You thought the last week of the month might give you a break? HAH! Tokyopop and Del Rey team up to double team you!
Oh yes, and Dark Horse as a new volume of the Shinji Ikari spinoff manga that simply doesn’t appeal to me, mostly as I hate the ‘Episode 26’ universe and thought that it was a parody when it appeared in the anime.
As for Del Rey, all of these volumes will be ‘final volumes’ from Del Rey manga itself, but only Hell Girl, which gets its last 3 volumes put out in one giant omnibus, is actually over (bar its sequel, Hell Girl R). The others are all entering limbo land, hopefully to be rescued soon by Kodansha USA. I say hopefully as there’s some great stuff here.
A new Mahou Sensei Negima, which has the scene the yuri fans have been waiting for forever. There’s also the second volume of Code: Breaker, a shonen series I was pleasantly surprised by this summer. On the shoujo end, we get an omnibus of Vols. 22-24 of The Wallflower, which I love for its wacky humor and characters, although many hate its lack of romantic payoff. There’s the 2nd volume of potential dark magical girl series Fairy Navigator Runa. And there’s a debut, Arisa, from the creator of Kitchen Princess.
And now we come to Tokyopop, who have 3 new debuts. Summoner Girl, a cute shonen series. The Stellar Six of Gingacho, a cute shoujo series. And Saving Life, an ecchi harem series. Something for all walks of life! They have new volumes of Happy Cafe and V.B. Rose, which makes me incredibly happy. And they have new .hack, Maria Holic, and Asu no Yoichi, which I’m sure makes people other than me incredibly happy. They also wrap up their Gravitation reprint with Vols. 11 and 12.
And, most interesting of all, they have Hakusensha’s How to Draw Shojo Manga book, with contributions from many of their star artists!
What interests you this week?
The how-to-draw book, Maria Holic, Wallflower, and possibly the Stellar Six are what I like although the dream of becoming a manga-ka seems less possible now. I'm holding off on all Del Rey titles except Wallflower until I know for sure that those titles have returned to print. There was never a guarantee that all of them would be rescued.