Sawako’s classmates are scared of her because she looks like a character from a horror movie, with her long black hair, heavy bangs, and pale skin. (Me, I thought she looked like a typical Japanese manga schoolgirl.) She copes by doing every good deed she can and volunteering for tasks at school, so that people will like her for being helpful. She’s making the best of her loneliness. If she can’t be liked, at least she can make herself useful. […]

From the first color page of this volume, I’ve never seen pink look so menacing. The big-nosed Professor Ochanomizu is trying to spend his day off from the Ministry of Science at a park, but his mandatory security detail robot interrupts the respite. The professor finds a discarded dog-bot and tries to repair it, but the parts are too old and can’t be found anymore. This first chapter is astounding in its achievement. The reader thinks they know what’s going […]

A new volume of Oishinbo is an event at my house. I love tucking into the large, thick volume after making sure I’ve had a satisfying dinner — otherwise, I’d spend the whole time reading with my tummy rumbling. I expected Oishinbo a la Carte 4: Fish, Sushi & Sashimi by Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki to cover the cuisine most identified with Japan in the Western world: sushi. The subjects of previous books, Sake and Ramen, are familiar to […]