Manga Recon has been a big part of my life these last two years. I know that goes for our team of reviewers too, so, in order to give it a fitting sendoff, we participated in one final roundtable, sharing our gratitude, memories, and directions on how to find us elsewhere online. Thank you for reading, now and at all times past and future.

MICHELLE: While I’m obviously saddened by the news of PCS’ closure, I’m still extremely grateful for the opportunity to spend two years working with talented writers and honing my reviewing skills. Before getting tapped by Kate Dacey to join the Manga Recon team I was toiling away in obscurity on my own modest blog, and the idea that someone as well-respected as she (for, yes, I knew her name already) was reading my reviews was pretty mind-boggling. In a very real way, Manga Recon changed my life.

MELINDA: My experience was very similar, Michelle, at least in terms of Manga Recon’s impact on my life, though I did not even consider myself a reviewer when you and Kate brought me on. I learned how to write reviews from the two of you and that was key in expanding my world and introducing me to the many wonderful minds in the manga blogosphere, something that has enriched my offline life as well. Without Manga Recon, it’s difficult to imagine what the last year and a half of my life might have looked like.

SAM: My experiences with Manga Recon are very close to Melinda’s: this website was really my start, my jumping-off point for becoming a reviewer. I never once thought that I would meet anyone so significant in a comic book shop and I am very fortunate to have met Kate that day in Comicopia.

Manga Recon overall has helped me become a better writer in general (I wasn’t great when I started out) and that is largely due to the wonderful editors I have had. Doing reviews and roundtables has fueled my creative interests, pushing me to go out and research series, authors and industry news. Manga Recon even helped me to increase my online and convention presence, driving me to start actively using Twitter, as well as taking part in panels. This has really been the best experience that I could’ve had; it has opened the door to countless opportunities and I hope to continue to take what I have learned here and carry it on into the future.

Thanks to all the readers over the years, especially my close friends who’ve supported my writing, and thanks to the wonderful staff of writers that I have had the pleasure of getting to know. You will be missed.

KATE: Thanks for the kind words, guys!

Like everyone else who’s chimed in so far, Manga Recon was the place where I cut my teeth as a reviewer, where I learned the difference between snark and criticism, where I learned how to write for an audience instead of myself, and where I learned just how passionate fans are about their favorite series— woe to her that pan Vampire Knight! I’d never been to a comics convention before contributing to PCS, so Manga Recon provided me with a crash course on the manga publishing industry, not to mention the various subcultures within the fandom. And Manga Recon gave me a place to let down my hair and experiment with my writing, something that’s a lot harder to do within the narrow confines of academia. Put simply: Manga Recon was an educational experience for me.

None of this would have been possible without Jon Haehnle, who originally invited me to join PCS back in September 2006. Lord knows what Jon saw in my writing—it was pretty uninformed—but reviewing turned out to be an exciting way to explore what was then a new interest for me. Jon was patient with me in the early going, and an indispensable collaborator when Manga Recon blossomed from column to blog to full-fledged website. I owe Jon a big debt of gratitude for his support.

I also wanted to thank Michelle for her excellent stewardship of Manga Recon. She’s raised the editorial standards well above the benchmark I established, she’s developed some exciting new features, and she’s recruited some great talent for the site. Michelle is a natural-born editor; not only does she have a keen eye for detail and a good ear for language, she is one of the most organized people I know. (This from a woman who alphabetizes her spice rack—I know organizational skillz when I see ‘em.) Michelle also has a terrific, dry wit that I really came to appreciate when we worked together in 2008: who but Michelle could work in a Robert Goulet reference to a review of Slam Dunk?

MICHELLE: Thank you, Kate. You and Jon know how hesitant I was to attempt to fill your shoes, but it ended up being a lot more fun than I had expected! Sometimes you have to take risks to realize that you’re capable of doing something, I guess.

Sadly, I think you’re the only person who ever really appreciated the Goulet!

CHLOE: I, too, tip my hat to Kate on this one—you’re an excellent curator of talent, and I feel exceedingly privileged to have been scooped out of the big pond and dropped in the lovely little enclave that is Manga Recon. Reviewing has been one of the most fun, exhausting and thrilling things to do and pushed both my creative and analytical skills to new areas, not to mention getting my hands on some cool books in in the process. I’m going to miss the reviews, the community and, of course, these roundtables!

ERIN: My friend and Dungeon Master Hal Johnson, a clerk at Midtown Comics, asked me if I’d like to earn some free manga by writing reviews back in 2006. I enthusiastically and foolishly agreed. Free comics! Oh boy! A crate of yaoi from DMP arrived and promptly took up a lot of space in my living room. (My boyfriend complained about it and tripped over it a lot.) I was quickly overwhelmed and buried in books.

Jon Haehnle and I worked together to come up with the ninja-themed name “Manga Recon” to go with my podcast persona. I started the “Ninja Consultant” podcast in 2005. It was always my intention to tie Manga Recon into the podcast, or give it its own podcast. I commissioned a logo from E.K. Weaver but only ever produced a few shows.

In the early days I picked manga randomly from the shelves of Midtown Comics and reviewed it in “monthly” columns, with no regard to publication dates. Without an editor to reign me in I rambled on and on for hundreds of words. I couldn’t meet my self-set goals and only ever produced a few columns.

I was surprised and a little territorial when Kate was hired on as Chief Editor or Head Manga Reviewer or whatever. When did I get demoted? Worse still, Kate’s reviews were all very polished and much smarter than mine, and she was able to write on a near-daily basis. When I met her in real life it was even more upsetting: she’s gorgeous and doesn’t look nerdy at all, outside of a classy CLAMP bag. I was slouching around conventions in black T-shirts with frizzy pink hair and a Katamari hat.

When I first starting writing the column I figured the readers were probably the same high school-aged manga fans who crowded the aisles at Barnes and Noble. Then I met Brigid Alverson at New York Comic Con, and she really opened my eyes. Traffic was going through Manga Blog to PCS, and it wasn’t a bunch of Fruits Basket fourteen-year-olds at all—it was librarians, the publishers themselves, and other literary manga fans like Kate! I had to re-think how I was writing my reviews.

My most-viewed review is undoubtedly the Kare Kano comic I drew. I was unemployed in early 2007, and it took a couple days to put together the comic when I should’ve been job hunting. I also painstakingly reviewed individual volumes of the series with the idiotic idea that fans could save money by not buying the unimportant volumes. Nowadays I realize that’s ludicrous; even the most casual of manga fans can’t stand to miss a single volume. I wasted months writing those things, and the comic was a last-minute addition to the much-longer piece.

A horrifying thought occurred to me later: what if Masami Tsuda sees my comic? It’s been passed around the internet a lot, and even linked to from The Comics Journal website! After all, Rivkah herself commented on my review of her OEL manga Steady Beat. That really freaked me out! What if I ran into Rivkah at a convention (very likely)? Would I have said those things to her face? Tsuda probably can’t read English, but I drew myself slapping her…!

Through a combination of podcasting and writing for PCS I got a lot of press passes and went to a lot of conventions. I loved the ICv2 conferences and learned a lot about publishing. I met Ed Chavez of the Manga Cast, who hooked me up reviewing manga for Publishers Weekly. I used my Manga Recon reviews as writing samples for the job. When an opportunity came up to write about the Tekkonkinkreet movie for the second issue of Otaku USA Magazine, I pointed to my writing samples and got the job. Earlier I had reviewed the first issue of Otaku USA on Manga Recon with some harsh design notes. Ironically, I quickly became a staff anime reviewer for the magazine.

Paying gigs took up more of my time and I couldn’t contribute as much to Manga Recon (not that I ever contributed all that much per year). Fortunately, Jon and Kate kept adding more staff. I feel lucky to have met (almost) everyone on the incredible staff, and to have done some great panels with a few of you at conventions.

Last October I was approached to take over Bamboo Dong’s Shelf Life column on Anime News Network. It never would have happened without Manga Recon. In the last nine months, my writing has improved more than it has in five years of Manga Recon, thanks to tight deadlines, a tremendous volume of work, and extra editorial oversight. Obviously the paychecks also help. It bothers me that the readers there treat me like a n00b, even though I’ve been a reviewer for years!

In 2006 I worried that no one was reading my reviews, but now, thanks to Manga Recon, I have a tremendous number of readers. Otaku USA has a circulation of about 100,000 and Shelf Life has about 35,000 readers. I’m not sure how many readers my Publishers Weekly reviews have reached, but some of them turn up in Amazon’s database under “Editorial Content.” I have no idea of how many readers Manga Recon has reached over the years, but oddly enough I have found my Manga Recon reviews quoted in Wikipedia as “Critical Reception.”

MICHELLE: That’s an awesome glimpse into Manga Recon’s early days! I know that I had the Kare Kano review bookmarked for a long time before joining the staff myself. I’m not sure of Manga Recon’s readership levels myself, but I’ve seen some things I’ve written here turn up on Amazon, too, so they definitely get around.

Your account of your reviewing journey reminds me to encourage everyone to let readers know where you can be found! Just because PCS is closing down doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop writing about the manga that we love! Personally, I still have my original blog, Soliloquy in Blue, and also intend to ramp up my contributions to the Comics Should Be Good blog at Comic Book Resources.

Where will y’all be?

KEN: I had been writing long, rambling reviews for movies, comics, novels and more since ‘05, but those were mostly only read by friends and folks who stumbled across my livejournal. It wasn’t until I joined the TOKYOPOP site that Kate found me and brought me into the MR fold, which in turn served to introduce me to the larger online manga community. Thanks to that I’ve not only learned a little self-control in my reviews, but I’ve also met a number of interesting people, both online and off, that I probably never would have encountered otherwise.

Thanks to Kate, Jon, Michelle, the rest of the MR team and the readers. It’s been a fun and interesting few years.

ERIN: Oh yeah, I’m tagging my livejournal entries with “manga” if I put up an odd scrap:

erinfinnegan.livejournal.com/tag/manga

I believe you can subscribe to an RSS feed for a specific tag.

KATE: Jeez, Erin, you’re embarrassing me—without you, there’d be no Manga Recon at all! You were the person who puts PCS on the map as far as manga is concerned, and your reviews of Kare Kano and the Death Note movies were among the site’s all-time most-viewed articles during my tenure. I know we had some awkward moments, but I will always regard our Definitive Guide to Fumi Yoshinaga one of my proudest moments at PCS; I’m particularly fond of your Flower of Life cartoon review, and might even like it better than your legendary Kare Kano piece. Heresy, I know.

As for where to find me, I have my own website, The Manga Critic, and I’m also a contributor to Good Comics for Kids, a blog at the School Library Journal.

SAM: In terms of future projects, I am moving aside from reviewing content and am currently working on a podcast project that explores the comics community as whole; who the people are who love comics, who shell out money week after week, why they attend cons, the relationships they’ve built through comics etc.

I really want to explore why people are so passionate about the artform in general and I want to do this through a series of themed interviews and stories. Think of it as a much nerdier approach to This American Life.

So I will be keeping people posted through my Twitter, @SamKusek, and hopefully you all will be able to hear the first episode within a week or so!

MELINDA: Sam, that sounds great. I think you are just the person to undertake a project like that. I really look forward to it!

As always, you can all find me at Manga Bookshelf, which also serves as the home for Off the Shelf, a new weekly discussion column that is a collaborative project with Michelle. We’ve got a couple of other such projects in the works as well. I’ve also just started a new manhwa-specific blog as a companion site, Manhwa Bookshelf, where I’ve been hosting this month’s Manhwa Moveable Feast.

Speaking of Twitter, I’ve put together a Manga Recon Twitter list to make it easy to keep up with everyone’s future exploits!

GRANT: I was both shocked and thrilled when I was recruited to write for Manga Recon last January. I knew that there were review sites for manga, but never imagined I’d ever find myself writing for one (let alone being quoted on Wikipedia or landing a blurb for the Cirque du Freak manga series in a Yen Press promotional flyer). In a lot of ways, this was a huge learning experience, from poring over the MR article style guide to coming up with new ways to write reviews without falling into a pattern. I also found myself revising my reviews several times before submitting them: there was a standard of quality that all of you established and I had to make sure my work was always at that level.

Being able to write for Manga Recon truly helped me show other people what it is I see in graphic novels. Our review site was full of insightful breakdowns of what makes manga worth reading. Even better, it served as a reminder that there are plenty of other people out there who read manga with a critical eye. My students often tell me that their parents refuse to consider manga to be proper reading. I think our site proves that it is a legitimate story-telling form a thousand times over.

It has been a dream to write for MR. Just like many of you, I plan on continuing to write reviews. I look forward to commenting on your blogs and websites.

CONNIE: Manga Recon was one of the most fun projects I’ve been involved with, and I’m very sorry to have to say goodbye. I’ve been involved with other review sites before, and have had my own blog at Slightly Biased Manga for almost six years, but it had been a few years since I’d written real reviews for a site that was not my own when Michelle asked me to join the Manga Recon crew. I enjoyed the guidelines and deadlines I worked with at Manga Recon. Most of my writing is informal, off-the-cuff responses after I finish a book, so writing with purpose and coherency for Manga Recon was both fun and very good for me.

Most of all, though, I think I’ll miss the roundtables and the sense of community. I’m naturally very shy, so it’s hard for me to jump into a conversation or comment on things, even on the internet. But watching Twitter conversation and participating in roundtables has been an experience I haven’t had at any of the other sites I’ve worked at, and it’s what I’ll miss the most.

I’ve only been here a year and a half, and it’s felt like no time at all. I feel sorry that I couldn’t contribute more, but I am very, very happy with the time I’ve spent here. Thanks a million.

MICHELLE: Thanks again to all of you for being part of Manga Recon. It was a lot of fun working with each of you and, like Melinda mentioned, becoming part of a warm and welcoming manga blogging community. Although we won’t be writing here, I hope we still continue to follow each other’s endeavors in the future.

Sam: While Friday was a nice fan experience, I think Saturday is what really solidified my experience of Anime Boston and would be the reason why I think this was the best year yet…

Ken: Saturday was excellent. It was incredibly panel-heavy for me and I remember being worried about whether I’d be able to get anything to eat at one point due to food court lines, panel schedules, et cetera. It also brought out what was probably one of the best cosplays I’ve ever seen—a fantastic Liger Zero from the Zoids anime. I was really blown away by it and pictures of it at turning up all over the place, so anyone who missed it should have no trouble tracking down a photo. But it was another thing that had me lamenting my lack of camera.

Saturday for me kicked off with arriving late at the Black Jack, Tezuka’s Dark Doctor panel, which was again hosted by Clarissa and Daryl of AWO/Otaku USA fame. Between the two of them, I think they must have accounted for about half the panels at the con. Anyway, I had no idea there had been so many adaptions of Black Jack prior to this panel, never mind the musicals and whatnot. I’m kind of amazed at how few of these have made their way to the US. All the info on the different take, tributes and re-imaginings of the series had me thinking about Western comics and how every writer puts their own spin on the same character. Interesting stuff.

Of course the highlights of Saturday had to be the Vertical Panel and the Manga Mania panel, both hosted by Ed Chavez. The Vertical Panel was first and while I don’t think there were really any surprise announcements, there were some rather intriguing things said throughout. First, there were the utterly horrible teases regarding two series that should be out in the next year, a new Tezuka series and an unnamed manga project. But what really caught my attention was the mention of Vertical having talked to both Ishinomori’s and Go Nagai’s people! I’ve been fighting a growing curiosity of Ishinomori’s work since I read an Otaku USA article about him years ago, manly because so little of his work is available in the US. The fact that they’ve talked to Ishinomori’s people, even if it did fizzle, was really the kind of thing I couldn’t ignore and was both heartbreaking and oddly encouraging at the same time. Of the previously announced manga titles, 7 Billion Needles really jumped out at me. It was something that I had only had a passing curiosity in, but the cover art and the description of it really caught my attention. Not sure why it hadn’t prior to the panel, but I guess I can be slow on the uptake sometimes.

Sam: Oh, yeah! Saturday was the most intense day by far, in terms of panels and overall attendance to the con. I believe the total attendance was 17,236 people this year!

The first panel that I attended was the Shoot the Hostage!—An Adventure in Marketing Anime Workshop. This workshop was put on by Adam Sheehan, the marketing manager for FUNimation, and he played out the panel in a very interesting way. Upon splitting us into groups, he gave us pamphlets that read like a Choose Your Own Adventure… but instead of fighting dragons and just finding out your princess is in another castle, it was about the decisions that must be made while marketing anime. As a marketing major, I was very interested in this and Adam provided a unique real-world experience with this idea, as all of the choices we could make were actually things that had happened! This was a great way to connect with the industry.

However, you are not wrong to say that the clear winners of the panels on Saturday were the Vertical and Manga Mania panels! It was wonderful to hear Ed talk about Vertical’s overall success in the marketplace and it was great to get an understanding of the directions that they want to go in, both in publishing and as a company! I think the best part for me was that Ed was very attentive to what the fans had to say and really was trying to get a perspective on the titles people want to see out on the shelves. I am in the same boat as you, too: I’d love to see more of Ishinomori’s work!

The Manga Mania panel was the other panel highlight, and it can only be described as mind-blowing! The panel was set up by Ed Chavez again, as a roundtable discussion between Internet reviewers and podcasters, including MangaBlog’s Brigid Alverson, Ninja Consultant’s Erin Finnegan, Anime World Order’s Clarissa, Anime Jump’s Mike Toole, Ain’t it Cool? News’ Scott Green and Vertical Intern, Ko Ransom. The panelists talked about the state of the industry, the changes in fandom over the years and the emergence of digital technologies and how that can ultimately affect our market overall. I don’t know about you, but I eat this stuff up! This is what I love to come to panels for and like you said when it was over, they could’ve easily extended this to two hours of discussion. I think it was a really interesting mix of very opinionated people, who all got introduced to manga in different ways (Brigid mentioned her daughters being a huge influence on her manga reading). Ed was also a perfect host, having prepared a variety of individualized questions for each of his guests, which made it all the more driven and focused.

Ken: If I had any complaint regarding the Manga Mania panel it’s that there were no introductions. I knew who everyone was on it, but then again I follow most of them online in one form or another, but I’d imagine that your average con goer must have been a bit lost and confused at the entire thing. That small bump aside, it was definitely a fantastic panel. The discussions about keeping things in mind like the context of the original manga and the audience you’re writing for really struck me as interesting, but admittedly that could just be the reviewer in me. There was some talk about audience fragmentation and how everything is targeted towards specialized niches that struck me as intriguing as well. It’s definitely a panel that would have benefited from some more time, though. If there’s another panel like this in 2011, like you I can only hope that it’s given two hours.

It wasn’t too long after the Manga Mania panel that you and Erin Finnegan were co-hosting Cooking With Manga. It was a pretty fun panel and it showed that you two, and her husband Noah, are far braver cooks and eaters than I. Half of the ingredients you two mentioned I hadn’t really heard of, and the food itself looked questionable at times, particularly that rice cooker bread. Gyah!

Definitely a fun, packed day, but the crowds and lines were manageable and everything seemed to go off with minimal hitches, which is a testament to how hard the Anime Boston staff must have been working.

Sam: Yeah, I think that we both had a lot of fun doing that panel and were both really surprised by the turnout! I would say there were over 40-something people there, which doesn’t sound like a whole lot but we filled the room! From what I saw up on the panel and from the people I talked to before and afterwards, I think it was really well liked! In fact, I know it was well received (Erin’s been forwarding me some e-mails) so overall, people really ate it up! It’s these types of panels, where con-goers can learn about new types of manga or even just applying them to real-life situations (I met a few people who were culinary students), that really make conventions a lot fun. You can get industry news anywhere but where else are you going to find a community as interested in this stuff as you are?

Overall, Saturday was a great, dare I call it the best, day for Anime Boston!

Ken: Which brings us to the con’s final day, Sunday. I have to admit that I wasn’t at the con for long on Sunday due to Easter plans, and even then I spent most of the time in the Dealers’ Room making my last-minute purchases and hoping for some excellent deals. One of things that struck me was the change in the crowd. Sundays are bound to be the slowest and least-crowded day at cons, but I was surprised at just how many families took advantage of this and showed up. I saw several couples with toddlers or babies in strollers roaming the hallways, something that would have been impossible on Saturday and probably difficult even on Friday. Of course it’s entirely possibly that they were there the whole time and I was just noticing them now, but I kind of doubt it. It was kind of nice to see and had me wondering if those are the next generation of anime and manga fans.

I also took advantage of the light schedule and stopped by one of the video rooms for a bit and caught a few episodes of Slayers: Revolution. I’ve been an on-again, off-again fan of the franchise since the ’90s but really hadn’t seen any of the series in years. I had nearly forgotten how much fun that show is and now I’m tempted to start hunting down boxed sets.

At any rate, for me the big panel on Sunday was The History of Otakudom, hosted by Alex Leavitt. It was a pretty interesting rundown of the history of the term otaku, the various ways it’s been used and perceived in both Japan and abroad, and the various attempts made at using otaku culture as an economic buoy in recent years. I thought it was interesting that the term has yet to really be reclaimed and redefined by those labeled otaku, despite the fact that they’ll often use it in a positive away amongst themselves.

After that panel came the Anime in Academia panel, which was also hosted Alex Leavitt and others, but that was about it for me as Easter dinner was calling.

Sam: Wrapping up sounds good to me. I don’t have much to say other than always keep an eye out for deals and know what you are looking for.

All in all, I would argue that this was the best con that I have attended to date. That might be because since the last Anime Boston, I have been exposed to a lot more manga and industry insight, but I think that the organization and amount of content that was offered this year was really a driving force. It is hard to argue with a number like 17,000 attendees!

My one word of advice to con-goers who are looking to get the most out of this experience… try a little bit of everything! Don’t just sit in the viewing room or game room (should these really even be here?) for hours on end! Get out of your comfort zone, go sit in some industry panels, go talk to dealers! You might learn something!

Ken: Yeah, you’ve got snap things up quickly or they’ll be gone by the next day. I learned that the hard way this weekend. Ah well!

It was definitely a well-organized and well-run con. They had a very good lineup of panels this year, ranging from fun clip shows to more academic fare like talks about genres, society and the like. I have to agree in thinking that this was the best Anime Boston out of the three years I’ve attended.

My one word of advice to con-goers would probably be to wash your hands when you leave the bathroom. Saw at least two people not do that and it kind of squicked me out. The hand sanitizers and soaps are there for a reason, people! Aside from that, though, there’s definitely so much to do that sitting in one place all weekend definitely seems a bit odd.

Ken: Friday was pretty good for me. It wasn’t obscenely panel-heavy or anything so I had some time to meander about the Dealers’ Room and do things like check out Artists’ Alley. It wasn’t immovably crowded, either, so I as able to check out some of the different cosplayers roaming the halls while wishing I had a camera, particularly for the Friend from 20th Century Boys and Shin from Dorohedoro cosplays. Both were unexpected but nice surprises.

The Craziest Mecha Moments panel, hosted by Will Kusleika and Nate Malynn, was a relaxing way to kick things off. It was just a bunch of off-the-wall clips from various mecha shows ranging from V Gundam to GaoGaiGar and everything in between. It was also the first of at least three times during the weekend where I’d see that Ideon clip of the little kid getting his head vaporized. I think it might have been some kind of unofficial theme for the weekend or something. Still, crazy child death aside it was a nice light start to the festivities!

The early evening was a bit of a mixed bag, but that’s really due to whatever I ate for lunch. I was still able to enjoy Play It Again Sam: Anime Remakes, which was hosted by two-thirds of the Anime World Order crew, Daryl Surat and Clarissa G. There was an interesting bit where they explained how companies rush out an anime for the weekly schedule and as result the broadcast version might end up looking a little subpar, but then the companies go back, touch up and redo the animation and artwork for the DVD release. Apparently, most fansubbers use the TV version, while the official US DVD releases almost always use the touched-up versions. Thought it was fascinating stuff.

I think it was after that and right before the Mad Science in Japanese Fiction panel that I bumped into you. So that seems like a good segue to find out about the first part of your day.

Sam: Much like you, Friday was a really good day for me. I got a really early start, not checking out panels, but helping out in the Dealers’ Room! I volunteered with a local Boston shop called Comicopia, which offered a really different perspective for me. Not only was it really interesting to see the inner working of the con, but I got to interact with con-goers in a way I had only dreamed of before! If you have the opportunity, I’d really recommend helping a local shop in your area at a con. The experience really helped me appreciate the con more than I ever did before (and I got some great discounts, too!).

After that, I grabbed some lunch, and was able to catch Erin Finnegan’s Unusual Manga Genres panel. She covered some really interesting sports manga (who knew there was curling manga?) to manga about Capybara (think big red guinea pigs). I really enjoyed it overall; I thought Erin did a good job at finding and presenting really strange bodies of work! It’d be great to get some of them here, though!

From there, I killed some time, helping out a friend of mine look for some things in Artists’ Alley, before we sat down for the VGO or Video Game Orchestra. This is the second time that I’ve seen the VGO play and this performance was phenomenal. The group played an enormous amount of classic game music, ranging from Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario World to Chrono Trigger. The turnout was amazing and what a treat for Anime Boston!

I left a bit early from that performance, though, to make sure that I was able to catch Gerald Rathkolb, Mike Toole and Daryl Surat’s (who showed up late for good reason) The Melancholy of Yoshinobu Nishizaki panel. For those of you readers who don’t know who Yoshinobu Nishizaki or “the Nish” as our panelist called him, he was the co-creator and designer of Space Battleship Yamato, which was one of the first series to really push the envelope on the space drama genre. Sadly thought, after the first series ended, “the Nish” really tried to redo the series again and again across a period of almost 20 years, only to end in failure. I love seeing these guys talk, especially about older ridiculous Anime.

After that, I stayed for You DON’T survive the Anime Apocalypse, which was put on again by Daryl Surat, but this time he was joined by his other AWO host, Clarissa Graffeo, which I think you attended as well. That was ridiculous, right? Especially that Ideon clip, which I had never seen before (and thankfully that was the only time I saw it the whole con!) Overall, though, this was one of my highlight panels and I think it well represents the type of content that really makes Anime Boston a fun experience.

What’d you think of it?

Ken: I really wanted to check out the VGO, but the past few years have had insanely long lines for any kind of musical performer so I passed without even bothering to check out the line’s length. Someday I’ll swing it though. Instead, I hit up a few more panels, with CapyBaron’s Mad Science in Japanese Fiction being a real standout.

CapyBaron hosted an excellent panel on Edogawa Rampo last year, and his Mad Science in Japanese Fiction panel was just as good. Admittedly it might not have been as flashy as some, but it did a fantastic job at exploring mad science in Japanese pop culture, tracing its roots back to historical figures, visits from Einstein, and more. He really, really knows his stuff and it showed throughout the panel. The panel was very well researched, informative and engaging. I was glad to see that it was pretty well packed since his Rampo panel was virtually empty last year; then again I think it was up against some hentai panels, so hey.

After that I sat in for a bit on The History of Japan, Part 1 panel, but I arrived late and unfortunately didn’t catch the hosts’ names. It wasn’t quite what I expected. When I came in they were finishing up a portion on pottery and launched straight into a section following the evolution of Japanese fashion through the Jomon period to the Edo period. It wasn’t exactly my thing, but the way the hostess explained how Kagura’s (from Inuyasha) clothing, attacks and name all fit together was pretty fascinating and gave me a new appreciation for the character. She clearly has a passion for the subject and I think that’s part of what held me in the panel despite not normally being interested in such things.

When I finally got to the You DON’T Survive the Anime Apocalypse, like yourself, I really dug the hell out of it. These clip panels usually strike me as a bit of a gamble as it really depends on the subject, the wit of the hosts and what clips they’re able to dig up. Of course Clarissa and Daryl have a good back-and-forth, and I thought their sense of humor really came across with their running commentary throughout the various end-of-the-world scenarios they threw at the crowd. I think most of the clips were from older shows, too, which makes me wistful for those days when laying waste to civilization was par for the course in anime. Ah well, all good things and all that…

I also have to mention that I really think the AB staff did a good job at organizing and placing things this year. I remember running all over the place, from the Sheraton to the third floor of the Hynes, last year, but by using all three floors of the Hynes they managed to keep most things in one area without getting overly crowded in the hallways. Also, the hand sanitizers and vending machines were a nice touch, as well.

Sam: Surprisingly, and this touches back on your point about overall organization of the convention, lines moved pretty smoothly this year. We were at the tail end of the line and got in just fine (thought I understand your concern). I was also pleased overall with how the convention was handled. The staff was always very helpful and willing to answer questions, which is something I know has been troubling in the past. Even thought it’s not something a lot of people think about, it really does make the experience all the more easy and fun to do.

It really is always amazing the amount of panels that Anime Boston has every year, especially with the non-anime/manga focused panels (I’ve seen some sci-fi and I know they have steampunk groups that come every year). This appeal is wonderful, considering what a wide audience it brings in. One thing I noticed in the panel schedule is an increasing amount of manga workshops and “how to break into…” types of panels. While I didn’t attend these, I was pleased to see them on the roster, hoping that some younger fans would take the next step in getting involved in the medium.

Continued tomorrow in part two!

Jack and the Princess

Original text by Raye Morgan
Art by Junko Okada
Harlequin K.K./SOFTBANK Creative Corp., 126 pp.
Rating: Young Adult (16+)

Karina, the 22-year-old princess of Nabotavia, is going to be returning to her home country soon and getting married to an aristocrat of her aunt’s choosing. Lonely and looking to enjoy her final summer of freedom, she attempts to befriend Jack, the new head of security for her uncle’s Beverly Hills residence and only other young person around. Jack’s resistant at first, owing to the gulf between their social circumstances, but the extent of Karina’s isolation coupled with her resigned acceptance of her duties prompts his interest in her to grow and, in what will come as a surprise to no one, they fall in love.

The result is a sweet romance that, even though it contains far too many kidnapping attempts for a story this short, works well in the manga format. I think the reason Jack and the Princess was able to be adapted from the original novel so successfully is that the story is so simple. Lonely princess meets suspended cop who sees the woman, not the title. That’s essentially all that’s going on here, and while it’s definitely nothing new, the end result is still satisfying.

Junko Okada’s clean and attractive artwork complements the story well, with shades of early shojo in Karina’s character design and an appropriately studly look for Jack. While lettering problems persist—some of these lines really could fit the bubbles with only minor tweaking—this volume is completely free from grammatical errors and the script reads smoothly.

The original novel is evidently the first in a series (Catching the Crown) featuring more members of the Nabotavian royal family hooking up with ordinary folks. I have no idea if the others received the manga treatment, but if they show up on eManga, I’ll definitely check ‘em out.

Jack and the Princess is available now at eManga.com.

–Reviewed by Michelle Smith

Keeping Luke’s Secret

Original text by Carole Mortimer
Art by Hinoto Mori
Harlequin K.K./SOFTBANK Creative Corp., 128 pp.
Rating: 16+

When the aging actress Rachel Richmond calls young female historian Leonie Winston to her home, Leonie has absolutely no clue that Richmond is going to request that Leonie be her biographer. Not that Leonie hasn’t been published, but her first book was a biography of her grandfather. She’s stunned at the request, especially since thirty years prior, Rachel gave birth to a son she called Luke. The identity of Luke’s father is a secret to everyone but Rachel and Luke—hence the title. Luke fights against his mother giving up this information, thinking Leonie to be just another opportunist, but there’s a reason Rachel contacted this particular historian, and those reasons will shake Luke’s world to the core.

Interestingly, this manga adaptation of Keeping Luke’s Secret is the first time this title has been published in the United States. I’m not sure why—this version, at least, works just fine. Well. Sort of. I mean, the art falls into awkward angles sometimes and I absolutely do not understand why the boyfriend Leonie has at the beginning of the story has to gradually morph into king of all dirtbags in order to make room for Luke. They could just grow apart like adults, but I guess that’d be asking too much. Still, this is a pleasant enough diversion for a springtime afternoon.

Keeping Luke’s Secret is available now at eManga.com.

–Reviewed by Jennifer Dunbar

Only By Chance

Original text by Betty Neels
Art by Chieko Hara
Harlequin K.K./SOFTBANK Creative Corp., 126 pp.
Rating: YA (16+)

Henrietta Cowper is a low-level assistant to an insufferable physician at a London hospital. Adam Ross-Pit is a well-respected surgeon at the same facility. When Henrietta falls ill in the middle of her shift, Adam forces her into an extended hospital stay, ultimately resulting in the loss of her apartment and her job. Feeling responsible, he steps in to take care of her cats and ends up finding her housing and a new job as well—as a tour guide in a large manor near his country home. Though Henrietta and Adam are each drawn to one another, their social stations place them worlds apart. Is it possible for two gentle souls like these to overcome societal barriers?

Very little happens over the course of this manga, but that’s actually what makes it work so well. While more ambitious stories fall to pieces under the constraints of manga adaptation, this simple, quiet romance slips perfectly into place with no obvious cuts or awkward shifts in tone. There’s no real drama here—no true villains or any genuine conflict. The romance is inevitable but lazily pleasant, like sunlight on a Sunday morning or a cat stretching out after a long nap. Do these comparisons sound ridiculous? They’re not. If you’re now picturing a lazy cat stretching in the sun, you’re actually right on track.

Betty Neels’ protagonists are sweet in an vintage sort of way, reminiscent of the quieter characters of Louisa May Alcott or L.M. Montgomery, perfectly matched by Chieko Hara’s old-fashioned shojo character designs. The art is a real highlight of this volume overall, especially in terms of pacing and emotionally rich imagery. Though the lettering is as sloppy as all the books in this series, its stodgy font choice actually feels rather appropriate.

Though Only By Chance delivers neither high drama nor epic romance, this gentle little love story is truly a breath of fresh, spring air.

Only By Chance is available now at eManga.com.

–Reviewed by Melinda Beasi

The Sheikh’s Contract Bride

Original text by Teresa Southwick
Art By Keiko Okamoto
Harlequin K.K./SOFTBANK Creative Corp., 128 pp.
Rating: Young Adult (16+)

Adina does not wish to go through with her arranged marriage to Malik, a powerful sheikh who was chosen as her husband by her father. She has fallen in love with another, but is too timid to tell her father or her fiancé. Instead, her twin Beth volunteers to go to the sheikh and break up the marriage so that Adina doesn’t have to rock the boat herself. But Beth finds herself falling for Malik and encouraging him rather than breaking things up.

I got exactly what I was looking for in this volume: a sweet story that was easy to read and follow. There’s not a whole lot of depth to the characters or story, and it’s not hard to tell where it’s going, but it was still enjoyable. I liked that Beth’s forwardness was what Malik was drawn to, and I also liked that he was a pretty nice guy, because so often in this type of story the powerful man is a jerk who is brought low or made vulnerable in order to give the heroine an opportunity at his soft side. The relationship between Beth and Malik is very natural and very slowly developed, and the subtlety surprised me. There is a twist at the end that threatens to wreck things (aside from the fact she’s been passing herself off as her twin sister), and of course it doesn’t amount to much in the end, but it was still appreciated.

It’s not going to win any awards, and I’m sure anyone not looking for a romance manga would find it extremely boring, but anyone who’s interested will probably be satisfied with it in the end. And I can’t argue with the e-manga format.

The Sheik’s Contract Bride is available now at eManga.com.

–Reviewed by Connie C.

To Marry McAllister

Original text by Carole Mortimer
Art By Junko Murata
Harlequin K.K./SOFTBANK Creative Corp., 128 pp.
Rating: Young Adult (16+)

Brice is a famous painter who is hired by the millionaire Richard to do a portrait of Sabina, his fiancé and a famous supermodel. But Sabina feels uncomfortable around Brice and continually avoids him. Brice comes on hard in situations where he forces Sabina to meet, and before long, he finds himself falling for the aloof woman. Sabina wants to stay faithful to Richard, but also feels chemistry for Brice. How will the situation work itself out?

The answer to the above question is a pretty obvious one, given the fact Richard is older and fairly sinister and Brice is a young and romantic artist. The story was an interesting one, and while it trod in familiar territory, I do like these Harlequin manga for following a completely different set of clichés than typical shojo manga. I liked this story less than the others I’ve read, however, since there was almost no chemistry between the couple. It was a shock to me when Brice declared his feelings, since he seemed more interested in pushing Sabina’s buttons, and it was even more surprising and abrupt when Sabina began to reciprocate.

There is also a secondary story about an obsessed fan that is handled badly and winds up being irrelevant, anyway. I did like the older characters and more mature emotions on display, though, which I do give it some credit for. There are better Harlequin titles out there, but if you’ve got an itch for the mature rich people story, this will do nicely.

To Marry McAllister is available now at eManga.com.

–Reviewed by Connie C.

Complimentary digital access provided by DMP.

All images copyright © Harlequin.

To start us off, we are joined by special guest reviewer Danielle Leigh (of Comics Should Be Good), who takes a look at The Apartment. Melinda’s up next with Honor’s Promise, followed by Michelle with Married Under the Italian Sun. Chloe wraps things up with two reviews: Prisoner of the Tower and Word of a Gentleman. Enjoy!

The Apartment

Original text by Debbie Macomber
Art by Ryo Arisawa
Harlequin K.K./SOFTBANK Creative Corp., 126 pp.
Rating: Young Adult 16+

He’s a little bit country and she’s a little bit…classical music? It isn’t just the leads’ love of different musical styles that keeps them apart, but the difference in their class status that is offered as the contrived impediment that keep the two from embarking upon a relationship in this run-of-the-mill contemporary romance.

This Harlequin manga—based on a Debbie Macomber story—is named The Apartment because a landlord has double-booked recent army vet Shaun and sheltered flutist Hilary for the same apartment. While Hilary’s delicate sensibilities are at first wounded by Shaun’s abrupt manner, it doesn’t take long before she realizes he’s a good guy and starts to fall in love with him. Meanwhile, Shaun is hung up on Hilary’s cultured upbringing, and does the dumb male thing by trying to wreck their budding relationship on purpose. For Hilary’s own good, of course.

Even for a formulaic romance, there’s next to no tension in the book and the final resolution is never in doubt. I must admit I have a secret fondness for historical romances, though I greatly appreciate a book set in a post-feminist era that generally treats the characters as equals. Although Hilary is assigned a “princess” background, she is still attempting to make it on her own as a young musician, and it is Shaun who mistakenly flaunts his masculinity as if that were an indelible class marker. While technically a “contemporary” romance, the characters’ hang-ups about the difference in their status seem rather quaint by today’s standards.

The art looks like conventional shojo, but pared down quite a bit to suit the story’s focus on maturing young adults, rather than excitable teenagers. That said, I found myself missing the impressionistic flourishes and all the storytelling excesses that often make shojo titles such a pleasure to read. In the end, this title lacked that artistic and narrative passion that makes representations of various affairs of the heart often so compelling in shojo manga.

The Apartment is available now at eManga.com.

–Reviewed by Danielle Leigh

Honor’s Promise

Original text by Sharon Sala
Art by Esu Chihara
Harlequin K.K./SOFTBANK Creative Corp., 125 pp.
Rating: YA (16+)

Though still mourning the recent loss of her mother, Honor O’Brien strives to keep her mother’s memory alive by caring for the restaurant she started after the death of her husband. When a young man from Colorado sweeps into town and sweeps Honor off her feet, she’s surprised to find herself experiencing real happiness alongside such fresh grief. She’s even more surprised to discover that the man she’s fallen for so quickly is actually in town to deliver a rather appalling truth about her own origins. Can Honor truly find love with the man whose job it is to tear down everything she’s ever known?

This manga starts out strong, easily establishing a believable whirlwind romance between Honor and her out-of-town suitor, Trace, as well as a solid foundation for Honor herself, including her close relationship with her mother and their restaurant’s built-in “family.” If Honor’s surroundings don’t exactly feel like Texas, they do feel like home and all the things (wonderful and hurtful) that go with it. Less well-developed are the story’s antagonists—long-lost relatives threatened by Honor’s arrival into their lives—which keeps the volume’s dramatic climax from truly packing a punch. The greatest sacrifice made in the name of single-volume romance, however, is the lack of time allotted to Honor’s grief after Trace’s revelation, which robs her of an opportunity to achieve real depth.

Though DMP’s adaptation suffers from stunningly sloppy lettering—pages and pages of square blocks of text artlessly pasted over rounded speech balloons—the visual storytelling is quite effective. Honor, in particular, is expressively drawn, which plays a large role in her believability, especially in the beginning.

Though the manga’s middle chapters are too rushed to support the story as well as they might in prose, Honor’s Promise is a sweet, dramatic, genuinely poignant romance.

Honor’s Promise is available now at eManga.com.

–Reviewed by Melinda Beasi

Married Under the Italian Sun

Original text by Lucy Gordon
Art by Mayu Takayama
Harlequin K.K./SOFTBANK Creative Corp., 126 pp.
Rating: Young Adult (16+)

When Angela—an actress who’s been playing a “dumb bimbo” called Angel for eight years—is jilted by her wealthy husband, she’s too weary to battle his lawyers and instead accepts an Italian villa for a divorce settlement. Upon moving to Amalfi, she meets Vittorio, the former owner who assumes a lot of negative things about her character, given the life she comes from, only to eventually be proven wrong when she makes sacrifices for the sake of the villa’s lemon grove and opens up to him about her background.

The relationship between Angela and Vittorio is rather shallow, but I suppose that’s what happens when a full-length novel is condensed into a short manga like this one. It’s entertaining for the most part, but sometimes they behave inexplicably seemingly only for the purpose of putting an obstacle in the way of their just being happy together. There’s also a pretty unusual twist on the love triangle idea, resulting in some amusing scenes of the unlikely threesome sightseeing together.

Mayu Takayama’s art is fairly attractive, though pages have a tendency to look a bit too busy when depicting the villa and its grounds. My main quibble with the visual presentation of the book is actually not the lettering—which, as other bloggers have noted, doesn’t even try to fit into the word balloons—but with the grammar problems in the text. Sometimes these are minor (“Can’t… breath…”), but sometimes they affect the meaning of what’s being said: “I think I will thank you” and “I think I will, thank you” mean two different things to me.

As a final note… guess what never happens in this book, despite its title?

Married Under the Italian Sun is available now at eManga.com.

–Reviewed by Michelle Smith

Prisoner of the Tower

Original text by Gayle Wilson
Art by Karin Miyamoto
Harlequin K.K./SOFTBANK Creative Corp., 126 pp.
Rating: Young Adults (16+)

There are, essentially, two kinds of bad shojo in the world: the irredeemably awful, and hence “just plain bad,” and the bad-yet-enjoyable, a class of works that manages to strike the right note between trashy and good to achieve the coveted “guilty pleasure read” status. Thankfully, Prisoner of the Tower features far more of the latter than the former, turning its all-too-familiar bag of chance meetings, mistaken identities and Regency lovers into a middling, if solid, dose of girl comics. A slightly older central pair keeps the focus from devolving into the typical tale of star-crossed young’uns; the youthful girl and boy are here replaced by a widow with a ward in tow and a troubled war veteran, whose post-traumatic stress from wars on the Continent is apparently Regency’s most popular “troubled male” trope.

Still, the combination of high melodrama and an almost retro sparkling look on the part of Miyamoto call to mind (not unpleasantly) some of shojo’s earliest soaps, a la Glass Mask or Candy Candy. It’s a bit like a thick slab of chocolate cake in comic form; nutritionally empty, but it goes down easy and sweetly, even if one is left feeling slightly ill afterward. Granted, there are better romantic one-shots out there, but for period piece fans with a taste for dramatic flair, Prisoner of the Tower remains nonetheless a perfectly serviceable (if forgettable) outing.

Prisoner of the Tower is available now at eManga.com.

–Reviewed by Chloe Ferguson

Word of a Gentleman

Original text by Lyn Stone
Art by Tsukiko Kurebayashi
Harlequin K.K./SOFTBANK Creative Corp., 126 pp.
Rating: Young Adults (16+)

Taken completely objectively, Lyn Stone’s decidedly middle-of-the-road text for Word of a Gentleman will neither thrill nor offend Regency romance fans: spirited heroine forms (initially) purely convenient marriage contract with rakish nobleman; dangerous hijinks, falling in love, discoveries of tormented past ensue. And yet, it’s hard to willingly suspend disbelief and switch off the brain for a bit when Tsukiko Kurebayashi’s decidedly less than serviceable art reminds us why a sense of space and proportion should underlie every mangaka’s career. Gangly arms! Mangled hands! Awkward spaces! Junk-food stories are best consumed with a heavy sugar coating of good artwork, and the dearth of quality here will likely leave readers choking.

So too are unfortunate side effects of crushing a multi-hundred page novel into some 120-odd comic pages readily evident in both art and plot. Despite a supposed sense of urgency permeating the events, individual moments feel starved of importance: it’s a series of empty romance pictures, strung together by panels of tone. Plenty of tone. Overflowing, omnipresent backgrounds and squares of tone that substitute both for location and act as a rather bland way of signaling to the reader that (drama drama!) time is ticking…not that you’ll care in the end. There’s nothing wrong with indulging in a little mindless Regency now and again—but when the mindless indulgence becomes a distracting slog through terrible art, it may be time to look elsewhere for your romance kicks.

Word of a Gentleman is available now at eManga.com.

–Reviewed by Chloe Ferguson

Complimentary digital access provided by DMP.

All images copyright © Harlequin.

MICHELLE:
Now that we’ve had sufficient time to recover from the holidays, but not yet consign them to the distant past, it seemed like a timely moment to pose the following question for roundtable discussion:

Did you receive any gifts of manga this holiday season? And, if so, what?

MELINDA:
What a fun topic, Michelle!

My manga haul was pretty robust, though perhaps not as exciting to others as it is to me, since they were mainly aimed at filling in holes in my collection rather than providing me with anything genuinely new.

My in-laws (to whom I think manga is fairly baffling) went all out, gifting me with volumes five and six of CMX’s cracktastic shojo series, Moon Child, as well as all six available volumes of Kazuya Minekura’s Wild Adapter. I’d previously read WA via copies borrowed from a friend and had cried every day since giving them up. No more tears for me!

My uncle really came through as well, with Fred Schodt’s Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics, which I’ve wanted my own copy of forever. He also gave me the first four volumes of one of my favorite manhwa series, Goong: The Royal Palace, previously borrowed from Michelle.

Speaking of manhwa, some family members who know me well went the route of Barnes & Noble gift cards, which I immediately spent picking up early volumes of Yen Press’ series Very! Very! Sweet and You’re So Cool. I’m already clamoring for more!

JENNIFER:
This was a holiday season for more practical-type gifts, but I did get the Clover omnibus! One of these days I’m gonna sit down and do nothing more than look at the pretty art.

When I find time. If I find time.

SAM:
Wow! Great responses so far and fun topic!

While I don’t believe I received anything manga-specific from my family (I did receive some earlier Neil Gaiman Sandman Mystery Theater books and The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu), I had the opportunity to treat myself to some manga.

My former supervisor of my last internship gave me a gift card to Amazon and during the course of the internship, I was adamantly following manga news and reviews and reading up on new series and beautifully crafted books. So I bought GoGo Monster, Red Snow, Swallowing the Earth and MW, all in really nice condition.

I will be doing the same thing again soon. I sold a number of my older manga volumes to New England Comics for store credit and received $150! Any suggestions?

ISAAC:
Oooh, good idea with the store credit Sam! I also did not get any manga for Christmas, but will be buying some with the holiday loot! I loathe paying full price for anything, and am looking forward to taking advantage of my local comic book store’s (Berkeley’s Comic Relief) sale on manga next week. 35% off! I’m planning on getting Swallowing the Earth, NANA, From Eroica with Love, Kekkaishi, and All My Darling Daughters. I wonder what else I should be on the lookout for…

ERIN:
I didn’t ask for much manga this year, just Blue Spring by Taiyo Matsumoto. I also got Jonathan Clement’s Schoolgirl Milky Crisis: Adventures in the Anime and Manga. I’m looking forward to reading it! Last Christmas I got Noah (now he’s my husband) a bunch of volumes of Berserk. This year, I got him volumes 18-25, in a slow effort to catch up.

Over the holidays I finished reading Fred Schodt’s Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. I really enjoyed the section on different manga magazines in Japan. In the second half of the book Schodt does a series of artist spotlights. Many of the authors were published in Garo, the legendary alternative magazine magazine, so they tend to be artists I want to read. The best part is that Schodt interviews half the people he talks about, including the editors of the magazines he describes. It’s a fun read!

MICHELLE:
Ooh, Dreamland Japan sounds marvelous. I’ve been lamenting my lack of knowledge of Japanese magazines and publishers lately, so I might have to check that out.

I did not get any manga as a gift, but neither did I ask for any directly. I usually point my mother to my Amazon wishlist, but I think she felt safer making selections from the DVD and fiction categories. One thing she did get me was 70 Japanese Gestures: No Language Communication, in which a respectable-looking middle-aged man demonstrates gestures ranging from the mundane to the slightly risqué. It’s pretty amusing.

This does bring up a sub-topic, though… How do you describe manga to your parents?

ERIN:
I just tell my parents that manga is “Japanese comics” and they generally get it. They knew how was into Sailor Moon in high school.

But this year I described yaoi to them, and it totally blew my dad’s mind. He wasn’t offended or anything, he just repeated “WOW! I did NOT know that!” in an amusing fashion. My mom is pretty unflappable, so she didn’t really react.

MICHELLE:
Hahaha. That’s awesome.

I give mine the same general explanation, with perhaps a little bit of information about how manga differs from Western comics, but I have not been brave enough to describe BL to them. I tell my husband and others, “It’s gay romance,” but don’t elaborate beyond that.

KEN:
This Christmas was a bit light on the manga sadly. Still, I did get volume seven of Eden: It’s An Endless World and I used some Christmas money to snag the second volume of Dororo as well!

SAM:
I don’t really read enough yaoi and hopefully won’t have to explain it to my parents.

Like Erin, I also gave manga as a gift this year. My uncle is a graphic artist and was the one who initially introduced me to comics so I got him a copy of A Drifting Life. Also, this isn’t a Christmas gift, but I lent my girlfriend, Adrien, all of my Rumic Theater books!

Did anyone else give out manga this year?

MICHELLE:
Actually, the Clover omnibus Jen received was from me.

MELINDA:
I gave volume one of Children of the Sea to my uncle (the same one who gifted me with manhwa). He is a college professor in visual arts, so, aside from my mother (who has read several series I’ve loaned her), I figure he’s the next best hope for pushing manga on my family.

My parents read most of my reviews (including yaoi reviews) so I rarely have to explain anything, which is nice.

ERIN:
Noah and I have been giving manga as gifts to the lawyers he works for, and their families. We gave Swan to a little girl who likes ballet and Dragonball to her brother, Crayon Shin Chan went to their stay-at-home mom, Doing Time went to a criminal lawyer, Slam Dunk to his teenage son and Beauty Pop to his junior-high daughter. One year we gave a golf-fanatic lawyer a copy of Golden Rough: The Stance of Souta in Japanese, although we don’t think he had much time to flip through it. These were all volumes 1-2 or 1-3.

GRANT:
No direct manga gifts here. (Although my parents did get me a copy of the first Ender’s Game graphic novel compilation, which comes close.) I made use of gift cards to bolster my collection of classic manga: Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life, Push Man, and Abandon the Old in Tokyo.

While I didn’t officially classify it as a holiday gift for them, I did pick up a bunch of manga for my in-class library prior to winter break. (I’m an English teacher.) Some of my students have been griping that our media center doesn’t get any new series, so I’ve gotten them the Maximum Ride manga, some Fullmetal Alchemist, and CLAMP’s Tsubasa. I have to read through some One Piece volumes to make sure they’re classroom safe before I can put those out, too.

Explaining manga to my parents has always been easy. I was Dragonball-obsessed starting in 6th grade and they would take me up to the comic store every month to buy Viz’s latest single-chapter release of DB and DBZ. I loved the stuff so much they had no choice but to talk to me about it on a regular basis. (They get major parenting points for that.)

JEN:
Erin, I’ve actually had similar conversations with my parents over the same thing. Well, sort of. My dad’s an archaeologist, and actually lived in Japan when he was a child (my grandfather was in the Army and was part of the post-war occupation), so the conversation was decidedly anthropological.

MICHELLE:
Melinda, the fact that your mom reads manga is pretty amazing. I can’t imagine mine doing that at all.

I haven’t given much manga as gifts, really, but I’m doing my best to introduce it to my coworker’s daughter, Elizabeth, whom I’ve successfully hooked on Veronica Mars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Doctor Who. I tried once before when she was 9 or 10 with the first volume of Cardcaptor Sakura but it didn’t interest her. Now she’s twelve and majorly into Twilight so I’m thinking that Vampire Knight might appeal to her. I don’t own it, though, so all I can do is nudge her toward the library.

I did used to loan it to some of my piano students, back when I taught. One of those kids still has my volume eight of Prince of Tennis!

CONNIE:
Fun topic! I’m enjoying all the different answers, too.

I neither gave nor received manga for Christmas, unfortunately. Usually my parents do give me gifts off a list, but this year it was all about a new TV, so I can’t complain. Try as I might, I don’t know a lot of people who read or really get into manga, so I don’t have many I can make gifts to. I might try to give a few volumes to my younger cousins next year. My roommate is a voracious reader of my manga, but he leaves it to me to buy all of it and just hand him things to read. He usually tries to get me other comics he thinks I’ll like, but not this year.

I did make a gift to myself of five volumes of From Eroica with Love in Japanese and the first two bilingual volumes of Princess Knight. It even arrived on Christmas day, strangely enough. My roommate’s Christmas gift to himself was a subscription to 2000 AD and a volume of Flesh, so we’re both looking forward to that.

My parents occasionally ask conversationally about manga since I have so much of it, but I think both would rather not know. My mom tried to read some a long time ago, and picked up random volumes of Lupin III and Confidential Confessions. She was horribly offended by both (Lupin for its bawdiness and Confidential Confessions because it was a story about a girl trying to fight back against a teacher that sexually harasses her) and never asked me or tried to read others again. My father once asked about a volume of Sorcerer Hunters with one of the characters in bondage gear on it, but never asked again. I don’t think they ever need to know BL exists.

SAM:
While we’re on the subject of parents, I bought volumes seven and eight of Barefoot Gen right before a trip with my mom and I’ve gotten her into reading those.

MICHELLE:
This brings to mind another question: does your family know that you write manga reviews online?

Mine does, though Dad might’ve forgotten, though they’ve never shown any interest in reading anything I’ve written. My husband read the first few that got posted on Manga Recon, but otherwise he just listens to me talk about it and insists that I’m not boring him, though I always feel as if I am.

CONNIE:
Mine sort of know I write reviews online. I’ve mentioned it before, but they’ve never really expressed any interest in it. My roommate reads all of the reviews I write, and also sits through regular lectures that I know bore the pants off of him. He’s made me promise never to talk about Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures again.

ISAAC:
Haha! My brother used to read manga, but he “grew out of it”. He still likes a couple series though, like Cromartie High School, What’s Michael? and Azumanga Daioh.

JENNIFER:
I need to get off my butt and read Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure one of these days. I had a friend talk my ear off about it and it sounds quite cracktastic.

My sister and her husband read manga, though I know they don’t read my reviews. Sis buys Gin Tama in the original Japanese release (she took three years of college-level Japanese) and also cosplays it at cons, etc. My taste and hers are vastly different, though—I like feel-good shojo and magical girls and basically, if it ran in LaLa, I adore it. She loves gag shonen and has no time for shojo.

SAM:
We should all read Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and then we can have a roundtable about it. It’s finishing up in America very soon I believe.

Also, just to chime in on our loved one reading our reviews, my parents don’t as much, unless I make them aware of it. They do know that I write them frequently and are supportive on how much it’s done for me. My friends and girlfriend on the other hand, love to read them and either support me on my ideas or argue with me… even if they haven’ read the books. The good thing is, is that its getting them more into manga, though!

MICHELLE:
Thanks to everyone who participated; everyone’s responses were so fun! I’d like to conclude by extending these same questions to the readers: did you give or receive any manga this holiday season? Is your family aware of your love for manga and do you even dare explain BL to them? Please feel free to chime in below; we’d love to hear from you!

Brought to us from the brilliant mind of Katsuhiro Otomo, the creator of Akira, Domu: A Child’s Dream is a psionic thriller about a modest housing complex, set in what appears to be the outskirts of Tokyo. Originally serialized from 1980 to 1982, Otomo created this series based on his own experiences living in Tokyo and on hearing about the eruption of suicides around his area. I originally wanted to review this because Akira is such a formative piece of work in terms of manga and anime and this series really seemed to me to be the source of where Akira came from.

Over the past three years, 29 deaths have mysteriously occurred in this living structure, ranging from suicides and accidents to just plain unbelievable circumstances, leaving police to ask the question, “Is there something else out there?” They begin to prowl for “suspicious characters” in the complex; however, much to one inspector’s surprise, it is always who you would least expect it to be.

Enter old man Cho, a seemingly senile and extremely childish old man with unlimited psychic abilities and potential. He can teleport some distance, telekinetically move objects, create illusions at will and possess the mind. Spending most of the time sitting in the courtyard of the complex, quietly enjoying his days, he creates a perfect persona of innocence. No one would think twice that when the lights go down, this almost cute old-timer is no more than a close-fisted child, utilizing his abilities to manipulate and terrorize his fellow denizens all the for the sake of toys. Cho is quite content with his position of unchallenged power until a new ESPer, a young girl by the name of Etsuko, moves in. She quickly displays her own abilities, negating Cho’s continual hysteria and dominance and juxtaposing herself into a role neither of them have ever experience before—a rival.

Though the characters are very important in how the plot unfolds, they aren’t the key element that drives the story. In fact, the characters, when examined thoroughly, can be considered uninhabited, showing no real depth in terms of personality. It’s not to say that they are not personable or interesting, with Cho being extremely temperamental with moods constantly swinging and Etsuko trying her best to act like a composed, calm adult. This gives the characters a sense of commentary, touching on the differences between the unruly ideals of Japanese youth and the traditional views of their elders. Though the characters are dynamically composed, they aren’t very detailed. We know little about Cho’s past (we know his family moved out and left him but never why) or where Etsuko moved from, but this anonymity is really a vital piece to what makes the story great. It makes us feel as though we are viewing this tremendous event as a resident of the complex, never truly knowing our neighbors and the secrets they hold behind closed doors.

The real driving forces of this tale are the suspenseful storytelling and unyieldingly sinister artwork. The writing moves at a slow but effective pace, rapidly shifting between the happenings and conversations of the building tenants and the bewildering confusion the police are dealing with. Domu is a very conversation-heavy book, with a lot of details in the dialogue to take in. Even a simple sentence, from a character you’ll never see again, is vitally important for the reader to begin to start piecing the puzzle together. I found myself flipping back and forth between pages, making sure I got the whole story and really enjoyed this about the book; it creates an excellent excuse to reread it.

Otomo’s artwork generates the correct tone of eeriness for the situations by utilizing tremendous shading and painstaking detail in character and environment. Just take a look at the cover, for instance, which features Cho at his creepiest. Notice the intensive wrinkles around his mouth, eyes, cheeks and hands; Cho is visibly elderly and Otomo goes to great lengths to portray this. His expression, pose and props suggest differently though. Up in the air, enveloping himself in his treasures, he seems so full of life rather than the docile stereotype we give the elderly. He almost projects a childlike innocence but the shading around his eyes and the beckoning motions of his hands suggest that he has anything but innocence on the mind. The rest of the comic can be similarly dissected layer by layer, with each character wearing their hearts and minds on their sleeves, each meticulously rendered and planned out to teach us something new. While I do really enjoy Otomo’s artwork, I found some of the action to be really jerky and disorienting at times. Maybe psychic battles are as such (I’ve never been in one before) but it wasn’t as fluid as it could’ve been.

Inarguably, this is one of the greater manga stories ever told; the book even says so itself. In the back of volumes two and three, Greg Vest, senior editor, answers questions from readers about his understanding and their interpretations of the book. (Originally, Dark Horse released Domu in three 80-page issues, but the most prevalent way to find it these days is in a 240-page all-in-one edition. -ed.) Many were shocked that it is even considered manga, breaking the “big eyes, shallow writing” stories that were available in America at that time. Many consider this story to be one of great social examinations, pitting men against women or the old against the young. I was very pleased to find these little treasures in the back; they really helped to shape my opinions about the book and really caused me to look back and reexamine what was going on.

Altogether Domu: A Child’s Dream made me think about how well manga, and comics in general, can really capture a time, a place, a feeling or an idea and share it with the rest of the world. Domu: A Child’s Dream does just that.

Thanks so much to Kate Dacey of The Manga Critic for providing me with a copy! It was a blast to read!

Domu: A Child’s Dream is available now.

I can try to flower up and dance around the point all I want, but there’s really only one way to say it: Adolf is amazing. It’s one of the most powerful manga series I’ve ever read. As one of the last works by Osamu Tezuka, it takes a lifetime’s worth of themes and thousands of pages of experience and spins them into an exquisite story that is action-packed, thought-provoking, touching, and shocking in ways that not even the very best of his other work is.

It’s hard for me to talk about this series for fear of sounding disrespectful due to its subject matter, so I’m not going to comment too much on the history or its accuracy. It’s interesting as a look at Nazi Germany during World War II from a Japanese perspective. While Japan and Germany were allies during the war, the link and common ground between the two is rarely mentioned in the history material I’ve read since both countries had their own separate fronts and goals in mind. In Adolf, we see three characters: Sohei Toge, a Japanese reporter trying to uncover the secret of his brother’s mysterious murder in Berlin and the secret about Hitler he uncovered; Adolf Kaufmann, a half-German, half-Japanese boy raised in Japan and then sent to Germany to be a Hitler Youth; and Adolf Kamil, friend of Adolf Kaufmann and a Jewish boy living in Japan.

While the entire work is amazing, there are certain scenes that stuck with me for a long time after I read it. They are nothing short of harrowing. Toge getting his life torn apart by a relentless secret policeman for information that the Nazis want. Adolf Kaufmann being brainwashed as a member of the Hitler Youth and trying to resist, knowing that his friend Adolf Kamil is none of the things that the Nazis describe. Most scenes involving Adolf Kaufmann after he goes back to Germany, for that matter. The final scene between Adolf Hitler and Gestapo Officer Lampe. All of these are key plot points, but they are also powerful and disturbing in a way that I rarely see in a manga. Toge’s torture in particular was something that kept me awake at night. It was truly awful, and perfectly plotted and paced. The parts with Adolf Kaufmann are no less terrible, and seeing him brainwashed and slowly driven insane by the Nazi propaganda is hard to sit through, especially when he turns from a sweet boy into one of the more ruthless agents. Hitler himself is a character infrequently, and the way he is portrayed is also interesting, but I won’t spoil the surprise on that one.

The art is notable in Adolf, too. We see Tezuka’s art at its most realistic and gritty. There’s meticulous detail and attention paid to everything—a heaviness that his usual, more cartoony, style doesn’t possess—and the realism gives it an edge that even the art in MW didn’t seem to have. The contrast in style is most apparent in the appearance of Lamp and Hamegg, two of Tezuka’s Star System characters who have appeared in dozens of series since the 1950s. They are still recognizable, but both look more like real people here than they ever have before, which lends itself well to their incredibly villainous roles in this series. The art overall is maybe a bit less experimental than in MW or Ode to Kirihito, but there are still some very striking sequences. I was also quite taken with scenes in the first volume of the Berlin Olympics and the Nazi Party rallies that contain a great deal of detail and were likely informed by the films of Leni Riefenstahl.

The story itself stays on track and winds its way through the war and the lives of the Adolfs and Toge as well as the politics and history of the countries involved. Unlike most of the other work I’ve read by Tezuka, Adolf does not veer off on long tangents, but uses all its characters (who are rarely together) to give variation in the storytelling. There are separate plotlines for Toge and the two Adolfs, and eventually Adolf Kaufmann splits off to a third major storyline. The three converge at various points and in various ways (mostly through interaction with secondary characters), but it is mostly a character-driven work, with the war as a backdrop and an unfortunate catalyst in the lives of the characters.

The weakest part of the whole series is probably the epilogue, which takes place years after the story and is a final meeting of the two Adolfs. It feels out-of-place, but is also sad and very uncomfortable given the history between the two and the sad state of Adolf Kaufmann. The final scene does a good job of summarizing the theme of the whole series, though, at least from Toge’s perspective. The work begins and ends with Toge telling the story.

One other thing that’s worth mentioning is the excellent presentation the series recieved. Most would likely not guess that the five volumes are graphic novels: the trim size is different and the covers feature photography rather than art from the series. The adaptation is top notch and flows well, which is important here since stiff dialogue would likely lessen the impact of many scenes. Also, each volume features an interesting introductory essay from people connected to the work (mostly through VIZ), all of whom are still recognizable names: Frederik L. Schodt, Yuji Oniki, Matt Thorn, Annette Roman, and Gerard Jones. All are worth reading, and all do a far better job than I ever could of highlighting and discussing the themes of the work and covering a broad range of topics. Discussions include the fact that all the characters in this WWII story “don’t belong” racially in some way, that Tezuka’s usual themes of anti-discrimination and anti-ideology are still hanging around from the Astro Boy days, the word “seigi” and its untranslatable nuances as applied to the story, and an interesting comparison to Maus.

Admittedly, World War II has been the backdrop for many fine stories, and it’s hard not to make a powerful story with those themes if that’s what you’re setting out to do. But Adolf is haunting and certainly my favorite of Tezuka’s work; its mature art, story, and characters all come together to make even Ode to Kirihito and MW seem like child’s play as far as dark and disturbing go. Even given its relatively serious and grounded subject matter, there are scenes which can rival both of those titles for intensity and depravity. It’s also genuinely entertaining without being too dry and heavy-handed (well, mostly). It’s unfortunate that the series is out of print and expensive, because it strikes me as one of the occasional titles that would appeal to an extremely broad range of readers, outside manga and even comics. If you can find it, I highly recommend it.

All five volumes of Adolf are available now.

CONNIE’S LIST

Best New Series: Otomen (Aya Kanno, VIZ)
There’s at least a couple series that deserve this more, but Otomen is a lot more fun overall. It took me a couple volumes before the strange, sparkly, meta-humor of this series hit me. I’m still not sure if it’s a parody of shojo manga or truly sincere in its sparkles and plot devices so overused that they become funny again. I lean towards parody since one of the plot elements is a super-popular shojo manga featuring the main couple with swapped genders, the couple with opposite gender identities being the main theme of Otomen.

Best Continuing Series: Hikaru no Go (Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata, VIZ)
This was truly the year for Hikaru no Go, as we were treated to some of the best plotlines the series has to offer. Aside from the well-developed characters that make even a series about Go fun to read, the volumes from this year featured matches that have been built up for years, examinations of careers by several characters, and a farewell that breaks my heart no matter how many times I read it. There are few series that can rival the major event that takes place in volumes fifteen and seventeen for genuine emotional intensity.

Best Re-Release: InuYasha VIZBIG (Rumiko Takahashi, VIZ)
There are a couple good entries in this category, but none I liked as much as this opportunity to start InuYasha from the beginning. I hate including a series like this that everyone’s read, but it’s new to me, and it’s popular for a reason. I missed the boat when the series started running, and of course I could have picked it up any time since, but the three-in-one volumes with unflipped art and color pages are a far better treatment for my introduction to Kagome, Inuyasha, and their search for the Shikon Jewel shards.

Best Oneshot/Anthology: A Drifting Life (Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Drawn and Quarterly)
I feel like a broken record constantly coming back to this one, but reading it was one of the highlights of my summer. It’s a huge story that’s part biography, part history of manga, part history of Japan, and completely engrossing. I learned so much, and the only disappointing thing about it was that it had to end. It’s deeply personal, and to see Tatsumi interact at such a young age with some of the biggest names in manga (including himself) and see how he starts some of the most important movements in the medium with his coworkers is pretty incredible, especially knowing it’s all true.

Best Yaoi: Future Lovers (Saika Kunieda, Aurora Publishing)
The second and final volume of this series came out this year. It’s rare that I get more than shallow enjoyment from a BL book, but this had all my favorite things: an older couple, a more realistic approach to a gay relationship, and a sensitive romance with chemistry between the two that wasn’t forced. I doubted that a second volume would be a welcome addition, since the story feels complete in volume one, but the side stories about the pair coping with their families proved again just how superior this series was. A true joy to read.

Best Manga You Thought You Would Hate: REAL (Takehiko Inoue, VIZ)
I reluctantly started reading this towards the beginning of the year. Despite all the praise it gets, I didn’t think there was any way for a manga about wheelchair basketball to win me over. But it’s not really about wheelchair basketball, that’s just something they do. The incredibly bittersweet story, full of pleasant high points and crushing low points, is one of the best reads I had this year. Much like Hikaru no Go, it’s the fantastic and sympathetic characters that keep me coming back to this one, but in REAL, they do feel like they could be real people instead of a well-developed manga character.

Best Guilty Pleasure: Gakuen Prince (Jun Yuzuki, Del Rey)
I can see your opinion of me plummeting, and for good reason. This is honestly one of the trashiest, most cringe-inducing shojo manga available. But there’s something horribly addictive about the way the characters keep punishing each other, and seeing them interact with the other students at their school is like watching a train wreck. Every chapter is like a terrible lesson to teenage girls, and I don’t think I want to know who the intended audience is. But it crosses the line of good taste with a great deal of energy and intention, and it’s pretty fun to see all the taboos shattered in such an… extreme way. My conscience rebels, but I can’t read these volumes fast enough.

Biggest Disappointment: The Wallflower (Tomoko Hayakawa, Del Rey)
I went to this one late, but had high hopes since it was popular and sounded episodic and easy to pick up. I was disappointed by the completely one-dimensional characters, the tired jokes, and the lazy art. To be fair, the first volume I read was the worst and left a bad taste in my mouth for the others I read, but I can’t get over the complete lack of detail or effort that goes into the drawings and character development. The main character really should show some progress 20 volumes into a series, even a gag title like this.

Worst Manga: Maid War Chronicles (Ran, Del Rey)
This series was so bad that my subconscious made me skip it as I was going down a list of books from this year. I have no defense for this series, a fantasy starring a bratty prince surrounded by his maids that are also legendary warriors. They’re trying to take back their country after a rival takes the prince’s position, but they’re not trying very hard. More effort goes into molesting the maids and coming up with situations where they might have to take their clothes off than the dire situation at their home.

ERIN’S LIST

Best New Series: Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka (Naoki Urasawa, VIZ)
There were sooooooo many great new series this year. It breaks my heart to recommend just one! I find myself recommending Pluto to everyone the most often. It’s solid science fiction with the wide appeal of a primetime television. I also love the food reviews of Oishinbo, the cute-and-sick surprises in PELU, and the adorable E. coli of Moyasimon. I was loving 20th Century Boys more before I saw the crappy live action film, which really tainted the manga for me. I also look forward to every volume of DMC!
Honorable Mention: Oishinbo a la Carte (Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki, Viz); Little Fluffy Gigolo PELU,(Junko Mizuno, Last Gasp); Moyasimon (Ishikawa Masayuki, Del Rey); 20th Century Boys (Naoki Urasawa, VIZ); Detroit Metal City (Kiminori Wakasugi, VIZ)

Best Continuing Series: Black Jack (Osamu Tezuka, Vertical)
Tezuka was really down on the Japanese medical community in the 1970s, but reading this as an American now, as our country goes through a health care crisis, it seems particularly relevant. The handy short stories mean that I can pick this up and put it down between other books. In fact, I’m starting to think Black Jack is better enjoyed one chapter at a time, so I don’t raise my blood pressure too much thinking about the state of health care. Unfortunately, the hard cover editions were discontinued, so now my set won’t match on the shelf (arrg!).
Honorable Mention: Black Lagoon (Rei Hiroe, VIZ); Kitchen Princess (Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi, Del Rey)

Best Re-release: Yotsuba&! (Kiyohiko Azuma, Yen Press)
Yotsuba&! was definitely the license rescue of the year. I enjoy Azuma’s sense of humor, and I like to keep up with reading hit titles from Japan. This is an easy title to recommend to people, so I’m glad that Yen has also re-released volumes 1-5. Sometimes I’m a little weirded out reading Yotsuba&!; why does this run in a magazine for older guys? Why does Jumbo have a crush on such a young lady? Where did Yotsuba come from anyway, and how did she come to live with Koiwai?
Honorable Mention: Aria (Kozue Amano, TOKYOPOP)

Best Oneshot/Anthology: A Drifting Life (Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Drawn and Quarterly)
Honorable Mention: GoGo Monster (Taiyo Matsumoto, VIZ)
Don’t make me choose between A Drifting Life and GoGo Monster! They were both so great! A Drifting Life is epic in terms of historical content, breaking down the beginning of manga, year by year, documenting pop culture and capturing the spirit of the day. Meanwhile, GoGo Monster is the best presented book of the year, with red-trimmed pages imprinted with an abstract design, and it comes in a colorful cardboard sleeve. Is it supposed to be like Kodansha’s “Box” line in America? Insider, Matsumoto’s story starts off as a school drama about an outcast and then explodes into an experimental comic.

Best Yaoi: Ooku: The Inner Chambers (Fumi Yoshinaga, VIZ)
OK, so maybe Ooku isn’t exactly yaoi, but it certainly involves “dudes getting rude,” albeit in an alternate history of Japan-turned-matriarchy. I was familiar with Yoshinaga’s other titles (oops, I spelled Ooku wrong back then) and I was desperately waiting for this award winner to hit American shores. The story delivered more than I was expecting in the final few pages, and I’m really looking forward to seeing where this is going. I haven’t read volume two yet, although it is out now.

Best OEL/World Manga: Yokaiden (Nina Matsumoto, Del Rey)
I haven’t read volume two of Yokaiden yet, but I did buy it. Volume one was strong enough that I put it on my 2008 list. I’m looking forward to seeing Matsumoto’s artwork in her upcoming Avatar the Last Airbender manga.

Best Manga for Kids: Happy Happy Clover (Sayuri Tatsuyama, VIZ)
Happy Happy Clover transported me back to my girlhood in the ’80s, where I gleefully consumed franchise media about similar forests filled with happy creatures, from My Little Pony to Glow Worms. Clover’s relationship with her best friend, Mallow, is freaking adorable and it’s a true-to-real-life kid friendship (in my opinion). The art is extremely cute, like a rabbit version of Hamtaro. I think it’s clear enough that kids ought to be able to follow the comic paneling with no problem. The stories rarely get preachy (I’m not going to say never…).

Best Manga That You Thought You Would Hate: Clover Omnibus Edition (CLAMP, Dark Horse)
I had read a random volume of Clover when TOKYOPOP released it in the distant past. I really hated the song lyrics that are repeated on nearly every page, and I couldn’t follow what was going on. Reading this handy omnibus cleared up that problem, and, surprisingly I didn’t get sick of the song at all! I’m not much of a CLAMP fan, but the sci-fi design elements really won me over.

Best Guilty Pleasure: High School Debut (Kazune Kawahara, VIZ)
High School Debut doesn’t exactly aspire to greatness. In the author’s notes, Kawahara admits she sometimes forgets to draw important lines, like chin lines (!) before the magazine deadline, and fixes them for her books. I really had high hopes for this, because I identified with the sporty, tomboy protagonist. However, after six or seven volumes of cliché drama, including misunderstandings, frenemies, and a parade of students afraid to speak to each other, I ended up giving it up. This is really perfect light, fluffy reading, and Yoh is a hunk, but at some point I got really sick of Haruno’s spunky wide-eyed naiveté. Couldn’t she have just a slightly higher IQ? If I manage to read more of this, it will only be as a guilty pleasure.

Biggest Disappointment: Mixed Vegetables (Ayumi Komura, VIZ)
My hopes were just waaaaaay too high for this one. I thinking it might be a junk food version of Oishinbo for kids, or a shojo version of Yakitate!! Japan, but instead Mixed Vegetables is just bad. I might be wrong, but there are no recipes in this title like there are in other foodie manga on the market. I was pleased when the couple got together at the end of volume one, because I thought the series would avoid a cliché on-again-off-again, are-they-or-aren’t-they romance. Unfortunately, our star couple breaks up right away. I can’t bring myself to care whether or not they get back together. Plus the art quality and the paneling actually get worse as the manga goes on. I’m not even sure how that’s possible.

Worst Manga: Vermonia (YoYo, Candlewick)
Candlewick’s debut into the North American market is laugh-out-loud so-bad-it’s-good funny. When the Mayor’s teenage daughter is kidnapped by aliens in the midst of an ancient civil war, it’s up to her friends, a skateboarding rock band, to save her. Along with the help of Princess Rainbow (har har) the kids transverse a videogame-like fantasy world that includes a saber tooth tiger spirit guide. It’s more like a laundry list of stuff kids might like than an actual book. This international co-production is disastrous, but I think it’s kind of inspiring in it’s craptasticness (young writer might thing: “I think I could write better than this!”) and it serves as a useful guide of how not to make manga.

GRANT’S LIST

Best New Series: Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka (Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka, VIZ)
Pluto is a tour-de-force manga. The murder mystery that kicks off the story gives way to a masterful examination of humanity and how whatever we create can be infected by our flaws and insecurities. The thin line between artificial intelligence and “natural” intelligence plays a key role in Urasawa’s take on Tezuka’s work. Urasawa’s characters have light to shed on warfare, music, art, love, and hate—whether they are programmed to or not. If you like manga and you haven’t read Pluto, you need to fix that mistake immediately. This is A+ material from page one.

Best Continuing Series: Fullmetal Alchemist (Hiromu Arakawa, VIZ)
Hiromu Arakawa’s manga is utterly fantastic. I cannot pick out any weak volumes released this year. She keeps the tension high, the characters pressed for time, and has a narrative that refuses to let you go. The way she plays with the themes of family, love, loss, and addiction to power is what keeps me coming back time and time again. Everything is clean-cut, well executed, and never gets bogged down by confusing twists of logic. The most frustrating times of the year are the months in between releases of new volumes.

Best Re-Release: Yotsuba&! (Kiyohiko Azuma, Yen Press)
I wrote a 1000 paean about this title. It represents everything good about manga. I am convinced that reading it will make you a better person. Yostuba&! is pure happiness bound between two glossy covers.

Best OEL/World Manga: Scott Pilgrim (Bryan Lee O’Malley, Oni Press)
Trying OEL is a very new experience for me. That being said, I found a lot to like in Scott Pilgrim. It’s fresh and fun and proves that someone out there, who isn’t Japanese, can make a high-quality, manga-style graphic novel.

Best Manga That You Thought You Would Hate: Inubaka (Yukiya Sakuragi, VIZ)
Inubaka really caught me off guard. The covers all screamed “You will not like this!” Instead, I found that Inubaka had some of the best written female characters I’ve come across in any manga, ever. Instead of playing into character tropes (they aren’t all set on a single track pursuing a guy), the girls of Inubaka all have very complex, realistic issues they are dealing with.

Best Guilty Pleasure: Naruto (Masashi Kishimoto, VIZ)
I don’t talk about it much, but I have always loved the Naruto manga. This year brought some great storytelling moments. There were a few scenes that left me deeply affected, most notably Jiraiya’s last stand and Sasuke’s long-awaited fight with Itachi.

Worst Manga: Zombie-Loan (PEACH-PIT, Yen Press) and Tengu-Jin (Sumomo Yumeka, Aurora Publishing)
This is a toss up. Both of them are the manga equivalents of peeing in your pants in public: a horribly shameful, short-lived experience that some people will never, ever forget.

KEN’S LIST

Best New Series: The Summit of the Gods (Yumemakura Baku and Jiro Taniguchu, Fanfare/Ponent Mon)
I have to admit that this year was a bit of a slow year for me with regards to new manga, but out of the few new series I read this was the one that really stuck out in my head. It’s an enthralling, engrossing read about mountain climbing. Seriously. Mountain climbing. I was never a big Jack London fan and the whole man vs. nature shtick doesn’t hold that big of an appeal to me, but this book grabbed me early on and left me immediately wanting to read the second volume. Between the beautifully drawn mountainscapes of Jiro Taniguchi and the informative, documentary-like captioning, not to mention a rather engaging mystery and look into the life of an obsessed climber courtesy of Yumemakura Baku, this book ended up being a fantastic read.

Best Continuing Series: Blade of the Immortal (Hiroaki Samura, Dark Horse)
The series continues apace with several new volumes as the epically long prison arc reached its brutal and bloody climax. Horrors abounded as the true reach of the medical experiments being carried on beneath Edo Castle were finally revealed, and some old and forgotten characters made unexpected returns. Frankly, the two volumes that came out this year formed one of the better pay offs to a long term arc that I’ve seen in recent years. Samura’s penchant for enthralling and eye-catching fight sequences was also on full display with some intense and wonderfully demented moments. When that Otter hood came off the prisoner in volume 21? Yow! This year was just what the series needed after the interminably long prison arc.

Best Guilty Pleasure: Dogs: Bullets & Carnage (Shirow Miwa, VIZ)
I’ve always been a bit vague on exactly what would qualify as a guilty pleasure, but seeing as how I’m not that keen on Heine who’s arguably the main character of the series, I’ll go with Dogs. It’s a book where the biggest draw is the pretty art and wildly over the top action scenes that the Wachowskis wished they had thought up. Even though I may grumble about the story, the action is generally eye-catching and entertaining enough to tickle the portion of my brain that’s made me watch Versus three times in a single day. Lots of style, not much substance, but sometimes that’s just what you need to unwind.

MELINDA’S LIST

Best New Series: Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka (Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka, VIZ)
Based on volume three of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy (“The Greatest Robot on Earth”), this retelling from Naoki Urasawa brings new depth to Tezuka’s world and its characters, and it does so with remarkable reverence. Besides being intricately crafted both in storytelling and art, this series is surprisingly poignant and emotionally complex, particularly for a story in which most of the main characters are robots.
Runners up: Sayonara, Zetsubou Sensei (Koji Kumeta, Del Rey Manga), Ooku: The Inner Chambers (Fumi Yoshinaga, VIZ)

Best Continuing Series: xxxHOLiC (CLAMP, Del Rey)
With its thoughtful mix of of folklore, religion, and philosophy, this gorgeously drawn series has been a favorite of mine from the start, but this year’s new volumes have really kicked things up a notch, which is saying quite lot for a series that has redefined itself constantly over the course of fourteen volumes. Despite increasing dependence on crossover material from concurrent shonen series Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE, xxxHOLiC maintains a depth and mature beauty unmatched by any other of CLAMP’s work, past or present. Unlike so many series that are easily consumed and discarded, xxxHOLiC benefits from multiple re-reads, becoming richer each time through.
Runner up: Mushishi (Yuki Urushibara, Del Rey)

Best Re-Release: Yotsuba&! (Kiyohiko Azuma, Yen Press)
Appropriate for children but especially charming for adults, Yen Press’ rescue, reissue, and continuation of this series is truly a gift for all humanity, or at least those of us who read our manga in English. Following the daily adventures of a little girl named Yotsuba as she explores a world filled with wonders such as bicycles, air conditioning, and paper cup phones, this series is not only unbelievably cute but also surprisingly resonant for readers of all ages. Yen’s new translations are an upgrade from ADV’s previous release, at least in terms of capturing a sense of place, and the books’ crisp, bright paper is a nice treat as well.

Best Oneshot/Anthology: Mijeong (Byun Byung-Jun, NBM/Comics Lit)
NBM’s second anthology of short comics from up-and-coming manhwa-ga Byun Byung-Jun is uneven, unsettled, and artistically immature. It is also thoughtful, melancholy, and uncommonly beautiful, even in its weakest moments. Wholly unlike most of the other English-translated manhwa hitting the shelves these days, this volume is a hidden gem, with glimpses of true brilliance that promise a great future for the artist. Though perhaps not objectively the “best” in any category this year, this book’s dark humor and ethereal tone help to make it truly special. This manhwa is not to be missed.
Runner up: Castle of Dreams (Masami Tsuda, TOKYOPOP)

Best Yaoi: Age Called Blue (est em, NETCOMICS)
Though the competition here was surprisingly steep, I’m giving my vote to est em’s beautiful collection of vignettes revolving around the lives of two sets of bandmates—Nick and Billy, who are searching for what they mean to each other, and Pete and Joe, who discovered it much too late. Stark, yet surprisingly romantic, this single-volume collection is my favorite from this author, and that’s a fairly impressive recommendation. Though available for rent at NETCOMICS’ online store, I recommend the print version for the sake of permanence. Age Called Blue is a keeper.
Runners up: Future Lovers (Saika Kunieda, Aurora Publishing) and U Don’t Know Me (Rakun, NETCOMICS)

Best OEL/World Manga: Toxic Planet (David Ratte, Yen Press) This whimsical satire from French cartoonist David Ratte was one of the year’s biggest surprises for me, as it seemed to come out of nowhere with very little fanfare, and I was blown away by its pointed yet genuinely humorous take on global warming, pollution, oil slicks, and even genetically modified food. The artist has the uncanny ability to give expression to characters who never remove their gas masks and to bring his messages home with little more than a rare glimpse of true green in the midst of his universe’s otherwise sickening filth. Serialized first on Yen Press’ website and released as a single print volume, this comic has very little in common with most of Yen’s current catalog, but it’s become an instant favorite for me.

Best Manga for Kids: Hikaru no Go (Yumi Hotta and Takeshi Obata, VIZ)
Though Hikaru no Go has been in slow release from Viz since 2004, it is this year’s releases, volumes fifteen through seventeen, that really display the depth and downright elegance this series possesses. One of the few all-ages titles I can think of that offers a truly fulfilling reading experience for all ages, it’s got enough shonen sports manga formula to engage young readers, with enough emotional complexity (and beautiful art) to keep them hooked as they get older. It’s the kind of title that can be put away on the shelf and pulled down again years later to be enjoyed on a whole new level.

Best Manga That You Thought You Would Hate: Nabari No Ou (Yuhki Kamatani, Yen Press)
I have no interest in ninja. Truly, I don’t. Yet somehow, with its dark tone and unexpected humor, this ninja-centered story hooked me against my will and is so far holding steady. In addition to its engaging characters and very pretty art, this manga also has some of the cleanest action scenes I’ve seen in current shonen series, both kinetic and easy to follow. Though its second volume got off to a fairly sluggish start, its final chapter left me more intrigued than ever, and I can hardly wait for more. How the ninja ever managed this, I’ll probably never know.

Best Guilty Pleasure: One Thousand and One Nights (Han SeungHee and Jeon JinSeok,Yen Press)
It actually feels like a bit of a betrayal to list this as a “guilty pleasure,” because truthfully I don’t feel the slightest twinge of guilt for enjoying this series, but this category provides the perfect opportunity for talking about it once more and that’s something I have difficulty passing up. This retelling of the classic Arabian Nights follows the familiar story of the mad Sultan and his Scheherazade—in this case a young man named Sehera—including an engaging array of stories-within-the-story set in a variety of times and places, up to present day. The artwork is lush, the writing is stunningly romantic, and the series’ writer/artist team never use the strong homoerotic subtext (heavy on the “text”) as an excuse to become lazy.

Biggest Disappointment: Lucky Star (Kagami Yoshimizu, Bandai Entertainment)
As a fan of the anime series, I had high hopes when Bandai announced this license. Unfortunately, the first volume’s lifeless, incomprehensible English translation is so close to unreadable, it’s impossible to tell whether this 4-koma comedy is even remotely humorous, let alone comparable to its anime adaptation. A change in translation credit on the upcoming third volume is heartening, to be sure, but considerable damage has already been done.

Worst Manga: KimiKiss (Taro Shinonome and Enterbrain, Inc., TOKYOPOP)
Based on a PS2 dating sim, this series’ greatest sin is not its lame humor (“Heh, heh, your balls are huge!”), its cardboard characters, or even its generic plot. What’s most unfortunate about KimiKiss is that even its fan service—quite honestly the series’ only potential draw—is just about as original as everything else, leaving it with no apparent value, even in the crudest sense. The best that can be said about KimiKiss is that it is too dull to be offensive. The worst is exactly the same.

MICHELLE’S LIST

Best New Series: Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka (Naoki Urasawa and Osamu Tezuka, VIZ)
What a difficult choice! So many truly fabulous series debuted in 2009 that I had quite a hard time picking just one. Ultimately, I have to go with Pluto, Naoki Urasawa’s reimaining of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy story, “The Greatest Robot On Earth.” The result is a tale with epic, cinematic breadth that nonetheless never loses sight of the human element (ironic in a tale about robots). Visually stunning, emotionally wrenching, absolutely riveting from cover to cover, reading Pluto is truly a masterpiece. This is not a series to be missed by any comics fan, let alone a manga lover!

Best Continuing Series: Honey and Clover (Chica Umino, VIZ)
A year ago, I didn’t single Honey and Clover out for any superlatives. While I certainly appreciated its quirky charm, some of the comedy felt too over-the-top for me. Although Chica Umino never dispenses with humor entirely, the volumes released this year, particularly the seventh and eighth, feature finely realized character drama and many universal and heartbreaking moments. I defy anyone who reads this series to fail to identify with at least one of its protagonists as they struggle to figure out what they want to do with their lives post-university while enduring the pains of uncertain or unrequited love. It’s really fantastic stuff.

Best Yaoi: Future Lovers (Saika Kunieda, Aurora Publishing)
Please permit me one more opportunity to gush about the awesomeness that is Future Lovers. With rich characters and a slice-of-life feel, this series reads less like a BL tale than a seinen romantic comedy about two good people trying to get past their differences and achieve real happiness together. By turns funny, realistic, and moving, Future Lovers really is exceptional and features the first lead character to actually remind me of a real gay man that I know. I’d recommend it unhesitatingly, even to (and perhaps especially to) non-BL fans as an example of the very best the genre has to offer.
Honorable mention: Dining Bar Akira (Tomoko Yamashita, NETCOMICS)

Best OEL/World Manga: Nightschool: The Weirn Books (Svetlana Chmakova, Yen Press)
For me, this one was a no-brainer. Nightschool is the story of a teenage witch named Alex whose older sister disappears on the job at the Nightschool, prompting Alex to attempt a rescue. Chmakova combines likeable characters, an intriguing story, and some well thought-out worldbuilding to achieve a fun, spooky, and original story. Her artwork is clearly influenced by manga, but doesn’t attempt to be a copy. Indeed, a Western influence is also evident, and I especially appreciate the multi-ethnic cast. I found the second volume to be a little weaker than the first, but am still eagerly awaiting volume three.

Best Manga for Kids: The Lapis Lazuli Crown (Natsuna Kawase, CMX)
CMX has quite a few entertaining all ages titles in their lineup, but this two-volume series would work particularly well for the middle school reader. It’s the story of Miel, an unpolished but naturally gifted magician who shirks on practicing until she meets a boy (a prince, naturally) she’d like to protect. Okay, yes, maybe the part about needing a boy to get her motivated is a bit questionable, but I admire Miel’s determination to be useful to the guy she likes instead of just mooning about over him. The pacing is a mite rushed in the second volume, but Kawase manages to bring things to an enjoyable and satisfying conclusion.

Best Manga That You Thought You Would Hate: Takeru: Opera Susanoh Sword of the Devil (Kazuki Nakashima and Karakarakemuri, TOKYOPOP)
The lengthy and somewhat nonsensical subtitle of this series had me worried about what I would find within, so it was an extremely pleasant surprise when Takeru proved to offer an interesting, briskly paced story with appealing (if slightly generic) characters. Karakarakemuri’s art is attractive; she particularly excels at depicting character through body language and comes up with some nice character designs, too. Possibly the best part of the story is the cast of strong women characters, notably Miyazu, the unfailingly competent queen of a race of warrior women. Volume three just came out and it’s on the top of my to-read pile.

Biggest Disappointment: Nabari No Ou (Saika Kunieda, Yen Press)
This ninja tale of an unwitting and unwilling hero debuted to mixed reviews. Manga Recon’s own Grant Goodman was disappointed, but both Melinda Beasi and Comics Should Be Good’s Danielle Leigh enjoyed it, so I thought I’d check it out and see for myself. As it happens, I’m with Grant on this one. The premise has potential and the art is attractive, but the execution is lamentably boring. Interminable talk about forbidden arts and clan politics and repetitive ploys to get the protagonist, Miharu, to join the school Ninja Club make each volume drag, which is a real shame because sometimes, particularly when the lethal-yet-doomed rival ninja Yoite is concerned, things do get interesting. I’ll probably continue reading this in the hopes that it’ll improve.

PHIL’S LIST

Best New Series: Detroit Metal City (Kiminori Wakasugi, VIZ)
I love this series, even if it doesn’t warm my cockles so much as make me bust out laughing. DMC is about an unassuming young man, who inexplicably has become the death metal god of Japan, worshiped for his misogynistic and violent songs. I’m not that into death metal myself, and Kiminori’s series may be over-the-top and gleefully disgusting at times, but it resonates because it’s about something universal: the struggle between money and doing what we’re good at, and what our heart’s desire is, which are sometimes at odds. Combine that with artwork that’s as frequently ugly as the protagonist’s destiny likely appears to himself, and that’s plenty reason to go to DMC.

Best Manga That I Thought I Would Hate: Gacha Gacha: The Next Revolution (Hiroyuki Tamakoshi, Del Rey)
Fan service! A high school boy who transforms into a girl! More fan service! On the one hand, Gacha Gacha seems engineered to fetish, the objects being certain female body parts, and in one chapter, cute little girls. Nevertheless, the series is surprisingly good reading, and if I had to guess why, I’d blame the emphasis on characterization over both the gimmicks (gender switching, time travel fantasy) and panty shots. The strongest episodes this year have been those in which gimmickry plays only an indirect role, taking a backseat to more typical teen angst. When that happens, it falls on the protagonists to be interesting enough to keep us reading, and luckily, that’s frequently the case.

Best Guilty Pleasure: Negima!? Neo (Ken Akamatsu and Takuya Fujima, Del Rey)
With its plethora of school girls on every cover, Negima!? Neo is a series I feel uncomfortable breaking out in public places. Meanwhile, with all the fresh faces staring back at me, not to mention the elaborate magical battles, I feel slightly embarrassed reading this at home. The question becomes: why do I feel compelled to read it at all? The decision would be a lot easier if the characters weren’t likable, and if the series didn’t seem to embrace its own ridiculousness, but that’s how it is (and given the exceptionally bright artwork, the latter-type moments feel awesomely surreal). As a result, despite three volumes of Negima!? Neo out this past year, I’m looking forward to more.

SAM’S LIST

Best New Series: Oishinbo a la Carte (Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki, VIZ)
This series should really be on everyone’s list. Though sadly coming to a close with volume seven (There are actually 50 “a la Carte” volumes in Japan! – ed.), Oishinbo a la Carte has really brought a whole new side of manga to the table, introducing the American populous to a large part of Japanese culture, the cuisine. From sake to gyoza to rice and much more, Oishinbo a la Carte really drives home the history and cultural importance of each dish, dissecting each and every ingredient. The story can feel a bit rattled at times, as the chapters are selected by content alone and are in no sequential order, but the humorous character interactions (mostly on the part of Yamaoka) make up for it. It is food porn in its finest incarnation.

Best Continuing Series: Fairy Tail (Hiro Mashima, Del Rey)
I’ve really enjoyed Fairy Tail ever since it’s come out. As you can tell from my review of volumes one through three, I found it to be one of the best new shonen series out there. The stories keep getting better and better, introducing us to a whole magical universe of whimsical and wondrous characters, essentially creating a mythos Mashima was trying to create with Rave Master. Overall, I think it’s a series that has a great amount of depth to it; it is a very epic tale but each episode resolves itself so that it doesn’t drone on and feel ridiculous.

Best Re-Release: Parasyte (Hitoshi Iwaaki, Del Rey)
I was introduced to the first few chapters of Parasyte when it was running in Mixx and it really caught my attention. Kudos to Del Rey for picking up such and interesting and strikingly mature serious. Thought I am sad to see it end, it was really in-depth and raised a good amount of questions about humanity on a whole and made you really think about certain situations. On top of its thought-provoking writing, it was beautifully crafted, laid with well-paced fight scenes and heart-wrenching emotional pieces. Another overall winner of a series.

Best Oneshot/Anthology: A Drifting Life (Yoshiro Tatsumi, Drawn and Quarterly)
Following the life and blossoming of great gekiga writer, Yoshiro Tatsumi, this is what truly should be considered his masterpiece. It not only follows his journey and what personal hardships creators of the graphic narrative go through, but he really laid out the timeline and developmental stages of manga itself in a very interesting and insightful light. I’ve said it before in my review of this, but it really helps you to understand what manga is for the Japanese and what it means culturally for the country.

Best Manga You Thought You Would Hate: RIN-NE (Rumiko Takahashi, VIZ)
Surprising, I know, considering how much of a Takahashi fan I’ve made myself out to be on this site. Regardless, when I read the first few chapters of RIN-NE offered online, the whole concept really didn’t sit well with me. Time goes on though, and I was tapped to review it because of my love for Takahashi. Thought it fits her very formulaic style of storytelling, I’m enjoying the characters and the inventive use of tools (wheels of fire, that’s nice.) the more I read it. It does make me yearn for her older series, namely Ranma ½, but I’m glad to see that she is a still going strong as a creator and really hasn’t lost her touch.

Best Guilty Pleasure: BakéGyamon (Mitsuhisa Tamura, VIZ)
I’m still a big kid at heart and you really can’t beat a good old “kid’s battle with mystical monsters all while learning life lessons and growing up along the way” kind of story. Most times, people screw this up and when its bad, its really bad but BakéGyamon manages to stay soft and fluffy without being increasingly annoying as time goes on. I am also really surprised because most things that I’ve read this short (five books in total) are really terrible, but this series manages to make it work.

Biggest Dissapointment: Waqwaq (Ryu Fujisaki, VIZ)
Coming from the author who brought us Hoshin Engi, I was really expecting another epic, that incorporating a good amount of mythology or maybe just some thought into the story. Overall, the story was just very bland at the beginning and took some shape as the series progressed (plot development, friends becoming enemies) but not enough to really make it the winner we were all hoping for. I was also hoping for another shorts series to break the mold but alas, Waqwaq will just be forgotten like the rest of them…

BEST MANGA OF 2009: THE SHORT LIST

Best New Series:

• Detroit Metal City (VIZ)
• Oishinbo a la Carte (VIZ)
• Otomen (VIZ)
• Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka (VIZ)
• The Summit of the Gods (Fanfare/Ponent Mon)

Best Continuing Series:

• Black Jack (Vertical, Inc.)
• Blade of the Immortal (Dark Horse)
• Fairy Tail (Del Rey)
• Fullmetal Alchemist (VIZ)
• Hikaru no Go (VIZ)
• Honey and Clover (VIZ)
• xxxHOLiC (Del Rey)

Best Re-Release:

• InuYasha VIZBIG (VIZ)
• Parasyte (Del Rey)
• Yotsuba&! (Yen Press)

Best Oneshot/Anthology:

• A Drifting Life (Drawn and Quarterly)
• Mijeong (NBM/Comics Lit)

Best Yaoi:

• Age Called Blue (NETCOMICS)
• Future Lovers (Aurora Publishing)
• Ooku: The Inner Chambers (VIZ)

Best OEL/World Manga:

• Nightschool: The Weirn Books (Yen Press)
• Scott Pilgrim (Oni Press)
• Toxic Planet (Yen Press)
• Yokaiden (Del Rey)

Best Manga for Kids

• Happy Happy Clover (VIZ)
• Hikaru no Go (VIZ)
• The Lapis Lazuli Crown (CMX)

Best Manga You Thought You’d Hate:

• Gacha Gacha: The Next Revolution (Del Rey)
• Inubaka (VIZ)
• Nabari No Ou (Yen Press)
• REAL (VIZ)
• RIN-NE (VIZ)
• Takeru: Opera Susanoh Sword of the Devil (TOKYOPOP)

Best Guilty Pleasure:

• BakéGyamon (VIZ)
• Dogs: Bullets & Carnage (VIZ)
• Gakuen Prince (Del Rey)
• High School Debut (VIZ)
• Naruto (VIZ)
• Negima!? Neo (Del Rey)
• One Thousand and One Nights (Yen Press)

Biggest Disappointment:

• Lucky Star (Bandai Entertainment)
• Mixed Vegetables (VIZ)
• Nabari No Ou (Yen Press)
• The Wallflower (Del Rey)
• Waqwaq (VIZ)

Worst Manga

• KimiKiss (TOKYOPOP)
• Maid War Chronicles (Del Rey)
• Vermonia (Candlewick)
• Tengu-Jin (Aurora Publishing)
• Zombie-Loan (Yen Press)

Me? I am that monster.

The coworker? Our newest reviewer, Jennifer Dunbar!

Here’s what she has to say about herself:

Jennifer Dunbar has the spectacular day job of being a college student a decade older than most of her classmates and the night job of reading as much as she can get her grubby hands on. She is a fan of many things: live action sci-fi television, mystery novels set in Victorian London, fluffy romances, Bioware RPGs, and of course anime and manga. She is currently living with her family, who let her have a life of her own, and two cats, who don’t.

Please join me in welcoming Jennifer to the PCS team! You can look for her reviews to start appearing in the next couple of weeks.