time to start!

Readers, what looks good to you this week?