Manga Reviews

“Why … do we have to do this?” moans the protagonist on the first page of The Asterisk War , and I felt his pain. Years after a great meteor shower brought mana—basically superpowers—back into the world, skilled supers are trained in the city of …Read more »

[Review] The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime

October 6, 2016

Daryl Surat

© Tezuka Productions, used courtesy of Stone Bridge Press You’ve got to hand it to Tezuka Productions. Despite the “God of Manga” Osamu Tezuka having been dead for more than 27 years, he’s never been more relevant to American fans than now. The secret is …Read more »

[Review] Immortal Hounds

October 4, 2016

Jason Bradley Thompson

No one on Earth can die. This isn’t a recent development (like in Torchwood: Miracle Day); violent death hasn’t existed for as long as anyone can remember, and since you instantly resurrect at full strength whenever you’re killed, a bullet to the head is the …Read more »

[Review] Otherworld Barbara

October 3, 2016

Jason Bradley Thompson

Aoba is an orphan child raised by kindly old Maaya, but her life is beautiful. She lives on the lovely island of Barbara, a sunny, vaguely Mediterranean place where dryads sun their green leaves on the rooftops, where children can fly, and where the natives …Read more »

[Review] That Wolf Boy Is Mine!

October 2, 2016

Ink

While her mother is away on a year-long business trip, Komugi “Goody Two Shoes” Kusunoki moves to rural Hokkaido to live with her estranged father. She has high hopes of starting afresh in a new school, but the consequences of the social faux pas she …Read more »

[Review] Complex Age

September 29, 2016

Che Gilson

Twenty-six-year-old Nagisa Kataura worries that she’s aging out of her hobby as a cosplayer. She spends all the money from her temp job on her obsession, an anime called Magical Riding Hood Ururu. At first Nagisa comes off as one of those elitist cosplay snobs …Read more »

[Review] Breaking the 10

September 14, 2016

Shaenon K. Garrity

Sean Michael Wilson is a Scottish writer who specializes in collaborations with Japanese manga artists. I’ve enjoyed many of his books, going back to The Japanese Drawing Room, an adaptation of a Victorian travel journal. But his latest work, Breaking the 10, with art by …Read more »

[Review] Monster Hunter: Flash Hunter

September 14, 2016

Norbert Daniels Jr.

Monster Hunter: Flash Hunter does a good job of making its story accessible to readers with no background in the Monster Hunter video game franchise. Understanding the story doesn’t require any prior knowledge of the series and the jargon is kept to a minimum. As …Read more »

[Review] Corpse Party: Blood Covered

September 13, 2016

Jason Bradley Thompson

On a dark and stormy night, eight students and a teacher sit in an empty classroom at Kisaragi High School, telling ghost stories. Their tales soon turn to Kisaragi itself, built on the site of another school, Tenjin Elementary, that was supposedly the scene of …Read more »

[Review] Not Lives

September 11, 2016

Che Gilson

Mikami Shigeru not only plays video games to win, he’s also a designer. He’s programmed and sold a number of casual games, but he’s looking for the ultimate game experience, and he hopes someday to create that ultimate experience himself. That is until he finds …Read more »

[Review] Battle Rabbits

September 10, 2016

Evan Minto

In Japan, they don’t have the “man on the moon”—in its place is the “moon rabbit” or tsuki no usagi, best known by anime fans for inspiring the punny name of Usagi Tsukino in Sailor Moon . In Battle Rabbits , a manga by story/artist duo …Read more »

[Review] Servant x Service

September 8, 2016

Jason Bradley Thompson

“Be ready to work yourselves to the bone as the public’s dogs!!” That’s how new employees are greeted at the Health & Welfare Department, where patient bureaucrats sit behind windows answering the public’s questions and telling people how to fill out forms. Into this public …Read more »

[Review] Goodnight Punpun

September 7, 2016

Joseph Luster

Everyone has some kind of youthful awkwardness plodding behind them like a fading shadow. Punpun Punyama is practically the physical embodiment of this in Inio Asano’s Goodnight Punpun . He has to deal with his parents’ rocky, abusive relationship on top of all the woes …Read more »

Kuma Miko Manga Lives a Peaceful Life with Bears

September 7, 2016

Danica Davidson

It’s not unusual to see shrine maidens in manga, but Kuma Miko has a special kind of shrine maiden: one who hangs out with a talking bear. In fact, all the bears in 14-year-old Machi’s rural village are able to talk. They trace this back …Read more »

The Manga Guide to Regression Analytics

September 4, 2016

Norbert Daniels Jr.

© 2016 Shin Takahashi and TREND-PRO Co, Ltd. The Manga Guide to Regression Analytics is exactly what the title says: it’s a textbook on mathematics that teaches the reader through manga. As much as that sounds like a joke, it actually is successful at its …Read more »

Manga Reviews

[Review] The Asterisk War

[Review] The Asterisk War

[Review] The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime