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Review: Harukana Receive v. 1-3, by Nyoijizai
A few months ago, I stumbled across the Otaku USA review of Harukana Receive, a new-ish sports manga from Seven Seas. The comic attracted some early attention and garnered a 12-episode anime adaptation in 2018. Six volumes are currently on the Seven Seas publishing schedule through 2020, and the fourth volume was just released last […]
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Review: Witch Hat Atelier v.1 by Kamome Shirahama
Comics are magic, aren’t they? That’s less of a question, and more of a realization; Comics have a profound power over those who read them, shaping their mental process, causing delight, and dread, wonder, and horror. I’ve devoted a lot of my life to the magic of comics, and I’m grateful for that. Art-making calls […]
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Review: Saint Young Men #1 by Hikaru Nakamura
It’s not often that I review digital-only comics, but I’ll make a concession for Saint Young Men #1, a long-running slice of life comic from Kodansha Comics. This book is officially available to purchase in English as of yesterday, but has been running in Kodansha’s anthology Morning 2 since 2006. This is the works’ first […]
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Review: Gleipnir vol. 1, by Sun Takeda
Let’s be blunt and call it like it is; a lot of the manga published in the United States is really horny. And a lot of comics, especially shonen and seinen manga, are pretty violent. The combination can be particularly egregious at times; such is the case with Gleipnir, a furiously horny comic about a […]
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Review: An Invitation from a Crab by panpanya
An Invitation from a Crab is a recent release from Denpa, a new manga publisher helmed by Ed Chavez. Chavez is well respected in the English-language manga market and has a reputation as a tastemaker from his time at Vertical Inc, another small manga publisher. Denpa has already made a name for itself through its […]
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Review: Otherworldly Izakaya Nobu #1
IJapanese pop culture has been obsessed with a type of storytelling called isekai over the last few years, and it’s become a pervasive part of the manga landscape. The word isekai (異世界, lit. ‘different world’) has come to represent a wide swath of fiction with escape as their central theme. These are transportation or reincarnation […]
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Review: Ran and the Gray World vol. 1 by Aki Irie
The first volume of Ran and the Gray World was one of the first Japanese language books I ever purchased. It’s a series that has long held my fascination; the whimsical setting piqued my interest, its use of magic so completely different from other manga in the fantasy genre. And importantly, the cover is beautiful, […]
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Review: Giant Spider & Me, Vol. 1-2, by Kikori Morino
I’m fascinated by Giant Spider & Me, a recent release from Seven Seas. It’s genuinely unfathomable to me how a book like this got greenlit, because it’s about as unfocused a premise as possible. Giant Spider & Me is a grab bag of concepts; it’s a post-apocalypse setting, a slice of life story, a cooking […]
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Quick Picks #11 – More Manga
Quick Picks is an occasionally written series of microreviews of books I’ve read over the past two weeks. This episode contains 3 manga microreviews.
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Review: Spirit Circle V 1-2 by Satoshi Mizukami
The writing here at Sequential State has been a bit sparse – apologies if you’ve been waiting for the latest update. I took a little time off over the last few weeks to decompress and get some reading in. I’ve been doing a lot of prose reading, and getting through some zines and library borrows […]
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Review: Unmagical Girl, vol. 1, written by Ryouichi Yokoyama and illustrated by Manmaru Uetsuki
I read a lot of manga, but I don’t tend to write about it – that’s a problem, and one of my goals for Sequential State in 2018 is to review more manga. I’ve been trying to catch up with some recent manga releases, and Unmagical Girl #1 caught my eye after seeing a quick […]
