Man, April has been a very busy month for manga. Let’s see what’s hitting stores this week. It’s a lot.

Dark Horse, a company that’s cut back on manga in recent years, has three whole new books out! There’s Vol. 22 of popular violence ‘n service title Gantz. Vol. 41 of Oh My Goddess!, which is not known for its violence or fanservice. Well, not the kind of service Gantz offers, anyway. And after 7 years, we see Vol. 2 of The Monkey King, another adaptation of the famous story by Vampire Hunter D artist Katsuya Terada that ran in Shueisha’s Ultra Jump.

From Kodansha, we get Vol. 5 of their two newest Shonen Magazine titles. Thriller Bloody Monday (which reminds me of 24), and mystery Cage of Eden (which reminds me of Lost, only with far more shots of breasts drawn in loving close-up).

Seven Seas gives us two volumes that many folks got today from Diamond – for once, it’s Midtown being a week late. Blood Alone Vol. 6 has vampires in it. And Toradora Vol. 4 has tsunderes in it. It’s arguable which creature might be more scary to the average person…

Udon offers us Vol. 1 of a manga I know absolutely nothing about, Captain Commando. It seems to be some sort of superhero thing. And is apparently not from Japan, but original to this publisher? I guess? Looks interesting, at any rate.

Viz’s third week is usually its most interesting. We see Vol. 6 of my favorite Ikki title Dorohedoro; Vol. 6 of the Tenjo Tenge omnibus; and Vol. 2 of the X reprint, which should look gorgeous if nothing else. And apocalyptic.

Lastly, Yen has a giant pile of releases. New Betrayal Knows My Name. New Black Butler. New Black God. And that’s just the B’s! There’s also the 2nd Durarara!! manga, which should finally give us some Shizuo; a 6th volume of Zombie massacre title High School of the Dead; and the final volume of Higurashi’s latest arc, the Atonement Arc. After this we take a 5-month break before the next arc begins, so enjoy Higurashi now for the summer months!

So what are you getting out of that large pile of manga?

THERE IS ONLY ONE MANGA OUT THIS WEEK. BUY EXCEL SAGA 23. THAT IS ALL.

…OK, there are a *few* other manga besides Excel Saga. Hrmph.

Dark Horse has the sequel to Magic Knight Rayearth, with our heroines returning to a Cephiro much changes. Expect ship wars between Ascot and Clef fans, lots of cute fluffy romance between Fuu and Ferio, and one of the few workable threesomes in all of manga with Hikaru. Guaranteed to be good CLAMP-y fun! In the genuine way, not the postmodern ironic CLAMP fun way

DMP seems to finally be releasing the 8th volume of Itazura na Kiss, with … did Vol. 7 ever come out via Diamond? They skipped it, didn’t they? God. Anyway, enjoy your favorite shoujo couple be prickly and worried at each other. There’s also another mini-manga of Moon and Blood. And for yaoi fans, Vol. 2 of Countdown 7 Days and Vol. 2 of Replica.

Kodansha has the 7th volume of shoujo thriller Arisa, and the 14th – and possibly final – volume of Sayonara, Zetsubou-sensei. Please don’t Gintama this series on me, Kodansha. I will nag you hard.

NBM is releasing a single volume manga called Rohan at the Louvre, which I know nothing about but which I hear has some amazing art.

Udon is releasing the first volume of Sengoku Basara Samurai Legends, which sounds like it’s related to the series of video games based around feudal Japan.

Aside from EXCEL SAGA 23, Viz is releasing a bunch of other stuff. We get the penultimate volume of Cross Game, which I understand may have some baseball in it. A new Case Closed, a new Itsuwaribito, a new Kekkaishi. The final volume of Maoh: Juvenile remix (this last volume remixed by Junior Vasquez) (hey, if you’re going to tell a joke, tell it all). Vol. 8 of Nura, which did not ship last week for some weird reason. And Vol. 20 of 20th Century Boys, which no doubt will confuse some bookstores.

So, yeah, some other stuff. But mostly EXCEL SAGA 23.

It’s a first week of the month at Midtown, and we’ve got the usual Viz suspects, some Kodansha runoff from last month courtesy Diamond, some new Vertical titles (also a week late, also courtesy Diamond), and… two very odd releases.

Bandai may be dead, but it apparently had quite a backlog of titles to keep releasing. Thus we get Vol. 5 of both of their Code Geass doujinshi anthologies – Queen for the male readers, and Knight for the female ones. I’m going to take a wild guess that these are the final volumes we’ll see from Bandai here.

Kodansha has another volume of the Negima re-release, which updates the translation with its current version provided by the Nibley twins. This volume has Vols. 10-12 of the original, covering a great deal of the tournament battle, which, unlike many shonen tournament battle arcs, was really where Akamatsu came into his own. There’s some great stuff here.

I didn’t get a chance to use GTO as my featured image when Vol. 1 came out, so it goes here. The second volume of 14 Days in Shonan is almost nonstop action, and really packs a kick. As does its hero. There’s also the 3rd omnibus volume of Drops of God, containing the original Vol. 5 and 6. It looks as if we may finally get to see the First Apostle. As well as lots more wine.

Then there’s the huge pile o’ Viz. A Devil and Her Love Song got the image last time instead of GTO, but Vol. 2 excites me just as much as Vol. 1 did. There’s also a new Dawn of the Arcana, Kamisama Kiss, Sakura Hime, and Skip Beat!, giving you lots of shoujo goodness. If shonen is more your thing, well, this is Jump week. New Bakuman, new Bleach (still not at all caught up with the online releases), new Blue Exorcist (man, this and Kamisama Kiss come out FAST), A new Rosario + Vampire Season 2, a nicely retro new Slam Dunk Vol. 21, and the 9th Toriko. Lastly, they also have the first volume of that Voltron Forge graphic novel to excite sentai fans.

As an aside, this is my 100th post tagged ‘Manga The Week Of’. I hope it’s proven of interest to you, as it’s mostly just an excuse for me to geek out, and also keep track of what’s been coming out when. What whets your appetite to read over the Easter weekend?