Books, books and more books! Digital manga may be picking up speed but I’m so thankful we still have bookshelves, upon bookshelves of manga to buy. This past week I got a bunch of new titles along with scattered older titles that I missed.
I also secured remaining plans for my trip to New York next month for NYAF/NYCC. Going to the con again is going to fun, meeting new and old acquaintances amazing and then there’s the opportunity to step foot into Kinokuniya again. A place of manga beauty… Anyway! Any other Kuriousity readers going this year?
In terms of goodies bought here at home recently, I was pleasantly surprised to find an early copy of Osamu Tezuka’s The Book of Human Insects. It’s published by Vertical Inc. and is a nice hardcover edition. I wasn’t expecting it to be flipped, since I’m so accustomed to reading their Black Jack books, but at least it doesn’t take long getting used to reading it the other way around.
Adding some new boys’ love to my shelves, I bought the one-shot Midnight Bloom from Digital Manga and two volumes of the Takumi-kun series: Tales Out of Season and Barefoot Waltz. I also bought The Betrayal Knows My Name (Vol. 01) which though not undeniably boys’ love yet, is definitely leaning the way. This one’s an omnibus release which is a format I’m becoming more and more fond of – so much manga in one affordable go!
To my sadness, I bought the last volume of Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit (Vol. 07). It’s not actually the last volume of the series itself but looks like (based on retailer listings) that it’ll be the last one Viz Media is going to release. It’s unfortunate, but I suppose not very surprising as it doesn’t look to have sold very well. Starting something new to try and off-set the abrupt end, I bought my much anticipated Drifters (Vol. 01) from Dark Horse.
Another new series I bought (this one on a total whim because it was there) was Mardock Scramble (Vol. 01) from Kodansha Comics. From them I also bought Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (Vol. 02) and Until the Full Moon (Vol. 01). There was a huge quality contrast between these two titles – Until the Full Moon looked beautiful with a really nice paper stock for the cover. Phoenix Wright however had really low resolution artwork on the cover that was pixelated and fuzzy – it looked like a bootleg product. Not good, Kodansha!
From Viz Media I continued a handful of on-going series with Pokemon: Black & White (Vol. 03), Bleach (Vol. 36) and Toriko (Vol. 06). I’ve already read Bleach and it was really good – a great flashback volume into the pasts of all the Shinigami. Toriko was just really, really, really weird still (they’re fighting a battle inside a giant mammoth’s intestines!) and I can’t help but love it because of that. I then purchased Fall in Love Like a Comic (Vol. 01 – 02), having just recently read and enjoyed the first volume from the library.
Lastly I bought a whole stack of old Tokyopop titles thanks to Strange Adventures‘ great discounted manga section. First I bought Soul Rescue (Vol. 01 – 02) since it’s by the same creator as Otomen, which Viz Media currently publishes. Because the cover looked really pretty, I then bought Million Tears (Vol. 01 – 02). Forget About Love (Vol. 01) was the last of my TP titles and unfortunately never had anything further than that published (so here’s hoping I don’t like it too much?).
Alas it looks like no Sailor Moon for me this week (why, Diamond Comics, why?!) but I’ve still lots and lots to read. Time to get started! So what’s in your Swag Bag this week?
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I got Not Simple and Resturante Pardesio by NAtsume Onon both are great and I can now understand why she's so populer. I also pre orderd Sailor Moon volume one, Code Name Sailor V Volume one, and volume four of Blood Alone wich will hopefully be shipping today (the 13th) and I plan on ordering volume one of Gantz becuese after reading Not Simple and Resturante Parediso I felt like reading something mindless. bloody and border line explotateve.
Natsume Ono\’s works definitely have their own charm to them. I find I always enjoy them a lot more on the second-read than the first too.
And Gantz will definitely be a huge difference from anything Natsume Ono\’s done, that\’s for sure! I only read the first volume of Gantz and it was enough for me – not the kind of mindless, bloody and border line exploitative I like I suppose. I\’ve heard it gets pretty compelling though – you\’ll have to tell me how it reads!
What did it for me was I just randmonlly read volume 8 of Gantz and it made me want to know how it got to that point and in other good news Kodnasha came through and my copies of both Codename Sailor V and Pretty Guriadian Sailor Moon shipped on the 13th so their do to arive Friday. Now it's on to the 20th when volume 26 of FMA comes out and I am going to clean up in October what with Tokyo Mew, Mew, Kngyo Used Books, Yotsuba & !, Gunslinger Girl omnibus three and Princess Knight I know I'll be selling my Plasma in the comeing weeks (LOL)
The amount of books I want coming out in October is almost staggering! It really is looking like a manga-fans\’ early Christmas. My suitcases returning from NYAF may be a little crazy ;p
You must know already the Takumi-kun series is out-of-print at 3 volumes.
It\’s a pretty standalone series at least. Having finished all three, I don\’t feel I lose anything not reading anymore. Fluffy stuff, no big plot (thankfully in this case!)