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Pick of the Week: Soviet Politics? Or Baseball?

KATE: As a ride-or-die Shostakovich fan, there’s really only one choice for me: Snegurochka of the Spring Breeze. It has everything a student of the old USSR could hope for: political intrigue, real historical actors, and a character whose code name is Bielka (that’s “squirrel” in Russian). Here’s hoping Dmitri Dmitrievich makes a cameo! SEAN: I will never say no to more manga from Mitsura…

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Manga the Week of 6/25/25

SEAN: How is June already getting away from us? ASH: I don’t know and I’m not sure I like it. We start off with Yen Press, which has finally located most of its June releases. We start off with Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian (Tokidoki Bosotto Roshiago de Dereru Tonari no Alya-san), whose light novel has been coming out so long I’d assumed the manga was long-since licensed. It runs…

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Pick of the Week: Double Your Picks

SEAN: I cannot decide between The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You 14 and Medalist 12, two series whose venn diagram of readers who love both may be just me. KATE: This is one of those weeks when I’m torn between two very different titles: the part of me that likes streaming crime procedurals is intrigued by The 13th Footprint, while the part of me that has fond…

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Manga the Week of 6/18/25

SEAN: Mid-June, and oh look, it’s raining again. I guess April showers bring May showers bring June showers. Airship, in print, gives us The Mimosa Confessions 4 and Reborn as a Space Mercenary 12. And for early digital we see The Condemned Villainess Goes Back in Time and Aims to Become the Ultimate Villain 5 and A Tale of the Secret Saint 8. Dark Horse Comics has the 5th and final volume of…

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Pick of the Week: June Is Bustin' Out the Picks

MICHELLE: I had no idea that I Didn’t Mean to Fall in Love had a sequel, so I’ll choose that very pleasant surprise for my pick this week! KATE: What’s that you say—a Tezuka title that I haven’t read? In that case, I’m making Neo Faust my Pick of the Week! (C’mon… I’m very, very predictable.) SEAN: I’m going to go with the final volume of Sketchy, which will hopefully nag me to catch up with this…

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The Manga Review: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

As we celebrate another Pride Month, now is a good time to remind everyone that books by queer creators are among the most challenged books in American libraries. There are a number of small things that you can do, however, to ensure that readers can continue accessing This One Summer, Flamer, Our Colours, and Gender Queer: A Memoir. The simplest is to support the work of the Comic Book Legal…

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Manga the Week of 6/11/25

SEAN: Summer is here, it’s getting too hot to read 800-page history books, but not too hot to read manga. ASH: It’s getting close, some days. SEAN: Yen On has a good 3/4 of the stuff it said was coming out today (though Yen Press itself got bumped). Secrets of the Silent Witch -another- (Silent Witch: Chinmoku no Majo no Kakushigoto -another-) is a spinoff of the main series, showing us the…

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Bookshelf Briefs 6/3/25

Detectives These Days Are Crazy!, Vol. 1 | By Masakuni Igarashi | One Peace Books – Back in the day, Keiichiro Nagumo was a renowned teen supersleuth. Unfortunately for him, his past successes didn’t follow him into his middle age, very few people remember who he is, and making ends meet is a struggle. Enter Mashiro, a high school girl who, seemingly out of nowhere, is determined to become his…

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Pick of the Week: Endings and Beginnings

SEAN: There’s a lot of good stuff coming out, but I feel the pick of the week has to go to the final volume – the 50th! – of a series I never thought we’d see over here, even if only digitally. My pick goes to Chihayafuru. MICHELLE: You are absolutely correct. I’m so grateful to Kodansha for releasing it in its entirety! ASH: I am likewise very happy that Chihayafuru has been completely…

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The Manga Review: Hark the Herald!

Big news from Anime Herald: the popular website will launch a companion magazine in October! Site founder and editor-in-chief Samatha Ferreira noted that the inaugural issue will celebrate Anime Herald’s fifteen-year history with reprints of “eight classic articles” but will also feature nine new essays from well-known journalists and critics in the field including Lynzee Loveridge, Daryl Surat,…

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Manga the Week of 6/4/25

SEAN: (insert June-related manga joke here) ASH: (witty response) SEAN: Airship has only one print title, Adachi and Shimamura 99.9. ASH: I had to check, but that is indeed the correct volume number. SEAN: And for early digital they have I’m the Heroic Knight of an Intergalactic Empire! 3 and Loner Life in Another World 12. Fantagraphics has a 2nd volume of Search and Destroy. ASH: Excited for…

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Pick of the Week: Witches, Senpais, and Doodles

KATE: I’ve been jonesing for A Witch’s Life in Mongol since I first encountered the title on Tumblr several years ago. Based on what I’ve read about this series, it checks all of my boxes. Historical setting? Yes! Originally published in a magazine for women readers? Yes! Capable female lead? Yes! Oh, and the artwork looks pretty great, too. So, yes, A Witch in Mongol is my PotW. MICHELLE:…

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The Manga Review: Robot Cat from the Future

When Toei Animation released its 2025 Business Outlook Report last week, fans immediately began translating the document. Twitter user @Venixys reported that Toei was planning to expand it use generative AI tools in several ways including “storyboard creation,” “coloring,” and “background creation” from photographs. While using AI to perform these kind of detail-oriented, labor-intensive tasks…

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Manga the Week of 5/28/25

SEAN: The end of May brings a lot of Yen, so let’s dive right into that. Yen On only has one title, which is the 3rd volume of Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Short Story Collection. Yen Press has many, many debuts. We’ll start with The BS Situation of Tougetsu Umidori (Umidori Tougetsu no “Detarame” na Jijou), the manga adaptation of the light novel Yen is already releasing. It runs in…

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Pick of the Week: Mid-May Picks

SEAN: I have heard many people talking up The Tiny Witch from the Deep Woods, so I think that’s where I’m headed this week. MICHELLE: I’m all about Love in the Palm of His Hand this week. I’m a sucker for stories when the protagonist finally finds the milieu in which they belong, and if there’s BL romance on top of that, then that is very much my sort of thing! ASH: It’s Love in the Palm of His…

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Bookshelf Briefs 5/18/25

The Apothecary Diaries Art Book | By Touko Shino | Square Enix Books – First of all, a word of warning: this is an artbook that has art from the first fourteen volumes of the light novel—which not only burns way past the five that Square Enix has released in print, but even past the thirteen that J-Novel Club have released digitally (fourteen isn’t out till the end of this month). Other than…

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The Manga Review: School's Out for Summer

Before I get to this week’s links, I wanted to share some great news: MJ Beasi, the long-time host, webmaster, and founder of Manga Bookshelf can add another title to their impressive resume: author! MJ’s novel I Was a Teenage Death God will be published by Page Street Publishing’s Young Adult imprint in 2026. The novel, a “YA paranormal mystery,” sounds like it might make a swell manga: For…