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Lovely Muco!, Vol. 1
For thirteen years, I lived with Grendel, a smart, stubborn Australian shepherd who treated me and my husband like a pair of unruly sheep. She woke us up at 5:45 am every day, herded us to the park,...
View ArticleYashaHime: Princess Half-Demon, Vols. 1-2
YashaHime: Princess Half-Demon epitomizes what I dislike most about IP-driven entertainment. It’s a manga adaptation of an anime sequel to a popular series, made with little involvement from the...
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My Dear Detective: Mitsuko’s Case Files, Vol. 1
Have you seen The Law According to Lidia Poët? It’s a period drama that’s loosely based on a real-life woman who was the first in Italy to pass the bar exam. Though the series explores the real-life...
View ArticleFrom the Vault: Mitsukazu Mihara’s The Embalmer
This month, I’m reaching into the PopCultureShock vault for a review of Mitsukazu Mihara’s The Embalmer, one of those offbeat titles that Tokyopop published back in the aughts. It’s not hard to see why...
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Innocent, Vol. 1
Innocent is hard to pin down. On the one hand, it’s a meticulously researched period drama starring real-life figures such as Casanova, Robert-François Damiens, and Jeanne Bécu; on the other, it’s a...
View ArticleThe Manga Critic’s Year in Review: 2023
At the beginning of 2023, I vowed to post one review or essay per month, a goal I met for the first half of the year. Then work got busy, and my husband and I did some home improvement projects we’d...
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The Best and Worst Manga of 2023
This weekend’s Nor’easter provided me a swell opportunity to finish my long-gestating Best and Worst Manga list for 2023. One of the things that tripped me up was the sheer volume of new work published...
View ArticleDrunks
In the shadow of the mainstream North American manga industry, there are a handful of indies who are keeping manga weird. They’re publishing the kind of offbeat stories that you won’t read in Shonen...
View ArticleTrillion Game, Vol. 1
By all rights, Trillion Game should be a blast. Creators Riichiro Inagaki and Ryoichi Ikegami have more than a dozen hit series to their names—including Eyeshield 21, Dr. Stone, Sanctuary, and Crying...
View ArticleConfession
Confession is a tight, twisty thriller that reads like an episode of The Twilight Zone or Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Author Fukumoto Nobuyuki establishes the premise in a few quick strokes: two...
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