Manga News, Reviews and Commentary
It’s a week until Christmas! Time to fill a manga lover’s stocking with their favorite titles! Only four publishers are offering new volumes this week. Kodansha has the second volume of Manga Dogs already. It feels like it just came out, and already volume 2 is out. Seven Seas Entertainment dumps the rest of their titles this week, including their first volume of their yuri series Citrus. They’ve really been pushing t...
Over in Japan, the top-selling manga series for 2014 has been published by Oricon. The list includes the top 30 titles and their sales numbers covering the dates from November 18, 2013 to November 16, 2014. Looking the list over, it’s pretty amazing how many of them have been licensed and are currently being released. Seventeen titles are current available, with the eighteenth, Tokyo Ghoul having just been announced by Viz Media a...
Master Keaton is a series I have been wanting to read ever since I first heard about it. It is a reality based series that features an anthropologist as the protagonist! It’s a detective suspense series that just pushes it up higher in my esteem. Despite my hit and miss record with Urasawa, I loved Pluto, but didn’t care for 20th Century Boys and Monster, I have pre-ordered not jut the first volume, but the second as well. I...
Viz has some strong debuts and sales hitting the month of December. Assassination Classroom, and bundled sales of digital manga that makes catching up on some of the longer shonen titles not to hard to swallow hit this month. A new Jump Start title hits this month as well that Takeshi Obata fans as well as Phoenix Wright/court room dramas will want to get out; Gakkyu Hotei: School Judgement. Gift certificates would make a great presen...
Every week, Viz Media and the New York Times posts the top ten bestselling books. For Viz Media, it is the bestsellers on their site, Vizmanga.com. The New York Times gets their numbers of print sales from retailers. Offered here is a listing of these books with their status this week compared with the previous week, and some way-off analysis of the activity. Vizmanga.com for the week of December 2, 2014 Vizmanga didn’t sen...
With their identities revealed, the Colossal Titan and Armored Titan kidnap Eren and Ymir and try to escape. The Survey Corps is on their tail though, led by Erwin, Commander of the Corps himself. It is another massacre, but they still escape with the help of a new ability exhibited by Eren. Back behind Wall Rose, Levi and Hange begin experimenting on Eren to learn his strength and weaknesses. But with the internal MPS under royal comma...
I know everyone raves about Junji Ito, but I’ve found a lot of his work too far on the disturbing side. I don’t think I’ve been able to finish one of his titles, and I’m still haunted by Gyo‘s fish with metallic spider legs. **shudder**. It’s great that we’re getting this new collection of his so soon, but when are we gonna get his Cat Diary? I’ll bet that’s a series I can complete!...
Several publishers have books coming out this week, just not a lot. Gen Manga Entertainment is back in the print game. Over the last couple of months they’ve been releasing books in print. This month it’s Stones of Power. The third volume of Attack on Titan Before the Fall, the manga adaptation of the second two light novels is out this week from Kodansha. I still want to see the first volume adapted. Vertical Comics has #2 ...
Shuiesha, the publisher of all the Shonen Jump titles released an app in Japan that allows 30 manga to be read for free. Some of these titles first run in Weekly Shonen Jump, and some in their mobile app Jump Live. This is all well and good for people living in Japan, but no so much for us here in the west. But that doesn’t mean we can’t wish. Going through the list, there are 5 titles that I would like to be able to read, o...
Just reading the description of this new series makes me think it’s a mash-up of Blue Exorcist and Nisekoi. But since it’s been licensed, it must have something going for it. Guess we’ll have to wait until next summer to find out....
Every week, Viz Media and the New York Times posts the top ten bestselling books. For Viz Media, it is the bestsellers on their site, Vizmanga.com. The New York Times gets their numbers of print sales from retailers. Offered here is a listing of these books with their status this week compared with the previous week, and some way-off analysis of the activity. Vizmanga for the week of November 25, 2014 Neon Genesis Evangelion Vo...
It’s that time of the year again, where you have to go shopping for the manga readers in your life, but have no idea what to get them. No worries, here’s just one more gift guide to give you ideas of what to buy for who. For suggestions from previous years (some titles maybe out of print or digital only), check out my guides from 2013, 2010, and 2009. Card Game Lover – The king of card game manga is Yu-Gi-Oh!, but it i...
