Solanin has little in common with how many readers think about manga. It’s a self-contained volume, slightly larger in size than the usual manga digest and much thicker. More important is the content, a story about young adults seeking to find themselves and their directions in life. If the book was described to me, I would be more likely to guess Top Shelf or Drawn & Quarterly instead of Viz. I welcome seeing this diversity from them as part of […]

When I first heard about this heavy metal parody by Kiminori Wakasugi, I was sure I’d be too grossed out to make it through. The premise, you see, is that nerdy virgin Soichi becomes the vile, repulsive, hateful, misogynist lead singer of a death metal band on stage, but he really wants to sing sappy pop songs. The comedy comes from the contrast between Soichi’s incompetence at so much of life and his made-up posturing on-stage. I did have to […]