This nerd is still out, pretending like she’s a legit college student, going to university football games and stuff while out and about. No longer does she have the right to judge bros who come into Forbidden Planet in their plaid shorts and popped-collar polos. But just because she is watching some sports and pigging out on hotdogs doesn’t mean that she’s forgotten her manga faithful on the home front! If anything, she is more attached to y’all than ever before, so know that the rest of this article is written with extreme love for the otaku of FP!!
There’s a pretty giant array hitting our shelves this week, with a heavy emphasis on the action, thriller and generally shounen-type things, with new volumes of all three big guns (Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece) amongst them. Also worth noting is volume four of personal favourite, Grand Guignol Orchestra, and a new manga called Bloody Monday, the first volume of which is coming to us from Kodansha. Though I don’t know much about the latter, it looks super promising. I mean, hackers and conspiracies and cults? Sounds like it’s just waiting to be a Hollywood flick, but a lot brainier. The art may not be the flashiest, but it has a certain retro feel to it that makes it unique and probably worth checking out.
But the most exciting new book we’re getting is the first volume of Kodansha’s reprint of Gon, the wordless and ILLEGALLY ADORABLE manga adventures of a tiny, baby dinosaur. Though he is a kind of generic T-Rex-looking thing, eats pretty much whatever he sees, and somehow seems to have survived the part of history where a giant meteor smacked into the planet and wiped out all the other dinosaurs on the planet, Gon is about as raw and honest as manga can get. A good comic has great story and art, but a great one can convey these things without the use of words, and that is exactly what Gon does. Much like how Wall-E went back to the roots of film in a similar fashion, Gon relies on lush illustration and dynamic paneling to express itself. There’s not much of a linear story to be found here, but it is comedic, adorable, and fun. Also… TINY BABY DINOSAUUUUR, omigawd.
There is also a new volume of Toriko out this week. If you are into food manga, perhaps really enthused over the ridiculousness of Yakitate Japan’s Iron Chef-like attitude, or into the Kitchen Nightmares vibe of Oishinbo, then Toriko is probably going to be somewhere on your list. It’s absolutely out of control insanity, following the adventures of two guys who are Gormet Hunters, which basically means that their calling in life is to go out and find the best of the best in the world and eat it. Toriko is determined to make the ultimate meal out of the rarest foods in the world, but of course, since this is ridiculous shounen manga, he is always battling crazy beasts and an organization out to control the world’s food supply in the most nonsensical and ludicrous ways possible. I mean, how can you go wrong with a manga that starts out with a featured team-up with Luffy and the crew from One Piece? Eaters of the world beware!
And don’t forget BABY DINOSAUR!! RAWR!! (It is dinosaur for “I love you!”)
