Manga Monday!

Three more books came through the door this weekend and here’s what I thought of them all…

‘Y Square’ – Judith Park (Zen Press)

Yoshitaka is not a success with the ladies but his new classmate, Yagate, has no troubles in this area at all. However, in a strange quirk of fate, Yagate would much rather be a hit with Yoshitaka… Cue lots of unrequited love and teenagers getting themselves into trouble doing stupid things. The press release says this one is for ‘older teens’ and this is very much the case when you look at the characters (all teens) and the setting (a school). I haven’t been a teenager for a long time and school is (thankfully) a distant memory as well. Consequently, there was nothing there that engaged me at all. I read the whole thing but there was nothing there that made me want to keep reading if you know what I mean…
Might be worth a look if you’re fifteen or sixteen years old.

Four out of Ten


‘Black God: Vol 2’ – Dall-Young Lim & Sung-Woo Park (Zen Press)

Game programmer Keita Ibuki’s life is going from bad to worse now he has found himself entangled with a guardian of the coexistence equilibrium. He’s got an arm that isn’t his own, a friend who is suddenly in danger from shadowy strangers and Keita is about to find that it doesn’t stop there.
I loved the fight scenes in this (the artwork doesn’t pull any punches) but it sometimes felt like the rules were either being made up on the spot or I had come into something that had been going on a lot longer than just two books. As a result things sometimes felt confusing and this interrupted the flow of the story. The fight scenes take up a large chunk of the book (so there isn’t much room for the story itself) but you do get sense of plot progression and there’s quite a hard hitting ending!
This story is worth sticking with for one more book at least.

Six out of Ten


‘Zombie Loan: Vol 2’ – Peach-Pit (Zen Press)

Following the events of volume one, Michiru Kita now finds herself working for the Zombie-Loan office helping two undead agents (Chika and Shito from volume one) dispatch unauthorised zombies. The trio have their work cut out for them with the arrival of a serial killer who is intent on creating zombies of his own…
Despite some confusing moments, requiring re-reads, ‘Zombie Loan’ is starting to become a series where I want to see what happens next. The detective element to the tale keeps things fresh and the introduction of a new character puts an effective spin on established relationships, nice cliff-hanger ending as well! And it’s got zombies in it, what more could I want? Less of the confusing ‘did I just read that right?’ moments…

Seven out of Ten