These four volumes span the genres from YA to adult, which I think highlights the great flexibility and richness of the medium. I’ve been on a real manga kick lately and it’s always so fun going to the bookstore and finding stuff that wasn’t on my radar. We’re really in a golden age of translation right now and I’m hopeful that it will only keep going from here.
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is a series I’ve been reading for a long time and I was happy to see these deluxe editions get published. The series is set in a post-apocalyptic Japan, but a very gentle one where things are slowly winding down. The main character, Alpha, is an android who runs a coffee shop. Nothing much happens beyond small scenes about getting watermelons from your neighbor, the summer festival, and other quotidian events, but the magic of the series is in its portrayal of everyday life as the world is slowly ending.
4☆Town 4☆Real is a surprisingly angsty Disney manga about the boy band from Turning Red. It follows the members on a day off before their big Toronto concert. Each of them has something they have to work through (although I wish they went more into depth about what was going on with Robaire). For a tie-in property, I was pleasantly taken aback by how this manga dealt with things like parental pressure or adoption trauma. The art was also charming and everything wrapped together nicely.
Fourth Generation Head is set in the universe of Scarlet Beriko’s series Jealousy, which I just started reading. I also just discovered the author and am really enjoying her work overall. This book deals with some very heavy topics (child sexual abuse, rape of adults) but at the core is a love story in a yakuza setting that works really well as a standalone volume. This was a real highlight for me in terms of emotional depth and storytelling, as well as Beriko’s great art. Definitely for very mature readers, though.
Pure Love’s Sexy Time is about a group of high school friends who all end up paired off by the end of the book. It’s definitely a hard M rating. Overall the characters all felt very distinct and the art was solid throughout, which was good given the amount of characters the author was juggling. Some of them were real weirdos, which I always appreciate given how stock the characters in this genre can be. It felt a bit outdated somehow for BL but not in a bad way, more of a nostalgic way for me.
I’m not sure if I’ll manage another review before the end of the year, so I’ll recap my reading and reviewing year here:
I was happy to hit the cannonball even though I had to focus on school and work for most of the year. I got straight As and am gearing up to apply to grad school next week (fingers crossed!). I was extremely distracted because of that, so I did read a lot more comics and fanfic this year for gentle reading. I also managed to read some good nonfiction and a bit of fiction, but as per usual comics and nonfiction were ahead by a mile. All in all, a solid year for me personally and reading-wise, and I am hopeful for 2024, which promises to bring big changes with it. I’m hoping to cannonball again and do more reviews next year than I managed this year, but we’ll see. I’m always grateful for the kindness and positivity of this community! It’s really been such a positive experience and I wish all the best for everyone next year.