Fumi Yoshinaga is well-known in manga circles for her yaoi and yaoi-like titles. (Some are still arguing about what to call Antique Bakery, about a group of men who sell dessert, one of whom is gay.) Her more recently translated Ooku: The Inner Chambers, again featuring a society of men, was on many best-of-2009 lists. She’s done some creative female character studies before, especially in Flower of Life volume 3 and volume 4, but I’ve never seen her cover mostly […]

It’s always fun dipping back into the various mysteries solved by the six-year-old-who-is-really-a-15-year-old — but I still wish that the books were divided up differently. This volume has two chapters finishing up the case from the last book; a four-part complete story; another three-chapter quandary; and then two chapters beginning a new puzzle. To find out what happens there, with a teacher setting a game for her students, I guess I’ll need to get the next book in March. Once […]

Review by Ed Sizemore The Kana storyline from volume 5 continues. Britney, one of the regulars at the restaurant where Kana works, has witnessed a murder and is being sought by the police and hunted down by the killer. Kana makes arrangements for Britney to get out of town and to stay with her grandmother. However, things get complicated fast as it turns out that Britney has stumbled upon something much bigger. Volume 6 also introduces us to Kakuta, a […]

Haruna and Yoh are on their first overnight trip together in High School Debut volume 12. Although Haruna isn’t sure she’s ready for their relationship to go further physically, she’s psyched herself into thinking that she owes it to Yoh. But she doesn’t know what he’s thinking, so she’s jumping to conclusions based on what every boy must want. Plus, she’s freaking out simply seeing him half-naked in a swimsuit. It’s clear that she is not at all ready for […]

I’m very sorry to hear that this is the last volume in the series that Viz will be translating and publishing in the US. Oishinbo was one of my best manga of 2009, and each volume is better than the last. Which would make Izakaya: Pub Food the best yet, or at least the most diverse, and a great note to end on. Izakaya, according to this volume, are bars that serve, along with the alcohol, food that goes well […]

Yuki Yoshihara’s Butterflies, Flowers has a bizarre approach to male/female politics with a twisted take on relationships, but readers may relate to the characters’ confusion and control-swapping. Choko Kuze used to be a rich daughter, but her family went bankrupt. Now she’s an office lady for a company run by her former beloved servant. The tables are turned, as he trains her personally and harshly to be his perfect executive assistant. She’s cheerful and works hard but isn’t particularly talented […]

I thought the Sushi volume would be the most authentically Japanese, or maybe the Sake book, but no. It’s The Joy of Rice that sums up the Oishinbo series and its unapologetic championing of Japanese cuisine. The first chapter of the book is an early episode from the long-running series that establishes key themes: Yamaoka, the lead researcher for the Ultimate Menu project, is a jerk to co-workers but really knows his food. Fancy dishes are only good if they […]

After enjoying Solanin, I was curious about Inio Asano’s next translated work. The two-volume What a Wonderful World! is a set of short stories created earlier. Like Solanin, the characters here are urban young adults unsure of their direction or place in life. Unlike that longer work, I found them annoying here when I didn’t before. Maybe it was because the shorter lengths meant less time to get to know them as people, so they become more defined by their […]