REVIEW: Home Office Romance (manga) by Kintetsu Yamada, translated by Matt Treyvaud

Home Office Romance is a contemporary romance one-shot manga. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This is technically set during pandemic lockdown times, but there's no sense of strict restrictions and very little talk of the pandemic itself - the time period is mostly just an excuse for Nokoru to suddenly be asked to work from home and for Natsu to find herself stuck in Japan, unable to go on digs due to travel restrictions.

Anyway, this manga is told from the POV of Nokoru, an exhausted and overworked systems engineer. When his company tells him he needs to start working from home, he's faced with the realization that he's spent so little time at his place that, even after living there a year, most of his stuff is still in boxes. He does his best to make his home, now his new work space, more livable, even going so far as to create an Angkor Wat-like paradise on his balcony. 

It's during this time of working from home that Nokoru meets his neighbor, Natsu, a grad student in archaeology. Nokoru soon finds himself thinking about Natsu a lot, looking forward to opportunities to talk to her and spend time with her, and trying, in his awkward way, to figure out if she's as interested in him as he is in her.

REVIEW: Sōseki Nasume's I Am a Cat: The Manga Edition (manga) retold and illustrated by Chiroru Kobato, translated by Zack Davisson

This is a manga adaptation of Sōseki Nasume's I Am a Cat, originally serialized between 1905 and 1906. I bought my copy new.

This review includes spoilers. 

Review:

The whole thing is told from the point-of-view of an unnamed cat, who was found as a kitten and taken in by a teacher named Kushami. The cat observes the various goings on of Kushami's household. There's Meitei, a friend of Kushami's who likes to make things up just to see if Kushami will believe him. There's Mizushima Kangetsu, a former pupil of Kushami's, who has supposedly caught the eye of Kaneda Tomiko, the stuck up daughter of a businessman. Tomiko's mother has a nose so large that Kushami has nicknamed her Lady Nose.

The situation between Kangetsu, Tomiko, and Tomiko's parents is a bit of a mess, with Tomiko's mother only willing to accept Kangetsu as Tomiko's husband if he gets his doctorate. Meanwhile, Kangetsu is cheerfully dragging his feet. There is much joking about Tomiko's mother's large nose (and efforts to convince Kangetsu not to marry Tomiko, since her nose may eventually grow to match), not that Kangetsu seems all that interested in Tomiko in the first place.

REVIEW: Super Mario Manga Mania (manga) story and art by Yukio Sawada, translated by Caleb Cook

Super Mario Manga Mania is a tie-in manga based on various Mario games. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This features a selection of stories from the long-running Super Mario-kun manga. They each tie in with various Mario games, including Paper Mario, Super Mario Sunshine, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, Super Paper Mario, Super Mario Galaxy, and New Super Mario Bros. Wii. So...basically a whole manga's worth of stories based on games I've never played.

That said, there were footnotes that explained the basic stories of the games, so I wasn't totally lost, although I might possibly have appreciated the volume more if I'd actually played any of the games referenced.

REVIEW: Hauntress (manga) by Minetaro Mochizuki, translated by Annelise Ogaard

Hauntress is a horror manga. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Hiroshi, a college student, overhears someone repeatedly ringing his neighbor Yamamoto's doorbell late one evening. He opens his apartment door out of annoyance and curiosity, and sees that the person is an extremely tall, long-haired woman with dirty shoes and a scar on her wrist. He talks to her briefly and then tries to go back to bed, but she spends the entire night continuing to try to get Yamamoto to answer.

Unfortunately for Hiroshi, it doesn't stop there. The woman, Sachiko, turns up at his door, hoping to find Yamamoto hiding in his place. He lets her use his phone to call Yamamoto, who still doesn't pick up and probably isn't even home, only for her to contact him later, telling him that she left her bag at his place. Sachiko becomes even more persistent, transferring her obsession with Yamamoto to Hiroshi.

REVIEW: Little Miss P (manga) by Ken Koyama, translated by Taylor Engel

Little Miss P is a humorous manga with some educational elements. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This is a collection of multiple stories about women and girls dealing with "Little Miss P" - aka, their period. She always seems to arrive at the most inconvenient times, bringing fatigue and her cramp-inducing "Period Punch." 

The first story stars a housewife who's been trying to get pregnant. The second story stars a young writer and her kinda sleazy editor (he's a married man who's slept with the writer at least once and who probably would have done so again that evening if it weren't for the arrival of Little Miss P). The third story is focused on a convenience store clerk who's convinced that she's ugly and will always be single. The fourth story stars a pair of Sailor Moon-like magical girls. The fifth story goes back in time to the Edo era, when women on their period had to stay in menstruation huts. The sixth story stars a pair of rival Drama Club script writers, a girl and a guy, who suddenly swap bodies and are forced to go through the experiences of the opposite gender (Little Miss P for the guy, and Mr. Virginity and Mr. Libido for the girl). The seventh story stars a woman who's been proposed to by a single father of an 11-year-old daughter. The eighth story stars a cafe worker with an unrequited crush on one of her coworkers. The ninth story focuses on Yoshiko Sakai, the creator of Anne napkins, disposable pads designed to fit Japanese women's bodies better than Western pads. The volume wraps up with a bonus story about dealing with Little Miss PMS.

REVIEW: Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy (manga) by Sanzo, translated by Alexandra McCullough-Garcia

Caterpillar Girl and Bad Texter Boy is a blend of fantasy and psychological drama. I got my copy via interlibrary loan.

Review:

Suzume is a beautiful, smart, and kind high school girl who everyone loves. She's friends with this manga's narrator, a boy called Aa-chan, and one day she confesses that she likes him and asks if she could be his girlfriend. Aa-chan, who views himself as pathetic and utterly unlikeable, turns her down, saying that she's too perfect for a guy like him. He assumes that she'll get over this rejection and find someone more worthy of her, but then she goes missing, and he starts to wonder whether his rejection of her might have contributed to her disappearance.

A month after her disappearance, Aa-chan comes across a large caterpillar who speaks with Suzume's voice. Now that she's so pitiful and nasty, she says, can she be his girlfriend? Although he still won't let Suzume be his girlfriend, she doesn't blame him for what she's become, and Aa-chan hates himself even more. He takes her home with him to keep her safe, find out what happened to her, and hopefully undo it. 

REVIEW: Animal Crossing New Horizons: Deserted Island Diary (manga, vol. 1) story and art by Kokonasu Rumba, translated by Caleb Cook

Animal Crossing New Horizons: Deserted Island Diary is a humorous manga based on the Animal Crossing: New Horizons game. I checked my copy out via interlibrary loan.

Review:

Four characters - Corouyuki, who loves fish, Benben, who's constantly reading the dictionary, Himepoyo, a spoiled young lady who's used to getting others to do everything for her, and Guchan, who's always sleeping and talks via snot bubbles - move to one of Tom Nook's deserted islands. They were expecting a proper vacation near actual civilization, but they soon adapt to their situation, learn what sorts of things they can do on the island, enjoy island life, and just generally drive Tom Nook crazy.

REVIEW: You and I Are Polar Opposites (manga, vol. 2) story and art by Kocha Agasawa, translated by Dan Luffey

You and I Are Polar Opposites is a high school romance manga. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

In this volume, we meet Nishi, a super shy girl who enjoys listening in on conversations but who can't bring herself to participate. Her efforts to hide her laughter at funny things that come up in others' conversations attracts the attention of Yamada, Suzuki and Tani's hyper friendly classmate. Meanwhile, Tani and Suzuki spend more time together, which results in Suzuki getting to see Tani's home. Then it's time for the school's cultural festival...and a teeny tiny bit of drama, as Suzuki's ex-boyfriend (sort of?) from middle school stops by.

REVIEW: You and I Are Polar Opposites (manga, vol. 1) story and art by Kocha Agasawa, translated by Dan Luffey

You and I Are Polar Opposites is a high school romance manga. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review: 

Suzuki is a bubbly girl who's loud and friendly. She secretly has a crush on Tani, a quiet but direct classmate of hers, and the only way she can think to handle it is by being hyper friendly to him, including him in conversations even when the topics (like mascara) likely don't interest him.

Something about the cover art style puts me off and is part of the reason I wasn't really originally drawn to this series. Maybe Suzuki's eyes are a tad too sharp? But then I heard it was getting an anime, read a bit more about it, and decided to give it a try.

REVIEW: Shiver: Selected Stories (manga) by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen, "Painter" translated by Naomi Kokubo

Shiver is a collection of 10 short horror manga stories (9, if you consider that one is technically a bonus continuation of another one of the stories in the collection). I bought my copy new.

Review:

As I usually do with anthologies, I'll write about each of the stories in this volume separately. The volume includes an afterword by Junji Ito and author commentary for all of the primary stories.

"Used Record" - Scat music from the afterlife - an old record everyone would kill to have. This was ok but would have been better if we could actually hear the music.

"Shiver" - What's the fear of holes called? Trypophobia? Well, this definitely checks that box. Cursed jade that infects people with holes that let in the wind and give an intense fear of insects. I found this to be one of the stronger stories in the collection, mostly because of the artwork.

"Fashion Model" - Some amateur filmmakers hire a couple models, one of whom is conventionally pretty and one of whom is maybe not even human. I was hoping this one would have more unexpected elements to it, but it was decent enough.

"Hanging Blimp" - People all over Tokyo are being hanged by blimps that look like their own faces. This was kind of creepy, but oddly funny as well. I laughed when the dad was all "Huh, that's horrible. Welp, I've got to go to work now!" Like, dude. Really?

"Marionette Mansion" - A whole family that's being controlled like puppets. This was weird and freaky, especially since I already find dolls to be fairly creepy.

"Painter" - A beautiful woman bewitches a painter. Meh, I wasn't really a fan of this one. It reminded me of Parasite Eve, for some reason. 

"The Long Dream" - Doctors are treating two patients, one a girl who fears death and one a young man who is having longer and longer dreams, to the point that he's becoming something inhuman. The body changes were a bit much, but is it really a Junji Ito story without body horror?

"Honored Ancestors" - There's a girl with amnesia, a boy with a dying father, and a huge monster that turns out to be [redacted]. This was some weird wtfery, which I know is a description that can apply to a lot of Ito's works, but still.

"Greased" - This focuses on a family living over their yakiniku place. Everything is oily and gross, and you can practically feel it oozing out of the pages. This one made my skin crawl. 

Bonus "Fashion Model: Cursed Frame" - A girl with a phobia of anything but full-body photos being taken of her becomes a model and has the bad luck to meet the model from the earlier "Fashion Model" story. Ok, so it's horrible of me, but I found this one to be a little funny. Don't mock the large and intimidatingly toothy model, folks.

REVIEW: Why I Adopted My Husband (manga memoir) by Yuta Yagi, translated by Katie Kimura

Why I Adopted My Husband is a manga memoir. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Yuta Yagi and Kyota are a gay couple in Japan. Because gay marriage isn't legal nationwide in Japan, in order to get legal protections similar to a married couple, the two of them utilized a loophole by having Kyota adopt Yuta. In addition, this allowed them a way to not actually come out to most family - Yagi came out to his mom, but otherwise both men just presented this adoption as a convenient way to protect themselves in the future while technically still leaving them both with the option to marry women. (I had to wonder how dense some of their family members were if they all really believed the "we're just close friends" explanation, but I guess willful blindness is a thing.)

REVIEW: Remina (manga) by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen

Remina is sci-fi horror. I bought my copy new.

Review:

A Japanese scientist discovers a wormhole that spits out a strangely moving planet and names the planet "Remina," after his 16-year-old daughter. Remina the girl then becomes popular and reluctantly agrees to become an idol. Unfortunately, Remina the planet seems to be eating the stars and planets nearby it, and now it's headed towards Earth. Everyone goes batshit insane, and many decide that the only way to save the Earth is to kill Remina's discoverer and his daughter.

I want an xkcd style look at what would actually happen in this situation. I'm betting people would die a lot sooner, and there would be no survivors. But then we'd all lose out on a lot of the craziness.

Anyway, there are no answers here as to what Remina the planet really is, besides incredibly freaky. As usual, Ito's horror strongly features eyes, tongues, and screaming young women.

This was nuts in a way that kept my eyes glued to the story, even when things got gross. Although, honestly, there are grosser Junji Ito stories out there.

REVIEW: Dissolving Classroom (manga) by Junji Ito, translated by Melissa Tanaka

The Dissolving Classroom is a collection of horror manga stories. I bought my copy used, I think.

Review:

The first five of the seven stories included in this are connected by a brother and sister duo. The brother, the older one of the two, spends all his time apologizing. His sister is a psychotic little monster with wide eyes and a creepy smile.

"Dissolving Classroom" - The introduction of Yuuma Azawa and his sister Chizumi. Melting brains and devil worship. Meh.

"Dissolving Beauty" - Yuuma is living in yet another town, dating girls and melting their faces with his profuse insistence that they're beautiful. Again, meh.

"Dissolving Apartment" - Residents of an apartment worry that the newest residents are abusing their children, creepy Chizumi and polite Yuuma. People dissolve. Meh.

"Chizumi in Love" - Chizumi falls in love with a little boy and wants to lick him, so she and Yuuma kidnap him. This one is gross. I mean, they're all pretty gross, but for some reason this one was particularly "ick" for me.

"Interview with the Devil" - The siblings are hunted down by a reporter, based on a tip from the sole survivor of Story #1. For some reason, Yuuma seems to be genuinely afraid, despite his ability to literally melt people with his apologies. Chizumi and Yuuma never really did much for me, and I was glad to be done with them.

"The Return" - Some guy's dead love comes back to "life" via an asteroid that smashes to Earth and then kills her again. Or something. Not scary, just weird.

"Children of Earth" - A bunch of kindergarteners are changed and swallowed up by the Earth. Creepy, but too brief.

All in all, this was probably my least favorite Junji Ito volume I've read so far. 

REVIEW: Shino Can't Say Her Name (manga) by Shuzo Oshimi, translated by Molly Rabbitt

Shino Can't Say Her Name is a one-shot manga. I bought my copy new.

Review:

Shino Oshima has just started high school. She has a bad stutter, especially in anxiety-inducing situations or with words that begin with vowels (like, for example, her surname, Oshima). Unfortunately, starting high school means introducing herself in class, and she gets made fun of when she turns into an anxious, stuttering mess. 

Shino eventually befriends a girl named Kayo. Kayo plays guitar, but when she tries to sing and sounds terrible, Shino accidentally laughs...and learns that her new friend has previously been made fun of for being tone deaf. The two of them form a band, with Shino realizing that she is able to sing without stuttering, and try to practice getting out of their comfort zone by performing on the street. This, however, leads to another shake-up in their budding friendship.

REVIEW: Sneeze: Naoki Urasawa Story Collection (manga) by Naoki Urasawa, translated by John Werry

Sneeze is a collection of short manga stories by Naoki Urasawa. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I'll review this like I usually do anthologies, one story at a time.

"Damiyan!" - A yakuza member hires a weird duo, one of whom supposedly has supernatural abilities, to kill someone. This was quirky and weird, but didn't quite feel finished.

"Throw Toward the Moon!" - A psychic homeless guy tells a kid that he's going to win a Pulitzer one day. The kid grows up bitter and angry because the prediction led him to expect better things, but now he's stuck as an obituary writer for a small paper. When he learns that the psychic wrote up his own obituary and expects to die soon, he decides to get back at the man by proving that his claims are false and correcting his obituary. I thought this was one of the better stories in the collection. Not great, but not bad.

"The Old Guys" - A Bob Dylan appreciation comic, I guess? There's no story here, just nostalgia. And not my brand of nostalgia, so this one didn't end up appealing to me at all.

"Henry and Charles" - Two mice, one of them dumb and one with a tendency to lie about his accomplishments, go on an adventure to sneak past a cat and steal a piece of cake. This was a fun little comic that reminded me of old school cartoons like "Tom and Jerry" - no wonder, since apparently Looney Tunes cartoons were part of Urasawa's inspiration for the story.

"It's a Beautiful Day" - A tribute to Kenji Endo (Enken), a Japanese folk musician. The comic features an experience that Enken once described to Urasawa, in which he and his bandmates saw a stripper with a snake one evening and then saw her again during the day, pushing a stroller (which they assumed contained the snake??) and looking much like their album cover. Again, there was an element of nostalgia here that I didn't share.

"Musica Nostra" - Urasawa's LA music travelogue, with some Beatles stuff and observations about rock guitarists. Meh. This read like a bonus author's note manga at the end of a volume.

"Kaiju Kingdom" - A French kaiju otaku travels to Tokyo to see kaiju and falls for a kaiju researcher whose parents were killed by kaiju. This was another weird and quirky one that I, for the most part, enjoyed - there was some joy in the moment I realized that the main character wasn't just a delusional nerd who thought fictional characters were real. This was a world in kaiju actually existed. The story didn't manage to stick the landing for me, though.

"Solo Mission" - Some sort of sci-fi guy has to go out and save the universe, and his wife is terrified for him. This one turned out to be the setup for a ridiculous little joke and was mildly amusing.

Some of the stories were stronger than others, but overall this was just so-so. After reading Urasawa's much heavier and darker Monster, the humor and general quirkiness here took me by surprise. 

Extras:

Includes author's commentary for each of the stories. 

REVIEW: Tombs: Junji Ito Story Collection (manga) by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen

Tombs is a collection of short horror manga stories. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This starts with the title story, "Tombs," which is a blend of Junji Ito's body horror with a side of I Know What You Did Last Summer. It takes place in a town where bodies naturally turn into tombstones if not disturbed. I liked this story well enough.

Next is "Clubhouse," which stars three friends. Two get possessed by warring spirits in an old clubhouse. This was, for me, the weakest story in the collection.

"Slug Girl" - This is just pure body horror, a story about a girl whose tongue turns into a slug. The grossness of it worked for me.

 "The Window Next Door" - A young man is haunted by a horrific older lady who lives next door. The story is pretty basic. It's the artwork that really sells this one.

"Washed Ashore" - A giant dead sea creature washes ashore. This one felt weirdly unfinished.

"The Strange Tale of the Tunnel" - A tunnel that absorbs people. Meh. This was another weaker entry.

"Bronze Statue" - A woman spies on others via a bronze vanity statute she had made of younger, more beautiful self. We've got murder, art, and a descent into madness.

"Floaters" - People start producing floating hairballs that tell everyone their deepest secrets. This one was okay.

"Bloody Story of Shirosuna" - A town of sick people, and a weird underground horror that's trapping them all there.  

This wasn't one of the stronger Junji Ito collections I've read, but, as usual, Ito's artwork is horrific enough to make up for a few weaker storylines. Here we have people bleeding from their pores, crazy-eyed main characters, horrific rotting corpses, and more. 

REVIEW: The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story (nonfiction manga) by Marie Kondo, illustrated by Yuko Uramoto, translated by Cathy Hirano

The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up is nonfiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

I haven't read Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but I assume that this manga includes the same tips and principles as the book, just in a different format, with some edutainment aspects. Here, Marie Kondo has been hired by a new client, Chiaki, a 29-year-old sales rep in Tokyo, to learn how to clean up her fantastically messy apartment. 

Kondo's method requires you to divide the contents of your home up into categories: she recommends Clothes, then Books, then Paper, then Miscellaneous Items, and finally Sentimental Things. First, though she wants you to think about the kind of life you'd like to live in your home - it's a way to focus your priorities and then start to gear your living space towards those priorities.

REVIEW: Thermae Romae: The Complete Omnibus (manga) by Mari Yamazaki, translated by Stephen Paul

Thermae Romae is historical comedy with fantasy/time travel elements. I bought my copy new.

Review:

When Roman architect Lucius is criticized for his thermae (ancient Roman public bath) designs, he goes to a local public bath himself to collect his thoughts...and ends up in an onsen (Japanese public bath) in modern Japan. He doesn't immediately realize that's what happened, however, and thinks he's surrounded by slaves or foreigners. He's absolutely awestruck by what he sees at the onsen. When he is somehow transported back to ancient Rome, he tries to make some of the features of the onsen a reality in his own thermae designs. It's all an instant hit, catapulting Lucius into thermae architectural fame. 

As the series progresses, Lucius is repeatedly transported back and forth between modern Japan and ancient Rome. Each instance gives him more ideas, but also leaves him feeling conflicted about his pride as a Roman. 

REVIEW: Black Blood (manga) by Hayate Kuku, translated by Kat Skarbinec

Black Blood is a BL sci-fi one-shot manga. I bought my copy new.

Review:

The year is 3020 C.E. Ethan is a cyborg soldier who has traveled to the planet Peridot in order to take a break from the battlefield. He'll be working security - on Peridot, whose only inhabitants are a few human scientists, their family members, and some weird native plant-like things, that should be a piece of cake.

Since Ethan can handle the high oxygen content of the planet a bit better than most of the other members of Peridot's security, he's assigned to help Mihail, an enthusiastic botanist who's finally been given permission to go out and do some fieldwork. As Ethan gets to know Mihail, he starts feeling things he hasn't felt since before he became a cyborg. His emotions were dialed down so that he could handle battle better, and there's very little of him left that's still organic tissue...but maybe even he can still feel love?

REVIEW: Nichijou: My Ordinary Life (manga, vol. 10) by Keiichi Arawi, translated by Jenny McKeon

Nichijou is a high school comedy manga. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

This volume introduces a French fry thief who only ever steals a single fry. Nano does full-on battle with him. For a good chunk of the volume, Arawi does 1-3 panel comics, leading to moments like when a comic's title becomes its own single-panel comic. Mio almost (finally) hears the results of the manga contest she entered volumes ago, but her use of a pen name messes things up. There are more hair jokes. We get a flash forward, in which Mio is a manga creator, with Mai taking her sweet time to come help, and Yuuko traveling somewhere outside Japan (maybe discovering a new species??). There's also a storyline about a time capsule in which the girls are sending letters to their future selves. Nano, Mr. Sakamoto, and the professor somehow switch bodies, and there's some kind of corn power battle involving a snake.

This had some good moments (like the flash forward), but then it kind of went off the rails. I have no idea what Arawi was thinking with the 1-3 panel comics. Maybe getting tired? An extended flash forward section would have made for a great stopping point for the series.

This is the last volume I own, and I plan to stop here, although an English translation of volume 11 is available and an English translation of volume 12 will be released later in 2025.

Extras:

Several full-color pages.