20th Century Boys was a manga about the power and danger of nostalgia. It was a story about a group of childhood friends who grew up in 60s and 70s (late Showa) Japan, who basically had their childhoods literally weaponized not just against them, but the world as a whole, and who ultimately had to go into conflict with their childhoods to save the world and themselves. 21st Century Boys serves as an epilogue to answer one last lingering question – why?
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I’d heard about the manga The Men Who Created Gundam a while ago from an article on TVTropes – and later had heard that the manga had been licensed by Denpa, though I found it was only available in a physical release, so that ended up serving as something of a hold-up on my picking up the series. However, at long last I’ve picked up up the omnibus release of the series.
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Volume 2 of We Started a Threesome put a lot of time into developing Emito and his backstory, along with the setting up that Emito was bisexual and also loved Suisei – who so far hadn’t shown any signs of being bi, and was also dealing with some of his own jealousy. So, theoretically, the ending that has been established for the final volume was – “What’s Suisei’s own backstory, how will he handle his own jealousy, and is he closeted bi, or is he heterosexual and this volume will be about how nested polycules handle situations where two members have incompatible sexual orientations, where one of those members is into the other, and both have a common person who they’re both compatible and romantically into?” The question becomes – how do they handle that topic (if they do), and will they have enough time to do it justice?
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I’ve fallen behind a bit on my reviews of the Ultraman manga, from the last one I’ve reviewed. To a large part, that’s because I’ve hit a stretch of the manga that wasn’t covered in the anime, which feels kinda weird – considering how important this stretch is.
Read moreIt feels weird to be reviewing not just softcore erotica, but a manga series that is softcore erotica, but here I am. I attribute this to the fact that other series by Katsu Aki have gotten releases here, but undoubtedly his biggest work, in terms of length, and the one that he will most likely be remembered for after his passing – like Toriyama with Dragonball & Dr. Slump – is Futari Ecchi, a series that seeks to both educate and arouse. So, when the first volume of We Started A Threesome ended on a cliffhanger related to the risk of sexual assault, I felt a little hesitant to recommend it. I feel a little better about a recommendation now, though it’s still one with some caveats.
Also, no cover excerpt this time, it’s very NSFW.
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Recently I dabbled a little in reviewing some more adult materials with a review of the first Emmanuelle novel. Well, recently I learned that the new adult manga from Katsu Aki, the creator of Futari Ecchi (along with the manga version of Vision of Escaflowne & Psychic Academy) involved discussing polyamory, and had been licensed, I decided to pick up the first volume of that manga – We Started a Threesome.
There will be some spoilers.
Read moreNisioisn, the creator of the Monogatari series, recently ran a new manga in Shonen Jump, and which ran in on the app in the US – Cipher Academy. The series gained a degree of infamy due to a level of wordplay that lead to a change in translators partway through the run. Well, I’ve read the whole thing, following its conclusion, and I have a few thoughts.
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I was excited to see a new Record of Lodoss War… anything really come out, both in terms of the Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth game (which I’ve just finished Let’s Playing – I’ll have a review of that in November) and when I learned that a new manga was coming out set after the events of Chronicles of the Heroic Knight. I had wondered if it was going to be an adaptation of Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth – but Crown of the Covenant being its own story (albeit one that Wonder Labyrinth led directly into) was something of a pleasant surprise.
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I’ve been endeavoring to fill some of the broad gaps in my manga back catalog – I’ve watched far more anime than I have manga – and one of the particularly significant gaps is in the career of one Go Nagai. While I’m familiar with him as being frequently referred to as “Anime’s Horny Uncle”, or “Perpetually Horny On Main” – not all of his works necessarily seemed to fit with that tonally, Devilman more than any other. So, considering the reputation of that work (and its, shall we say, end of The Elric Saga-esque ending), once the Devilman manga became available in print, I decided that eventually, I would take the time to seek it out and give it a read. Having finally finished reading it, I do indeed have some thoughts. There will be spoilers.
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So, the manga of Hayate the Combat Butler concluded a few years ago – and while the official US English release has not yet reached its conclusion (Viz is moving at a somewhat glacial pace with their releases), the rest of the work has been translated through (*ahem*) other avenues. Consequently, I can provide a reasonable analysis as to whether it’s worth the wait for Viz to reach the ultimate conclusion of the series.
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It has been decades since the last installment of Record of Lodoss War, so I was tremendously surprised to encounter a new installment of the manga coming out in 2023 – subtitled Crown of the Covenant. I’ve picked up the first volume, so it’s time to give my thoughts.
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So, Kodansha’s planned manga app – “K Manga” – which they’d yanked all their titles from various simul-pub services (like Azuki) in preparation for, has finally come out, and I’d like to give some quick thoughts, and compare it to Square Enix’s Manga Up app, and with it the Shonen Jump, Viz Manga, and Azuki apps.
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Naoki Urasawa’s Master Keaton is fascinating to read alongside his later series Monster. If Monster is an HBO prestige television series, Master Keaton feels much more like a syndicated TV series. Both are mysteries, but Monster pushes forward on a tightly plotted course toward its conclusion. At the same time, Master Keaton is willing to tell a collection of more episodic stories, often moving back to a particular status quo at the end of each episode. That’s not bad, it’s just a different approach.
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Naoki Urasawa’s Monster was the series that got him on my radar when I learned (10 years ago) that Guillermo Del Toro was trying to get a live-action adaptation of the series made for HBO (which ultimately fell through). That was enough to get me to hunt down the manga and slowly, over time, read it through my local library system (impacted by books falling out of and then back into print). Well, at long last, I’ve finished reading it.
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Shojo manga has, historically, been underserved by American manga publishers – and when we have gotten shojo series, they have tended to be more conventional romance series – and not necessarily works in other genres (whether fantasy, science fiction, or historical fiction). However, some of the more influential works of the genre have fallen overlapped with other genres, and probably few more influential and more high profile than Riyoko Ikeda’s The Rose of Versailles. It’s also a manga that until fairly recently, hasn’t been available (legally) in its entirety in English.
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Ken Akamatsu’s most recent (and likely last for a while) shonen battle manga, UQ Holder, has come to a conclusion. So, having previously discussed it the last time I got caught up, now is a good time to give my thoughts on the series.
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I started going to anime conventions during peak Haruhi-ism. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya anime had first aired – fans were debating in which viewing order was the “right” one to watch it in, conventions had panels about how to do the Hare Hare Yukai, it was a wonderful time. As the years have gone, and in the wake of Endless Eight, and a general lack of Haruhi content, the visibility of the series has kind of faded to the background. However, the novels and the manga were still out there, so I came to the decision that if I wasn’t able to see the whole story animated, I’d read it in manga form and see how it all played out.
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It’s been a while since I dropped a manga, and much as when I reviewed Night Head 2041 after having dropped it, it feels appropriate to discuss Copellion for the same reason – particularly since I made it over halfway through the series (with under 100 chapters to go before finishing it) before I had enough.
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I’ve finally gotten caught up on the My Hero Academia Manga in the Shonen Jump app, and want to give my thoughts on where the manga is now. As a warning – this post will contain spoilers for content after the conclusion of season 5, up to where the manga is now and will include speculation on what will be covered in Season 6. Spoilers will begin below the cut.
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Maison Ikkoku is, like a fair number of Rumiko Takahashi’s manga from this period (including Urusei Yatsura and Ranma 1/2) – very sitcom esque. It finds a status quo, will venture away from it at the start of an arc, and will generally will return to whence it came at the end, with some forward movement, but not necessarily a lot. Such is the case with the second and third volumes of the manga, where after introducing the cast in the first volume, it’s starting to find its rhythm.
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The last 4 volumes of the Silent Mobius Manga are, in a lot of respects, representative of everything about the manga that works, and everything that really doesn’t. We have some truly spectacular action in these volumes, but also a reiteration of some of the more considerably cringy elements of the series. There will be spoilers for the ending below the cut.
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It’s interesting looking at Knights of Sidonia’s ending on context of the endings of Blame and Biomega, and the tones of those series overall. Blame and Biomega were stories with a generally small cast. Blame with one person, later 3 people. Biomega with 3 people. Those stories were also generally travelogues, with the protagonists traveling the Megastructure or the World (respectively) to find a solution. Knights of Sidonia on the other hand, has the story more (generally) locked down to a location, and has a much larger cast. So, the question becomes how does the ending pan out. There will be spoilers in this post.
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Negima, Ken Akamatsu’s previous manga, was one that Akamatsu wanted to make as a battle manga, his publisher wanted to make as a fanservice-heavy rom-com, and ended up being both. UQ Holder, Akamatsu’s current manga, starts as a battle manga and has, to date, stayed that way, with plenty of fanservice and some rom-com hi-jinks scattered through the series.
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If you were expecting the Manga Contest to come to some sort of a head this volume, expect disappointment.
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