It shouldn’t surprise me that I enjoyed the first volume more than this one. If you’re trying to build excitement, it’s a lot easier to keep introducing new twists and turns than to wrap them up in coherent fashion. Plus, there are a lot of years of war still to cover, although we do get quite the time jump on several occasions. I’m sure the experience would have been much different, and perhaps preferable, if I wasn’t reading all these […]

This third volume was a tad disappointing. After the excitement in the first two books of the series, establishing the situation of schoolgirls struggling for survival after a morbid bus crash, I expected to see more twists and revelations with a similar high level of emotional effect. However, Limit volume 3 feels as though the author, Keiko Suenobu, realized that there was potential in this concept to run a long while, so she started padding the storytelling and introducing more […]

My thanks to Alexander Hoffman for running a contest where I won this book and volume 2. It’s the kind of story I never would have tried otherwise, and I’m glad I got a chance to discover it without risk. It’s written and drawn by Keiko Suenobu. Limit, to describe it briefly and in reductionist fashion, is Lord of the Flies with Japanese schoolgirls. Konno is surviving her teen years by hanging out with the popular queen bee Sakura and […]

One of the most famous of Osamu Tezuka’s adult works is now back in print in an oversized hardcover with a new translation by Kumar Sivasubramanian. The story of three men named Adolf is introduced to us by a reporter, Sohei Toge, who covered the Berlin Olympics in 1936. (Message to Adolf was originally published in the 80s, which made his age more reasonable.) His brother is murdered there, and the body, taken away by officials, disappears. While investigating, Toge […]

After launching strongly, The Drops of God series appears to be faltering. The previous book released was Volume 4, taking us through the discovery of the second “apostle” of twelve amazing wines. The Drops of God: New World jumps ahead to where the two oenophiles are seeking the seventh bottle, because that quest takes them to the wines of the New World, the Americas and Australia. Reportedly, if this volume doesn’t do well, we won’t see any more in English, […]

I was curious to see this single-volume historical manga by Moyoco Anno after reading her Happy Mania series. (She’s also had Flowers and Bees translated over here.) Sakuran promised to be similar to Happy Mania in its portrayal of a strong-willed but messed-up woman, only this one had kimonos and a more explicit use of sex as a transaction. Kiyoha is a child slave at a brothel who eventually, out of stubbornness, rises to become a leading courtesan during the […]

There’s something to be said for consistency. In structure, style, and presentation, The Drops of God Book 3 is much the same as the first two books, so if you enjoyed those, you should find the same appeal here. However, story-wise… On the plus side, we get the first “Apostle” revealed, one of the 13 wines Shizuku must identify based on clues from his father’s will. On the negative side, in a storyline set up at the very end of […]

While the technical problems — balloon text collisions, computerized lettering inconsistent with the art, repetitive pages at the end/beginning of chapters (due to its original serialization) — continue from Volume 1, this second volume of The Drops of God improves on the first where it counts, in the story. The tales this time around have plenty of heart. Instead of focusing on dad’s insane will, a plot gimmick that isn’t even mentioned until over halfway through this book, wine genius […]