Author Archives: dakazu

KoLD8: King of the Living Dead

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KoLD8: King of the Living Dead

A manga about young survivor during a zombie apocalypse who gains the ability to command the living dead.

We’ve discussed this series on a previous episode.

This was serialized in Jump+ but ended abruptly without finishing the story. I suppose it couldn’t be helped because it was pretty mediocre by all standards so it was most likely canceled.

I enjoyed Pageratta‘s previous manga called Hinmin Choujin Kanenashi-kun but I was mostly just shocked how they decided to jump from a lighthearted comedy to the horror genre. Apparently there’s an epilogue that’s only in the final volume and I wouldn’t mind reading it just to see what happened.

~dakazu

Yuko Sae Tatakaeba

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Yuko Sae Tatakaeba

A comedy manga about a high school girl who gets recruited into a tournament between demons but doesn’t care to be involved despite her natural omnipotent abilities.

Great premise. I love how this series takes the shonen battle troupe from something like Zatch Bell! and turns it on it’s head. There’s such good odd couple comedy with the demon who wants to fight so badly and the dense girl who just wants to go to school. Even when rivals appear she defeats them handily but doesn’t finish them off because she thinks the tournament is a simple game. This is one of the few series I follow in Weekly Shonen Sunday and it’s gimmick hasn’t gotten old yet.

~dakazu

Shinotori

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Shinotori

A manga about a prisoner who escapes from a hijacked plane alongside a mysterious girl with wings into a world where a viral epidemic is transforming humans into cannibalistic bird monsters.

This is essentially a zombie manga except they’ve replaced zombies with birds. The artwork by Dr. Imu is fairly impressive and creative when it came to the various monster designs but the story felt really rote and predictable. It was pretty mediocre in my eyes and not really worth recommending.

~dakazu

O Maidens in Your Savage Season

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O Maidens in Your Savage Season

A manga about 5 high school girls of a literature club who become conscience about sex.

We discussed this on a recent episode.

This series is kind of a mixed bag for me. I like that it explores the youthful sexual awakening through the eyes of female protagonists. However a lot of these explorations lead to extremely dramatic moments, which the author Mari Okada is known for. I would’ve preferred if the series took a more thoughtful approach to sexual exploration like Scum’s Wish did, instead of using it to create drama for drama’s sake. I did think Nao Emoto‘s expressive artwork was impressive.

It’s available in English from Kodansha Comics.

~dakazu

Kuishinbo!

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Kuishinbo!

A manga about a salary man who’s large appetite leads him into the world of competitive eating.

I really love this series. I remember thinking how unique it was to cover competitive eating as a manga topic when I first read it years ago. Shigeru Tsuchiyama has made his career on making food manga and you can see why here.

It’s available in English through Kindle & comiXology.

~dakazu

264 – dakazu diversions 4 – dakazu’s Trip to Japan

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264 – dakazu diversions 4 – dakazu’s Trip to Japan

On this episode a very jet-lagged and lethargic dakazu has returned to talk about his vacation to Japan! dakazu rambles on about disposable manga magazines, Japanese bathrooms, going to the Shonen Jump bar, and the aggressive animals at the famous Nara deer park by the Great Buddha Hall!!!

Continue reading →

Misoji Meshi

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Misoji Meshi

A food manga about a 30 year-old woman who enjoys meals at real-life restaurants and eateries.

I love me some good food manga and it’s always impressive when have ones like this that incorporate real places you can go visit. There are some really creative reaction scenes as the food sprout faces and talk to the woman in her imagination. I also really loved Shizuka Itou‘s art work. Almost all of her shading is done by hand and that gives it an almost pencil sketch like look.

~dakazu

Shiratama-kun

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Shiratama-kun

A manga about a cat with the IQ of a human who talks and goes to high school.

What a cute series!

The story follows the titular Shiratama-kun as he tries to make regular friends but one of his classmates is obsessed with him being a talking cat. There’s a lot of comedy revolving around him dealing trying to be treated normally but he can’t fight the fact that he’s a cat. My favorite part was how he would dance on a laptop to type and take notes during class. It’s really surprising to me that this ran in the seinen magazine Young Jump.

~dakazu

Pinsaro Sniper

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Pinsaro Sniper

A manga about an elite lady assassin who is an office worker by day and sex worker by night.

This has got to be one of the stupidest things I’ve read. It’s maddening because Koji Dabe‘s art is such high quality and it’s completely wasted on this dumbass concept.

The lady sniper works at a brothel at night and receives requests for assassination while giving her clients a blowjob. I can’t even express how ridiculous it is as these clients get their knob polished in graphic detail while they tearfully cry about their horrible situations that led them to hiring a hit woman. It’s laughably stupid.

This manga must be a prime example that sex sells and how publishers target male readers. A shame because Dabe clearly has the ability to draw something with more substance than this book.

~dakazu

Dämons

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Dämons

A manga about a man who’s desire for revenge awakens the power to control iron prosthetic arms like they were his own.

We’ve discussed this manga on an older episode.

This series is based on a one shot by Osamu Tezuka. It’s kind of amazing that Hideyuki Yonehara took such a small and short story that Tezuka did and crafted it into an epic 13 volume adventure.

Unfortunately I’d only say this is a pretty average action series. I’ve read Yonehara’s Full Ahead! Coco and this seems to be on par with his abilities. You get some decent action scenes but a lot of the narrative structure and overall designs are pretty insignificant.

Interesting because of it’s existence but not because of the manga itself.

~dakazu