Words of Truth and Wisdom: Japanese in Practice OR Say Again?
Written by Alethea and Athena Nibley

Hey, everybody! I know it's only been the normal two weeks since our last column, but it feels like it's been ages. See, Athena and I just got back from our first trip ever to Japan. Hm, come to think of it, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to admit that we had never been there before. It's the truth so I guess there's no point in hiding it, but I wonder if it seems wrong that someone be translating manga if they've never even been to Japan. ...
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Mission Statement
Written by Park Cooper

Yesterday a MangaLife staffer contacted me. She's working on an article about a comic and why she feels that certain cultural things about it were not done with enough attention to detail on the part of the creators. However, the work in question isn't a manga, so she asked my advice about how to fit it into our site. It was natural that she'd ask me, since having this thing she's working on on MangaLife was my idea in the first place. I started...
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High School Girls v9
Reviewed by Barb Lien-Cooper

My husband read this manga first. I could tell he was sort of charmed with it, but he asked me to review it instead of him. Puzzled, I asked him why I should review it instead of him and he sort of hemmed and hawed, then said something like, 'It would be better if it came from you." So I read it and was actually quite charmed by the unpretentious and sometimes quite funny little volume. It's been sitting around the house, eating at my conscience...
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My Sassy Girl v4
Reviewed by David Rasmussen

When it comes to humor in manhwa I guess you have to consider the target audience. Actually when it comes to humor anywhere in comics (with any genre) it's the audience you're aiming for that sets the humor. This must be the gross humor audience, since it got such a poor score from me. From presently-non-functioning, out-of-business ComicsOne (whose only "heir" since collapse seems to be DrMaster, which absorbed part of its lineup before ComicsOne's...
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Monster v14
Reviewed by Ysabet Reinhardt MacFarlane

Tenma's long journey for justice, Johan and Nina's search for identity--all roads converge on the mysterious "Red Rose Mansion." Is Nina prepared to confront the dark memories this cursed house will awaken in her subconscious? If Tenma gets there in time, will he find a clue that will help him save the life of his ex-fiancée Eva? Or will Johan, as always, remain several steps ahead of everyone? As the back cover blurb suggests, Monster is building...
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Shaolin Soccer v1
Reviewed by David Rasmussen

The movie version may star Stephen Chow, but this is cooler. Young Shaolin Kung Fu adept Sing is taking his final test to leave the temple grounds and travel the world, yet despite the perils that face his departure, he seems fixated on this whole "bringing the word of Shaolin Kung Fu to the masses thing (though the giant stone door at the end of his "test" does silence his thinking for at least three hours). He's strong, incredibly powerful in the...
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MangaLife Con Report: NYCC 2008
Written by Park Cooper

You know, cabs are not guaranteed to show up even though they say they'll be there at a certain prearranged time. Mine didn't, to take me to the airport... I called their competitor, and it was a race. The competitor won, by mere seconds. He explained to me that he used to work for the other guys, and knows firsthand what the other side's problem is: they use GPS to tell where their cabs are and stuff, and their GPS is messed up. "Oh yeah? What...
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Lunar Legend Tsukihime v5
Reviewed by Park Cooper

I came in late to this series by DrMaster, and there's no "what has happened so far" section to bring me up to speed, so I've sort of come in in the middle of the movie, as it were. But here's what I've got so far: There's this kid, Shiki Tohno. He knows this girl, Arcueid (looks a lot like Alucard, from Hellsing, don't it? That's because ALUCARD is DRACULA backward, dig it?), who fights vampires. She's really quite good at it. At the start of...
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Full Metal Panic: Overload v3
Reviewed by Park Cooper

It's labelled "action/comedy," but let's face it, FMP:Overload is pretty darn comedy, a lot less action. My wife and I liked Full Metal Panic, liked Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu even more, but I've never thought that the manga of FMP was that great. Well, now, just as Fumoffu was the comedy version of FMP, Overload is the comedy version of the manga set. Set in the days after Sosuke started guarding Miss Chidori, but before she ever found out WHY he...
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Buddha v1
Reviewed by Park Cooper

I saw volume 1 of Buddha at the local library and decided to check it out. At first I was very put off by the artstyle. "Is Astroboy the Buddha?" asked my wife (since Tezuka also did Japan's classic Astroboy, and his style really hasn't changed since then). But when I got back from NYCC, during which I met with the genial folks at Vertical, Inc., I decided that I owed Tezuka another try. I've never really embraced his work before-- the artstyle...
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Cheeky Angel v4-5
Reviewed by Shannon Fay

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from manga, it’s that there’s apparently nothing hotter than a guy in a girl’s body. Case in point is ‘Cheeky Angel,’ a shonen series about a teenage girl who used to be a boy. And while Megumi wants nothing more than to go back to being a guy, the guys in the series like her just the way she is. When Megumi was nine, he and his friend Miki helped a wizard. The wizard gave Megumi a magic book which would grant any...
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Bus Gamer 1999 - 2001 The Pilot Edition
Reviewed by Joy Kim

Never trust a deal that's too good to be true. Three young men remember that truth a little too late in Kazuya Minekura's suspense manga, Bus Gamer. Lured by the promise of huge cash prizes, Toki Mishiba, Nobuto Nakajyo, and Kazuo Saitoh form Team AAA in the "biz" game, an underworld competition where large corporations gamble on their hired team's ability to defend or steal discs filled with company secrets. Before long Toki, Nobuto, and Kazuo discover...
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