Author Archives: dakazu

H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space

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H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space

A manga adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror story where an old meteorite starts changing everything nearby on a hillside in Massachusetts.

This is the 2nd Lovecraft adaptation by Gou Tanabe I’ve read and I continue to really love his artwork and creature designs. I really enjoyed the pacing of this story and was glad they spread out the creeping terror through the whole 6 chapters.

You can buy English editions of Tanabe’s adaptation of The Hound and At the Mountains of Madness right now. Hopefully sales will be good enough that they’ll put out more of these.

~dakazu

Runway de Waratte

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Runway de Waratte

A manga about a girl too short to model and her aspiring fashion designer classmate who work to achieve their dreams for making it in the fashion industry.

A decent manga that’s currently running in Weekly Shonen Magazine. Fashion isn’t a typical subject, especially in shonen manga so I’m interested to see how it will fair. Luckily Kotoba Inoya’s artwork shines with the different designs of clothing.

I will say I end up laughing every new chapter because Inoya loves to create drama by making the protagonists react to some awful circumstance or put down with a shocked and despondent expression, usually every week.

I’m surprisingly into this series so far.

~dakazu

LV999 no Murabito

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LV999 no Murabito

A manga about a villager in a fantasy RPG world that’s figured out a way to reach the maximum level who plans on destroying his world where monsters and humans constantly fight.

This is based on a light novel so you get a familiar gimmick of adding an extreme element to established RPG tropes. In this case it’s an over powered villager. I didn’t find anything about this series that interesting but I did like how the villager is neither on the side of the human heroes or the demons. I might keep checking it out to see the reveal of the big baddie but not gonna get invested enough because it might be lame.

~dakazu

Kengan Ashura

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Kengan Ashura

A manga about a martial artist Tokima Ouma who teams up with a weakling salary man to participate in a special tournament where corporations pick fighters to represent them.

Fairly decent fighting manga. Reminds me a lot of Baki where all other fighters have fun personalities and different martial arts styles. Artist Daromeon is very good.

There’s an anime coming in 2019 but it’s gonna be 3D and it doesn’t look promising.

~dakazu

Magical Girl Ore

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Magical Girl Ore

A manga about an aspiring idol who becomes a magical girl to protect her loved ones except that means transforming into a muscular man who beats enemies to death with blunt objects.

Yeah, I loved this and thought it was hilarious. I especially loved how the sidekick mascot was a yakuza looking dude and Saki’s relationship with her best friend and fellow idol Sakuyo. The recent anime was also great with it’s dual cast for both the female/male versions of the characters.

Highly recommended for a good laugh.

~dakazu

Kekkai Sensen – Back 2 Back

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Kekkai Sensen – Back 2 Back

Sequel series to Blood Blockade Battlefront.

It’s strange because this is a rare case where I will always prefer the anime over the original manga. After suffering through Yasuhiro Nightow’s horrendous panel layouts in Trigun Maximum that I couldn’t care less about Blood Blockade Battlefront when it started. After the anime came out I revisited the series and found that he had toned down his weird angled perspectives enough so I could finish it and get to his newer stuff with this series.

I highly suggest you check out the anime along with some classic Trigun for a good time.

~dakazu

214 – Ode to Kirihito part 1

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214 – Ode to Kirihito part 1

On this episode we present part 1 of our Retrospective review of Ode to Kirihito! We explore the themes of discrimination in this mature series from Osamu Tezuka!

Continue reading →

Mushi to Uta

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Mushi to Uta

An anthology collection of Land of the Lustrous manga artist Haruko Ichikawa’s works.

The themes here were human relationships with bizarre alien-like creatures. I particularly enjoyed her story about a lightning bolt that takes the shape of a human so it can get close to boy it saves from a falling airplane.

It was surprisingly filled with lots of human emotions. I liked it.

~dakazu

Jank Runk Family

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Jank Runk Family

A manga in a post-apocalyptic world where gangs fight over resources to survive.

Apparently this is spin-off of another manga called Oren’s that artist Hiroshi Takahashi wrote. I’ve read several of Takahashi’s works and they’re all about the manly world of street gangs and delinquents who fight to be the best. He usually focuses on themes of rivalries and male bonding through fighting and this one is very similar except the world setting is post-apocalyptic. To be honest, Takahashi’s usual aesthetics didn’t really match the world setting and I wouldn’t recommend this.

I’d recommend reading Crows or Worst which are much more entertaining.

~dakazu

6000

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6000

A horror manga about an haunted underwater facility 6000 meters below sea level and the humans who become trapped inside.

A decent horror manga that’s actually a bit scary. Combines Lord of the Flies style group insanity along with cosmic horror right out of H.P. Lovecraft. Nokuto Koike’s art definitely creeped me out. I also appreciated it’s shorter length.

I’d recommend this for horror fans.

~dakazu