One More Step, Come Stand By My Side is a unique and unusual manga short story collection. It consists of seven stories: “When the Time Comes,” “Ten Minutes Later, the Cops Showed Up,” “A Tranquil First Night,” “Ain’t That Nice?,” “Paradise,” “Nothin’ Wrong with That,” …Read more »
In The Ice Guy and the Cool Girl, Himuro is the descendant of a snow spirit, but that doesn’t mean he’s off doing supernatural things. He works in an office, like a regular person. Unlike a regular person, though, blizzards rise up when he focuses …Read more »
Ogami-san Can’t Keep It In opens with a hilarious scene, continues with bawdy humor, and also shows some heart. Ogami is a high school girl who can’t think about anything but sex, and she doesn’t want other people to know. She’s sure they’ll judge her, …Read more »
Osamu Tezuka, known as the god of manga, refers to One Hundred Tales as one of his representative works. It’s described as an adaptation of Goethe’s Faust, only as a historical samurai piece. And while there is a character making a deal with a supernatural …Read more »
You may think you’ve seen bleak dystopias in fiction, but how about a world that’s turning into an enormous, all-devouring subway system? In Yokohama Station SF, the titular port city stop begins to “self-propagate,” apparently due to a bug in an AI construction program. It’s …Read more »
Mimi’s Tales of Terror is an adaptation of Hirokatsu Kihara and Ichiro Nakayama’s work adapted into a manga by horror legend Junji Ito. It consists of nine stories with Mimi — “On the Utility Pole,” “The Woman Next Door,” “Rustling in the Grass,” “Grave Placement,” …Read more »
#DRCL: Midnight Children is a unique and provocative take on the Dracula story. While the cover says it’s “based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” it is not a straightforward adaptation. A better description would be “inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” That’s because the characters have been …Read more »
In Panorama of Hell, an artist with different-sized pupils tells the reader that he is “a painter of hell, possessed by the beautiful color of blood.” He cuts himself to use his own blood for paint. With that he makes his “Panoramas of Hell,” and …Read more »
The Black Cat and the Vampire is a BL story that takes place in an all-boys boarding school. The boys are all from well-to-do families, and they’re all very pretty. The main character, Yuki, can come off as cold and aloof, and he takes his …Read more »
The success of The Way of the Househusband has inspired a mini-boom of comedies about tough, macho, or sometimes just improbable characters throwing themselves into feminine-coded activities. The Yakuza’s Bias starts from what may be the funniest of these premises yet: a hardened gangster becoming …Read more »
Manner of Death Volume 1 is very good. I stress that it’s Volume 1 because, being an ongoing mystery story, its serialized nature is more important than in some of the other manga I’ve reviewed recently. It’s a stylish enough BL crime thriller that I …Read more »
“I’m just an ordinary person,” Miyuu Seno says on the first page of The Essence of Being a Muse. “In fact…I’m painfully aware of that.” Manga protagonists have a habit of introducing themselves as regular guys or gals, usually as a prelude to adventures that …Read more »
In I Can’t Refuse S, Miku is in an unfortunate situation. Her father has destroyed the finances, her mother needs to be hospitalized, and the family desperately needs money to stay afloat. Miku has been working all sorts of jobs, but it’s never enough. So …Read more »
My Picture Diary is a work by Fujiwara Maki, the wife of the much more famous mangaka Yoshiharu Tsuge. Each page has a short description on one side of what her day was like, and illustrations showcasing the day on the other side. The descriptions …Read more »
Associate Professor Akira Takatsuki’s Conjecture is a manga based on a light novel series, both of which are being published by Yen Press. Naoya Fukamachi, a new college student, has a mysterious past, where something otherworldly seems to have happened at a Bon festival. He’s …Read more »
Danica Davidson
![Yokohama Station SF [Manga Review]](https://otakuusamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Yokohama-Station-SF-v2-crop2-202x202.jpg)
![Yokohama Station SF [Manga Review]](https://otakuusamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Yokohama-Station-SF-v2-crop2.jpg)
Shaenon K. Garrity
![The Yakuza’s Bias [Review]](https://otakuusamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/yakuzas-bias-v2-crop-202x202.jpg)
![The Yakuza’s Bias [Review]](https://otakuusamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/yakuzas-bias-v2-crop-1024x576.jpg)
![Manner of Death [Review]](https://otakuusamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/manner-of-death-v2-crop-202x202.jpg)
![Manner of Death [Review]](https://otakuusamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/manner-of-death-v2-crop.jpg)
Robert McCarthy![The Essence of Being a Muse [Review]](https://otakuusamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/essenceo-of-being-a-muse-v2-crop-202x202.jpg)
![The Essence of Being a Muse [Review]](https://otakuusamagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/essenceo-of-being-a-muse-v2-crop-1024x576.jpg)
