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Review Archive

To see a list of reviews in alphabetical order, please see our review index.


ANN Review: NGE Campus Apocalypse (Vol. 01)

A bit belated but back in September my review for Neon Genesis Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse (Vol. 01) [phew, long name!] was posted over at AnimeNewsNetwork.

It’s been a long while since Dark Horse has had a manga series I was interested in (excluding the ever-engaging Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service) but the art style and plot of this looked like something right up my alley. The fact it was Neon Genesis Evangelion was just an interesting quirk.

Overall I enjoyed it, the art was really nice (non-NGE characters looked especially good with the freedom to design from scratch) and the plot was alright. I was irked at the end when Shinji stepped up as the stereotypical passive anime-hero to join this fight he never really gave enough thought to, but other than that I read the book with few complaints. Not overly exciting, but decent entertainment for those new and old to the franchise.


13 Days of Halloween: After School Nightmare

12 Days of Halloween: After School Nightmare

Shannon, here – Halloween is my favourite holiday and to honour it I’m counting down 13 manga throughout the month that I think best capture the Halloween spirit. They aren’t all horror manga, as to me Halloween is about more than scares: it’s about a sense of fun and wonder. It’s about discovering that there may be more to this world than meets the eye. So with that in mind, there’s everything on this list from action-packed shounen to romantic-comedy to children’s manga to some lock-the-doors-and-leave-the-lights-on horror.(See all 13 Days of Halloween so far…)

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12. After School Nightmare

After School Nightmare may not seem like an obvious Halloween-time manga. There are no ghosts or goblins, no monsters lurking in the shadows. In After School Nightmare the boogeyman isn’t in your closet, but in your mind, right under your skin: The boogeyman is you. In this gender-bending shoujo horror (which is quite possibly the best sub-genre of anything ever) the characters have to deal with their worst nightmares, literally.

Mashiro Ichijo is a normal high-school boy…almost. While Mashiro has the build and upper body of a young man, down below he’s actually female. One day Mashiro is enrolled in a strange class by the school nurse. In this class Mashiro and other students dream and meet up in a shared nightmare. In the dreams the students take on forms that reflect their inner struggles. Mashiro wears a girl’s uniform in the dreams which is pretty mild compared to some forms the other kids take, like a girl who has huge holes through her head and torso. In the dreams the students must compete and even fight each other in order to ‘graduate.’

A big appeal of Halloween is that it gives you a chance to dress however you want and be something completely different from usual. October 31st is the one day of the year when you can dress like a Mexican wrestler, or a bearded lady from the circus, or a two-headed monster, and not be the weird one at a party. The shared dreams in After School Nightmare have a similar atmosphere. It’s the one place where the students get to show an aspect of themselves that they otherwise keep hidden. The forms they take on in the dreams (a little girl, a shining knight, a paper giraffe, a gaggle of grabbing, clinging hands) are who they really are. It’s their school uniforms that are the costumes.

Of course, the main difference between a Halloween party and a session in the dream world is that a Halloween party is generally a good time for all while the dream classes are traumatic, full of blood, and end in tears (if that’s the way your parties usually go, then perhaps hosting parties is not for you). But there’s still enough of a link in my mind to make After School Nightmare good Halloween reading.

You can read Lissa’s reviews of After School Nightmare volumes five, seven, eight and nine here. Also worth checking out is September’s Manga Moveable Feast, which collects various blog posts concerning After School Nightmare.


Review: Cold Sleep

Reviewer: Jaime Samms
Cold Sleep

Author/Artist: Narise Konohara
Publisher: June
Rating: Older Teen (16+)
Release Date: August 2006

Synopsis: “After losing his memory in a car accident, Tohru Takahisa is taken in by Fujishima, an older man who claims to be his friend. But the taciturn Fujishima refuses to reveal anything about Tohru’s past! Despite the gulf between them, a strange and awkward tenderness grows, even as they are held apart by the tragic events of Tohru’s forgotten past! Dramatic, heart-wrenching romance and tragedy combine in a gripping story where the past and present are intricately entwined.”

Cold Sleep is a different sort of yaoi novel. It delves a deeper into the psyche of the characters and, though we still have just the typical one point of view, the lead isn’t your run-of-the mill yaoi character. He’s a blank slate, sure, but still a thinking feeling man who isn’t afraid to go after the answers he needs.

Read more…


13 Days of Halloween: Chibi-Vampire

13 Days of Halloween - Chibi Vampire

Shannon, here – Halloween is my favourite holiday and to honour it I’m counting down 13 manga throughout the month that I think best capture the Halloween spirit. They aren’t all horror manga, as to me Halloween is about more than scares: it’s about a sense of fun and wonder. It’s about discovering that there may be more to this world than meets the eye. So with that in mind, there’s everything on this list from action-packed shounen to romantic-comedy to children’s manga to some lock-the-doors-and-leave-the-lights-on horror. (See all 13 Days of Halloween so far…)

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

13. Chibi-Vampire

It’s easy to assume that Chibi-Vampire is just another shoujo vampire series like Millenium Snow or Vampire Knight. But Chibi-Vampire has something that other vamp manga lack: it’s fun. The characters go through some rough patches, but they never spend pages angsting about their lot in life. The manga manages to take something as tired as vampires and be both respectful to tradition and while still crafting its own mythology.

Karin is the middle-child in a family full of vampires. Even in a strange family like that she still manages to be the odd one out. Instead of drinking blood, Karin’s body is a hemoglobin-making machine, pumping out so much blood that Karin bites people in order to inject them with it and get it out of her system. If she doesn’t find someone to donate blood too, she ends with the mother of all nosebleeds. When her classmate Kenta witnesses one of them, Karin and Kenta get drawn into a strange friendship that slowly grows over the course of the manga.

What makes this a ‘Halloween’ manga in my mind is Karin’s family. They embody all the traditional vampire tropes: they sleep in coffins, can’t bear sunlight, use bats as familiars, and need to drink blood to survive. They even dress the part, wearing gothic-lolita outfits and capes. Ironically, the fact that they adhere so much to tradition makes them stand out against the wave of sparkly, sun-happy vampires that are in fashion (sure, Karin is fine in the sun, but she’s got drawbacks of her own to balance things out). But that’s only a minor part of their appeal. A much bigger factor is the fact that they like being vampires. Sure, there are some moments in the series where being what they are makes things hard for them, but they never stoop to angst and bemoan their existence.

The series is labelled as comedy horror, but as I said in my review of volume two it’s much more of a comedy with horror trappings. There’s enough respect and affection for the vampire mythos that a horror fan can read the manga and enjoy the comedy. It also works just as a romantic-comedy, as the characters are strong and the relationships well-written.

To find out more about Chibi-Vampire, you can read Lissa’s review of volume one here as well as my review of volume two.


Review: Knights (Vol. 02)

Reviewer: Shannon Fay
Knights (Vol. 02)
No Amazon.com Link Available

Manga-ka: Minoru Murao
Publisher: Digital Manga
Rating: Older Teen (16+)
Release Date: August 2010

Synopsis: “In this second instalment of the exciting medieval tale, Mist’s lady-friend Nina goes missing, while dark memories from his tortured past are brought to the surface. Unexpected help comes from a former adversary, and the self-confessed “true” witch Euphemia is always by Mist’s side, but will they be help enough for Mist to overcome a new assault from the Saints and win the battle within himself?”

Knights isn’t going to change the way you look at manga. It will never be a huge juggernaut like One Piece or Naruto. But what it is, is a solid, fun shounen manga with likable characters and an interesting plot. While for the most part it’s your standard action adventure, the way it deals with things like sex and race sets it apart from other hack-and-slash fantasy stories.

Read more…


Review: Your Love Sickness

Reviewer: Shannon Fay
Your Love Sickness

Manga-ka: Kuku Hayate
Publisher: June
Rating: Mature (18+)
Release Date: September 2010

Synopsis: “The Shrine Inari is protected by two divine-being foxes – Unka and Aura. Unka, a red fox, is the serious one and born into a lower social class. Aura, pure-bred white fox, is the reckless and irresponsible one. Can opposites attract?”

Your Love Sickness is a yaoi anthology where every single one of the stories is good. There are some stories were I would have happily read a whole volume or series based on the characters. As it is, the short stories are crafted so well that even when I wanted more, I was still satisfied with what I got.

Read more…


ANN Review: Tale of a White Night

ANN Review:  Tale of a White Knight

Newish manga review of mine over at AnimeNewsNetwork is for a one-shot horror/fantasy book from Digital Manga, Tale of a White Night.

I’m a fan of these types of suspenseful ghost stories so I really enjoyed the majority of this book. The art was also really pretty (note the gorgeous cover) – the combination reminded me of Matsuri Akino’s Pet Shop of Horrors, so I think fans of it would enjoy this as well. The last story in the book was a big let-down though; sharp change of subject matter and art style that was a real surprise, sadly though not a good one.

Still, a good overall read with some nice work on it by Digital Manga so I’d recommend fans of the genre checking it out. Shannon Fay also wrote a full review on the book which was posted earlier this week.


Review: Library Wars (Vol. 02)

Reviewer: Lissa Pattillo
Library Wars (Vol. 02)

Manga-ka: Kiiro Yumi
Publisher: Viz Media
Rating: Teen (13+)
Release Date: August 2010

Synopsis: “When the director of the Kanto Library Base gets sick, a temporary replacement is assigned, according to regulations. But Iku and her roommate Asako discover a trail of missing books that leads back to the temporary director Has he betrayed everything the Library Forces stand for an handed books over to the enemy?!”

Readers looking to Library Wars for guns blazing in the name of saving books may be a little disappointed with volume two. I was a little let-down myself that there wasn’t much more actual book-defense than last time after the first volume had so much importance spent on training.

Read more…


Review: Tale of a White Night

Reviewer: Shannon Fay
Review: Tale of a White Night

Manga-ka: Tooko Miyagi
Publisher: Digital Manga
Rating: Older Teen (16+)
Release Date: September 2010

Synopsis: “In a small quiet village – There is a folk story of a beautiful female demon; nobody knows who she is but the locals calls her “Oni.” The story has it that she killed people and collected parts of their body to make a perfect human figure. A young man named Sho, is spending his summer with his grandmother and meets Oni while he’s taking a walk in the woods. Blinded by his beauty, he is lured into Oni’s house… nobody can hear him crying for help…”

Tale of a White Night is a collection of short stories: four horror tales and one fantasy story. It’s a strange collection in that the fantasy story sticks out like a sore thumb. Not only is it a different genre from the rest of the book, its tone is totally different and the style so dissimilar from the other chapters that I wondered if the same manga-ka actually drew it. It’s not a bad story, but it’s just strange to cap off a series of horror shorts with a high fantasy piece.

Read more…


Review: Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles (Vol. 27)

Reviewer: Lissa Pattillo
Tsubasa (Vol. 27)

Manga-ka: CLAMP
Publisher: DelRey
Rating: Teen (13+)
Release Date: August 2010

Synopsis: “The restart of time! Cut off by time, the travelers have arrived in Fei-Wang Reed’s dimension to get Sakura back. But Fei-Wang has been waiting for them, and they’re in for the ultimate fight. The witch Yûko finally brings into play that odd cylinder she’s had in her keeping, and what’s inside gives Syaoran the shock of his life!”

It’s time for another new volume of Tsubasa, and the penultimate chapter at that. It’s exciting, it’s dramatic, it’s mostly one giant magical showdown and… it’s downright confusing. It’s tough having a story so artistically engaging and brimming with emotion when it’s also one hampered irrefutably by a story that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense at times.

Read more…


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