Back in the early days of my anime/manga fandom, a popular bit of trivia about mangaka Rumiko Takahashi was that she was the second-richest woman in Japan.  It was an easy to believe factoid, too.  She was the creator of long-running hits like “Urusei Yatsura,” “Ranma ½” and her current series, “Inuyasha,” was working its […]

This was a satisfyingly dense volume. It starts off strongly by revealing the nature of the threat from the previous volume, which I recognized from its presence in one of my favorite songs from a videogame.  That Chise is clever enough to find a way to deal with it isn’t a surprise, though the role […]

This volume starts out with a two-part story.  What’s the story about, I hear you ask?  It’s about what the cast of this series does when they have some spare time.  Mr. Smith goes for a walk.  Amir sings.  Karluk goes to look at some horses.  Leila and Lily complain to their husbands.  It’s 40-plus […]

“Murcielago” may never get back to being its old, gloriously nasty self.  Vol. 15 at least marks the closest it has come to being genuinely interesting after divesting itself of its shock tactics.  After a chapter is taken to wrap up the events of the previous storyline, we bear witness to the next psycho’s gimmick […]

With Garo recuperating from Orochi’s beatdown and Saitama walking. very. slowly. into the underground lair of the Monster Organization, this means that “One-Punch Man’s” two main protagonists are currently out of the action.  Which means that it really is up to the heroes in the Hero Organization to pick up the slack in terms of […]

This is a volume of two halves.  The first half is notable for how it does its absolute damndest to get me to give up on this series with this volume.  That’s because it’s essentially nothing but teenage wish fulfillment involving a porn star who can change her size at will.  All of the weirdness […]

Vol. 4 finally saw this series start to live up to its potential as the crew of the Quin Zaza tangled with an arrogant, high-class dragon researcher, and a legendary dragon in that order.  This volume doesn’t have the same level of excitement or adventure, but it does broaden the scope of the series in […]

The end of the previous volume promised us a showdown between longtime rivals Io Fleming and Darryl Lorenz.  We don’t quite get that here as the first half of the volume gives us a still-thrilling encounter between the two as Fleming presses his advantage as hard as he can.  It’s only the unbreakable determination of […]

BARBARIANS OUT!  That’s the rallying cry of the politicians from Kyoto as they despair at the savages — you know, like the British, the Dutch, and us Americans — that are infesting random small parts of the nation.  However, it’s not like Japan can just close itself off from the world as doing so might […]

Three years.  That’s how long it’s been since the last volume of “Master Keaton” was published in the U.S. and the last time anything from Naoki Urasawa hit these shores as well.  After “Monster” and “20th Century Boys” established him as one of the most acclaimed mangaka around, you’d think we’d have received something new […]