Immediately after finishing Top Shelf's upcoming AX manga anthology, I started to wonder if the sense of discovery that's applicable here is alive and well in the general manga community today. It may be a little short-sighted to assume off the bat that it's not, …Read more »
In the commentary on Disc One of El Cazador de la Bruja , the chief cast members and staffers that worked on the show describe the series (and I paraphrase) as “a buddy film.” Those words couldn’t have been more accurate… El Cazador de la …Read more »
Should anyone out there still find Capcom's Final Fight (1989) an unfamiliar flurry of fists from a bygone arcade era, they just might not be that into beat 'em ups. As much as I tend to prefer other entries in the genre—mostly, I realize now, …Read more »
Initial D has always managed to entertain to some degree in spite of the myriad ways it attempts to turn its audience off. Seriously, both the anime and manga practically challenge me to dislike them on a regular basis, yet I keep coming back no …Read more »
Just like Hollywood movies, anime comes in a variety of forms. Delving beyond the standard shonen, seinen, and shojo, there’s almost everything you can dream up. Buddy comedies, female empowerment, even teeny bopper fantasies all come to life in Japanese animated features. But sometimes the …Read more »
The setting of Dorohedoro is every bit as decrepit as the moniker of "The Hole" would lead one to believe. Picture slums that stretch as far as the eye can see and you've got a pretty good idea of the kind of picture mangaka Q …Read more »
The latest One Piece DVD collection has me practically dancin' on the ceiling like Lionel Richie, because the Alabasta arc finally comes to a close. For the record I really enjoyed Alabasta, but I also dug it when I read the manga and again when …Read more »
Twin Spica is the story of Asumi Kamogawa, a young girl in Tokyo who's spent most of her life looking toward the skies, and is just now entering a phase in her life where that aspiration can become something tangible. Thus her ambition is cast …Read more »
If I remember correctly, the original 2006 Vertical edition of Ode to Kirihito was my first true exposure to a dark, somewhat self-contained Osamu Tezuka tale. It also may have been the largest bulk volume of manga I consumed prior to Drawn & Quarterly's release …Read more »
I figured it's been a while since I've watched Neon Genesis Evangelion in its entirety, so going into Evangelion 1.11 would be kind of a fresh slate viewing, or at least a memory-jogging one. It turns out the former isn't actually possible, but it …Read more »
Long-time fans of Castlevania will be stricken with nostalgia the moment they start the first stage of Castlevania: The Adventure ReBirth . That has nothing to do with whether or not they're actually fans of the game on which this particular outing is based—a Game …Read more »
Before the latest volume of Black Jack is even a third of the way through, the good doctor fends off sharks with scalpels while adrift at sea with a critical patient. Does something as seemingly preposterous as this make me balk? Oddly enough, no. Instead, …Read more »
"From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-cross'd lovers, take their life.” – William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Act I My decision to take on the review of the boxed sets of Romeo X Juliet was a difficult one. When …Read more »
I was fairly blind to the work of Natsume Ono prior to Viz's unveiling of their Ikki line of manga, aside from some cursory knowledge of her series Ristorante Paradiso . My first real introduction was House of Five Leaves —a few chapters of which …Read more »
Viz's 2009 publication of Taiyo Matsumoto's GoGo Monster received a lot of love when the time came for year-end Best Of lists, and now this fashionably late reader knows precisely why. This is as good a comic as you're likely to find out there on …Read more »
Joseph Luster
Cody Bye
