Manga Village

It’s a short list for the end of September, but it’s got some big names on it. But we’ll get to those later. First, Bandai finally releases the 2nd volume of Kannagi about magical girl shrine deities. Del Rey Manga makes a rare appearance with the next xxxHOLIC, while Kodansha has a few other former Del Rey titles with Arisa and Negima. And just for the kids, there’s a new adaptation of the latest Pokemon movie from Viz.

While we here at Manga Village love all the new manga coming out each week, there’s over 20 years of manga releases that we love and want to recommend too! So, in each column, we will look at a genre, or creator, or even publisher to come up with the best titles that we want to recommend to you! This Month: School Manga! September is traditionally the time kids go back to school, so this month we’re looking at titles that take place mainly at school. School is a big part of life and is often used promptly in teen manga titles. So here’s our some of our favorite manga that takes place at school! Alex Hoffman: There are a veritable ton of manga series that are set around a school – more shojo series than shonen, I would think, but there are quite a few of my favorite shojo series set in a school – Monkey High!, Kimi ni Todoke, and Otomen, just to name a few. If you are looking for specialized schools, well, there are plenty of those too! Mixed Vegetables is set in a cooking school, and Twin Spica is set at a school for astronauts….

It’s a new month with a whole new slew of manga to check out! Kodansha makes another strong showing with several volume 1s including the all ages title Animal Land, and the sci-fi title Mardock Scramble. Vertical releases their requisite zombie title Velveteen and Mandala, and Viz releases their monthly wave of shonen and shojo titles including Black Bird, One Piece, Naruto, and the next Pokemon: Black and White.

The rogue doctor Black Jack is back with more stories of strange diseases and amazing feats to cure them. These three volumes feature stories that move away from the “corruption of the medical system” and focus more on Black Jack’s patients, both the two-legged and four. We also get another glimpse into Black Jack’s past with the appearance of his father and his new family.

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…

While we here at Manga Village love all the new manga coming out each week, there’s over 20 years of manga releases that we love and want to recommend too! So, in each column, we will look at a genre, or creator, or even publisher to come up with the best titles that we want to recommend to you!

Since the death of her father, Hikaru has been withdrawing from the world, hiding being her headphones drown out everything around her. While on a school trip, she sees a shooting star that seems to turn right for her! What seems like a dream becomes a horrible reality as she learns that she died, and is only alive now because of an alien entity called Horizon, who needs Hikaru’s help to find Maelstrom, another alien intent on destroying all life on Earth. But the only way to help Horizon and get her life back is to reach back out to the world she’s been trying to escape from. By Nobuaki Tadano Publisher: Vertical, Inc. Age Rating: Older Teen Genre: Sci-fi Price: $10.95 7 Billion Needles is a sci-fi story that was inspired by a classic sci-fi story, Needle by Hal clemet. It uses Needle‘s basic premise of a human and alien having to work together to stop a different alien threat, but then branches off in its own direction. while having plenty of action and suspense, this story really examines what it means to be human through Hikaru and Horizon’s interactions. When we first meet Hikaru, she is pretty much…

Another good volume of more medical mysteries, just not a great one.

The sins of the father are visited on the daughter in this second volume of Twin Spica as Asumi struggles with starting at Space School.

In a Tokyo of the not-too-distant future a young girl looks up to the stars with melancholy in her heart and hope in her eyes. Thirteen-year-old Asumi kamogawa’s whole life has been tied to those stars; her future may very well be among them. And she is not alone… Asumi is on of many young people with ambitions to some day head into space in Japan’s first manned space mission. By Kou Yaginuma Publisher: Vertical Inc Age Rating: Teen Genre: Drama/Space Price: $10.95 The dream of going into space is one man has had for centuries, and was finally fulfilled in the last few decades of the 20th century. But no matter what happens, that dream never dies, as we see in the series Twin Spica, a new title from Vertical about 5 young people working to make their dreams of space travel into reality. The focus of Twin Spica is on Asumi Kowagawa. She has some strong and tragic connections to space. When she was 1, Japan’s first attempt at a manned rocket flight into space failed, and crashed into her city. Her mother was badly burned and put int a coma, dying 5 years later.  This tragedy doesn’t…