OH NO!  Gieve is departing Arslan’s service!  After being really smug to one of the new officers about how he killed– I mean, spared his brother from suffering, the minstrel gets in a very well-choreographed swordfight before Farangis shows up to put a stop to it.  Gieve realizes that his services are no longer necessary […]

The craziest train in comics continues… I mean, it’d be easy to fill a couple paragraphs with all of the “What the hell did I just read?” moments from this latest omnibus edition.  Instead, I’ll just fill one: Bando getting a bionic arm and saying nuts to the castration surgery to go fulfill his vendetta […]

The plot of this series does move forward in this volume, albeit incrementally.  There’s some drama at the beginning as Mari and Yori’s relationship goes through another rough patch.  It’s more the latter being angry at the former for trespassing against her boundaries, though we do learn a little more about Yori’s family life in […]

This current storyline has the feeling of a final arc, what with how everything hits the fan here, but it still feels like we’ve still got a ways to go yet.  That’s because Sato has finally revealed his plan for destabilizing Japan. It employs the same kind of stupid/clever planning that this series has specialized […]

I wasn’t expecting to see Smith back with Talas after the two parted, or rather “were parted,” way back in vol. 3, but it’s nice that it happened nonetheless.  There’s a part of me that wishes it led to some more engaging storytelling here, however. Things start off with a chapter of glorified and glorious […]

It’s a lovely, dense volume of the series we have here.  While the cliffhanger from the previous volume is dispatched quickly enough, it immediately segues into telling us all about Father Simon’s genuinely tragic backstory.  (As well as the various factions which exist in the church, which I’m sure will become relevant later…) Then we […]

It’s a new volume of “Berserk.”  What’s there to say about it besides, “It’s still really good,” and “I wish Kentaro Miura world get these out faster?”  A lot, actually. This is a momentous volume of the series as it makes a fundamental change to its status quo — one that’s been in place for […]

There’s a more interesting series lurking underneath the surface of the one we get here.  A thriller about an obsessed schoolgirl who stalks the new girl in her class. A quiet girl who can only experience happiness if she’s tasting ramen.  Instead, we’ve got a relatively sedate slice-of-life story about Yu, a schoolgirl who is […]

That was a hell of a cliffhanger the previous volume left off on.  You’d think that mangaka Nagabe would pick right back up to show you how it’s going to be resolved, but you’d be wrong.  He wants you to squirm for a while yet. So you’ll have to see Teacher deal with the soldier […]

The Stephen King vibes are still strong with this second volume as more Stand users show up around the small town of Morioh — all of them with (initially) malicious plans in mind for our protagonists.  Take small-time crook Tamami who tries to wrangle Koichi into giving him 500,000 yen after the little squirt runs […]