Manga Village

I have been lucky in my reading that I rarely come across things I actively hate. Sure, I have had a few instances (Sasameke comes to mind) but the stuff I don’t like I just don’t like, and there are no hard feelings. But there are times when I consider a new title to add to the “shit list,” and unfortunately, Attack on Titan is one of those times. By Hajime Isayama Publisher: Kodansha Comics Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Shonen/Speculative Fiction/Horror Price: $10.99 At the core of Attack on Titan is a futuristic version of the Earth where the human race has been driven nearly to extinction by a race of giant monsters called Titans. These creatures seem only to exist to devour human beings. Humanity has responded to these alien creatures by building a giant walled city to protect themselves, and created an elite group of fighters who protect the human race by using retro-futuristic grappling hooks and natural gas to propel themselves through the air and kill Titans. As far as end of the world stories go, it’s a fairly original premise. While the premise is original, the execution in Attack on Titan is poor. The tone of the dialogue is always some flavor…

It makes sense to me that one of the most cutting edge manga in Yen Press‘ manga collection is Soul Eater Not! The series is published on the same day and date in the USA as it is in Japan, and is the only series that Yen Press releases with that schedule. In Japanese comics, it stands beside Rumiko Takahashi’s Rin-Ne from Viz Media as the only other mainstream* comic that is released day and date in both Asia and America. The reason why this makes sense to me has quite a bit to do with the characteristics of Soul Eater Not! – it is neither shojo, shonen, or moe, but rather a strange mix of all three. By Atsushi Ohkubo Publisher: Yen Press Age Rating: Older Teen Genre:  Slice of Life/Action/Fantasy Price: $11.99 USA The best way to describe Soul Eater Not! is that is not the same manga as Soul Eater, another popular release from Yen Manga. Written and illustrated by the same author and set in the same world, it even uses some of the same characters to tell a much different story. Tsugumi, our main character, is a girl enrolled in the DWMA, an international organization in charge of training meisters and “weapons” in order to make sure they are able to control their abilities…

Getting halfway through a series and finding things to talk about can sometimes be quite challenging; with Natsume Ono’s work, it’s a fairly simple matter. It may be my love for her characters, her designs, and her writing, but the complexities are fascinating and are great for discussion.

As a medical professional, I sometimes have a hard time reading medical dramas or watching medical shows on television.This is especially true with shows like House, where the way the series is set up forces it to be completely technical and still be somewhat accessible for the layperson. As part of a long-standing studying stress reliever, my friends and I would gather around the television during pharmacy school and analyze all of the things that were going wrong throughout a given episode of House. I remember running through lists of ways the medical team could have accurately diagnosed the patient and not half-killed him or her throughout the show.

Shonen Jump is entering a new era – with Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha coming down the pipeline in only a few short weeks, it appears that we are headed towards a place where the legitimate publisher can beat the scanlator on the terms of his or her speed. Sadly, the content on Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha isn’t the most impressive of what is being published under the Shonen Jump label. Of the six titles in the original offering; Bakuman, Bleach, Naruto, Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan, One Piece, and Toriko, only Toriko and Bakuman really interest me in some way (even if it’s only a guilty pleasure kind of way). The one gem of a series that isn’t being published in Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha which I really enjoy is Kazue Kato’s Blue Exorcist. (Perhaps that’s because it runs in Jump Square, but honestly, if it’s being published as a Shonen Jump title in the USA, that shouldn’t exclude it from a USA-centric anthology.) By Kazue Kato Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Supernatural/Action Price: $9.99 I bought the first volume of this series on a whim at the VizManga.com webstore and read it on a combination…

Reviews are subjective things. A reviewer is drawing on many things when they write their review. Besides technical things such as story structure, character development and art, a reviewers personal preferences and experiences can affect their feeling about a book. And sometimes, even their gender can make a difference as to whether a book gets a good score or bad. In the following discussions, reviewers Alex Hoffman and Lori Henderson will look at different books and examine the similarities and differences they have over each of them. Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan Volumes 1-2 By: Hiroshi Shibashi Publisher: Viz Media – Shonen Jump Age Rating: Teen Genre: Action/Supernatural Price: $9.99 ISBN: Vol. 1: 978-1421538914 Lori Henderson: That was quite a debate we got into with Degenki Daisy. Will Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan be just as contentious? Alex Hoffman: I don’t know Lori – I guess that depends on what you think of the series. Want me to give the rundown? LH: Please do. AH: Here goes nothing. Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan is a series about a boy named Rikuo who is the descendant of one of the most powerful yokai in Japan. Being ¾ human…

Natsume Ono is one of my favorite creators in comics today. Her distinct style and charismatic writing have filled many of my evenings with beautiful imagery of Italy and feudal Japan, and her characters have sparked my imagination and wanderlust. When Ono’s first works were brought to the USA, we started somewhere in the middle – Ristorante Paradiso and not simple were a progression of sorts from La Quinta Camera, which is some of Ono’s earliest work. The series started as a webcomic, and was brought to print in one volume through Viz Media’s IKKI COMIX imprint. Of all the creators popularized by the IKKI format from Viz, Natsume Ono is the most complex, and most wonderful. La Quinta Camera is certainly an expression of that – but Ono has learned much between her initial comics debut in 2003 and her currently running series House of Five Leaves. By Natsume Ono Publisher: VIZ Media LLC; Sig IKKI Age Rated: T for Teen Genre: Slice of Life Price: $12.99 La Quinta Camera is a series of vignettes focusing on four men who live in a five-bed apartment in Rome, and how they use that fifth room; or rather, who they rent…

One of the things that surprised me (and continues to surprise me) about TokyoPop was their ability to survive off of B-list titles. The subject matter of this review is a prime example. Butterfly is the definition of B-list. The series is a five-volume supernatural/horror/gender bender from Gentosha, which looks to have a really smart collection of josei and seinen manga. Why this series was picked from all of the other content Gentosha could provide is really not the subject of this review, but it is worth considering. Perhaps Tokyopop was getting smarter with their releases, and knew that Butterfly would appeal to their fan base. By: Yu Aikawa Publisher: TokyoPop (March 1, 2011) Age Rating: T for Teen (13+) Genre: Supernatural Price: $10.99 If that is the case, this series proves that I was not a part of the TokyoPop fan base. The story centers on Ginji, a high-school guy with a severe hatred for the occult, but who is haunted by the image of his dead brother. This dead brother appears to have hung himself, for reasons unknown. Ginji meets up with a girl who his friend has introduced him to and ends up in a rough spot…

Over the past three years, I have come to admire the work of Jiro Taniguchi. Through The Quest for the Missing Girl and A Distant Neighborhood, I have come to appreciate Taniguchi’s masterful draftmanship, his unique stories, and his strength as both a writer and a cartoonist. Of all his great qualities throughout books adapted by Fanfare/Ponent Mon, I have noticed one key feature, one slight detriment to his impressive works: Taniguchi has a difficulty creating people. His characters are impressively constructed, but like the craggy cliffs and towering skyscrapers he so ornately crafts, they are inscrutable. It is hard to understand their emotions, and their faces are mask-like in quality. And while the beauties of the scene that surround each character are readily apparent, the beauties of the characters themselves are often hidden behind a wall. Written and Illustrated by Jiro Taniguchi Publisher: Ponent Mon S.L. (June 23, 2011) Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Slice of life Price: $23.00 In A Zoo In Winter, Taniguchi sets his sights on himself – and thereby, other people.  The focus he puts into drawing the emotions of his characters is equal if not greater than the usual care he devotes to mountains…

Comparison is one of the great powers of the human mind. We categorize and store information throughout our lives, and then at every step necessary, recall and compare, oftentimes synthesizing new information and opinions. It is hard to review Usamaru Furuya’s Lychee Light Club for the simple fact that there is very little that I have ever read that would allow me to compare, analyze, and then synthesize an opinion of the work. When the mind cannot find the most immediate comparisons, it digs harder and deeper, looking for the things it has experienced before to connect the dots. It is in the shadows of Lychee Light Club and its distinctive beginning that make it such a strange, visceral experience. By Usamaru Furuya Publisher: Vertical, Inc. Age Rating: 18+ Genre: Seinen/Horror Price: $16.95 Lychee Light Club is, if I describe it in general terms, is a Lord of the Flies with an added bonus of homemade robots programmed to find beautiful girls to worship. The characters of Lychee Light Club are all adolescent, prepubescent boys, who are unsustainably obsessed with beauty and androgyny. Lychee, the robot, is probably the most human of the entire cast. There is internal conflict over…