The Undying Butterflies is the latest volume, the seventeenth, in the recommended Kindaichi Case Files mystery manga series. It opens with a day at the beach for Kindaichi, Miyuki, and Reika, a young singer who’s previously appeared in the volumes Death TV and Playing the Fool. The sleuth finds himself juggling time alone with the two young women in a sequence that could have appeared in an Archie comic, in which the authors do a good job combining tenderness and […]

Now that the series by Moyoco Anno is winding down, things are happening rapidly again. Volume nine opens with Shigeta getting the news that Takahashi is getting married. Fuku expects her to be shocked, but Shigeta is the calmest I’ve ever seen her in this series. Takahashi’s faux-fiancee is the freaky one here. She hears “congratulations” and thinks “they’re plotting against me.” She refuses to leave, even when Takahashi tries to break up their non-existent relationship. Artistically, there’s a lot […]

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about this series by Moyoco Anno, last covering volume two last month. I admit, the intervening books didn’t grab me as much as the first couple did, but I still want to find out if man-crazed Shigeta ever calms down and finds happiness. Volume eight opens with a recap of her motivations in an amusing visual parody of the samurai genre. She’s mid-20s, she wants true love but doesn’t know what it is, […]