The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You, Vol. 8 | By Rikito Nakamura and Yukiko Nozawa | Ghost Ship The first half of this volume is a parody of idol groups, as all of Rentaro’s girlfriends become one huge idol group for a Culture festival event. Unfortunately, not all of them have idol group talent, and their coach wants to concentrate on the good ones and ditch the bad ones, which won’t fly in THIS series. In the second half of the book we meet the newest girlfriend, a huge girl (she’s 6 foot 7) who tends the school gardens and is a lover of all living things, to a ridiculous degree. She has a complex about her height, and she also has a complex about the fact that this is a man with thirteen other girlfriends. I think she’ll fit in quite nicely on the “sweetie pie” end of the cast. – Sean Gaffney
Blue Box, Vol. 7 | By Kouji Miura | Viz Media – Taiki has been dealing with a lot. We do get a bit of his romance issues here, as he’s still awkward around Hina, mostly as he’s a teenage boy who has a girl who says she likes him, and even though he doesn’t feel the same way it’s hard not to feel a bit horny about it. But it’s the badminton that’s the most interesting part. He’s pushing himself far too hard, and I thought the message of the book was going to be “don’t forget to relax and remind yourself that sports are fun.” But no, this is a Japanese shonen sports series. So the message is actually “try harder, and harder, and break yourself into bits, and eventually you’ll get past that wall and victory will be yours!” And that happens here, if only in practice. Let’s see if it can translate into a real match. – Sean Gaffney
Bocchi the Rock!, Vol. 1 | By Aki Hamazi | Yen Press – I never did watch the <iBocchi the Rock! anime. Its lead character’s social anxiety—and the exaggeration thereof—ended up making me uncomfortable. Still, I’ve had this problem with sounds and images before, so wondered if the written page might be better. And I admit I was able to get through this with few issues. What I didn’t expect was that this would be because, without the anime’s directorial attempts at spicing things up and animation tricks, Bocchi the Rock! is a very normal 4-koma series in the Kirara mold, with Bocchi’s anxiety sometimes barely registering due to the tight panels of the required format. The most interesting part for me, as you’d expect in a 4-koma series like this, was the relationship between the four leads, and it’s definitely worth reading if you enjoy 4-koma. – Sean Gaffney
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Vol. 9 | By Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe | Viz Media – Obviously the anime did not time itself with the release of this volume in North America (it was released in Japan in September 2022), but it seems like kismet that, after a fabulous but controversial arc about the true nature of demons, we’re headed back to that well in this book. We also see the welcome return of Denken, one of the most interesting mages from the Tournament Arc, and his own regrets about seeing the city he was from turned into gold by a demon’s powers. And into this comes Frieren, who takes one look at what’s happening in the golden city and says that it’s impossible for Denken to win. This series is at its best when it examines the cliched fantasy tropes. – Sean Gaffney
Kageki Shojo!!, Vol. 10 | By Kumiko Saiki | Seven Seas – Sarasa is fun, funny, and the main reason most readers are probably following this. But she doesn’t have the training that a lot of these theater kids have, and when she goes out of control (as can be seen near the end of this volume), it can not only be impossible to stop her but actually damaging to the actresses she’s appearing with. She needs to be smacked down a bit, I expect. Ai, on the other hand, is flourishing in Sarasa’s absence (the two switched rooms with the twins for the sake of the Orpheus and Euridyce performance they’re doing), and is starting to realize that not all the advice she spurned from those in her idol group years was wrong or bad. That said, the main attraction to readers for this volume might be the girls in suits. They’re amazing. – Sean Gaffney
Like a Butterfly, Vol. 3 | By suu Morishita | Viz Media – If you get frustrated when two people who obviously really like each other but are too shy/stubborn/self-loathing to actually speak to each other, then this volume of Like a Butterfly must be pure torture. Suiren keeps trying to get Kawasumi to have a conversation with her, or say a word to her, or even look her way, and he is resolutely not doing any of these things, even going so far as to stop going to the group roof lunches. This is not only frustrating to everyone else in the cast, it’s frustrating to Koharu, who likes Kawasumi and has confessed to him but can’t get past it because he won’t admit his own feelings and confess to Suiren. Basically, it’s a high school romance cocktail, and very old school shoujo manga, which makes sense given this series is ten years old. – Sean Gaffney
Monthly in the Garden with My Landlord, Vol. 1 | By Yodokawa | Yen Press – I enjoyed this, but it didn’t really go the way I was expecting it to. I’d heard it was a yuri series, and there’s a bit of that here, but the setup shows it’s more interested in contrasting the sensible, somewhat tightly wound manga editor Asako with the laid-back, relaxed, and at loose ends former idol Miyako. They bounce off each other well, and a lot of the first volume deals with the fallout of Miyako’s sudden retirement, be it stalkers harassing her or her grumpy grandmother trying to take her back home. Miyako is a lot of fun, even though she’s a bit of a mess. Asako is responsible and likeable, even if she’s a bit of a mess. The two clearly need each other badly, and I’m hoping future volumes capitalize on this. – Sean Gaffney
Murcielago, Vol. 22 | By Yoshimurakana | Yen Press – We’re starting a new arc in this book, which involves a lot of things that readers of this series love. There’s a perfume that makes people go mad and literally eat other people. There’s some sort of immortality drug, which (judging by the cliffhanger) may even work on people who are down to just a head. There’s a bunch of new characters from the FBI, including two hot women who Kuroko immediately pays attention to. That said, Kuroko does very little this volume—even the standard sex scene goes to the bad guys this time around—and indeed the plot itself seems to involve Urara getting into a huge fistfight with a monstrously huge guy. Which, let’s face it, is another thing that readers of this series love. – Sean Gaffney
Skip and Loafer, Vol. 8 | By Misaki Takamatsu | Seven Seas – At the end of the last volume (my review was all about Yuzuki, sorry/not sorry), Mitsumi and Shima agreed to start dating, though they’re both so awkward about it that they call it dating for a trial period. That in itself should clue you in about how well this volume goe—if the start of the book was everyone’s dream come true, the rest of this book is like Alex Norris’ Webcomic name, as we all say “oh no.” The whole book is excruciating but necessary, and it’s really driving Shima and all of his hangups into a corner, especially when he thinks the best way to resolve a conflict is not defending Mitsumi but in not revealing their relationship at all, something she understandably gets very angry about. Fortunately, I doubt this is the end for them. – Sean Gaffney
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