A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions

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

2026-04-20T01:13:00.001-05:00

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.

So, the artwork was very loose, like a quick sketch, and not really to my taste, but the humor helped make up for it. When Little Miss P first arrived at the housewife's home, she was like a friend checking in to see how things were going. The switch from "supportive friend" to "matter-of-fact bully," with a not-very-apologetic "sorry" at the end, was so sudden it startled a laugh out of me. Same when Little Miss P whipped out her Period Punch when the housewife's husband had the gall to complain about what she'd made for dinner and commented on her mood.

My favorite story of the bunch was probably the seventh one, with the woman who's considering marrying a single dad. It was wholesome without being cloyingly so, and I liked the slightly unexpected aspects of how it wrapped up.

The story about Yoshiko Sakai and her efforts to get Anne napkins on the market in Japan and destigmatize periods was interesting, although the bit with Hajime Watabe in the bathroom was kind of weird. (WTF did he do?? Dip the cotton in the toilet before putting it on? Dude.)

While Mr. Libido and Mr. Virginity were amusing and I could see what the author was going for, it was somewhat annoying that they were presented as primarily male problems/concerns. Still, despite some odd and kind of off-putting bits, I liked this overall.

Extras:

Three pages of translator's notes, a page devoted to explaining how to draw Little Miss P, and a truly horrific Little Miss P anatomical chart.

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

2026-04-13T00:00:00.001-05:00

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.

I was not expecting this to be so dark and complex. It looked at mental health and the effect that toxic parental relationships can have on kids. I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending, beyond saying that this definitely isn't one of those works where mental health issues are easily fixed and hand-waved away.

I do wish that this manga had spent more time looking at Suzume and what was going through her head. Honestly, even prior to the events that resulted in her becoming a monster caterpillar, she didn't seem entirely healthy to me - her focus on Aa-chan was fairly obsessive. We got to learn how and why Aa-chan came to hate himself so much, but why did Suzume make Aa-chan the center of her world the way she did?

And that ending... Was it a good ending? I don't know. But it's definitely one I'll be thinking about for a while.

I liked the artwork and found Caterpillar Suzume to be very creepy-cute.

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

2026-04-12T23:07:00.003-05:00

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.

This weird manga is basically a combination of ad and game guide. It introduces several villagers, including Dom and Raymond, as well as a bunch of NPCs players of the game will encounter, such as Blathers, Tom Nook, Timmy and Tommy, Wisp the ghost, Gulliver, and more.

A little over a third of this volume is explicitly game guide stuff, paired with humorous four-panel comics - lots of ACNH character introductions (including a bunch of villagers I've never met), and gameplay tips like setting up your home, using a vaulting pole to get across rivers, catching bugs, fishing, and more.

It doesn't manage to get through everything you can do in the game (I assume this manga was published prior to the updates that added new activities), but it does get through a huge chunk of the basics, so I wonder if future volumes in this series will be more focused on Coroyuki, Benben, Himepoyo, Guchan, and their interactions with villagers.

Other than the chance to see a few villagers in action that I might never meet, there isn't a lot here to make me want to read the next volume. The humor is aimed at kids (Japanese kids, at that, so there are probably jokes lost in translation) and never really hit the mark with me. It was kind of fun seeing the characters drive Tom Nook nuts, though.

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

2026-04-06T01:59:00.000-05:00

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.

These characters are so cute.

In this volume, we have several instances of characters nervously trying to approach things in various roundabout ways, along with a few refreshing and much more direct approaches (although, as an awkward shy person, I totally get the allure of roundabout approaches!).

Unsurprisingly, it generally works best for everyone when they actually talk about what they're feeling and say what they really want to say. Which didn't keep me from enjoying the bonus "before the start of volume 1" story, in which Suzuki engineered a situation in which she could believably ask Tani for his contact info without actually telling him that she was interested in him.

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

2026-04-06T01:32:00.001-05:00

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.

This is a really nice, fluffy high school romance. There's a minimum of drama: when Suzuki says something that she realizes Tani might misinterpret and be hurt by, she's finally honest about her feelings and clears things up with Tani as quickly as she can. While there are a few who are surprised when they become a couple, everyone mostly just accepts it and starts expanding their social circles to include Tani more.

Taira, a moody side character, is the closest thing the series has to a negative personality so far, and even he quickly realizes that all his bitter thoughts about social hierarchies are more an internal problem he's got to work on than an actual issue at his school. Then there's Azuma, a jaded girl who has a bad habit of being drawn to bad boys who turn out to be horrible boyfriends.

Tani and Suzuki's movie date was super cute. Tani was the one who remembered all the basic story details, like characters' names, while Suzuki was the one who noticed all the little details in the background that underscored the movie's emotional aspects.

All in all, enjoyable. I'm glad I gave it a shot.

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

2026-01-04T11:49:00.000-06:00

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

2025-12-31T19:30:00.000-06:00

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.)

As I was reading this, I felt a sense of deja vu. I realized that it was because this felt very similar in tone and content to The Bride Was a Boy - fluffy, happy, and not trying to be argumentative but just present the couple's life and decisions.

Readers got an overview of how Yuta and Kyota met, how they ended up living together, how their daily lives work, etc. They wear wedding rings and allow others to assume they're married to women. I wonder if they had any concerns that this manga might out them? Yagi said that this manga was a way of paying forward what a different manga series did for him.

There's some surprisingly detailed information here about how to fill out Japanese adoption forms. Hopefully that's reassuring to Japanese readers who want to take the same route as Yuta and Kyota.

Despite the overall light tone, it was depressing how much Kyota and Yuta essentially had to bend themselves into pretzels in order to live happily as a family. I winced when the afterword began with "This book was not made with the intention to endorse or promote same-sex marriage" - Yuta's bar is so low that he just wants people to recognize that gay people exist. Maybe he and Kyota are genuinely ok with the way things are, but, as one of their readers, I'm going to say you guys deserve better.

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

2025-12-30T22:05:00.000-06:00

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

2025-12-30T21:36:00.000-06:00

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

2025-12-30T00:06:00.000-06:00

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.

Shino's stuttering moments were almost physically painful to read. In the author's afterword, Oshimi mentioned that the manga was based on some of his own experiences growing up with a stutter, and you could feel it in every horrible panel in which Shino, flushed and sweating with anxiety, tried desperately to force words out.

The finale, at the cultural festival, was kind of predictable, but I loved what Kayo did for Shino (and snort-laughed at Kikuchi's mask with a big X on it - the guy did his best to show his support while keeping his mouth shut for once).

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

2025-12-28T20:54:00.000-06:00

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

2025-12-07T23:21:00.000-06:00

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

2025-12-01T00:10:00.000-06:00

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.

Rather than starting by helping Chiaki find new ways to store her stuff, Kondo asks her to focus on particular categories and discard things. For example, she has Chiaki collect all her clothes from her closet and wherever else they might be located, put it all in one giant pile (a good way to truly understand just how much stuff she has), and then individually consider each item. Although Chiaki is discarding things, she's supposed to focus on choosing what she wants to keep, the items that "spark joy." Everything that no longer sparks joy should be individually thanked and discarded. Kondo tells Chiaki (and readers) that this process may be more difficult and emotional than you expect - in some instances, you're essentially saying goodbye to moments in your life that are now firmly in your past.

I know a lot of folks made fun of the whole "spark joy" thing back when Kondo's book was enormously popular, but the advice in this manga actually did seem really helpful. The problem: I'm not sure I'm committed enough to cleaning up to go through Kondo's whole method. In a way, it makes me think of a less time-sensitive version of the cleanup I did when I was packing everything up to move to a new place, and even then I couldn't bring myself to individually go through all of my books.

Also, Kondo never really says how to tackle strictly utilitarian items - they're subcategories under "Miscellaneous," sure, but a plate doesn't necessarily need to spark joy in me in order to be worth keeping. Then again, I just have a little stack of plates that fits easily in my kitchen cabinets. Kondo's method seems to best apply to those things a person has so much of that they can't figure out how to deal with it all.

Even if you, like me, are too chicken to go through Kondo's whole cleaning process, this is still a motivating read, and the images of Kondo's recommendations for ways to use what you have in order to sort and store the things you plan to keep (rather than buying new storage containers) are helpful. There are also some nice diagrams explaining how to fold and hang various clothing items neatly.

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

2025-07-07T23:06:00.000-05:00

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.

This series is fantastic, and it makes me sad that so many will probably never read it, considering the niche subject matter. It doesn't really sound like there could be much to a historical comedy manga about ancient Rome and modern Japan's shared love of public baths, and yet somehow this series feels like it's just as long as it needs to be at over 1000 pages total.

Yen Press's omnibus edition is an absolute brick of a volume, which can make for awkward/uncomfortable reading but which gives the gorgeous artwork plenty of space to shine. I loved Lucius' ultra-serious facial expressions as he confronted new thermae design challenges and dealt with yet another out-of-nowhere time travel experience. You can feel Yamazaki's love for ancient Roman history and public baths on every page, but there's plenty of humor too, beyond the generally absurd premise. I particularly got a kick out of the running joke involving a horse that fell in love with Lucius (imagine a serious, beautifully illustrated moment...with a horse gazing at Lucius in the distance, surrounded by little happy hearts).

Yamazaki's author's notes are great as well, and it's evident how much time, enthusiasm, and research went into this series.

Extras:

Author's notes and translation notes.

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

2025-07-05T22:25:00.000-05:00

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?

Overall, this was a fairly sweet, low-angst volume. It didn't take long for both Ethan and Mihail to figure out that they had feelings for each other and that those feelings were mutual, and there didn't seem to be any taboos about fully human folks being in a relationship with cyborgs. And, hurray, there were no rapey moments. All sex was consensual.

I did have a few questions. What/who was Ethan originally fighting for? If his body was so high-tech, why wasn't he still on the battlefield? Who paid for his cyborg parts? Were there still any fully human soldiers left, or was it just cyborgs vs. cyborgs forever? What was his life like prior to becoming a cyborg, and how much of it did he remember? And as far as Mihail went, how the heck did he manage to crossbreed Earth plants with Peridot plants when he wasn't even sure that Peridot plants were 1) plants or 2) even living beings?

I probably thought about all of this more than I should have for something that was more feelings and sex than plot. Anyhoo, I loved Hawk, the most prominent minor character and basically a reader stand-in. He served as Security's maintenance cyborg. His excited support for Ethan's developing feelings for Mihail was adorable, and I was amused at his idea of an appropriate gift to a military cyborg with a crush on a human.

Extras:

One page of full-color artwork.

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

2024-12-31T15:00:00.001-06:00

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.

REVIEW: Nichijou: My Ordinary Life (manga, vol. 9) by Keiichi Arawi, translated by Jenny McKeon

2024-12-31T14:24:00.001-06:00

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

Review:

Mio meets Yuuko's celebrity lookalike, Double Cheeseburgirl. Mr. Takasaki freaks out about Ms. Sakurai seeing his pic of her as a high schooler and accidentally makes it look like he really has a crush on Ms. Nakamura. Nano and Mai get really into a book called Double Crops: A Textbook (which I later realized was written by Ms. Sakurai's father). Misato continues to have weird delusions of romance with Sasahara. Mio buys an over-priced cutting board from a weird vending machine. Also, Ms. Nakamura is now somehow living at the Shinonome Laboratory?

Yet another random and weird volume, with a lot of the weirdness somehow interconnected. So, basically a normal Nichijou volume.

It's been a while, but I think the one pen featured in a strip near the end of the volume is a reference to one of the teachers in Azumanga Daioh.

Extras:

A few full-color pages and a page about minor characters.

REVIEW: Nichijou: My Ordinary Life (manga, vol. 8) by Keiichi Arawi, translated by Jenny McKeon

2024-12-31T13:52:00.000-06:00

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

Review:

Ms. Nakamura continues to try to capture Nano. Yuuko hypnotizes various students, with varying degrees of success. The newspaper subscription guys are back and trying their best. Misato thinks her younger sister Mihoshi is in love with Sasahara. There's an extended flashback to Mai's middle school days as a transfer student from Alaska, more hair-related humor, and we finally meet Ms. Sakurai's father, who turns out to be a narcoleptic novelist.

Definitely better than the previous volume. More characters are getting the spotlight, which is helping to keep the jokes fresh. I like the way some of the jokes extend across multiple strips and morph along the way.

My one issue was that the middle school flashback was a bit sudden and jarring.

Extras:

A few full-color pages and a page introducing some of the people Yukko, Mai, and Mio knew back in middle school.

REVIEW: Nichijou: My Ordinary Life (manga, vol. 7) by Keiichi Arawi, translated by Jenny McKeon

2024-12-31T13:32:00.000-06:00

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

Review:

In this volume we get more Go/Soccer demonstrations.Yuuko gets mistaken for some kind of celebrity and immediately regrets rolling with it. The principal has an increasingly terrible experience with Mr. Takasaki as his unfortunate witness. Yuuko and Mio attempt to smash an indestructible pumpkin. Also, a weird group arrives and tries to get itself some newspaper subscribers.

This volume seemed weaker and more random than previous volumes. Certain running jokes, like the dog thing, seem to have been dropped.

The best bits, for me, were the part with Mr. Takasaki and the principal, and the part where Yuuko thought she was having an unlucky day but inadvertently saved the prime minister's life.

Extras:

A few full-color pages and a little info on the weird guys who were trying to get newspaper subscribers.

REVIEW: My Brother's Husband (manga, vol. 2) by Gengoroh Tagame, translated by Anne Ishii

2024-12-31T00:27:00.000-06:00

My Brother's Husband is a contemporary realistic manga series. I bought my copy of this volume new.

Review:

Yaichi, Mike, and Yaichi's family go to an onsen. Afterward, Yaichi meets one of Ryoji's old high school friends, who asks to come by and drop some stuff off - and who secretly arranges to go out with Mike to talk about Ryoji. Yaichi deals with a phone call from Kana's teacher about Mike, and Yaichi and Mike finally sit down and really talk about Ryoji.

Well, I cried. A large part of it was thinking about the relationship Yaichi and Ryoji could've had but didn't. Mike's 3-week trip to Japan was a healing experience for Mike and Yaichi, but it couldn't change the past.

Mike got more food for thought after meeting with Ryoji's old high school friend, a deeply closeted gay man who had no intention of ever coming out. Although Mike didn't like keeping secrets from Yaichi about what he was doing and where he was going, at the same time he didn't want to out someone who wasn't ready for that. Unfortunately, then he had to consider that even just a friendly greeting from him could count as outing them.

This ending is a bit rushed-feeling. Mike's last few days in Japan passed by really quickly, and some things (like the issues with Kana's friends' parents) were never fully addressed. Still, this was a really good, short series overall.

Extras:

Several pages of the author's pencil art from this series.

REVIEW: The Walking Cat: A Cat's-Eye View of the Zombie Apocalypse (manga omnibus) by Tomo Kitaoka, translated by Caleb D. Cook

2024-12-30T23:16:00.000-06:00

The Walking Cat is a zombie apocalypse manga. I bought my copy new.

Review:

This follows Yuki the stray cat as he's taken in by various humans in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. First, Yuki travels with Jin, a man looking for his wife, Satoko. When Jin learns that Satoko has left for an island that's supposedly untouched by zombies, he heads there as well. After that, Yuki lives with Kaoru, a girl who's part of the little island survivor community. Kaoru wants to become part of the resource hunting crew that periodically leaves the island, because she can't stand to be around her mother, who's made an abusive jerk the most important person in her life. After Kaoru, Yuki travels with Fuuta, a boy who comes across a group of kids who, for various reasons, hate adults. They travel to a little village only to discover that it's inhabited by a man who isn't interested in having company.

Wow, this was a stressful read. For those who need it, here's a slight animal-related spoiler: Yuki is in peril several times throughout the story, but he survives and is still having a nice cat life by the end of the omnibus volume. There's also a pack of dogs that seems to be doing well.

The artwork in this was occasionally confusing. Scenes didn't always flow well, and some of the characters looked a little too similar. Still, it did the job.

The actual zombie stuff in this will be familiar to anyone who's watched or read any zombie apocalypse stuff in the past few years. There were the usual sad scenes where you know certain characters aren't going to last much longer, even if they're not actively in danger of being eaten by zombies. There are the characters who hide that one of them has been bitten, putting everyone else in danger. There are some survivors who help others and some survivors who are willing to kill other survivors in order to secure their own safety.

Yuki the cat gives the human survivors who care for him something to focus on besides themselves and the world that's falling down around their ears. He adds some relatively sweet and humorous moments too, even though some of it had me rolling my eyes. For example, Yuki spent a period of time pursuing a female cat in heat, with Jin doing his best to ensure that his furry little friend wasn't interrupted by zombie attacks. My favorite was the ex-boxer with a secret soft spot for Yuki - so cute!

All in all, this was okay, but I'm kind of glad that most of the zombie apocalypse stuff I've read and watched doesn't have pets in it. It's stressful enough, worrying about the people.

Extras:

A couple pages of full-color artwork and a bonus art gallery.

REVIEW: Nichijou: My Ordinary Life (manga, vol. 6) by Keiichi Arawi, translated by Jenny McKeon

2024-12-02T11:01:00.003-06:00

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

Review:

In this volume, Fecchan tries to look on the bright side of things. Ms. Nakamura (the science teacher) finds the Shinonome Laboratory and completely freaks out about being in what she's sure is enemy territory. Mio finds out about the manga contest she entered...or does she? Yuuko has another Fey Kingdom dream in which Mio is a super-powered villain looking for the magical wooden cubes (her barrettes or whatever they are). Ms. Sakurai finds porn (??) called DVD Vinyl in her brother's bedroom. The author pokes fun at rigged target practice games. We finally get to see a Go/Soccer match, and it is bizarre. Also, Sasahara and Misato walk together, and it completely wrecks Mio emotionally, with utterly ridiculous results.

I am wildly curious about the contents of DVD Vinyl, and it was nice to finally see a Go/Soccer match. Also, I found the target practice game bit hilarious, even though I've never played one of those in my life.

As usual, this series is weird and weirdly fascinating. There are occasional genuinely funny moments, but mostly I'm here to see what bizarre things happen next.

Extras:

A few full-color pages, some random notes about Mai's pets and other tiny details from the series.

REVIEW: Nichijou: My Ordinary Life (manga, vol. 5) by Keiichi Arawi, translated by Jenny McKeon

2024-11-24T22:01:00.000-06:00

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

Review:

Mio has apparently given up on keeping her BL manga creation a secret, because in this volume she enlists Yuuko and Mai's help in getting her pages done. Mr. Takasaki accidentally runs into Ms. Sakurai outside of work. We get our first glimpse of what's going on in the vice principal's head. Also, there is an incident involving several dogs.

I don't know how Mio got to the point of being okay with her friends spending hours looking at her art, but now that she's there, the series has other layers of comedy it can explore. Mai doesn't really care about what she's doing, and Yuuko, unsurprisingly, is terrible at helping out.

Mr. Takasaki is a disaster. I still have no idea what Go/Soccer is supposed to be, but it's mildly amusing to see Ms. Sakurai's younger brother blackmailing Mr. Takasaki into being the club's advisor.

As usual, this is more weird than funny, but reasonably entertaining.

Extras:

A few full-color pages, profiles for the various high school staff members, and profiles for the Record of Fey Kingdom soldiers. I still don't understand those episodes - I assume they're dreams of some sort?

REVIEW: Nichijou: My Ordinary Life (manga, vol. 4) by Keiichi Arawi, translated by Jenny McKeon

2024-11-24T21:42:00.001-06:00

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

Review:

Miss Sakurai's younger brother becomes (or always was?) a student at the high school, joining the Go/Soccer club and giving Mr. Takasaki anxiety. Ms. Nakamura, the science teacher, makes several attempts to capture Nano in order to study her. The principal continues to have more animal and toupee issues. Mio is exceptionally bad at sports or anything physical. Also, it looks like Nakanojou, the kid with the mohawk, is becoming more of a series regular, poor guy.

This series continues to be reasonably fun, if a bit too weird to truly be funny, with enough new things happening in each volume to keep the jokes from getting stale.

Extras:

A couple full-color pages, a page detailing a few things from the professor's laboratory/home, and a page of random Nichijou facts.

REVIEW: Nichijou: My Ordinary Life (manga, vol. 3) by Keiichi Arawi, translated by Jenny McKeon

2024-11-24T21:16:00.001-06:00

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

Review:

Mai is in yet another embarrassing situation where people are likely to see her BL art. Mr. Takasaki has a crush on the guidance counselor, Miss Sakurai, but is too socially awkward to ask her to go out mushroom hunting with him. Mai and Yuuko get into a big fight inspired by Yuuko buying Mai fried mackerel for lunch rather than the fried macaroni she asked for.

In every volume there are jokes I just don't get, plus a few I sorta kinda enjoy. This volume went back to the more so-so feeling of volume 1, although I did get some amusement out of Mr. Takasaki's sheer nerdiness. I suspect that the man's closest friends might be his eggplants.

Extras:

A couple full-color pages.