A manga about a genius chef who opens a restaurant that only serves burgers.
Pretty good series! I like food manga that limit themselves to a specific recipe or technique because it can stand out among others. Every chapter of this series introduces “Today’s Burger” which focuses on different burger recipes. The author Rei Hanagata does a good job connecting burger recipes from around the world as requests from restaurant patrons. This story setup reminds me a lot of Shinya ShokudÅ. Artist Umetaro Saitani makes all the burgers look delicious so reading this book makes me hungry! I think I’ll go make some cheeseburgers for dinner.
A manga about a boy who embarks on a quest to find the 4 Rave stones and defeat the Dark Bring to save the world.
This is Hiro Mashima‘s debut work. It’s a pretty standard shonen action manga but you can see how he started with this book before moving on to his acclaimed Fairy Tail series. Fairy Tail is more refined in comparison but I find myself enjoying the stranger aspects of Rave Master, like the weird mascot Plue.
If you’re a fan of Fairy Tail I think you’ll find a lot to enjoy reading this. It’s available from Kodansha Comics.
A comedy manga about a prestigious academy’s student council vice president Kaguya and student council president Miyuki who both try to make the other confess their feelings of love.
I got into this series when the anime adaptation started. I really enjoyed the anime and started reading the manga. This is one of those rare cases where I really prefer the anime over the manga. I think Aka Akasaka art is solid and I love this serious comedy about these two elite students who are too prideful to just admit their mutual attraction. It’s just that the anime voice cast really brings the characters to life and accentuates their likability while the manga versions sometimes comes off as cold. I’ll personally stick with the anime myself.
I’ve always seen this manga in Evening Magazine but only skimmed through it. It wasn’t until we did our Kasane Retrospective did I learn this series was inspired by Doumu Kobayashi working as Daruma Matsuura‘s assistant! Suddenly jokes about the manga artist falling asleep with their mouth open painted a picture of Kobayashi catching Matsuura dozing off! The thought of Kobayashi farming ideas from his experiences cooking for Matsuura got me to reread this manga and search for potential behind-the-scenes events that could have happened!
As far as a food manga goes this book has two unique qualities. First, the recipes for the meals are often experiments so they don’t always yield a delicious dish. Second, the series features lots of surreal humor that removes it from reality. At one point, the Roomba becomes sentient and an ongoing character. So besides searching for insight into Matsuura’s work place, I also enjoyed the unique food and wacky comedy.
A food manga about an office lady who is too lazy to prepare food properly and instead uses mentsuyu or noodle sauce for easy to cook and delicious meals.
This manga seems like it would be perfect for my food loving sensibilities but I really disliked how it was a 4 panel layout comic. 4 panels are good for comedy but really limit you from having any dynamic shots of the delicious meals. A shame because Mizuki Setoguchi‘s concept of doing a food manga with only mentsuyu recipes was pretty unique. Close but no cigar for me.
After Morgana talked about I Don’t Know How to Give Birth! I found that Ayami Kazama had a few other non-fiction books that preceded that one. This one is the first in her series of autobiographical tales and it’s quite impressive she was willing to share so much of her embarrassing past. During Elementary school she would cry when confronted by boys because she thought everything she read in romantic shoujo manga was real. She spent her early adult life being obsessed with shipping fictional characters. Even when she started dating she had no concept of how to interact with others. It’s seems self deprecating but I really liked how she would be recapping all this to her editor who would jump in and point out everything absurd.
As Kazama reached the age of 30 she began a romance with a manga artist who she would go on to marry. I was extremely disappointed that her husband turned out to be Azure Konno who created Koe de Oshigoto!, a manga about forcing high school students to voice hentai dating simulators, which I despise. While I’m glad Kazama found someone who she found love with despite all her eccentricities, I really didn’t like that it was Konno. And unfortunately I found this out after I already bought the next book Totsuidemo Otaku desu. so I guess I’ll have to keep reading about them for now.
A manga about a genius fighting game player who’s been kicked off her team and ends up being scouted by a private school that is starting an e-sports curriculum.
So apparently this is a sequel series to Tokyo Toy Box which was about game development. Since I’m unfamiliar with Tokyo Toy Box I can’t comment on any connection between these two but I recognized the creator Ume from some of their other manga like STEVESor Nangoku Tom Sawyer. The story here is that Ren Azumino is an excellent player but she deals with prejudice for being a girl. The setup is simple and it addresses the issues with sexism in professional gaming but since this manga is relatively new, I’ll have to keep reading more to see if it handles these issues with some tact. But so far I’m enjoying this manga and I’ll probably look into reading Tokyo Toy Box as well.
I was equally surprised and excited to learn that Kazutomo Ichitomo took it upon himself to draw the continuation of Versus Earth with Versus Earth – War Hammer. He originally started posting new chapters over on Pixiv until he was able to self publish them through Denpa Bato. Since Ichitomo was just the writer of Versus Earth there is an obvious change in art style here. I don’t think Ichitomo does a bad job but I miss the shonen action style of Yoshihiko Watanabe.
So I was all ready to read the ending of this series when I found out Versus Earth – War Hammer is also unfinished! It’s been on hiatus since 2017 when Ichitomo got busy with other projects. At this point I doubt I’ll ever get to read the end of Versus Earth. Maybe somethings were never meant to be.
A manga about an everyday salary man who loves drinking and eating.
I was initially drawn to Roswell Hosoki‘s simplistic art style when I picked up this series. I didn’t know Hosoki has been drawing Sake no Hosomichi since 1996 and that it’s still on going. Each chapter is super short story and focuses on either food or alcohol or some aspect of both. You can tell Hosoki loves to partake in both himself and that enthusiasm spills over into these stories. Hosoki has made a career out of drawing many different seinen series about food and drink. They’re all enjoyable to read and also full of great recipe tips as well. Love this book!
A manga about a teenager who begins his journey to become the best Air Trek rider and become a Storm Rider and reach the pinnacle at Trophaeum Tower.
I went back and started reading this series and boy does it not hold up. Oh!great‘s art work is so detailed it borders on excessive sometimes. Dramatic poses are filled to the brim with background effects that are so impressive to read. But this shonen battle manga by Oh!great is equally filled with excessive fan service. Oh!great started as a hentai artist and it shows. I’m not opposed to T&A but when the first chapter of this manga has implied sexual assault I just disengage from the story content.
Air Gear just has an aggressive tone within the characters and the story and that combined with the beautiful but blinding art work does not make for an enjoyable experience. I’m pretty sure I ended feeling this way when I read through this manga the first time. This type of manga worked well for the early 2000’s but I’ve moved past any interest I had with Oh!great‘s titles.
