It’s a good second week of the month for manga, seeing a hefty but not overwhelming amount of stuff coming from Midtown Comics (which still seems to have misplaced June’s Kodansha releases that Diamond and bookstores already have, by the way).
Seven Seas gets to Volume 10 of its bestselling title Dance in the Vampire Bund, one of the few things they have that’s not a Dengeki work. It comes from Media Factory’s Comic Flapper. There’s also the second volume of romantic comedy Toradora!, which *is* from Dengeki Daioh, and features possibly the most popular of the four ‘loli tsunderes’ that all arrived at the same time (for the curious, the other three are Shana, Louise and Nagi).
Viz has its ‘Oh, right, we also put out Shonen Sunday stuff’ second week, and the big news here is the 4th volume in the Cross Game omnibus, which has now reached its halfway point. There’s the 39th volume of Case Closed, which is really quite impressive given how it has to compete with all those Jump titles. The 6th volume of Rin-Ne will no doubt make us all keep hoping that Sakura will actually get mad at something. New volumes of Hyde & Closer and Kurosakuro, both Vol. 5. And for Pokemon fans, two volumes of the new Black and White series, 96 pages each.
Yen Press also rolls out their July releases. The 4-koma series Ichiroh! ends here with Volume 5. Cirque Du Freak is up to Vol. 10 for you Darren Shan fans. High School of the Dead would like to remind you that yes, it is technically a shonen title, at least in Japan. Speaking of genre, what genre to call Kobato, which runs in media magazine Newtype. The fanboy genre? But of course, the big titles for yen are the Square Enix ones from GFantasy. Black Butler and Pandora Hearts, which are both smash hits. And Nabari no Ou, which… isn’t a smash hit. But has ninjas, so should be doing better than it is.
Anything interesting you? Or will you be catching up with the pile that came in this week?
Well I’ve personally gotta save some stuff to buy at Otakon, but I’ll eventually be getting volume 10 of Cirque du Freak.
I love the Pokemon games, but man, I rented the first two Adventures manga from the library and was so confused at how blatantly it broke the game’s rules (and for some reason made Koga a member of Team Rocket). That said it also made me smile in a massive guilty pleasure type of way so I can wait until the library has them, I just don’t think they’re worth owning for me personally.
I just got the new Cross Game today and can’t wait to sit and read it. Other releases I’m interested in are volume 4 of Kobato., volume 6 of Black Butler, and maybe volume 2 of Toradora!.
I’ve been calling Kobato seinen ‘cos it looks like it spent at least a little time being serialized in Sunday GX. But it has spent significantly more time in Newtype, so I don’t know.