To kick off my discussion of Jormungand, I’d like to make something very clear about my reading preferences when it comes to manga: to whit, I’ll read about anything that amuses me.  Saccharine teenage love stories?  Yeah, been there, did that, do that, and have enjoyed them.  Weird future adventure tales with lots of T&A [...]

Today I’m going to ruminate on one of the longest running fantasy mangas.  The title of the work is Berserk and I doubt there’s anyone who has even a moderate level of involvement with the medium who wouldn’t recognize the name instantly. If I were trying to be pithy and smart ass like the majority [...]

Immortal Witch, Pure Hearted Boy, Blood Thirsty Mermaids There is no point in denying that most manga that hits popularity in the States is based on Japanese high school students and various stereotypes thereof.  The classic coming of age tale, in all the various flavors (both tame and tawdry) play out in the crucible of [...]

I took on the task of writing anime and manga reviews for Naked Reader a while back.  After a suitable interval, I’ll be re-posting those reviews here on Darwin’s Evolutions as well.  The first of these is Raiders by JinJun Park. I don’t like zombies.  Seriously.  I find the whole genre cliché (at least the [...]

Okay, we all know that there are no new ideas in fiction, right? Especially when it comes to manga.  The Japanese are absolute masters of running over the same opossum to the point that they’ll vary the positions of the entry and exit of the tire treads by millimeters just to see what changes on [...]

Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro is a unique offering by mangaka Kiyuouki Satoko. The manga is an interesting slipstream mix of fantasy and “mad scientist” archetypes used as settings for telling a series of uplifting slice-of-life stories. The main character, “Kuro”, is a traveller on a quest to locate a witch who has mysteriously cursed her.  Frequently mistaken [...]

My daughter snagged this off the manga shelf at Barnes and Noble the other day and immediately gave me the puppy-dog look.  “Can I please have this?” Yeah.  Right.  Like I was going to say, “No.” The thing is, what she had keyed in to was direct evidence that not everyone making money decisions in [...]