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Review: To The Abandoned Sacred Beasts, vol. 1, by Maybe There’s something intoxicating about dark fantasy. The most popular manga in the USA is Attack on Titan, a dark fantasy giant zombie title I haven’t kept up with (I did review the first volume a long time ago in another life, review forthcoming?). To The…
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Thoughts On The Nostalgia in Mag Hsu & Nao Emoto’s Forget Me Not
Kodansha USA has been publishing some titles that seem like a hybrid between shonen and shojo romance; Your Lie in April, which I reviewed last year, is up to seven volumes now, and a new release, Forget Me Not, is now up to its second volume with a third scheduled to be released in July.…
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Review: Real Account vol. 1, Written by Okushou, Illustrated by Shizumu Watanabe Hey there! Long time no see! March was a nice break from writing. I hope you are well. Kodansha Comics sent over a batch of their latest manga, and one of the books that immediately caught my attention is the first volume of…
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Review: Solanin by Asano Inio This week marks the release of one of the more highly-anticipated manga of the publishing year, A Girl on the Shore from Asano Inio. In 2010, I reviewed an earlier piece by him, Solanin, and I wanted to revisit that work before I wrote about his latest comic. Solanin is…
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Review: Unico, by Osamu Tezuka
Unico was one of the first books published through Digital Manga Publishing’s Tezuka Kickstarter program, and with its recent reprint from DMP in their Storm Fairy Kickstarter, I thought it would be reasonable to revisit a review of Unico I wrote in 2013. The book, as a print object, is one of DMP’s best to date; I’ve complained about…
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Manga is a tricky type of comic. There’s a higher barrier to entry due to the flipped pages, cultural cues that may not be easily understood or explained, and there’s a lot of chaff available on the market. It’s hard to know where to start. In this on and off again feature, I’ll be presenting…
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Review: Let’s Dance a Waltz Vol. 1 by Natsumi Ando This week is a week of manga reviews at Sequential State; the next on the pile is Natsumi Ando’s Let’s Dance a Waltz, a 3-volume shojo series originally published in Kodansha’s Nakayoshi manga anthology. Ando is known best in the United States for her titles…
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Review: Your Lie in April Vol. 1 by Naoshi Arakawa Kodansha USA has licensed a few “off the beaten path” comics in the past 12 months, and next week, one of those titles sees the light of day. Your Lie in April, a title from Monthly Shounen Magazine, is a music-based manga; the category doesn’t…
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Review: In Clothes Called Fat (with emphasis on comparison to Kyoko Okazaki’s Pink)
I wanted to take some time to discuss Moyoco Anno’s new comic In Clothes Called Fat late last year, and I’m finally getting around to it now. Recently, Katie Skelly wrote a thoughtful review of In Clothes Called Fat and compared it to Kyoko Okazaki’s Helter Skelter, a seminal josei manga of the 1990s. After having…
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Review: Monokuro Kinderbook In the early-to-mid 2000’s Kan Takahama was one of the key creators involved in the Nouvelle Manga movement that gathered Franco-Belgian and Japanese comics creators. The results of that movement have been published in part by Fanfare/Ponent Mon, and comics such as Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators as well as Sweet…
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DMP’s Kickstarter Issues, Continued: Feedback Loop
This is a continuation of a 3 part series I wrote on DMP’s latest Kickstarter project. DMP’s goal is to take in $589,000, and in return, publish 31 volumes of Tezuka manga before July 2015. I expressed concerns regarding the total price, the loss of value, and the relative lack of book quality. Check out…
