Manga and Comic Reviews
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 […]
Above-the-Board Recommendation: Usagi Yojimbo vol. 33: The Hidden Though this is numbered as a proper volume of the series, it was originally released as a seven-issue miniseries. While the official reason for this was never mentioned, my gut feeling is that age is finally catching up with creator Stan Sakai and future “Usagi” releases will […]
Much of the focus of this volume’s first half is on Karluk as he goes off to live with Amir’s brother Azel and his friends on the plains for a while. Why’s he doing this? Well, any twelve-year-old boy with a twenty-year-old wife is bound to feel some insecurity about his masculinity. Now he’s learning […]
When we left off with the main characters of this series, things had become really weird even by its standards. Having Hideo partially swallowed by a mutant ZDQ creature and not be digested was strange. Finding out that his current situation not only allowed him to exert some mental control over the creature, but to […]
Seeing the Spartan arrive at the Rig in the final pages of the previous volume was a clear indication that things were going to hit the fan in vol. 9. That’s exactly what happens here with some pretty spectacular and morally ambiguous action. We see things mainly through the eyes of the civilians caught in […]