A small but filling dose of manga next week.

Vertical has the second volume of Felipe Smith’s manga from Japan, Peepo Choo. The first volume was very much in your face. I may review all 3 at once, since I never got a chance to review the first one.

Viz has what they list on their website as the final volume of the Shakugan no Shana manga, which may come as a surprise to those who know that Vol. 7 came out in Japan a while ago. When I first saw this, I thought it might be due to low sales, but it could also be a licensing issue, or something else. I still think calling an unfinished series finished is the wrong way to handle it. There’s also the first volume of the low key samurai manga House of Five Leaves from Natsume Ono.

Yen has a pile of stuff. I’m not certain if this volume of With the Light is the last (the creator died before it was finished), but it’s still worth your time. Bunny Drop is eagerly awaited by the whole blogging community, while Bamboo Blade is eagerly awaited by ME, and I believe this volume is the one that ‘catches up’ to the anime series. Cat Paradise is a series I couldn’t get into, but lots of my friends like it, and it manages to exist in Champion Red without being creepy, always a plus. This is its final volume. And for those who enjoyed the yaoi otaku weirdness of My Girlfriend’s A Geek in manga form, now you can read the novel it’s based on.

It’s a pretty busy week at Midtown Comics. First of all, they’re getting in all the Viz the rest of us got this week. So I already covered a lot of it.

In the Viz that Diamond and Midtown are getting at the same time, we have a new Hayate the Combat Butler, a great silly comedy manga I enjoy. This may be the last pure silly volume of that, as 17 begins a very serious arc. I’m also very fond of Dogs: Bullets and Carnage, which pretty much delivers what its subtitle suggests. And there’s another volume of the light (somewhat too light) Takahashi comedy Rin-Ne.

Digital Manga Publishing has been quiet lately, but are making up for it with a giant pile of books, 13 in all. The majority are yaoi, which is mostly a genre I don’t follow as much, but even I’ve heard of Finder, one of the titles listed. They also have the 3rd volume of the classic shoujo manga Itazura Na Kiss, inspiration for approximately 80 billion other shoujo titles that came after it.

And Dark Horse has the 34th volume of Berserk, a title that we’ve discovered sells perpetually well. Which is good, as it subsidizes the awesome yet poor selling Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, which celebrates its 11th volume by switching from beige to black covers. One of the best horror titles out there, with a wicked sense of humor and the legendary endnotes of Carl Horn. (Which sounds like a bad RPG quest. “Traverse the Mountains of Despair to get me the Endnotes of Carl Horn!”) Everyone should get this, even if you think you hate horror. It’s fantastic.

Yes, it’s a day late at the comic shop due to the Labor Day holiday. Also, Midtown and Viz one again fail to hook up. I’m basing my list on what Viz says is coming out rather than Midtown, as Diamond tends to follow Viz’s more accurately.

In any case, Dark Horse has new volumes from two of their more male-oriented series. Ghost Talker’s Daydream has a virgin albino dominatrix who fights crime, which is a USA World Premiere Movie if ever there was one. And Gantz is… it’s Gantz. It just is. You know what I mean.

Del Rey continues to prove it exists with a bunch of new stuff. I reviewed Volume 1 of Pink Innocent and found it horribly fascinating, especially its road accident of a heroine. I hope the second volume gives me more to stare at in a sort of dull stupor! There’s also a new volume of Negima Neo, for those who like Negima but wish it had poorer writing and bad art. And omnibus volumes of the romantic comedy/drama Suzuka and the sort of insane roller blade epic Air Gear.

Udon is releasing some more of their kid-friendly titles, with Ninja Baseball Kyuma (ending here, I believe), Big Adventures of Kanojo, and two Mega Man titles. It’s always nice to see things licensed from the ‘Kodomo’ genre of Japan, i.e. things actually for little kids.

Vertical has Volume 3 of Twin Spica, a series I’m definitely enjoying. Let’s hope that the heroine can snap out of her funk and triumph against the teacher who hates her for undisclosed reasons.

And Viz has a pile of stuff, although it’s a much smaller pile than I’m used to from them in a first week. A lot of titles that came out every 2 months are down to quarterly or even less. We get lots of shoujo I like, with volumes of Library Wars and Cactus’s Secret, as well as the more adult Butterflies, Flowers. And then, in order to prove I am a MAN!, we also have Volume 2 of the food-loving Toriko.