After you’ve taken a look at the Manga Bookshelf Pick of the Week, we’ll tiptoe through the current ComicList.
Are you back? Great! I’m so excited! Sort of! Also frightened! Because this week sees the arrival of my first chosen-by-committee dubious manga! For those of you who have forgotten, the “winner” was Arata Aki’s The Beautiful Skies of Hou Ou High from Digital Manga. It’s about a girl who likes girls whose mother sends her to an all-boys’ school so that she’ll start liking boys. I’ve tried to refrain from reading early reviews of the book, partly not to color my own opinion and partly to stave off the ominous despair that Wednesday may bring, but even quick glimpses at these analyses suggest that the book is kind of terrible. We’ll soon find out! (Oh, and please help me pick between the two titles left standing in the last round of this exercise in horizon-expanding masochism.)
Perhaps I’ll turn to Digital Manga to recover from that reading experience, as they’re kindly also delivering the fifth two-volume collection of Kaoru Tada’s totally adorable Itazura na Kiss. I’m not quite caught up with this series at the moment, but it’s nice to know that more volumes are out there, waiting to provide the healing power of snarky shôjo romance.
While Midtown is a week ahead of Diamond in terms of new Viz releases, those dependent on the distributor can at least count on the arrival of the 14th volume of Naoki Urasawa’s excellent, Eisner-nominated 20th Century Boys. This is possibly my favorite Urasawa series to be published in English.
What looks good to you?