Manga the week of 7/14

Back to Wednesday shipping for us in the U.S., and a surprisingly quiet 2nd week. Probably as a lot of the Yen stuff shipped in the first week.

Dark Horse has the 5th volume in their alt-universe Evangelion, Shinji Ikari Raising Project. I dunno, I found this pretty unsatisfying. More to the point, it’s the first of a whole string of alt-universe Evangelions from Kadokawa, with another meant for teenage girls (read: heavy on the yaoi subtext) due out in North America this fall. Likewise, Haruhi Suzumiya now has 2 spinoffs and counting. Is this the hot new trend? Or more likely, has this always happened and it’s just they’re all being licensed here now?

Look, a CMX release! Wow, so it was all a dream after all… oh, it’s just Megatokyo. Scratch that. That said, this volume does collect a particularly good arc of Megatokyo, so recommended to those of us who enjoy seeing Largo and Erika interact.

Digital Manga Publishing has another in their regular non-yaoi line of books from Doki Doki with Vol. 1 of Wolf God. However, it is a title that ran in the magazine Wings, so I’d expect there’s likely some gay subtext scattered here and there throughout anyway.

And Viz has its Sunday manga. We have a new series, Hyde & Closer, which has one of the most fascinating teddy bears you’ll see in manga. And is only 7 volumes, so is not that much of an investment. (Viz’s new Sunday series all seem to be finished in Japan, possibly in an effort to avoid licensing epic but mediocre selling series that end up being 78 volumes.) Inu Yasha continues its push to the end, as it hits the Vol. 50 mark. And Inubaka is cute fanservicey fun, provided you don’t mind a lot of dog urine in your fanservice.

But really, my big rec this week is Black Lagoon 9. This catches us up with the Japanese releases, and finishes off this current Roberta revenge arc. The subtle nuances of plot and characterization that manga readers desire… are not really anywhere to be found. But no one reads Black Lagoon to see Revy and Fabiola have philosophical discussions (although they do in fact do that here). There is much gunplay and mayhem here, with more cool fighting women than you can possibly believe.