Manga and Comic Reviews
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Snow, Glass, Apples HC This is the latest entry in “The Neil Gaiman Library” from the company. Coming back for her second tour of duty on this kind of project is Colleen Doran, best known for her epic creator-owned series “A Distant Star.” She’s also worked with Gaiman directly on a couple of […]
After “The Flowers of Evil” and “Happiness” this is Shuzo Oshimi’s third series about a girl who takes a boy down a path in life that he couldn’t have imagined. Like the latter series, there’s a supernatural aspect to this story about college dropout and social recluse Isao. He spends his days jerking off and […]
When I originally wrote that this series would appeal to people who like weird and interesting manga, provided they had the patience for it, I didn’t think that patience would also have to extend to the wait between volumes. The first omnibus volume of “Die Wergelder” arrived on our shores back in December of 2015 […]
Two volumes in and I’m still waiting for mangaka Tsutomu Nihei to shake up the storytelling here. It’s all so familiar as vol. 2 begins with Etherow and Titania arriving in an Imperial town only to get thrown into jail after the former is suspected of suffering from Frame Disease. This only puts him right […]
Should I have talked about this latest volume in the most recent podcast? Nope. That was all about discussing the “Alita”-related stories that I hadn’t had a chance to talk about yet, and were also representative of its Shueisha-era heyday. Five volumes in and it’s clear that “Mars Chronicle” is a much different beast in […]
Do you know what “Murcielago” has been missing up until now? If you said, “Giant Robots,” then this is the volume for you! Is it the volume for me, though? While I’d never accuse “Murcielago” of being realistic in any fashion, the presence of mecha does threaten to break the particular kind of suspension of […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: The Umbrella Academy vol. 3: Hotel Oblivion No, I haven’t got around to watching the Netflix series yet. I have a million other things to catch up on watching, not the least of which is the second season of “Castlevania.” If there’s anything that I have to give the “Umbrella Academy” TV show […]
Kiyoshi dies in this volume. He gets better, though, and his experience puts him in a manic state that gives his shoulder-wars comrades the momentum they need to take the fight directly to Kate. How did he come to die in the first place? That’s… best left for readers to experience themselves. All I’ll say […]
The Good: We’re introduced to a new character, Inkarmat, whose specialty is fortune telling. This leads to hijinks both fun, involving Shiraishi and the local racetrack, and interesting, turns out she has a connection to Asirpa. Kirorake also gets his moment to shine as he winds up racing at the track on behalf of some […]
That I’m writing up this volume by itself shouldn’t be taken as a sign that there’s anything wrong with latest volume of Kaguya-sama. In fact, the latest volume of that series is up to its usual standard with quality gags involving Kaguya putting herself on trial (in her own mind) and Kaguya and Shirogane confessing […]