First off, shut up all you Yotsuba fans. My blog, I get to choose the featured image. :)

Dark Horse is hitting us with a double dose of CLAMP – or should that be a quadruple dose, as both CLAMP books are omnibus volumes. First off, Card Captor Sakura finishes up with its fourth and final volume, and is as cute and fun as ever. Secondly, Angelic Layer arrives, CLAMP’s first big attempt at shonen, in the first of two big books. Angelic Layer is one of the few anime series where the anime is much better than the manga, but despite this, the manga is still worth checking out. And for those of you who want the polar opposite of these titles, there’s the 36th volume of Berserk. I’m pretty sure Guts is never going to be a Magical Girl. No, don’t send me fanart links.

Speaking of genuine Magical Girls, Kodansha brings us the 7th volume of Sailor Moon, still deep in the S arc. If you like Outers being aloof and Usagi wishing everyone could all just get along, you’ll love this! There’s also the second volume of Attack on Titan, which startled us all at the end of Volume 1 by killing off its hero. Can Mikasa succeed where he failed?

Viz Media has the 22nd and final volume of 20th Century Boys… though the series as a whole is not quite over yet. It’s been a long ride, and I’m glad they stuck it out.

And there’s a bevy of stuff from Yen Press! Higurashi returns from its summer break, and begins the penultimate arc, cheerfully called the Massacre Arc. This one was six volumes in Japan (and the final arc eight), so Yen has chosen to omnibus it, giving us the first two here. Speaking of omnibuses, there’s also the 2nd volume of action thriller Until Death Do Us Part, with Vol. 3 and 4 of the original Japanese series. Manwha gets a look in with new volumes of both Raiders and Jack Frost. BL fans will be pleased to know there’s a new Tale of the Waning Moon. Omamori Himari gets back to its prologue with a Volume Zero. And best of all, after a long wait we have the 4th volume of adorable art school manga GA Art Design Class. Which, unlike Sunshine Sketch, has actual art lessons in it!

Hrm, I know that I’m forgetting something, what could it be…

Oh right! That Yotsuba&! thing has reached its 11th volume somehow, be it via huge sales, amazing word of mouth, or just being really really sweet and adorable. Expect more of the same.

So, how many omnibus bricks are you all getting this week?

As always, Midtown, Diamond and Amazon can’t quite mesh together. My store and most Diamond shops have Hayate the Combat Butler, Arata the Legend, House of Five Leaves, and Loveless out on 9/12. On the other hand, my store got in the Seven Seas stuff on 9/5, but Midtown isn’t getting it till 9/12. Best to just smile and nod.

Kodansha debuts the new Genshiken volume. In Japan it’s just Genshiken 10, but Kodansha USA has made a break with the former series and started its sequel with a new subtitle and Vol. 1. Of course, you can’t get rid of the old cast that easily – Saki and Kousaka make cameos, and Madarame is still a large presence throughout. For the most part, though, this is Ogiue’s new club, with new members – and a shifting mindset, devoted less to typical guy porn and more to typical girl porn. It’s a must buy for fans of the series.

And Seven Seas has a troika of September releases. The 2nd volume of Boris spinoff Alice in the Country of Clover: Cheshire Cat Waltz. A new omnibus of killer loli series Gunslinger Girl, containing the Japanese 11 and 12. (The end of the series was recently announced in Japan, possibly as they’d simply run out of cast members.) And the 5th volume of Toradora!, still the tsundere series to read if you don’t like tsunderes all that much.

And that’s about it, really. A nice quiet week. Any plans?

There is an awful lot of it, huh? I think Gon was annoyed at being by himself last week and called in his friends… and this isn’t even counting the Seven Seas titles my store is apparently getting in but Midtown isn’t.

Remember about a month ago when I said I’d heard good things about that long-titled quasi-incest thing? Turns out I was thinking of OreImo, out this week from Dark Horse, rather than Seven Seas’ Big Brother title. OreImo’s full title is Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai, aka My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute! This title has far less incest but just as many tsunderes, if not more, and is rumored to be good. So I will check it out to see if this is the case.

Bloody Monday from Kodansha Comics has hit lucky Number Seven, though I’ve gotten so far behind on it I may never catch up. Is it still the Japanese 24?

Sublime, Viz’s BL line, has Volume 1 of His Favorite. It has the typical BL seme with his arms around his man and a smirk on his face, but the fact that the other’s guy’s face, instead of fear or uneasiness, or even arousal, reads like “must control fist of death” made me smile.

Tempted as I was to give Hayate the Combat Butler the cover image just to see how many folks I could annoy, the clear winner this week is Vertical’s new Tezuka tome, the first part of Message to Adolf. I never got the series back when Viz put it out ages ago, so this was a must-buy for me. And it’s nice to see some late-period Tezuka as well, as this is a 1980s title. Vertical is also releasing the underappreciated yet fantastic penultimate volume of GTO The Early Years, and the adorably cute 9th (and penultimate?) volume of Chi’s Sweet Home.

PILE O’ VIZ time. Including some stuff Midtown is listing that I had thought would be next week. This includes the 11th volume of Watase Yuu’s shonen series Arata the Legend, 20th volume of still not cancelled and funny as hell Hayate the Combat Butler (Greece Edition), a new House of Five Leaves for you Ono fans, and 9th volume of recent License Rescue Loveless.

There’s also a pile of Jump stuff, which I was expecting this week. There’s new Bakuman! Two more volumes of Bleach, which is still not done with Aizen, believe it or not. Hunter x Hunter, taking time from its busy hiatus to give us a new volume. Naruto! One Piece! Two great tastes that few fans enjoy together, for some reason (can’t the ninja and pirate fans just get along?). And of course Psyren, which should be at the ‘exposition’ part of its fight/exposition/fight trend.

Shojo Beat is the bigger winner here, though, with some of my favorites out next week. There’s new Library Wars, new Oresama Teacher *and* a new Otomen. Now admittedly the three series have flaws. Library Wars doesn’t have enough war for some people; Otomen continues to be a BL series with no BL; and Oresama Teacher is written by Izumi Tsubaki, who is the ‘oooooh, shiny thing!’ of Beat authors. This does not make the series less awesome. Other titles out this week include Earl and Fairy 3and a new Fushigi Yuugi Sequel Thingy volume. (It is possibly that the title does not actually have the word thingy in it.)

Lastly, Viz’s younger fans will be delighted to hear there are new Fluffy Fluffy Cinnamonroll *and* Winx Club titles out next week.

That’s a lot. What’re you getting?