Category: Manga

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Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Vol. 1

Written by Eiji Otsuka
Art by Housui Yamazaki
216 pages, black and white
Published by Dark Horse

One of the easiest way to get a new reader’s attention is with a good title for your comic, or a good cover design. In the case of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service Vol. 1, both are provided. From the schematic design on how all the pieces of a body fit together, to the brown paper wrapper style cover paper stock, to the different colored inks to make up the logo, this is a book whose appeal has been carefully thought out and executed by all involved parties. And if the outside is that good, well, it’s hard to imagine that the inside won’t be as well.

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Kurogane Vol. 1

By Kei Toume
224 pages, black and white
Published by Del Rey

A young man turned into a cyborg in order to save his life after being torn to pieces. A talking sword that speaks for its new, silent master. Is this the future? No, Kurogane is set in Japan’s feudal period. But does this merging of cyberpunk and samurai era adventure mesh together? Or is it a combination of flesh and metal that simply can’t fuse together?

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Hikaru no Go Vol. 7

Written by Yumi Hotta
Art by Takeshi Obata
216 pages, black and white
Published by Viz

One of the biggest problems with what I’ve started calling in my head “tournament comics” is that I can never read them for too long. Essentially, it’s a comic where the protagonist is going through a series of competitions, be it soccer, tennis, go, cooking, or even something like fighting ninjas or evil demons. Sooner or later, the comic always seems to fall into a rut where it’s yet another bad guy with an even bigger and tougher finishing move and our hero has to fight them against all odds and figure out just how to win yet again. That’s why when reading the latest volume of Hikaru no Go I found myself genuinely excited, because I think it’s one of the few books with this basic set-up that successfully avoids falling into that trap.

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Q-Ko-Chan: The Earth Invader Girl Vol. 1

By Ueda Hajime
208 pages, black and white
Published by Del Rey

What grabbed me immediately about Q-Ko-Chan wasn’t that it was another story about a boy discovering an alien in his backyard. Rather, it was that Q-Ko-Chan is anything but “another story” about a boy and an alien. Reading this book is a perfect reminder that you can take the most standard story idea in the world and still make it exciting and different in the art of the telling.

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Basilisk Vol. 1

By Masaki Segawa
Based on a story by Futaro Yamada
208 pages, black and white
Published by Del Rey

Sometimes you hear about how great a series is and all the hype was true; it really is as sharp and interesting as everyone talked it up to be. And then, other times, it not only can’t live up to the hype, it just doesn’t work. Of course, you never really seem to know until it’s almost too late. That, I suppose, is half of the fun.

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Antique Bakery Vol. 1

By Fumi Yoshinaga
200 pages, black and white
Published by Digital Manga Publishing

Some books just defy any neat sort of categorization. That’s definitely the case with the first volume of Fumi Toshinaga’s Antique Bakery. Is it a romance? A workplace comedy? A series of mysteries? Well… apparently, the answer is that it’s whatever Toshinaga feels like at that given moment. And oddly enough, once it gives up trying to fall into a single style or category, that’s when it begins to shine.

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Eden Vol. 1

By Hiroki Endo
216 pages, black and white
Published by Dark Horse

Science-fiction stories about a future apocalypse are a dime a dozen. Like so many stories, the secret isn’t necessarily what the story’s about, but rather how it’s told. That for me was the case with Hiroki Endo’s Eden; while Endo’s basic ideas were good in their own right, it’s the storytelling that ultimately sold me.

Enoah and Hannah are living in Eden, but the rest of the world is anything but. A virus has ravaged the planet, killing most of its population. Now the only survivors are either those who were born with immunity to the virus, or people who have upgraded their bodies into cybernetic forms. When the outside world invades Eden, though, Enoah is confronted with the past of both his and Hannah’s protector, as well as that of his long deceased family. Can one spot of paradise still remain even as the rest of the world continues to crumble?

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Monster Vol. 1

By Naoki Urasawa
224 pages, black and white
Published by Viz

Everyone knows the old theoretical philosophical question by now. “If you could travel back and time and kill Adolf Hitler as a child, would you?” I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly what inspired Naoki Urasawa’s Monster. The one big difference? I think Monster‘s twist on that old chestnut is the far more interesting scenario.

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Death Note Vol. 1-3

Written by Tsugumi Ohba
Art by Takeshi Obata
200 pages, black and white
Published by Viz

There are always series that you hear about, ones spoken with a sort of reverence. “Oh, you’ve got to read this,” is a familiar opening phrase. Sometimes you’ll even get the, “If you don’t like this, I’ll give you your money back,” gambit. After a while, it’s easy to get skeptical about such claims. Tastes don’t always intersect, after all, and even your most trusted friends can still lead you astray. In the case of Death Note, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that all of those praising it (before the series was even officially released) were wrong… because it was actually better than they’d claimed.

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Sugar Sugar Rune Vol. 1

By Moyoco Anno
224 pages, black and white
Published by Del Rey

By now, it’s hard to have missed out on the pop culture juggernaut that was Pokemon. Even if you were fortunate enough to never see an episode of the show, or the card game, or the multiple video games, or even the movies, you’re probably still familiar with the basic concept of kids trying to collect all the different Pokemon creatures. In retrospect, I think that’s what instantly caught my attention with Sugar Sugar Rune; it took the “gotta catch em all!” attitude and gave it an interesting twist… instead it’s about two girls competing to collect boys’s hearts.

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