Category Archives: dakazu’s reading

Various manga dakazu’s read with some commentary

Gamblers Parade

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Gamblers Parade

A manga about a high school girl who gets wrapped up in deadly gambling games with her teacher who hates gamblers.

This series is still fairly new in the Weekly Shonen Magazine lineup but I don’t think it’s going to any real popularity. I like Atsushi Nakayama’s Uratarou but I feel like he’s crazy art loses the edge it had in his seinen series. Also the gambling battles aren’t very interesting which is crucial to this genre.

Not sure why Nakayama chose to do this project. Hopefully it’ll get better but I wouldn’t care if it ended and he moved on to something else instead.

~dakazu

Soukyuu no Ariadne

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Soukyuu no Ariadne

A manga about a boy who meets a runaway princess and joins her on a journey to travel and see the world.

This is a new series by Norihiro Yagi who is best known for his shonen battle series Claymore. I’m a fan of Claymore despite all it’s problems and was looking forward to seeing him try something different. Unfortunately this one has been a pretty standard shonen adventure series that doesn’t really do anything unique. It’s almost like a movie that was focus tested and had all the jagged edges removed for more mass-appeal.

Maybe things will change later but I’ve dropped this series for now.

~dakazu

Murder Incarnation

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Murder Incarnation 

A manga about a mysterious girl who offers people a chance to revive someone if they kill three people.

We’ve discussed this on an episode.

This series is very strange. Not because of it’s story or anything but because of the process in which Shinji Inamitsu drew it.

The entire series was created through CG artwork. While that’s not abnormal for modern manga artists, it’s very obvious that Inamitsu took 3D models and posed them in different positions to create each panel. It makes this manga actually looks like a Playstation 3 game cutscene or something. 

I know Inamitsu is capable of drawing in a traditional style because of his current series Seishokuki. I would really like to find out why he decided to use this process to do his art for this book.

Currently available in English on Crunchyroll.

~dakazu

Survival – Shounen S no Kiroku 

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Survival – Shounen S no Kiroku 

A remake of Takao Saito’s Survival.

A really decent reboot. The original was one of the first manga to cover the topic of survival. Akira Miyagawa does a great job modernizing the story while still sticking with all the major plot points of the original. It ended in 5 volumes but as a [End Act 1] kinda deal so I would be interested to read more if it happens.

~dakazu

Himawari 

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Himawari

A manga about a young man who follows in his childhood friend’s footsteps to become an idol.

This one has grown on me since it began it’s serialization in Weekly Shonen Champion. It started off slow as the main character is introduced as a Kagura dance performer and he uses that talent to pursue a career as an idol. The story is pretty typical as he’s put into a rag-tag group of misfits and his enthusiasm begins to win over the other members. I know Tetsuhiro Hirakawa is known for his delinquent fighting series Clover so I wasn’t surprised that the story sometimes dipped into it.

A solid series.

~dakazu

3-gatsu no Lion Shouwa Ibun – Shakunetsu no Toki

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3-gatsu no Lion Shouwa Ibun – Shakunetsu no Toki

A prequel to March comes in like a Lion that looks back at the professional career of it’s Japan Shogi Association chairman, Takanori Jinguji.

I love March comes in a like a Lion. It’s one of my favorite series and the recent anime was amazing. While I’m not a fan of most manga spin-offs, this one is damn good and artist Hideaki Nishikawa deserves all the credit. 

Their art work is tonally very different from original creator Chica Umino but equally captures the fiery emotions of the different professional players who appear throughout the story. It perfectly matches the series tagline of ‘scorching times’.

I also appreciated how this book put a lot of focus on food of the Showa era.

~dakazu

Mazarian

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Mazarian

A manga about modern Japan where anomalies known as ‘hizumi’ appear and mix together objects. After a high school delinquent, middle school nerd, cat, and flea end up fusing together, they embark on a quest to learn more about the anomaly.

I really enjoyed this! The main character of the cat with a kendo stick caught my eye when I would flip through Manga Action magazine and I finally had a chance to read it. The gimmick of this world Sakumo Okada set up is really fascinating and lead to some really unique mixes, such as a boxer with long pole arms or a homeless man who mixed with a tree.

The story moved along nice an quick and led to a open ended but satisfying conclusion. The series was both dramatic and comedic, which I loved. I’ll definitely be tracking down any more works by Okada. He’s gained a new fan.

~dakazu

Kin no Hitsuji

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Kin no Hitsuji

A manga about a girl who moves back to her hometown to find that her three childhood friends have changed.

Really enjoyed this one. We read Kaori Ozaki’s The God’s Lie for an episode but I really thought this series was way better. Ozaki does a fantastic job setting up the four friends and their complex relationships. The story really fleshes them all out and leads to a really great conclusion.

Short and sweet series.

~dakazu

Chainsaw Man

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Chainsaw Man

A manga about a young man who ends up fusing with his pet devil to become a devil hunter who grows chainsaws out of his body.

I really enjoyed Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Fire Punch so I was excited to see him start a new series in Weekly Shonen Jump. Initially the manga seemed like it might get canceled but I’m really happy that it’s started to gain popularity, at least for now.

It’s got a great silly sense of humor and I love it.

Available on Shonen Jump and Manga Plus.

~dakazu

Kabedon!

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Kabedon!

A manga about a a boy who gets into the world of bouldering.

This is a pretty interesting series. I like being introduced into the world of bouldering through a manga. It does suffer from having a typical sports protagonist who knows nothing about the sport but just happens to have a specific skill that makes him a prodigy. Since this series is runs in Big Comic Spirits it does seem to avoid some typical shonen sports troupes but it’s relatively new so I’ll have to keep reading it to see how it turns out.

~dakazu