Manga Village

The supreme beings that created the ogres have a problem. They are responsible for maintaining the delicate balance of nature, but they may have to eliminate the human race to do so. If mankind disappears, will a new order of sentient beings claim their sovereignty over the planet? Either way, Zakuro holds the key to the future of the world! By Yoshinori Natsume Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Teen+ Genre: Supernatural/Action Price: $9.99 It really shouldn’t come as any real surprise that I enjoyed this volume. I liked Togari, Natsume’s previous series released by Viz, and I discovered it the same way, by reading a volume in the middle of the series. Even though most of this volume is fighting, Natsume still manages to get enough story through to keep me interested throughout the volume. The volume starts in the middle of a fight with Lacey, and ends with a fight against Akebi and the discovery of the supreme beings’ plan. One of the things I liked about Togari was the way Natsume blurred the line between good and evil. Good characters are shown to have dark sides, and the characters thought to be evil might not be so bad….

It’s hard to not expect great things from Rumiko Takahashi. Ranma 1/2 and InuYasha are some of the most well-known manga series around, and her fame for these series doesn’t even touch how awesome some of her more romantically inclined work like One Pound Gospel, Mermaid Saga or more importantly, Maison Ikkoku is. So, when things weren’t automatically awesome in the first volume of Rin-Ne, I get a little fidgety. You might call it prejudice, or InuYasha syndrome, or whatever, but while Rin-Ne was interesting in the first volume, it didn’t sparkle like other Takahashi manga.

Rumiko Takahashi is a big name in manga – creator of the immensely popular Ranma 1/2 and InuYasha, she knows what it takes to write an enjoyable story. Arguably one of the most influential manga writers still writing today, she is the one manga-ka who could pull off the feat that is Rin-Ne.

Series Description: By night, junior high student Yoshimori Sumimura is a “kekkaishi”–a demon-hunter who specializes in creating magical barriers around his prey. By day, Yoshimori’s got some other demons to battle: an addiction to sweets and a seriously crotchety grandfather! Yoshimori’s pretty 16-year-old neighbor and childhood friend, Tokine Yukimura, is also a kekkaishi, but their families are feuding over who is the true practitioner of the art. Volume Description: Yoshimori and his elder brother Masamori are trapped inside a magical realm… The site’s guardian wants to steal Yoshimori’s body, and a renegade council member pits brother against brother! Which of the two will escape? And what will become of the other…? By Yellow Tanabe Publisher: Viz Media Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Action Price: $9.99 Short and sweet this week, this being the last (for now) of my “drop in the middle of a series to see what I find” reviews. And a little wrap-up on this experiment–but more on that later. For now, let’s talk about Kekkaishi, a series I’ve been wanting to check out for a while now, based on the recommendation of Shaenon Garrity, an awesome person whom we should all obey, should she ever take over…