Manga Village

By all counts, Ryouta Sakamoto is a loser when he’s not holed up in his room, bombing thing into oblivion in his favorite online action RPG. But his very own uneventful life is blown to pieces when he’s abducted and taken to an uninhabited island, where he soon learns the hard way that he’s being pitted against others just like him, in an explosive-riddled death match! how could this be happening? Who’s putting them up to this? And why!? The name, not to mention the objective, of this very real survival fame is eerily familiar to Ryouta, who has mastered its virtual counterpart–BTOOOM! Can Ryouta still come out on top when he’s playing for his life!? By Junya Inoue Publisher: Yen Press Age Rating: Mature Genre: Game/Survival Horror Price: $11.99 I had mixed feelings when I heard about BTOOOM! There were comparisons of this series to .hack going on in the mangasphere, which didn’t inspire me. Though having read the first volume, I think being stuck in a video game like BTOOOM! would have been better than the “Battle Royale”-esque “game-in-real-life” that the series has ended up being. BTOOOM! doesn’t waste much time in throwing the reader into the action….

Chris collects the last of the data needed to analyze and come up with a way to cure the zombies. Irel and Lamia go in search of the last remaining bottles with the blood of Jesus Christ, when they find one, they are confronted by Lamia’s opposite, Jeanne D’Arc, trained to be the ultimate killer, and with Ian’s help Lamia is killed, but Irel continues his evolution, stopping her and going after Ian, leading to the final battle that will determine who is the real God. By JinJun Park Publisher: Yen Press Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Action/Horror ISBN: 9780316220002 Price: $11.99 Raiders has been a rough ride for me. I started out detesting the series, but as a story started to emerge, I became more patient with it. Just as I thought it would be going somewhere, the title ends, but not before pulling out character and concepts from out of nowhere to accomplish it. The final battle is rather anti-climatic for all-powerful beings duking it out, but the ending is an appropriate one. Volume 8 picks up where 7 left off with Chris and the Zombie Hunter pretty much demolishing Area 51, with some added help from Crossline,…

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…

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. High School of the Dead Volume 1-3 Story by Daisuke Sato; Art by Shouji Sato Publisher: Yen Press Age Rating: Mature Genre: Horror Price: $13.99 ISBN: 978-0-316-13225-1/13239-8/13242-8 Lori: It’s been a while since we’ve been here, eh Alex? The holidays and RL hit me pretty hard. How did it go for you? Are you ready to get back to work? Alex: The holidays and even the entire month of January has been crazy for me, but I am glad to get back to our talks about manga. Let’s get right down to it with a synopsis of the series. High School of the Dead is the story of a zombie apocalypse. An outbreak…

The genre of horror isn’t as easy to pin down like sci-fi, fantasy or romance. It doesn’t have to be in a certain time or place, or have certain characters to work. Horror is an emotion. The creator of a horror story is trying to elicit specific feelings from the reader, mostly feelings of fear and/or dread. Horror manga is no different. For the Horror Manga Movable Feast, the Villagers will be looking at the elements of horror manga, and talking about what they think works, or doesn’t work, in many of the titles available. John: What I love about horror manga is what I love about manga in general: the ability to know no bounds. Great horror manga has to be rooted in reality, but then stretch itself to the edges of believable be truly scary. A couple of favorites that do this darn near perfectly are The Drifting Classroom and Uzumaki. The Drifting Classroom is set in a graspable reality (a typical elementary school) that is teleported suddenly to a barren, hellish netherworld. Uzumaki is set in a small town in Japan that is infected by a plague of spirals. On paper neither sounds particularly compelling, but in…

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…

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…

Traveling in-between the world of the living and the twilight world of the dead, Akamushi, the shaman known as the Red Spider Exorcist, wields the powers of a giant spider to combat the demons of the netherworld. In a serendipitous moment, a young girl meets Akamushi, and falls in love with him at first sight. However, it turns out her grandfather and mother are haunted by a “Waraigao” – a demon that attacks living human bodies from the inside, eroding and eventually deteriorating them! Written by Hideyuki Kikuchi; illustrated by Shin Yong-Gwan Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing Age Rating: 16+ Genre: Horror Price: $9.95 Volume 2 of Taimashin picked up right where volume 1 left off with Megumi at the hot springs. Her story is finished and a second story starts up involving a young girl whose family seems to be cursed. This volume gives some more insight into the nature of Akamushi, and that he might not be completely the hero he appeared to be in the first volume. Megumi’s story is completed as the truth about her is revealed as is the reason why she is being chased by the demons. There is a climatic battle between Akumushi and…

Being a guy that’s aging, and probably faster than my inner-child would like to admit, I enjoy it when a comic book caters to me as an adult. While this is rapidly becoming the policy in mainstream comics, where the entire readership is a bunch of 30 year-old man-children, manga published in the USA generally tends to hit the 13-18 crowd. The most popular titles are from Shonen and Shojo anthologies, weekly magazines that target younger children. Let’s just say that Naruto, while interesting, isn’t written for 23 year-olds. By Housui Yamazaki Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Age Rating: 18+ Genre: Horror Price: $10.95 Seinen manga, or manga for men, is a little scarce, but Dark Horse is one of the few publishers that bucks the trend;  the majority Dark Horse’s manga in print are seinen works. Thankfully, the publishing house does an admirable job with their manga. Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Oh! My Goddess, Eden, and Gantz are all for mature readers, and they’re all great series. One of DH’s shorter manga installments is a three-volume horror collection by mangaka Housui Yamazaki (the illustrator for Kurosagi). In it, he tells the story of the vengeful dead, delivering their hate as…

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…