Just when I started feeling that reviews of Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma could become almost mechanical — what’s the special ingredient for the challenge? what’s the competition hook? what crazy dish does Soma come up with to win, or at least demonstrate his strength of character? — volume 6 comes along to shake things up. The next big competition for the cooking school kids is the Fall Classic. Before summer break, those who have been selected to participate are […]

The food competition series continues with the results of the breakfast cook-off from volume 4. The students, after being up all night, have to successfully serve 200 plates of an egg dish to breakfast buffet customers. Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma volume 5 once again provides cooking education along with its challenges. To satisfy a customer, a chef has to take into account how a dish will be served in order to keep it attractive in appearance and consistent in […]

Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma volume 4 resolves the danger nice country girl Megumi faced in the third volume. Bad boy protagonist Soma has challenged the judge/instructor who threatened to expel her to a cook-off. For some reason, the former graduate judge is stubbornly refusing to reward creativity or initiative until overruled by his boss and forced to participate in the contest. That raises the stakes, since if Soma can’t rescue Megumi, he’ll also be out of the prestigious school. […]

Meteor Prince volume 2 concludes the short series by Meca Tanaka. The alien prince, Io, has in this volume developed an only-in-manga tic — whenever he touches his crush, Hako, he’s struck by lightning. That’s in keeping with the goofy humor of this story, but it’s also a convenient plot twist to keep things from getting too physical too quickly. Hako is in love for the first time, and an inability to touch means the story says romantic, not salacious. […]

As portrayed by Meca Tanaka, Meteor Prince is silly comedy, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Hako is the Queen of Bad Luck, known for having things fall on her. A naked guy falls out of the sky and says he’s an interstellar prince and she should be his queen. They’re made to mate with each other, soul mates according to his culture. She refuses, saying humans need to be in love first, so Io hangs around to learn what […]

Monster originally ran from 1994-2001 in Japan, and Viz serialized it in English from 2006-2008. Those volumes, out of print, have been in demand for two reasons. First, author Naoki Urasawa is now better known in the US, winning a couple of Eisner Awards for 20th Century Boys and gathering a great deal of critical praise for Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka. Plus, Monster may become an HBO TV series. So Viz has done the smart thing. They’re reprinting Monster in […]

Chiwa has been attacked recently by someone unknown. It could be someone from her husband’s family company who wants to get rid of him and take control. It could be his ex-girlfriend, president of a rival company. Either way, it provides some important drama to give this series by Maki Enjoji, which has been spinning wheels for a while, a jump start. It also shows how Chiwa is different from his previous entanglements — Hokuto cares about what happens to […]

I continue to adore this cute and happy series by Kazune Kawahara and Aruko. Even when events become exaggerated — as here, where the young couple go picnicking and end up trapped in the wilderness after falling off a cliff — the love between gorilla-ish Takeo and fairy-ish Yamato is inspiring and heart-warming. Their innocence is adorable. Yamato’s friends assume that the two have lied to their parents so they can spend the night together, but the sincere young couple […]