Yura Onozuka is the daughter of the stars, and she’s not very happy about it. Always being compared to her parents at school, she hates being average and hates that they make her life harder just by being around. On television, the star couple make their family seem perfect. In fact, you could call it anything but that. Yura’s mother, Yukari Shiraki, is a beautiful actress who treats her daughter like dirt, and her father, who is living in New York, is a world-famous composer. After coming home after being away for two weeks, Yukari drops a bomb on Yura -that she and her father are getting divorced, and that Yura is being kicked out into the street. To make matters worse, Yura’s mother is having an affair with Yura’s only friend and crush, Shin. By Miki Aihara Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Drama/Romance Price: $8.99 What a first chapter! When Yura tells the paparazzi surrounding her home that her parents can eat shit and die (that’s a paraphrase, but I’m sure that’s what she wanted to say), her father’s manager swoops in and decides that he wants to make Yura into an actress. Add a pair…
Haruna Nagashima is not your average high school girl. She never devoted any time to romance when she was in junior high. She never thought about any of that stuff. She was fully focused on one thing: sports. As a softball player, she only cared about softball. But now that she’s moving from middle school to high school, she’s having a change in priorities. By Kazune Kawahara Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Teen (13+) Genre: Romance Price: $8.99 Who doesn’t want to fall in love? Little bumbling Haruna tries to follow advice in magazines and shojo manga to pick up a boyfriend, and ends up a train wreck. So, she decides, that just like when she was a softball player, she’s going to need a coach to get better at love. A fairly silly premise, it seems. I was initially skeptical about where the book was going, but that’s when you meet Yoh – the guy that Haruna gets to be her coach. The primary relationship is right there staring at you, right in the face, but adding this grumpy male lead as the bounce board for ridiculous Haruna turned the story into a real charmer. Yoh tries to show…
If you knew a person that reacted to love with violence and hatred, what would you do? Enter Shogo, a young man whose childhood has caused him to react violently to any display of affection, be it from man or beast. His hatred is not unnoticed, though. As punishment for his aggression against love, a goddess appears before him and relates to him that he is to be punished by the gods to find the love he was never given as a child, and then have it snatched away violently from him over and over again. By Osamu Tezuka Publisher: Vertical, Inc. Age Rating: 16+ Genre: Drama Price: $19.95 Often claimed to be one of Tezuka’s most erotic and dark stories, Apollo’s Song is not the Astro Boy and Black Jack you’ve been used to. There is little cheer or happiness in Apollo’s Song. Vertical Inc. has released this comic to mixed appeal from many reviewers, and for good enough reason – its age. Apollo’s Song was written in 1970, a much less progressive time, especially in Japan. With each passage, we see characters and ideas rooted in that time. Women are treated more like objects and less like characters,…
When Viz Media first debuted their new website, SIG IKKI, a collection of seinen (young men’s) and josei (young women’s) manga titles aimed at older readers, Children of the Sea was the first comic to see its debut. Now that the first 8 chapters have all been released online, they’ve been printed into the first collection of the manga title, in a whopping 320 page Signature size book which looks more like a Pluto or a 20th Century Boys style publication. By Daisuke Igarashi Publisher: Viz Media – Sigikki Age Rating: Older Teen (16+) Genre: Mystery Price: $14.99 Children of the Sea is at its heart, a character driven mystery. It hinges on the fantastic and strange myths of the sea, and three children all connected by a “Ghost of the Sea.” Ruka is a young, brash, tomboy who can’t really express herself through words, and gets in trouble playing handball and gets kicked off her school’s team right at the beginning of their summer break. In her sulking, she decides to travel to Tokyo, and meets Umi, a strange, glowing boy, who is connected to her father, who works at an aquarium in Tokyo. Soon, she also meets Sora,…
The manga market is fairly saturated with books about ninjas. Ninjas are the latest craze for boys, just like vampires are the latest craze for girls. It’s no surprise that plenty of people are trying to get in on the ninja bandwagon. Yen Press’ entry into ninja fiction, Nabari no Ou, has been publishing monthly in its Yen Plus anthology for more than a year now, and it’s picked up a lot of steam, but only recently has the compiled trade paperback (manga fans call them tankobon) been released. By Yuki Kamatani Publisher: Yen Press Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Action Price: $10.99 The first volume introduces us to Miharu Rokujou, a completely apathetic schoolboy who wants nothing more than to take over his family’s restaurant and make sure that he never has to care about anything. Unfortunately for him, he is the carrier of hidden ninja world’s most powerful secret – the Shinra Banshou, and a faction of ninjas called the Iga Grey Wolves wants it bad enough to kill him for it. Members of the Banten and Fuuma villages don’t want that to happen though –his classmates Aizawa, Shimizu, and his strange teacher Kumohira have all decide to…
Meet Noh-A Joo, a brand new student at Amityville North High School. We’re barely introduced to the girl when suddenly we get to watch Noh-A get her head chopped off in a gigantic battle between Jack Frost, the only surviving student of North District, and the head guidance councilor of the West District, Hansen. Jack, armed with two sword-like blades attached to his arms brings the heat on Hansen, who wields what appears to be a gun that has been blessed with holy power. A few beautiful fights scenes, some perverted comedy, and ridiculous and disturbing panty-shot scene later, and Noh-A is alive, in a neck brace, in the hospital wing of the school. By JinHo Ko Publisher: Yen Press Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Horror Price: $10.99 It turns out that Noh-A is a “Mirror Image,” an immortal in the realm of Amityville, whose blood can be used to heal any wound. While the origin of her special power is not explained, the comic does explain that Amityville is a place where people who fall out of the reincarnation cycle go, to live and then die for good. Amityville is a world that is writhe with battle. Different districts…
In the first volume, Lim gave us blisteringly fast, bloody fighting. With the talented illustrator Park, he gave us gorgeous art, busty women, high tension scenes, and a background story for three characters thrust into something unfathomable. He also gave us tens if not hundreds of tiny, niggling questions. These questions made it so hard to truly enjoy Black God, Volume 1. Now, with the second volume, we still have questions, but a few more answers. Written by Dall-Young Lim; Illustrated by Sung-Woo Park Publisher: Yen Press Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Drama Price: $10.99 In this second volume, we foray into a deeper, darker world, and meet a second motsumita, a superhuman guardian of the earth’s “terra”. While these things have started to take on a meaning other than plain jibberish, their strength as story telling terms has not reached a high point . Throughout the volume, Lim uses these words, phrases, and expressions to divulge a secret, carefully crafted like a lotus, its petals peeling away one at a time. The result is a maddeningly suffocating curiosity that permeates the second volume. Many impressive things from the first volume turn out to be mainstays of the seinen manga…
Short Tempered Melancholic is a series of one-shot shojo stories. Unlike many manga, which span multiple volumes with twisting and turning plot arcs, ever evolving characters and increasingly complex storyline additions, Short Tempered Melancholic is a piece of work that stands on its own – more importantly, it is 4 separate works that all stand on their own. By Arina Tanemura Publisher: Viz Media – Shojo Beat Age Rating: 13+ Genre: Romance Price: $8.99 To then review Short Tempered Melancholic, each of the stories in the collection must be looked at. The title story is actually in two parts, and involves a young girl ninja who battles between her training and giving up her ways for a boy she likes. It’s a cute, saccharine sweet tale, and the action breaks up some of the storyline, giving it air to breathe. This is most definitely the best of all the stories, and especially for a mostly shonen reader, the action gives it less of a learning curve than the other stories. The rest are fairly typical plot lines. The second story is “This Love is Non-Fiction,” and is probably the second best of the 4 stories in the book. It unfortunately…
It appears that Justin and I are on the same road these days when it comes to manga reviews. I recently picked up the 18th volume of Fullmetal Alchemist to review as a standalone and introduction to the series, and here I am again with the 8th volume of Gin Tama. By Hideaki Sorachi Publisher: Viz Media/Shonen Jump Advanced Age Rating: Older Teen (16+) Genre: Comedy/Aciton Price: $7.99 Gin Tama starts off with the usual “What’s been happening since we started” page, and shows off the characters. There are a lot of them, and throughout the manga, they make a lot of appearances. It seems that all of them have very distinct personalities, but vol. 8 doesn’t seem to be that great of an introduction to any of the characters. We start in the middle of a story arc that gets finished within the first 5 lessons (chapters) of the book, and move on from there. Gin Tama is set in Edo at around the same time as Perry’s opening of Japan. Instead of Americans, though, Hideaki Sorachi has used Aliens instead. This lends the setting both a grasp on both past and current events, and allows Sorachi the ability…
It’s not every day that someone stops reading Fullmetal Alchemist and gives it up for two years. I probably already sound like an idiot for giving up this series a few years ago, but Lori gave me the chance to check out the latest volume of Fullmetal Alchemist, and I grabbed on without thinking. Reading it has been a bit of a shot in the dark; understanding the storyline from that long ago to now has taken a few leaps of faith on my part, but it’s easy enough to put the pieces together. So, in this review, and in a few of my next reviews, I’ll be hoping into a series mid-way and giving my impressions of how well the book manages to introduce the readers to the current story. By Hiromu Arakawa Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Teen Genre: Action/Fantasy Price: $9.99 Volume 18 is a continuation of the events that occurred last volume, and it gives up more information about the Homunculi, and perhaps what their plans are for the near future. Al and Ed are as crazy as ever, and the deadpan humor of the series retains its quirky charm. It is amazing how Hiromu Arakawa…