Admitted to the prestigious Tokyo Space School, Asumi appears to be on track to make her dreams come true. However, enrollment was just the first of many trials she must overcome on her path to the stars. By Kou Yaginuma Publisher: Vertical, Inc. Age Rating: Tween/Teen Genre: Drama/Space Price: $10.95 As Space School starts, Asumi is still enthusiastic about it despite having several disadvantages working against her. Her family is poorer than most of the other students. She is there on a scholarship. She has to live in a 40-year-old dorm and work a part-time job in a restaurant. She doesn’t even have a cellphone. Her friend flippantly tells her to ask her parents for one since they’re only 30,000 ($300), not realizing that’s a lot of money for her father to come up with. She’s shorter than everyone else. At 4’8″, she doesn’t fit the standard gear, and will need special gear made just for her. She’s a poor swimmer. We saw in the first volume where she nearly drowned, and as a result doesn’t like swimming. Asumi works hard to compensate for as many of these disadvantages as she can, sometimes to the point of exhaustion and/or injuring…
Publisher’s Info: They say you cannot choose where and when are born; we are gifted into the worlds are parents are living at the time. Whether a blessing or a curse, as individuals we must make the most of our environments to advance as best possible given the circumstances present. For the cast of Peepo Choo, their places of birth, whether they be the suburbs of Tokyo or the South Side of Chicago, appear to be a curse they cannot escape…until they realize the world is a much smaller place than they thought. On the surface Milton appears to be your average a high school student living in the thugged out streets of Chicago’s South Side. As is the case with many teens looks can be deceiving. When he’s not at school or riding the metro, he is at the local comic shop cosplaying as his favorite Japanese animation character Peepo Choo! A hardcore fan, Milton knows every line from the Peepo Choo animation by heart. He can happily replicate the Peepo Dance with ease, and genuinely believes the world depicted in this cartoon is “the real” Japan. By Felipe Smith Publisher: Vertical, Inc. Age Rating: 16+ Genre: Parody Price:…
A new volume of Black Jack means another volume filled with stories of our favorite medical mercenary saving lives, fighting against corporate greed and cover-ups, family betrayals and “legitimate” doctors pitting their pride against Black Jack. By Osamu Tezuka Publisher: Vertical, Inc. Age Rating: 16+ Genre: Medical Drama Price: $16.95 Some of the stories that exemplify these themes are “The Two Pinokos”, where Black Jack meets the girl who he modeled Pinoko appearance from. She and the people of her village are dying from beryllium poisoning, and the corporation responsible will do anything to keep that fact from getting out. In “Hurricane”, a young wife wants Black Jack to keep her old husband alive, but only until she can get him to make her his beneficiary. Comeuppance theater ensues. And in “Black and White”, a “reputable” Doctor takes a patient away from Black Jack, believing he is saving him from a quack, but gets in way over his head. The main theme of this volume though, seems to involve animals. In several of the stories, Black Jack is either working on an animal to save it directly, or saves a person important to an animal. “A Cat & Shozo” has…
Cosmoralia’s Prince Ithaca is about to wed Princess Lilia of Ayodoya and be crowned Astralta III. The apparently favorable celestial bearings mean he will be no mere monarch but holy king of a new “papacy”. Alas, the peaceful inhabitants of Planet Astria have no clue that they’re next in line for invasion by a ruthless machine force–a threat that seems to metaphorize the inherent perils of politics and desire in this multilayered saga. The tension slowly mounts to an unbearable pitch in this ominous first volume of three. By Keiko Takemiya Publisher: Vertical, Inc. Age Rating: 13+ Genre: Sci-Fi Price: $11.95 Short on action, and long on drama and intrigue, this first volume of Andromeda Stories sets the stage for an epic battle that has become a staple of science fiction: Man vs Machine. Before there was The Terminator, Andromeda Stories was examining the relationship between man and machine, and what it means to be human. Things start out ordinary enough. Princess Lilia, the protagonist of this first volume, prepares to marry Prince Ithaca after he is crowned King Astralta III. After much ceremony and celebration, the couple begins living happily in the palace. Astralta is a good and kind…
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,…
The Guin Saga series as a franchise is as epic as the story that it tells. The Guin Saga novels are an insanely popular with 126 books in the main series and 21 side story novels. There is a manga, an anime, cds, artbooks, rpgs, and even a musical based on the books. The only thing that stopped the series was the author’s untimely death. So with a mountain of source material it can be quiet a daunting task to try to adapt any of the Guin Saga story. But fortunately there is a simpler place to start. The side story novels start with Guin as an established character but are stand-alone stories that do not directly tie into the massive ongoing plot of the main storyline. One or two major characters carry over but most of the main story is unimportant and unaffected by the events in this manga, which make it and unusual but excellent place to start. Originally reviewed by Alain Mendez By Kazuaki Yanagisawa Publisher: Vertical, Inc. Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Fantasy Price: $12.95 The country of Cheironia is under the grip of a horrible plague that is clearly magical in nature is killing more…
Weight loss is the American ideal. It stands as one of the few things that all Americans look up to, and has the same “American-ness” to it like apple pie and baseball. People are always trying to lose weight in America, because many people in America are obese or health-crazed. Weight loss tends to be an almost magical thing, and people will try all sorts of absurd things to remove pounds. They eat nothing but protein, drink soymilk and vegetable juice three times a day, and exercise insane amounts just to fit into that smaller dress size or waist measurement. By Toshio Okada Publisher: Veritcal Inc. Genre: Memoir/Health ISBN: 9781934287422 Price: $14.95 So, here it is – I received Sayonara, Mr. Fatty! at a pretty critical time. My doctor had just informed me that I needed to lose weight to keep my blood pressure down and to make sure that my organs continued to function well. He had warned me about the long-term consequences of being overweight, including heart disease and diabetes. I was at 215 lbs, and I knew that I could lose weight, but I didn’t know how. I’m not super athletic, and I don’t care for stupid…
Black Jack is a shonen manga created by Osamu Tezuka. It’s about an unlicensed doctor what lives and works in the underworld. A “scalpel for hire”, he will take on any surgery, anytime, anywhere, for anyone that is willing to pay his price. It’s an episodic series, with each chapter being a self-contained story about some situation Black Jack gets involved in. Much like most TV shows, there’s no origin story or over-arching plot to follow. By Osamu Tezuka Publisher: Vertical, Inc. Age Rating: Teen+ Genre: Medical Drama Price: $16.95 Black Jack’s background itself is a mystery. Though, throughout these volumes, we meet people from his past that lets us start to piece his story together. The Doctor that saved him and became his inspiration to become a doctor himself. The boy that reminds him of his own rehabilitation. The boyhood friend that donated skin to Jack that gave him his distinctive facial coloring. The stories are scattered, so that in order to get the whole story on Black Jack you have to read them all. The stories aren’t linear either, as some chapters in volume 2 have Pinoko being able to cook properly, while other stories in volume 3…
Everyone’s favorite renegade doctor, Black Jack is back for more in Volume 4. Black Jack is probably Osamu Tezuka’s greatest hit among adult readers and you would be hard-pressed to find Japanese citizen over the age of 25 who wasn’t familiar with the skunk-haired hero of the long-running manga series. Vertical Inc. has committed to bring all 18 of these huge volumes to English over the next three years. Any question about Tezuka’s ability to keep the stand-alone stories fresh and interesting will be dashed after setting down this fourth volume. There is a reason he is called the godfather of manga, and Black Jack is a clear expression as to why. By Osamu Tezuka Publisher: Vertical,Inc. Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Medical Drama Price: $16.95 Black Jack is a non-licensed physician who performs his medical procedures under the surgical table for outrageous fees. People come to him for two reasons: either because they want discretion, or they want the best. Dr. Black Jack can provide both, but it comes at a price. (His incredible fees seemed contradictory to his humanitarian nature, and although Black Jack is full of interesting contradictions, the reason for is prices is explained surprisingly clearly…
A Samurai during Japan’s Warring States period (1467-1573), Daigo Kagemitsu wants complete control over Japan. He promises his unborn son’s 48 body parts to demons in exchange for that control. When the baby is born deformed, Daigo throws the newborn into the river to die, but it is miraculaously found by a doctor, Jukai, who makes prosthetics for the child and adopts him as his own. When the boy Hyakkimaru is grown, he leaves home and begins a journey to recover his body parts. Along the way he runs into a brash young thief, Dororo, whom he teams up with; together they battle demon and monster on their adventure to reclaim Hyakkimaru’s wholeness. By Osamu Tezuka Publisher: Vertical Inc. Age Rating: Teen Genre: Action/Adventure Price: $13.95 Dororo, first serialized in 1967, can be seen as a proto-shonen story. It has many of the elements we now see in shonen titles today, though these were new at the time. Tezuka spins a memorable supernatural action/adventure tale and characters that really draw you in, and only disappoints at the very end, though not in story, but lack of it. The first volume of this title is the introduction. Tezuka jumps from past…