It’s been three years since the previous volume, but one of the many charms of Yotsuba&! volume 15 is that it feels timeless. Yotsuba’s wonder at the world, her interest in creating and exploring and learning new things, is soul-restoring. I want to feel like that, and for the amount of time I’m reading this, I do. There’s one chapter where she and friends take a trip to the shore to collect rocks, and it’s all about riding in the […]

This is around when a manga series has to find something beyond the original concept with which to continue. Monster and the Beast volume 3 by Renji accomplishes this by separating the two leads and promising more information to come about one’s past. At the end of volume 2, Liam (the man on the run) has gotten on a ship to another continent, accidentally leaving Caro (the shy demon who has feelings for Liam) behind. That’s quite the cliffhanger. Liam […]

The premise of Monster and the Beast is a bit demented, but in ways that are right up my alley. It’s a man/monster love story where opposites (very opposite) attract. Cavo, a lonely forest monster, rescues an older man, described as “slightly eccentric” (an immense understatement), from being raped by his traveling companions and guides. Liam, the man, turns out to have quite the appetite, hitting on the monster first thing and objecting to the idea of having sex with […]

The thing about Yotsuba&! is that I could pretty much repeat the first half of my review of the previous volume, because the series is that consistently good. It’s still the reading equivalent of really well done comfort food. There’s still a number of years between releases. It’s still about a child’s imagination mixed with humor and good feeling and family and the occasional moment of poignancy. The main difference with Yotsuba&! volume 14 comes in the activities Yotsuba and […]

Laid-Back Camp volume 5 came out last year, but given that the theme of the book is New Year’s, it seemed a good time to catch up with the series. I can’t believe it’s March already; I’m still thinking we’re barely into 2020. There are many holiday-connected traditions in this volume: One of the girls has a part-time job delivering New Year’s cards. Most of the camping club members are working over the winter break in order to make money […]

Whenever Our Eyes Meet: A Women’s Love Anthology is a wonderful read if you’re interested in yuri manga or simply sweet romance. The characters are working women, not schoolgirls, which makes this a pleasant addition to the types of stories that are being translated. Each short story is by a different creator. Most are about how a couple meets, including: a one-night stand turns up at work the next day as the new employee former co-workers meeting again by chance […]

Fruits Basket Another is the best most recent example I’ve seen of the benefits of brand extension. I read a bunch of the original Fruits Basket series, although I quit long before the end. It’s considered a modern classic, though, with lots of awareness, so Yen Press republished it in the US beginning a few years back, along with this sequel series by the same author, Natsuki Takaya. I thought Fruits Basket Another might make a good starting point for […]

I had a hard time following Horimiya volume 12, simply due to its place in the series. This is a long-running relationship manga, which means by this point, we’ve left the core couple as focus a while back and spun out into various friends and schoolmates as continuing characters. We’ve caught up with Japan in terms of releases — there isn’t a backlog — so the previous volume came out almost six months ago. Combined, that means a whole lot […]