Last week I mentioned how surprised I was to see Osamu Tezuka’s “The Book of Human Insects” on the New York Times’ manga bestseller list.  This week had an equally unexpected and welcome surprise as vol. 17 of “20th Century Boys” debuted at #7.  While seeing a Tezuka work on the list was gratifying just […]

Most weeks whenever the New York Times list of the bestselling manga hits Anime News Network, it’s usually “a whole lot of shonen and shojo manga that I’m not reading,” with a few exceptions.  “Yotsuba&!,” “Chi’s Sweet Home,” “Claymore,” “Berserk,” “Battle Angel Alita,” and even “Biomega” are the ones that I can recall popping up […]

This volume’s official subtitle is “Gag and Serious,” but it may as well be, “What to do when your series is cancelled.”  It’s another eventful look at the process of creating Shonen Jump manga, and for all that I talked about the kind of bloat that tends to be a token part of series from […]

This was the summary given on the back of the volume: “After a hellish battle against ravenous sea monsters, Guts the Black Swordsman and his companions are forced to seek refuge on a small island so that their ship can be repaired.  But this island is not the safe haven they’d hoped for — it’s […]

“Trigun,” the anime, is a true classic of the medium.  Not only did it thrive on the sometimes whiplash-inducing shifts from comedy to drama, its creators also told a satisfying story after they adapted the entirety of the manga published at the time (something that all Shonen Jump anime seem to have a problem with).  […]

Longtime readers will know that I’m very passionate about this series.  I’d rather not get into a discussion about how it compares to the likes of “Blade of the Immortal,” “20th Century Boys,” or “The Walking Dead,” but a lot of that passion comes from two things.  One, it’s hands-down the best science-fiction comic being […]

Despite being a big fan of the original “Hellsing” anime I didn’t get around to actually buying the manga when Dark Horse released it over here.  That’s because I was borrowing it from a friend of mine and he stopped buying it when it started going off the rails in vol. 6.  Still, there’s no […]

I was looking forward to this (putting aside the fact that I look forward to all new Vertical titles these days) because the general description of it was along the lines of “schoolgirls vs. zombies.”  Think “Highschool of the Dead” for readers of a different kind of maturity, and the description on the back which […]

We get a lot of answers in this volume, and they all come from the (arguably long overdue) exploration of Fukube’s character.  Where Kenji and his friends were the most admired and talked-about kids in their class, Fukube wasn’t so much an outcast as someone who looked down upon their wild imaginations as much as […]

After the last volume left me dying to see how current pilot Chizuru was going to overcome the moral dilemma in front of her, we find out that… her sister is a saint amongst saints.  It’s a surprisingly straightforward resolution and I will admit that it was a little disappointing in how conventional it was.  […]