I haven’t read a Sgt. Frog book since 2006, when I gave up after volume 12. At that point, I’d grown tired of the series by Mine Yoshizaki, finding its comedy repetitive. Yet I was glad to get a chance to check in with it again, because I remember liking it in the early days, and with so much time passed, I was sure it’d be fresh again. After a pointless flashback about super-rich Momoka comes the kinds of stories […]

When I’m feeling out of sorts, nothing calms like a new volume of Aria by Kozue Amano. It’s the manga equivalent of a hot cup of tea and a sit-down, a lovely mediation on appreciating the quieter aspects of life. The series had some unexpected delays, but that means it’s timely — in this volume, Akari, the apprentice gondolier (undine), is beginning her second autumn on the water planet, just as fall has firmly fallen here in the U.S. The […]

At this point, I’m reading this series out of nostalgia, since it’s the oldest manga series I’m collecting that’s still running. It started in 2003, when the first three books by Kim Kang Won came out, with volume 4 following four years later, and then after another two years, here we are with volume 5. Goodness knows that the story isn’t worth six years of patience. The events are stereotypical soap opera, and the characters are types instead of three-dimensional. […]

It’s here! It’s here! The conclusion to the Kat & Mouse mystery started two years ago by Alex de Campi and Federica Manfredi! When we left our intrepid heroines, they were at the winter dance, where Chloe, the school princess, was wearing her mother’s diamond necklace without permission. When it was stolen, Chloe turned to Mouse and Kat for help, even though Kat had just been humiliated for wearing Chloe’s dress from last year. Finding the thief will mean catching […]

I was surprised to receive a copy of Bizenghast volume 6, since I’d thought Tokyopop had ended all of their OEL manga print plans. (OEL manga are comics created by non-Japanese creators in the English language but drawn in a manga style. I’m ignoring Princess Ai, of course, since it’s co-created by Stuart Levy, CEO of Tokyopop, so it gets special treatment.) Even though I’ve never read earlier volumes in the series, I figured the longevity deserved recognition, so I’d […]

My expectations, given that this was a spin-off tie-in, were low enough that I was pleasantly surprised to get a likable character and reasonably enjoyable story in CSI: Intern at Your Own Risk (story by Sekou Hamilton and art by Steven Cummings). Kiyomi is a student optimistically trying to cope with how badly the economy is treating her single father — the standard plucky manga schoolgirl type, in other words, who’s about to be given the opportunity to show how […]

Misaki is an attending a former all-boys’ school that’s now co-ed but still mostly male. She’s president of the student council and something of a disciplinarian when it comes to school rules. She also works in a maid cafe after school. Popular boy Takumi has plenty of girls in love with him. He finds out about Misaki’s maid job secret but surprisingly, keeps this juicy gossip to himself, which confuses her. There’s a lot you have to accept to enjoy […]