Manga Village

“I also highly recommend the strawberries-and-white-chocolate mousse. The strawberry compote filling will melt in your mouth as the genoise soaked in lime syrup sings in perfect harmony with the milky flavour of the white chocolate mousse.” By: Fumi Yoshinaga Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Genre: Slice of life/drama/comedy/food Age Rating: YA/young adult/16+ Price: $12.95 What a joy! What a delight! What a treat! Like the cakes and pastries it depicts, Antique Bakery is so exquisite that it’s tempting to swallow it all in one go, but with enough layers that it’s worth lingering over, to savour the interplay of different elements and the way minor details later prove to be essential. It’s clear that it’s been crafted with care and loving attention, and the skill of an artist at the peak of her career. Set in and around a pâtisserie-café that opens late and features antique silver cutlery as well as an immensely skilled pastry chef, Antique Bakery comes across at first as an episodic, slice-of-life series; as with the bookshop in Kingyo Used Books, the bakery seems to be less the setting for an ongoing tale and more a focal point where a diverse cast of minor characters can have…

“Ha! As if you could keep from causing trouble!” “Urk! Y-you’re right… but I can promise you a life full of excitement, though!” By Kaoru Tada Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Age Rating: T/Teen/13+ Genre: Shoujo/romance/comedy Price: $15.95 Itazura na Kiss sounds like it would be very much the opposite of my kind of thing. Shoujo romantic comedies tend to bore me unless they have some extra element in the mix (like, say, vampires, or ninjas, or robots, or… well, you get the picture). I get impatient with characters who are too dim to figure out what’s going on when it’s obvious to the reader. What’s more, I have a low tolerance for vicarious embarrassment — when a fictional character is humiliated or embarrassed, I get embarrassed right alongside them, and it often gets so bad that I can’t keep reading or watching because I’m cringing too hard. It seemed from the reviews that the plot of Itazura na Kiss mostly revolved around the main character being hideously humiliated again and again, and that made me think it would be painful to read. But despite all those reservations, so many people were so enthusiastic about the series that I decided to…

“If there really are two minds inside his body, then they’re both the real one. Saying that one is fake is twisted.” By Tooko Miyagi Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Genre: BL/yaoi Age Rating: YA/young adult/16+ Price: $12.95  Il Gatto Sul G deals with topics so often covered in manga as to be virtually clichéd: childhood abuse, multiple personalities, youthful ambitions, love triangles. It could very easily have turned into a godawful melodrama or a trivialisation of some very serious issues; indeed, I’m so used to certain issues being trivialised in manga (especially BL manga, where artists often dispense with realism the better to indulge their whims) that I tend to let it slide, filtering out the more offensive elements in otherwise satisfactory stories. Throughout my reading of Il Gatto Sul G, I held back a little, leery of trusting Miyagi to handle the difficult subject matter with enough delicacy and respect; but I needn’t have worried. Miyagi approaches her story with all the care necessary to do it justice, and the end result is deeply moving. As befits its title, Il Gatto Sul G is a stray cat story, beginning when college student Atsushi Ikeda finds a teenage boy unconscious…

Kaname Otonashi is gifted with a super-hearing ability, so much so that he can even hear voices from the “other side”…the dead. Having once worked as a top-notch detective specializing in Sound Engineering Investigation, Otonashi resigned to work as a private investigator. His partner, Yasuhide, aka Hide, collaborates with the police department to take on unsolved and mysterious cases. Surrounded by a string of mysterious deaths, the police turn to Kaname’s findings to identify suspects…but can Kaname handle the non-stop screaming of the dead? By Youka Nitta Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Age Rating: 16+ Genre: Drama Price: $12.95  Otodama: Voices of the Dead is a detective buddy story with a supernatural twist. It’s premise of the voices of the dead remaining behind long after the deed has become a staple in ghost investigations, but to this title’s credit, the voices of the dead don’t solve the cases as much as Otonashi’s abilities and Nagatsuna’s determination do. Otodama is about two men. Kaname Otonashi is a former researcher at the National Police Research Institute where he specialized in aural forensics. He analyzed sounds and recordings for clues to help in cases. Otonashi has very acute hearing. He can hear things others…

It’s been a bitter few weeks in the manga industry here in the USA. CMX and GoComi! were closed up, and Viz laid off 40% of its workforce. It’s a tough economy, and  while some of this is definitely expected, it hits sort of hard. Likewise, Itazura na Kiss is something of a bittersweet story. DMP managed to get the rights to it and start publishing it after news of the author’s death was delivered to American fans. The series, at 23 volumes, is currently unfinished. Kaoru Tada had an unfortunate accident while moving in 1999, and died shortly after of cerebral hemorrhage. I use the phrase bittersweet because, while the series is unfinished and the author died at a young age, DMP is giving us the rare opportunity to experience this classic manga. I’m ready for my clouds to have some silver linings. By Kaoru Tada Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Age Rating: Teen Genre: Romance Comdey Price: $16.95 Kotoko, the sweet, kinda dumb, and klutzy lead girl of Itazura na Kiss, starts out our series by confessing her feelings to the brilliant and icy Naoki, and after being roundly rejected by him in the first few pages, and I’m…

On a city night lit up by beautiful fireworks, office worker Megumi strolls the streets of Seoul without a care in the world…until she senses a stranger following her every footstep! When a greedy old woman named Gyouanja suddenly appears and tells Megumi to seek out a mysterious dancer at a pavilion, she heeds the crone’s words and finds herself in the midst of a ghastly showdown between light and darkness, shadow and substance. Does Megumi play a key part in this freakish and fantastic pageant…or is she simply losing her grasp on reality? Written by Hideyuki Kikuchi; Illustrated by Shin Yong-Gwan Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Age Rating: 16+ Genre: Horror Price: $9.95 I’m not normally a fan of horror manga. I get squeamish seeing gore and internal organs spilling everywhere. But, I will make some exceptions. The work of Hideyuki Kikuchi is one such exception. I’ve been enjoying the Vampire Hunter D manga (for the most part), and this new title, Taimashin: The Red Spider Exorcist, seems to be heading in the same direction. This first volume centers on ordinary office worker Megumi, who is being pursued through the streets of Seoul. She seems to have stumbled into the…

Penny-Rose, a stone mason in the Principality of Castaliae is summoned by the Queen. She asks Penny-Rose to marry the prince… but only for one year. To succeed the throne, the prince needs to marry a woman of “unimpeachable virtue.” Startled by such a sudden request, Penny-Rose hesitantly accepts. Despite knowing he is to marry another after her, she is slowly drawn to the prince, and eventually falls in love… By Harumo Sanazaki Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Age Rating: 16+ Genre: Romance Price: 400 Points eManga / $3.99 Amazon Kindle Price This manga adaptation of Marion Lennox’s A Royal Proposition is brimming with roses and all the romantic clichés one is to expect from a Harlequin title. Working to help her siblings back in her homeland Australia Penny-Rose lives up to her name as being presented to the reader as a hard-working poor woman, she may not have much money her beauty and her kind heart is a truer measure of her value. While working as stone mansion for the royal manor she is approached one day by none other than the royal highness herself! This first meeting will turn Penny-Rose’s life upside down and take her from being a…

Our childish ideas of being together… I thought I’d forgotten all about them. By Yugi Yamada Publisher: Digital Manga Publisher Age Rating: M/Mature/18+ Genre: BL/yaoi Price: $12.95 Despite being disappointed by her at least once, I have a high opinion of Yugi Yamada. Her art is distinctive and interesting, but not nearly so interesting as her writing, which is sparky and funny and unpredictable. She likes to take the most well-worn BL clichés and turn them on their heads or give them a twist that makes the end result more realistic and less sentimental than it usually turns out in the hands of less skilful artists. Dry Heat is no exception, being Yamada’s take on the “childhood crush all grown up” story. At just 7 years of age, Tatsuhiko declares to his ten-years-older friend Itaru that when he grows up he’s going to become prime minister of Japan, so that he can legalise gay marriage and marry Itaru. Ten years later, and five years after they last saw each other, Itaru learns that Tatsuhiko has gone missing, and is charged with finding him again. His search brings him to a sleazy area of Tokyo where he makes contact with Terasawa,…

Brave Sowil wields the power of mysterious runes that can bend nature to his will and even fill his pockets with unlimited riches.  But can the cryptic tiles help him unlock the many secrets surrounding the identity of his long-lost father?  He’ll have to contend with both angels and demons as he winds his way through desolate deserts, a hidden spring and shape-shifting forests on his quest.  Who will help Sowil discover his lineage…and legacy? By Makoto Tateno Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Age Rating: 16+ Genre: Fantasy/Drama Price: $12.95 Angelic Runes seems like your typical “on-a-quest” story with the usual “monster of the week” challenges and a search to find a long-lost father.  But with delicate art and well conceived and written characters, the story becomes something more and well worth the time to read. The basic story is straight forward enough. Sowil is a mage of sorts.  He uses an ancient magic that has been all but forgotten in the world.  He is searching for his father to find out how and why he has this power.  In the first chapter, he comes to a village that is about to sacrifice to children in an effort to save themselves. …

The vampire-slaying hunter known only as “D,” with a reputation of taking care of business by way of the sword, is on another bounty run– this time to resuce the beautiful daughter of a wealthy village elder, kidnapped by the vampire Noble, Mayerling.  But what happens when another group of bounty hunters have taken up the same assignment? Head of the notorious mercenary clan, the Marcus family, older Borgoff leads his not-so-merry band of ruthless renegades not only on a mission of pursuit and retrieval, but also on a path of destruction that’ll hopefully wipe out anything that gets in the way from their payday, including D. By Saiko Takaki Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Age Rating: 16+ Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror Price: $13.95 In this adaptation of the third novel, we get to see more the world D is living in, which in this case, isn’t necessarily a good thing.  Hideyuki Kikuchi continues to build on D’s background and mystery, but his misogynistic portrayals will only turn away women with any self-worth that might enjoy a good sci-fi/horror series. This third volume in the Vampire Hunter D series was the basis for the anime Bloodlust, which was popular in the US.  The…