Manga the week of 3/30

I wish I had more to tell you on why Diamond hasn’t shipped new Tokyopop books since late January… but I don’t.

We *do* get a new Tokyopop title this week! … that the rest of the bookstore and Amazon crowd got in December. It’s the ‘3rd’ volume of the shonen harem manga that ran in Shonen Ace back in the early 00s. Vol. 1 came out here in 2008, then, perhaps seeing harem manga was on the heavy decline sales-wise, TP released 2 and 3 together as Vol. 2. Now we get 4 & 5 together as Vol. 3, but it’s been a year and a half since 2. I had, in fact, forgotten this series existed. Ah well, no one can’t say I don’t love lost causes of my own, so…

We also get Dark Horse giving us the 3rd of 4 volumes devoted to another Evangelion manga, this one a shoujo mystery called Campus Apocalypse. It stars Shinji and Kaworu, and hits the ‘yaoi-friendly’ buttons quite a bit. Despite being a campus mystery-horror sort of series, it also apparently hits most of the major themes Evangelion always has.

Since I’m lukewarm about both manga releases next week, might I suggest the 4th volume of IDW’s fantastic Bloom County Library? It’s out next week as well.

Manga the week of 3/23

There’s still no Tokyopop this week, and I’m hoping to be able to find out more on what happened to the missing titles next week.

So what do we have? Dark Horse is almost caught up with re-releasing Oh My Goddess! in right-to-left format, as Volume 17 comes out next week. And from Viz, we have… Volume 22 of Hikaru no Go, which apparently the rest of the world got 2 months ago. Look, I just report the releases, I don’t explain them.

Most of the new titles are from Yen Press, though. Manga bloggers will be delighted to hear that Volume 3 of Bunny Drop is upon us, bringing a small drop of josei joy into our lives. I myself am also happy to see a new volume of Bamboo Blade, which I’m hoping gives me some great Miyamiya expressions. We also see Volume 2 of K-On!, the moe lovers’ dream. And there’s a new Haruhi Suzumiya, still struggling with not being either the novels or the anime.

In titles that are exciting but I don’t actually follow, we have a new Nabari no Ou, for those people who like a different variety of ninja than the usual Naruto sort. We also see Volume 8 of Cirque Du Freak, a rare Shogakukan title with a non-Viz publisher, as Darren Shan apparently arranged NA rights with Yen. The original manga ran in Shonen Sunday, from where I understand Manga Starts.

Lastly, the 2nd and final My Girlfriend’s a Geek novel is out. I found that the extra distance created by the manga helped me enjoy it more, and found the novel itself a bit too discomfiting. Nonetheless, it’s only 2 volumes, and it’s nice to see the light it shines on Japanese fujoshi culture. I’m sure much of it is fictional, but it’s a very based-in-truth sort of fictionality.

Any ideas what you’ll buy?

Manga the week of 3/16

Lately the next week lists have been coming out earlier, so this post is a day early as well. For the record, the Feb/Mar Tokyopop books are still MIA from our friends at Diamond Comics.

So what do we have? Well, Dark Horse has a new volume of Gantz. Comic readers love Dark Horse Manga, and Gantz is a good reason why, with a story and art that is as close as you can get to Image Comics without actually being it.

And Kodansha Comics! Remember them? They have the 5th volume of Akira out, for those who never bought the Dark Horse release. Yes, it’s still just Akira for now. Only 2 more months…

And Seven Seas, much to the surprise of those who got it from Diamond two weeks ago, is sending us the second and final Inukami! omnibus and the first volume of Toradora!, which I reviewed the other day. I understand in a couple of weeks they may have non exclamation-point titles for us as well.

And this isn’t on Midtown’s list, but it’s on my local shop’s: Diamond is finally shipping the 12th Evangelion manga, which most bookstores got last month. It continues to grind its way towards the climax at a snail’s pace, but we’re in the end run now.

Anything appealing to you?