Category Archives: Written Word

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Buggy Whip

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Buggy Whip

Sports manga about a high school boy with terrible tennis skills named Arata that get’s trained by Sakura, a former genius upperclassman.

A pretty decent realistic take on the sport of tennis, similar in feel to Baby Steps. Compared to typical shonen sports manga, this series isn’t about Arata’s journey to become the number one player in Japan. Instead it follows him as he slowly breaks through his own inferiority complex while butting heads against his mentor and it ends quickly once that resolution is reached. This kind of story progression might be why this ran in the seinen magazine Monthly Afternoon. My only complaint was that there wasn’t enough distinction between characters because many of their faces look too similar.

A solid sports manga that was interesting for it’s story.

~dakazu

Prison School

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Prison School

A manga about 5 boys who attend the recently co-ed elite private boarding school Hachimitsu Academy and are imprisoned on campus after peeking the girl’s bathing area.

This is a manga that fits the concept of a serious comedy, that was described in the manga Bakuman, to a T. All characters are 100% serious about their actions and motivations but they are so extreme and over-reacting that it looks absurd from the reader’s perspective. The extreme part helps me look past the insane amount of fan service and T&A in this series because at the manga is so self-aware of what it’s doing. Though I do think Akira Hiramoto is having his cake and eating it too when it comes to the vice president character.

This manga is hilarious. The anime and live-action were also hilarious. Available from Yen Press.

~dakazu

Hyouge Mono

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Hyouge Mono

A manga about Sasuke Furuta, a samurai under Nobunaga Oda who was obsessed with the ways of tea and sought the path of being a comical fellow rather than a warlord.

A great series that mixes history with humor. Yoshihiro Yamada is a master of over the top expressions. Despite the heavy historical setting and deep political intrigue, these colorful reactions help keep the story fun and jovial. I’ll admit that toward the end of this series I had a very hard time following all the various characters. Despite that I would recommend this series to anyone looking for a very different take on the popular warring states period of Japan.

~dakazu

Utsu Gohan

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Utsu Gohan

A collections of sad and depressing experiences involving food.

This is a bizarre manga to say the least. Each chapter revolves around the author trying to enjoy some food, whether it be a soft serve ice cream cone or some fries and cola at McDonald’s. But every story ends in a minor tragedy. 

With the ice cream, he get’s embarrassed about being a grown adult walking around with it, tries to eat it quickly, and then ends up with brain freeze. While carrying his McDonald’s tray upstairs to the eating area, he knocks over his drink and spills cola on his tray, the fries start soaking up the cola, and he spills more cola on his pants as he tries to avoid other customers on the stairs.

Every chapter left me with an undeniable sense of melancholy. It didn’t feel good but in a weird way I was impressed with artist Yuki Shikawa’s ability to make me feel bad…should that be a positive for this book?

I kinda liked this but probably won’t go back and re-read it ever again.

~dakazu

Goblin Slayer

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Goblin Slayer

A manga taking place in a fantasy RPG world about a warrior obsessed with killing goblins.

Yes, I know this is based on a lite-novel. I know this is overly grotesque with extreme violence and lots of rape. Still I found myself enjoying this series. There’s something oddly satisfying about a character who becomes a specialist in killing low-level enemies, almost to the point of obsession. Of course the depiction of goblins in this world is so brutal and evil they might as well be enemies in the final dungeon of an RPG, so there’s that as well.

We talked about it on a recent episode and I wasn’t surprised my co-hosts weren’t as enthusiastic about this book. Definitely a guilty pleasure pick for me.

Available through Yen Press.

~dakazu

Onna no Ana

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Onna no Ana

A collection of 4 strange stories from Fumiko Fumi. One is about about a girl who claims to be an alien and asks her teacher for a child. Another is about a girl who carries her brother’s face on the back of her head. And the final two are about a girl who treats a teacher like a slave through blackmail and a followup story about her actions being motivated by a demon.

Writing that synopsis makes these stories sound super weird but I really enjoyed this manga. I really liked Fumiko Fumi’s character designs and art. Especially the way she drew the black eyes and ink-like black hair.

Fumi is currently doing a series on Kurage Bunch called Ai to Noroi which is REALLY rough to read(especially considering it’s semi-autobiographical). Worth checking out if you can read Japanese.

After reading this book I’ll be looking for more of her other works.

~dakazu

Satsurikuhime

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Satsurikuhime

A manga about a boy who has to control his childhood friend’s murderous impulses to take down other serial killers.

The concept of a killer who hunts other killers has been done before. That said, I enjoyed the dynamic between the boy Ouji and the girl Ru. Ru is in love with Ouji and will get the urge to murder anyone she get’s annoyed with. Ouji himself always ends up getting attacked or beat up by the other killers but usually refuses to resort to using violence only as a last resort. I liked how even in the face of some truly wretched killers he would try and see if they could be redeemable before letting Ru slice them up with her razor nails.

The series was canceled early and unfortunately there is only a single volume to read. A shame because I would have liked read a little more of this.

~dakazu

Machimaho: I Messed Up and Made the Wrong Person Into a Magical Girl!

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Machimaho: I Messed Up and Made the Wrong Person Into a Magical Girl!

A manga about accidentally turning an insanely powerful & crass delinquent into a magical girl.

This book is crazy and extreme but also very entertaining. The juxtaposition of seeing a cute looking girl in twin tails rip the arms off demons while laughing manically is so absurd you can’t help but laugh. I especially enjoyed whenever the main character Kayo gets to smoke a cigarette because her reaction is always a giant “HOLY SHIT” complete with hearts and sparkles. There’s shameless fan service here but it’s done with in tongue and cheek that’s clearly going for a parody of magical girl shows and fan service in general.

It’s rude and crude and over the top. I dig it and it’s definitely a guilty pleasure kind of thing. Also it’s available in English from Seven Seas Entertainment so you can read it yourselves.

~dakazu

Avarth

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Avarth

A manga taking place in 12094 AD where Earth seems to have been rebuilt in the image of a popular MMORPG that is now ruled by NPC characters who claim to be gods known as “Avarth”.

You follow a space explorer named Lloyd who awakes from cold-sleep on his spaceship only to find the Earth in this state. He’s able to access the MMORPG and using his character on Earth to help stop the Avarth from terrorizing the surviving humans.

…yeah the premise is a convoluted mess.

This was really hard to follow and went all sorts of places that I can’t even remember because it was like mixing troupes from every post-apocalyptic story you’ve ever seen. In that sense it seems very lite novel-ish. 

It ends in 6 volumes and definitely seems like it got rightfully canceled without reaching it’s full conclusion. Not surprising.

~dakazu

Tsuredure Children

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Tsuredure Children

A manga about romance and comedy between a variety of characters in high school.

I only recently read through this series right before it finished it’s serialization in Weekly Shonen Magazine after checking out the anime adaptation earlier this year. Really loved all the jokes and heartfelt relationships between all the different couples. I really liked how some stories were very bittersweet and contrasted the other happy endings. Easily cried the most during this final volume as almost every story was resolved. 

Personal favorite couple was Ryoko & Agaki. I absolutely loved their final scene together. 

Also Toshiya Wakabayashi has some kind of superpower because he can make the biggest tears with snot nosed faces seem super endearing.

Available from Kodansha Comics.

~dakazu