Manga Xanadu

Sachie Wakamura just lost her mother, and her estranged grandfather has shown up to take care of her. The only problem is that Grandpa is the head of a yakuza gang! Sachie tries to continue living her normal life, but she can’t run far since Rakuto, one of the most popular guys in school, is part of her grandfather’s gang and her new protector. Soon, Sachie finds herself falling for her bodyguard. But she’s the granddaughter of Rakuto’s boss, so he can never show his feelings for her. Can Sachie find a way to fit into her new family and seize her chance at romance? Wild Ones Volume 1-10 By Kiyo Fujiwara Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Teen Genre: Romance/Comedy Price: $8.99-9.99 USD Rating: When I first read the first two volumes of Wild Ones, I liked it. It wasn’t amazing or groundbreaking in any way, but it seemed fun and the characters interesting. Then I binge-read the entire series. It unfortunately lost its charm pretty quickly as it fell into a rut of the same romance clichés and no character building. Wild Ones follows Sachie Wakamura, the unknowing granddaughter of a Yazuka gang. After her mother dies suddenly, Sachie…

Shogakukan’s Monthly Flowers magazine announced in its March issue that Yuu Watase will be launching a new manga in the Fushigi Yugi universe. Fushigi Yugi: Byakko Ibun, or Fushigi Yugi: The Curious Tales of Byakko, will start in the next issue due out at the end of February. It will have a color first page and will be featured on the cover. Little is known about the story, other than it is about the Priestess of Byakko, the White Tiger of the West, and the only Priestess whose story hasn’t been told. While the announcement said the chapter in February would “begin” a new series, Yuu Watase said on her blog that the manga wasn’t going to be a full story. This implies that it will either be a one-shot or a short story containing several chapters. I hope it’s the latter, for two reasons; 1) A one shot will only tell a sliver of the Priestess of Byakko’s story, and 2) several chapters can become a volume and more likely to get licensed and released. I don’t want to see a one-shot end up in a volume of Arata, assuming it starts up again. I don’t need one volume of…

It’s a small week for only being the second of the month. Hey, Dark Horse is still publishing manga! It’s kind of surprising considering how rarely volumes pop up. I see merchandise more often than manga, and had forgotten they were even publishing Blood Blockade Battlefront, from Yasuhiro Nightow, the creator of Trigun.  I was never interested in reading either. Volume 7 is out this week. They also have the omnibus of the re-release of Samurai Executioner Volume 4 by Kazuo Koike, who is associated with Dark Horse in the same way Naoki Urasawa is associate with Viz Media. The jewel of the releases this week comes from Vertical Comics, as can be expected. This week they have the second volume of Prophecy, the cyber crime investigation, social media vengeance title you didn’t know you should be reading. Well, you’ve now been given notice. It’s only three volumes long, and comes out of the gate punching. It’s a title that will hook you from the first chapter. In honor of Valentines Day this week, Kodansha releases the sixth volume of Say I Love You, a teen romance filled with all the uncertainty and doubt teens feel about themselves and their feelings….

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, Viz Media has announced several licenses, with a bit of “something old, something new” to them. Three of the titles are Tokyopop rescues for the Viz Select line, and two are brand new licenses from mangaka who have already had titles released in the West to quite a bit of success. From Tokyopop, Viz Media continues their CLAMP releases with two of their titles returning; The One I Love and Wish. The One I Love is a one-volume collection of 12 short stories that tell stories about the many sides of love.  All of the stories are told from a woman’s perspective, and deal with the doubts, insecurities and ultimately the joy of love. It sounds like a fun series, though perhaps best taken in smaller doses. The romance may get monotonous, even for romance lovers. It will be released February 10th. Wish is a four volume series that follows Shuichiro, who after saving an angel, Kohaku, from a tree one moonlight night, is offered a wish as a reward. Shuichiro refuses the wish, saying he can get what he wants on his own. But he and the angel soon find out there are…

February is the month to celebrate your relationship or singleness, which ever you embrace. Viz Media is sharing in that celebration with lot of new titles and offers from their Vizmanga digital site. What is especially enticing are the Shojo bundles. Three titles of 10 volumes each for $40.00. And they are really good titles too. Honey & Clover, Sand Chronicles and Strobe Edge. All three are amazing titles in their own way. If you haven’t read any of them, this is the perfect opportunity to get them all at a great price.

Every week, the New York Times and Amazon posts the top ten bestselling books. The New York Times gets their numbers from print sales from retailers, while Amazon calculates their own numbers. Offered here is a listing of these books with their status this week compared with the previous week, and some way-off analysis of the activity. This week will also include the return of Vizmanga.com and the Nielson Bookscan for January.   New York Times Bestseller List for the week ending January 31, 2015 Akame ga Kill! Vol 1     ↔ Soul Eater Vol 24     ∗ Black Butler Vol 19     ↓ 1 Fairy Tail Vol 46     ∗ Sword Art Online Progressive Vol 1     ↔ Noragami Vol 3     ∗ Unofficial Hatsune Remix     ↑ 3 Assassination Classroom Vol 1     ↵ 7 Deadman Wonderland Vol 2     ↵ 3 The Seven Deadly Sins Vol 6     ↵ 2 Yen Press does well this week as it holds four of the top five spots, including Akame ga Kill! Vol 1 keeping the top spot for the second week. A lot of titles returned as well, with Viz getting two titles to chart in Assassination Classroom Vol…

Super Sleuth Jimmy Kudo, who was physically transformed into a first-grader, continues to solve crimes as Conan Edogawa while living with family friend Richard Moore and his daughter Rachel. In these four volumes, Jimmy must solve cases such as a missing cell phone, a bomber at the Koshien baseball finals, the murderer of the head of a toy company, and stop the Kaito Kid from stealing the legendary gem The Blue Wonder, all while trying to find the men who changed him, and keep Rachel from finding out Conan and Jimmy are the same person. Case Closed Volume 43–44, 46–47 By Gosho Aoyama Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Mystery Price: $9.99 It’s been a while since I read a volume of Case Closed. I had the first twelve volumes, but sold them awhile ago, and apparently never reviewed them. Bad me. Since it’s been so long since I’ve read any volumes, I forgot how much I enjoy  reading a good mystery manga. These four volumes have the added bonus of touching on Jimmy’s ongoing search to find the “Men in Black” who changed him, Rachel’s suspicions about Conan and Jimmy being the same person, and a good…

I read some back volumes of Case Closed – Detective Conan recently, and it’s sparked by desire to read more mystery manga. The problem is, of course, is that there just isn’t a lot of other titles available. Seven Seas Entertainment had Young Miss Holmes, and Kodansha had Sherlock Bones, but both are complete. Kodansha does have another mystery series that Western fans are familiar with; Kindaichi Case Files. Tokyopop originally licensed Kindaichi Case Files, and published the volumes as complete cases, squeezing 22.5 Japanese volumes into 17. While Tokyopop had put the title on “hiatus”, Kodansha pulled the license soon after, killing any fan’s hopes of seeing the series complete. There were only 5.5 Japanese volumes left. That was probably only 2-3 stories! Now, I know Kodansha doesn’t rescue their older titles, and the 1992 Kindaichi series didn’t sell enough to justify bringing the series back or even completing it, but, there was a second series published in 1998, The New Kindaichi Case Files. This series is only 10 volumes, and continues the adventures of Hajime Kindaichi, his childhood friend Miyuki, and Detective Kenmochi, as they investigate mysteries and murders involving ghosts, monsters, the supernatural and folklore. Tokyopop had originally likened…

All good things must come to an end, and several of the titles on this week’s list are doing just that. Viz Media has a huge catalog of titles, and most of those titles have an end. This week, we see four of them. Nura Rise of the Yokai Clan has been following third generation Yokai Yakuza Rikuo, and with volume 25, we see his story come to an end. It took a while for me to get into Nura, but I really started to enjoy the story at around volume 8. I’ll have to get back to finish it some day. High School Debut gets to end a second time, as the 3-in-1 omnibus editions roll out with Volume 5 which includes volumes 13-15. This series had its moments, but was never a favorite for me. Viz is also one of the few publishers taking a chance on josei titles, and two of them end this week as well. Honey Blood is a short-lived vampire romance series, but this volume, Tale Zero is filled with short stories that may (or may not) help the abrupt ending of the original two volumes. Happy Marriage!? finally comes to an end at…

It was announced in the first 2015 issue of Shueisha’s Weekly Young Jump that Yasunori Mitsunaga was launching a new detective series, Kako to Nise Tantei. This mystery series follows a genius boy detective with a shocking secret, and the first chapter featured a color opening page. It just came out on December 11, so not a lot of information is out about it but, I love boy detective stories and am always happy to see more of them. It would be great if Viz Media would consider it once it’s got some chapters under its belt. It’s too bad it’s not a Weekly Shonen Jump series, otherwise we could have gotten a Jump Start on the first three chapters. This isn’t Mitsunaga’s first mystery series. Back in 2011, he launched another detective series, Kan Tantei D&W for Shonen Gahosha’s Monthly Young King. It features two characters, Juro, a man who is very sensitive to the smell of blood, and Hisato, who is a reclusive shut-in, for his own reasons. In the first story, Juro finds the body of an idol. After a run-in with the police, he goes to Hisato, who has his own mysterious powers, for help. This…

Weekly Shonen Jump, both the US digital and the Japanese print magazines have announced titles to begin and end in their respective magazines in the coming weeks. Starting in the US, Viz’s Weekly Shonen Jump will debut My Hero Academy by Kohei Horikoshi, the creator of the short-lived series Barrage. My Hero Academy follows Izuku Midoriya, a boy with no powers in a modern-day world where people with super powers have become common place. The series started in July of 2014, and Viz will run the first chapter in the February 2 issue, and begin simultaneous release in the next issue out February 9. Both of these issues will be free to read as part of Viz’s Weekly Shonen Jump Third Anniversary. Over in Japan, the sports medical manga Sporting Salt ends in the first issue of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump out in February. It will end at three volumes. The story follows Hiroyuki Shioya, a high school student who decided to become the best sports doctor in Japan, and starts out by helping athletes in trouble with their issues and improving their performance. Sporting Salt was the first series run in the Viz’s “Jump Start” initiative, but didn’t make the…

Every week, the New York Times and Amazon posts the top ten bestselling books. The New York Times gets their numbers from print sales from retailers, while Amazon calculates their own numbers. Offered here is a listing of these books with their status this week compared with the previous week, and some way-off analysis of the activity.   New York Times Bestseller List for January 24, 2015 Akame ga Kill! Vol 1     ∗ Black Butler Vol 19     ∗ Attack on Titan Vol 1     ↑ 1 Attack on Titan No Regrets Vol 2     ↓ 1 Sword Art Online: Progressive Vol 1     ∗ Black Butler Vol 1     ↵ 43 Sword Art Online: Aincrad     ↵ 11 Noragami Vol 1     ↵ 8 Assassination Classroom Vol 1     ↔ Unofficial Hatsune Mix     ↓ 10 Yen Press’ monthly deluge leaves its mark on the list this week. The first volume of new series Akame ga Kill! debuts at the top, and is followed by the newest Black Butler as well as a return of the first volume of Black Butler in the sixth spot. At 43 weeks on the list, it used to be the longest until Attack…