My Neighbor Seki is the kind of series it’s difficult to continue talking about, because it’s full of stand-alone chapters, all of the same consistent high quality. As I’ve previously explained, Seki comes up with all kinds of distractions during class, which drives Rumi crazy, since she’s trying to pay attention, but Seki’s activities are so much more interesting. In volume 3, they’re so wide-ranging: Digging for fossils in his desktop Snow sculpture — with an adorable bunny! A variety […]

What Did You Eat Yesterday? volume 9 may be the last volume of the series by Fumi Yoshinaga we see for a while. There’s no volume 10 listed yet at Amazon, and sales reportedly haven’t been great. That’s a shame, since this is a wonderful manga, blending gorgeous art, well-realized characters, realistic interpersonal challenges, and a deep dive into a particular skill. In this case, it’s cooking, with Shiro making tasty-sounding everyday meals to feed himself and his boyfriend Kenji, […]

The more time I spend with Shiro and Kenji, the couple behind What Did You Eat Yesterday?, the more I like them and their stories. Particularly now that they’re celebrating Christmas with another couple in volume 7. Mr. Kohinata makes sense for them to get along with, since he’s relatively well-behaved and shares some of the same interests, but Gilbert seems to exist just to make smarmy cracks about how they’re not “being gay” right. (He was the one criticizing […]

My hopes for this series raised in volume 1 weren’t completely fulfilled. Instead of thoroughly exploring the nature of computer crimes and behavior online, Prophecy volume 3 follows up on the manhunt started in volume 2, focusing on more human motivations of loyalty. It’s certainly a more dramatic way for Tetsuya Tsutsui to wrap up the series in this book, and it makes for a tighter character arc, but I liked the themes of how growing computerization are affecting society […]

My Neighbor Seki volume 2 is just as cute and funny as the first volume by Takuma Morishige, and that consistency is a good thing. Yokoi is still distracted by the weirdly creative things Seki does with, on, and to his desk during class, but this installment expands their world a bit with the introduction of a new character and different settings. The first chapter features a “lucky laugher” game. I’m not familiar with this piece of Japanese culture, but […]

My Neighbor Seki volume 1 by Takuma Morishige is something truly unusual — a refreshing read that celebrates curiosity, creativity, and imagination. It’s the kind of series that would never be created over here, but not because of weird cultural reasons or fan service or any of the other manga stereotypes. I can’t see someone here putting out a successful series about subtle battles with authority, about doing your own thing on your own. In this country, it would be […]

Clearly, Prophecy is not a series you can dip in and out of. I hadn’t paid enough attention to the specifics of some of the disaffected men introduced in volume 1, so I found myself wanting to reread both books as soon as I finished this new volume. However, there’s also a change in focus that means that much of volume 2 deals with different situations and characters than the first book did. The first scene, for example, effectively portrays […]

It’s so entertaining reading more about Kenji and Shiro’s relationship as it continues, with key moments involving food. Meals are such important family moments, and I love the emphasis on preparation and sharing of home cooking as a carrier of deep feeling, as well as the conversations the two men have over dinner. My favorite scene of the entire series so far occurs in this volume, as the two spend time with another gay couple at a pickup baseball game. […]