I was going to review Go! Comi’s Train + Train, but Katherine Dacey-Tsuei covers everything I’d want to say over at Manga Recon. I particularly agree with her assessment of the art:
“Given the description of the Special Train, I expected Tomomasa Takuma to have a field day rendering the different cars. But he does little with the set-up, offering us only a generic-looking glimpse of the mall car. (Forgive me if I let out a grumpy sigh—the MALL car?! Wouldn’t a school have a library and a gym?) His action scenes are no great shakes, either. Despite the heavy use of speed lines, the characters look firmly tethered to the ground.”
TangognaT isn’t especially inspired by the debut either. It’s very competent shônen, but there’s plenty of excellent shônen out there. (Like, say, Bleach.)
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Speaking of excellent shônen, Shaenon Garrity places Kekkaishi in that category in the latest installment of her Overlooked Manga Festival. From her all-caps review of The Drifting Classroom to her declaration that “MANGA CAN HAVE ALL (her) BABIES” in reaction to Gerard and Jacques, Garrity is the funniest manga critic going.
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At Yet Another Comics Blog, Dave Carter offers a list of unlicensed manga he’d like to see in English. They all sound good, but Palepoli tops my list of nag-worthy books. Because I’m an essentially envious person, I had to look and see if it had been published in France. Doesn’t look like it.
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I’m also an extremely forgetful person, so I neglected to pre-order a copy of PINNED! from Yaoi Press. After reading the interview with Yamila Abraham in the latest Sequential Tart, I feel kind of badly about that. At least I can read the first volume.