Dance Dance Danseur
Manga about ballet dancing by George Asakura.
Asakura’s art style is fantastic. The fluidity of motion in the pen work is perfect for a manga about dance. I put this one easily over Welcome to the Ballroom.
~dakazu
Wakako Zake
Cute food manga about an office lady Wakako who loves drinking and eating. Every short chapter presents a type of food that paired with booze. It was adapted into an anime short and a popular live-action series as well. I’m not a big drinker but still enjoyed this manga.
~dakazu
Semai Sekai no Identity
Rensuke Oshikiri’s crazy manga about a dystopian manga industry where battles break out Scott Pilgrim-style between manga artists fighting for serialization.
From the 1st chapter where a young, hopeful manga artist is defenestrated and impaled on a spike while they insert the “This is a work of fiction” warning, I knew I was in for a wild ride. Oshikiri inserts real-world gripes about the manga industry but turns them up to 11. The result is a mix of dark humor, excessive violence, and brutal commentary with a nice sprinkle of reality. Real manga artists like Inio Asano, Tooru Seino, and Rensuke Oshikiri himself appear to both self-deprecate and destroy their critics.
This manga is absolutely insane and I love it.
~dakazu
Torii Jun Kyouju no Kuufuku
Food manga that focuses on local eats of Southern Asia. Like many food manga with a single protagonist,
Professor Torii has a lot of inner dialogue and commentary about the food eats. I’m unfamiliar with most Southern Asian food so reading this was pretty informative and fun!
~dakazu
Ginga no Shinanai Kodomotachi e
A manga about an immortal sister, her brother, and their mother. As centuries pass them by, the children ponder their existence against the rest of the world that can experience death.
Despite the simple design of the children the subject material was very macabre and I found it disturbing. Any manga that can illicit such a strong emotional response after reading deserves respect. But just like the one and only time I watched Requiem for a Dream, I’m not sure if I want to go through that again.
~dakazu
Uhyo! Tokyo-to Kita-ku Akabane
This is manga artist Tooru Seino’s wacky tales of real life residents in the city of Akabane. While it’s great to see a manga covering crazy-but-true stories it felt a bit exploitative to be sharing information on some people there, like the local homeless lady. While Seino writes her in a positive light, he is still using her and others he meets for his comedy material. I think it’s important to keep that in mind, even if the city of Akabane has embraced this manga as a source of local pride.
I do appreciate manga(or any entertainment) that is based on real people and real stories so I enjoyed it.
~dakazu
Hi Score Girl
We love this manga here at Manga Machinations. Super excited for the anime coming this summer. It’s going to be CG but Land of the Lustrous was legit good so fingers crossed that it will be like that and nothing like anything from Polygon Pictures. I wonder if they’ll feature any SNK games considering the lawsuit?
~dakazu
Youkai Gohan: Shinsen no Ryourinin
Another food manga. This one is about literally about eating Japanese monsters of folklore. The fictional recipes they present here are kinda gory and they’re using that for some comedy elements but I honestly didn’t enjoy it that much. If you want to read about fantasy cooking stick with Delicious in Dungeon.
~dakazu
Wana Girl
Manga about a high school girl who’s knowledgeable with traps.
This is very similar to Sanzoku Diary with it’s outdoor hunting subject matter. I liked how the traps were used primarily as pest control to protect crops and not for active hunting. Making the main characters female seems like an easy way to get more readers but there was no fan service, so that’s good. I always like manga that focuses on outdoors stuff so I recommend this one.
~dakazu
Yuuhi
I’ve been a fan of Yu Koyama’s manga since reading Ooi! Ryouma while growing up. Yuuhi is the main character who struggles at leading a dual life of young yakuza boss and aspiring professional boxer. I like the post-war Japan setting and Koyama’s use of non sequential narrative.
One note about Koyama is that he is one of those manga artists that always draws the same face for the majority of his characters throughout his various series. I don’t mind it myself though.
~dakazu