At least I theorize it will be. As I’ve noted before, I get this list from a New York based comic shop called Midtown Comics, who post it (usually) on Thursday afternoon, well ahead of any other online retailer, and a full 4 days ahead of Diamond Comics. The problem is that Midtown frequently uses distributors other than Diamond for their manga. Sometimes this means they get it in sooner… and sometimes it’s stuff like this week.
Midtown lists two manga for this week. Both from Digital Manga Publishing, they have the 5th volume of seinen vampire thriller Vampire Hunter D, and the 2nd and last volume of a yaoi manga called Yokan Premonition. That’s it. No Viz whatsoever.
I’m fairly sure that Diamond, which already shipped Bleach this week, will have the rest of its giant pile of Jump/Beat releases on the 8th. I am therefore making an executive decision to include them here.
So… let’s see. In Jump manga, we have Vol. 33 of Bleach, which as I said before shipped to many this week already. It continues the Hueco Mundo arc, which is in no danger of ending anytime soon. No matter how much you beg. They have Hoshin Engi, a story inspired by Chinese Mythology that I never heard much chatter about, even though it’s at 21 volumes. Slam Dunk hits lucky Number 13, and Toriko hits Number 3. In a MANLY way!
Speaking of Manly, we see Volume 16 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. It ends the 3rd ‘arc’ of the giant JoJo’s series, and is billed by Viz as the final volume. JoJo’s continues to this day, of course, though it sort of morphed into Steel Ball Run in Ultra Jump. On the other hand, it’s about 100 volumes long, and sells poorly here. So normally while I bitch about Viz writing ‘final volume’ when it isn’t (i.e. Shana), I can’t blame them at all for cutting ties here at a logical stopping place.
That’s not all for Jump, as we have its spinoff, Jump Square. There we find Rosario+Vampire, an immigrant from the Weekly Comic, which has Volume 3 of its 2nd season reboot. We also have the 3rd volume of the Stan Lee penned Ultimo, which many of my friends have given praise to. It is also, in case I had not mentioned it, written by Stan Lee. As I found at NYCC, this is a Big Effin Deal.
On the shoujo side, we have piles of new stuff from Hakusensha. On the Hana to Yume front, we have Volume 1 of Kamisama Kiss, the current title from Julietta Suzuki, the author of the popular-with-bloggers Karakuri Odette. We also get Vol. 22 of Skip Beat!, which finds Kyoko wrestling with finding the ‘character’ of her latest role, as well as dealing with the usual infighting. In its monthly companion Betsuhana, we also get Volume 7 of Rasetsu, the supernatural sequel to Yurara.
And in the big monthly magazine, LaLa, we see new volumes of huge sellers Ouran High School Host Club and Vampire Knight. As well as Vol. 3 of Library Wars: Love & War, which doesn’t have enough library combat for some, apparently.
Shueisha’s entry in the shoujo stakes this week consists of just one: the final volume of Cactus’s Secret, a cute 4 volume manga from Ribon that succeeds very well in being cute and only 4 volumes.
As for the more mature-skewing titles from Shogakukan, we have Vol. 3 of Seiho Boys’ High School (Betsucomi), which has proven to be an excellent title for me. We have the 6th, and possibly last, volume of Honey Hunt (Cheese!), which is currently on hiatus in Japan. And skewing even older, we have the 5th volume of the smutty yet utterly silly josei comedy Butterflies, Flowers.
What suits your fancy?
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