Tag Archives: Manga

My Hero Academia, Volume 5 – Review

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My Hero Academia’s fifth volume is a friggin’ masterpiece. That’s basically all there is to it – the manga has continued to improve from a starting point of “extremely solid archetypal shounen,” and at this point its strong art, wonderful characters, and bubbling themes are all working in concert to create legitimate magic. This was a tournament arc where I actually cared about every single competitor, where I cheered and cried at every single fight. It perfectly fused climactic action and very personal storytelling, demonstrating exactly how you make fights worth fighting. I can’t even imagine what comes next.

You can check out my full review over at ANN!

My Hero Academia

My Monster Secret, Volume 2 – Review

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My Monster Secret is some very solid comfort food. You’re not gonna be impressed by its character writing, you’re not gonna be shocked by its dramatic craft, you’re just gonna laugh and watch some stupid kids make funny mistakes. I’m frankly happy to see it being released now – I generally need a certain density of active manga releases to keep me satisfied, and with both A Silent Voice and Biscuit Hammer having ended, I was running low. My Monster Secret obviously can’t replace either of those shows, but I’m enjoying my time with it just the same.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my kinda useless chapter notes below!

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UQ Holder, Volume 7 – Review

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Back to the UQ grind again, with a volume that finally dug into one of this manga’s core issues – how goddamn boring its protagonist is. Tota is a shounen lump, and this volume did its best to paint some character on that lump, with generally positive results. UQ is still a surprisingly mediocre performance from the guy who made Negima, but there’s plenty of entertainment to be found regardless.

You can check out my full review over at ANN.

UQ Holder!

Genshiken Second Season, Volume 8 – Review

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Genshiken continues its questionable adventure into harem territory, making the most of it but still being fundamentally much worse than what the manga used to be. There are certainly plenty of effective moments here, and the story still has better dialogue than most manga and solid art all around, but Second Season is still an inescapable disappointment. We are in the lean times of Genshiken now.

You can check out my full review over at ANN.

Genshiken

Keep on Vibrating, If You Must

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I knew I was in for some shit even just by reading the genre tags for this one, which included a nice mix of things like “anal,” “bestiality,” and “dystopia.” And Keep on Vibrating certainly didn’t disappoint there – the seven stories here offer a pretty consistent mix of prostitution, violence against women, and occasional scatterings of war and cultural decay. Keep on Vibrating doesn’t quite match the overtly misanthropic tenor of Denpa Teki na Kanojo, but its author sure has a lot of violence in his head. And that’s about all there is to it.

(incidentally, there’s definitely going to be some NSFW image links in this one, so watch out!)

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Hunter x Hunter – Volume 33

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It’s almost painful to read these chapters, knowing how close I am to the current stopping point, knowing how uncertain it is this arc will ever be concluded. So much of this reads like a fantasy dreamland idea of a Hunter x Hunter arc. Kurapika and Leorio are back, and they’re both relevant! Ging and Pariston are dueling on the sidelines! Biscuit and Cheadle are there too! It’s all too much happiness for one Hunter x Hunter fan to take in – the joy tempered by the cruel fact of Togashi’s terribly uneven health. I hope he finds some rest for his own sake. I can live with just these treasures.

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Yuureitou – Volume 2

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“They say her voice was as beautiful as that of a goddess.” That’s one of the few things Amano learns about Rika, the woman who supposedly tied her own stepmother to the clock’s face. What would lead a person to do that, and what her own thoughts might have been… all of this can only be inferred, refracted through secondary sources with their own ambiguous motives. All pictures of her were burned, and now she exists only as a distant wraith in the background of a single photo, and a cautionary tale about the dangers of feminine hysteria.

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One Piece – Volume 9

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One Piece’s ninth volume is titled simply “Tears.” It’s a thematically relevant choice, but it’s also about as clear an indication as you could hope for of the emotional trials to come. This volume is a harrowing journey, featuring One Piece’s greatest moments of character writing and most cathartic points of high drama so far. It’s an easy peak for the manga, a dramatic accomplishment any story would be proud of.

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A Silent Voice, Volume 7 – Review

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And so A Silent Voice comes to an end. This volume was definitely weaker than much of what came before, and essentially gave too much time to what was all pretty much epilogue. There were loose narrative tangents and unnecessary additions, and it all made for a slightly rambling experience. But A Silent Voice’s fundamental character writing is so strong that it really didn’t harm anything, and at this point, seeing the untidy threads of the manga actually just makes me feel even more excited for the film. A Silent Voice is a fantastic manga, but it could be condensed into a basically perfect movie. For the first time in a while, I can’t help but let the hype be real.

You can check out my full review over at ANN!

A Silent Voice

One Piece – Volume 8

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The Baratie arc came to an end in this volume, concluding with as much dignity as it could muster. As before, a great deal of this volume’s weakness came down to the fact that Don Krieg is just not a particularly exciting opponent. Volume six deliberately undercut him by using him as a prop to build up a more threatening opponent, and volume seven dawdled through a series of fights with underwhelming underlings. Even Don Krieg’s theming isn’t particularly compelling – his main gimmicks are a focus on “military might” and his wide variety of weapons, neither of which serve to make him particularly threatening. Don Krieg is altogether pretty much a failure of an antagonist.

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