Manga Village

Look! It’s a real list! With lots of different manga!! Dark Horse continues it’s on-again, off-again relationship with Eden: It’s an Endless World and it’s newest volume finally coming out this week. Kodansha has some old Del Rey titles this week as well as some of their new offering. Viz has a few Signature volumes, and Udon Entertainment releases their first original title, Randomveus.

I’ll arrange for them to play a special song for you.

When I was a kid, there weren’t any Japanese comics to be found—I think the first manga I ever saw was a 48 page pamphlet version of Keiji Nakazawa‘s Barefoot Gen called “I Saw It!” that was collecting dust in a quarter bin in some comic shop somewhere. There weren’t any comics from outside the U.S. period, except those found in the pages of Heavy Metal magazine. Chock full of sexy, muscular heroes and beasts, the stories in the magazine-sized European import stunned me with their raw power and lithe, sweeping energy. The magazine reprinted for an American audience some of the most exciting comics to come out of continental Europe from the previous decade or so, but to my eyes they might as well have come from another world, one where half-naked men and women wrestled monsters and spirits and each other for supremacy in strange, alien landscapes. By Katsuya Terada Publisher: Dark Horse Age Rating: Mature (18+) Genre: Action/Adventure, Fantasy Price: $14.95 So imagine my surprise and confusion and excitement when I first beheld Katsuya Terada’s The Monkey King: this book is like the best, most lavish collection of comics from some lost, kick-ass, alternate world Heavy Metal…

“There’s just…dead bodies everywhere.” By: Eiji Otsuka and Shou Tajima Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Genre: Horror Range: Mature 18+ Price: 12.95 USD I have spent much of the last few months comparing MPD-Psycho to a roller coaster ride. A lot is asked of the reader the first couple volumes, a little like loading into the coaster and easing up the first big drop. At about Volume 3 and 4 we start getting payoffs, and by the bucket loads. The faithful reader who dug deep into the tale of the Multi Personality Detective Amamiya in the first volumes found quick twists and breath-taking spirals as the size and scope of the world of MPD-Psycho slowly began to reveal itself. In expert fashion, Eiji Otsuka gives us a ride on a roller coaster on it’s fatal last run. Buckled in and barrelling straight ahead, we look forward to what’s ahead as we hear the girders and steel collapse behind us. Everything in the most recent volumes indicates that no character still alive is returning to any sort of normal world after the story ends. The twists and turns get bigger and more frightening, but at  the same time insanely satisfying. Like the…