Subtitled “Meiji Swordsman Romantic Story”, Rurouni Kenshin is a fighting manga set during the 1860s (the Meiji Era). It’s against the law to carry a sword, but the title character, a former assassin who’s become a wanderer, carries a reversed blade that can’t hurt anyone. He encounters Kaoru, a woman trying to maintain the reputation of her dead father’s fighting school in the face of a murderer damaging their name. After he helps her keep ownership of the school, he […]

As we learned in the first volume, Ranma Saotome, while undergoing martial arts training with his father, fell into a magical hot spring. Now, whenever he gets wet, he turns into a girl (because the spring was cursed when a young girl drowned in it). To change back, he has to be dowsed with hot water. Conveniently, there were hundreds of these cursed springs. Ranma’s father, for example, turns into a panda when he gets wet. It’s a flexible gimmick […]

Rich, spoiled Keiko wants to be recognized as the prettiest girl in school, but she can’t compare with Meg’s magically granted beauty. While the boys are praising Meg as an angel and a goddess, Keiko fades into the background, a fate she refuses to accept. Her resulting plots are comical in their fussiness. For example, to get revenge on boys who ignore her, she has a crew that pours mud and then drives by in a car to splash them […]

When he was nine years old, Megumi rescued someone he thought was a wizard, and in return, he was granted one wish. Unfortunately, Meg’s wish to be the world’s manliest man was misunderstood (perhaps on purpose), and he instead became the world’s womanliest woman. Now 16 years old, he’s gorgeous, only he’s also as aggressive as ever. This series is perhaps the world’s worst example of “be careful what you wish for”. His best friend Miki keeps telling him to […]

I’m a little lost. At the end of volume two, the kids Conan was forced to go to school with were threatening to investigate his deserted home. (I say “forced” because even though he has the mind of an almost-adult, he looks like a six-year-old.) I took this to be a hint toward the next storyline; apparently, it was just a joke, since volume three opens with Conan, Rachel, and her dad on a cruise ship, returning from an island […]

Jimmy Kudo, high school junior, idolizes Sherlock Holmes and solves mysteries for the police department in Case Closed, a long-running manga action comedy by Gosho Aoyama. After trailing bad guys to a mysterious meeting, he’s knocked out and poisoned. Although the villains meant to kill him, they instead turn him physically into a six-year-old boy. He winds up working with an incompetent private investigator, the father of the girl he has a crush on, while a mad scientist tries to […]

Tsukushi is a middle-class student at an ultra-elite high school in Boys Over Flowers. Her schoolmates are dropped off by chauffeurs and carry designer bags costing thousands of dollars, while she works part-time just for spending money. The school is run by a clique of cool, rich, and handsome students who ostracize anyone who displeases them. Tsukushi’s innocently good heart manifests through her huge, round eyes (resembling out-sized marbles) and her braided pigtails. She feels everything intently, allowing the inequities […]

This competition manga features a student learning to play go and appreciate all the tradition that comes with it. Although firmly within the expectations of its genre, the characters are so likable, the art so well-done, and the competition so compelling that it’s an addictive read. Story is by Yumi Hotta and art by Takeshi Obata. Fujiwara-no-Sai was an instructor of the Emperor a thousand years ago until a rival Go teacher’s cheating drove him to suicide. Sai’s yearnings to […]