Manga Xanadu

It’s a big Viz week with both their shonen and shojo titles as well as plenty of Pokémon from their kid imprint Perfect Square. Everyone else is slumming it with one volume each. Dark Horse has New Lone Wolf and Cub Vol 4, while Kodansha releases the 5th omnibus of xxxHolic. Whispered Words from One Peace Books and is a yuri series about a girl who is secretly in love with her best friend, but who isn’t her type. It keeps getting good word of mouth, so it might be worth picking up even with the higher price point Viz’s avalanche of shonen and shojo is hard to escape. I recently re-read the first volume of Kamisama Kiss, and now I’m feeling the itch to binge read, but catching up will hurt the pocket-book with volume 17 coming out this week, even if it were available as an e-book! Rose lovers have two titles to choose from this week, with Kiss of the Rose Princess Vol 3 being released, but even more exciting, and a week early, is Requiem of the Rose King Vol 1. This historical shojo by Aya Kanno, the creator of Otomen, is based on Shakespeare’s play Richard III, and…

Ultraman has been in a bit of a revival with the many incarnations of the TV series coming to DVD and streaming on Crunchyroll. This manga is a sequel to the first TV series, and just started in 2011, effectively updating the 1960s series for a 21st century audience. I’m really looking forward to seeing it later this summer.

My Hero Academia was already announced to have joined the Weeky Shonen Jump line up, but this new announcement makes the series available to more readers beyond the WSJ base. But with the simultaneous chapter releases, fans will have to wait until August to actually read what happens in between the first chapter and chapter 24, when it starts. Recaps are okay, but just not as good as the actual chapters.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has had a difficult time in the west. The first print run of Part 3 didn’t do so well back in the aughts. The release of the series in digital along with an anime simulcast on Crunchyroll propelled the series into the fan spotlight. While Part 1 has been available in digital for a while, anticipation for this deluxe hardcover has been stewing for a while, as a check of Amazon.com’s top ten list will show.

Viz Media gets a huge selection of titles onto Comixology from publisher Shogakukan which includes Shonen Sunday titles as well as some shojo and josei. Comixology readers can now enjoy the likes of Case Closed and Happy Marriage?! as well as the classic Drifting Classroom. Many of these titles are also complete, so there’s no waiting for the next volume to come out.

If you’re like me and have never read the first series, then you should check out the specially priced bundle Viz is running for the first 10 volumes of Boys Over Flowers. I’m interested in reading this new series. I was intrigued by the first chapter of the original, so hopefully this second series will be just as enticing.

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…

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.

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…

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…

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…