Independent Opinions, News, and Reviews of Graphic Novels, Manga, and Comic Books
I loved the message in Embrace Your Size: My Own Body Positivity, but I wished it had gone further. Perhaps this is a difference between American and Japanese attitudes. Or perhaps I was just hoping for a different book than this was intended to be. Embrace Your Size is hara’s story of how she came to realize that she could still be interested in fashion and wear cute clothes while being larger-sized (which in Japan is a size bigger than […]
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With patience, sometimes we get what we wish for. I first encountered Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou in a pirated, scanlated online version back in 2009. I’d only been reading manga for a handful of years at that point, diving in as an escape from superheroes and maudlin autobio — it was give up comics, or find a new enthusiasm. Manga meant more genres, and books featuring young women, and more approaches to storytelling, such as this one. The series, a pastoral […]
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In Hitsuzi Yamada’s The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again, Today volume 5, the cat Yukichi meets Saku’s parents! Which is kind of appropriate, as he’s the perfect boyfriend, except for the whole being-a-human-sized-cat thing. It’s New Year’s, and the parents have pulled out the guilt stops to get Saku to come visit, when all she wanted was a quiet holiday at home. That means plenty of favorite plot points, from a road trip to meeting former classmates to a shrine […]
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Fandom works. By which I mean, if someone likes something a creator does, they’re a lot more likely to seek out that creator’s next thing. That’s the reason I tried Show-ha Shoten! Volume 1. It’s illustrated by Takeshi Obata, who’s probably best known in this country for drawing Death Note, but I better remember him from Bakuman and earlier, Hikaru no Go. Story is by Akinari Asakura, a novelist making his manga debut. These types of shonen manga series are […]
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In Yuu Toyota’s Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! volume 6, the psychic Adachi has told his boyfriend that he can read his mind. This is an important, adult decision, to be honest with his partner. The need to reveal his secret first arose in volume 4 and drove the conflict in volume 5. Of course, Adachi was concerned about how Kurosawa would react. However, it doesn’t turn out as Adachi feared. Instead, Kurosawa accepts […]
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The mystery concludes in Shima Shinya’s Lost Lad London volume 3. (I previously wrote about the first book and the second one.) This final volume begins with a fascinating chapter. Instead of showing the suspect Al and detective Ellis working on the case, we check in on the perspective of several supporting characters: Rosie, a female police officer; Safa, her co-worker, a woman of color who wears a headscarf; and the Asian couple who runs the Chinese restaurant where Al […]
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With this latest installment, What Did You Eat Yesterday? volume 19, the series by Fumi Yoshinaga remains my favorite manga. One of the strong reasons is that it’s so rare to see comic characters in late middle age going through challenges of daily life. Each chapter stands alone, and the focus of each chapter is how to make a reasonably priced meal using seasonal produce or tying into recent events, but the underlying conflicts involve such things as whether one […]
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Blue Box by Kouji Miura tries to refresh two common manga genres, the sports competition and the school romance, by putting them into the same book. Taiki plays badminton. He’s got a crush on the year-older Chinatsu, who’s on the girls’ basketball team. Her dedication and skills inspire him to vow that he will practice and work hard enough to make it to the national competition for his sport. Meanwhile, he’s thrown together with her in unusual circumstances, providing plenty […]
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