Monaka Suzuki’s My Father Is A Unicorn is presently available for pre-order. Seven Seas continues its trend of making series available near their launch announcement once again. My Father Is A Unicorn was serialized on the Hug Pixiv manga service. The book will be a single compiled English translated volume with a tentative release month of December 2019. Seven Seas announced licensing rights to the property in April this year via social media.

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Setona Mizushiro’s The Carp On The Chopping Block Jumps Twice is available for pre-order. The single volume is a sequel to The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese. The josei manga was serialized in Shogakukan’s Judy magazine. Seven Seas announced the license for the series and its prequel in January this year. The current release month for the book is February 2020.

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The Last Saiyuki, since it launched in Weekly Shonen Jump, has been excellently done. My biggest issue with it is that the number of adaptations and interpretations of the story it’s adapting are already so numerous at the outset. Even Akira Toriyama’s most famous franchise globally borrowed ideas from it. Needless to say there’s some reluctance and fatigue attached to this project for some readers. It really doesn’t help how irresponsible and just plain rude one of the main characters is. The protagonist’s father often times is reprehensible yet has yet to face any consequences for his reckless endangerment of his child. This is accompanied without so much as an explanation until afterwards. The protagonist is tasked by his father with tending to a younger girl as a care aid brother figure. Earlier on, it is revealed the girl’s imagination could literally manifest itself and destroy the world. Again, not explained to the protagonist until after his dad literally hurls them into a shed. No consequences ever come of this at least not so far. There’s odd moral framing choices in the work which coupled with fatigue of many of the concepts make this something I honestly cannot recommend to anyone no matter how well it’s executed its ideas so far. Frankly there are far better monster of the week manga running in Jump at the moment to read. This one is an easy pass.

Tatsuki Fujimoto’s wildly creative Chainsaw Man manga delightfully plays with Shonen Jump’s more modern conventions in a fresh way. There isn’t a lot in the way of an over-arching narrative for the series so far. The narrative of a police unit that exorcises demons is mostly an excuse and a vehicle to propel the protagonist forward and transport the reader from one wildly imaginative demon slaying session to the next.

The closest to an honest direction so far is the gun demon which allows for some world building. Honestly most readers are likely here for the catharsis and glee of seeing monsters torn apart by a person made of chainsaws which makes for a fun reading experience. If you are looking for something with deep thematic elements or things to think about looking elsewhere is probably the best option. For a surrealist, wild ride Chainsaw Man fits the bill perfectly.

Amid a flurry of manga licensing news this week, it was announced Yen Press will simultaneously publish (simulpub) the sequel to Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket. The 3 chapter sequel subtitled The Three Musketeers arc will be serialized in Hakusensha’s Hana To Yume magazine in Japan. An anime adaptation of the original Fruits Basket manga is currently streaming on Japanese televisions and online internationally.

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After several years Crunchyroll is finally simulcasting a Pretty Rhythm related property with King of Prism: Seven Shiny Stars. Shiny Seven Stars is a spin-off of Pretty Rhythm targeting an older audience than the main Pretty Rhythm anime series. Prior to the television broadcast of this series, it was released as a series of films. As a personal fan of shows such as Pretty Rhythm, Aikatsu, and Precure this is an exciting development for me and hopefully many others.

Currently reading through Saint Young Men volume 1, review copy provided by Kodansha, this is by far the funniest graphic novel I’ve read in a while. The translation flows especially well. The biggest concern with gag manga in English is whether the jokes will translate and that does not seem to be a huge problem here. The original Saint Young Men manga is currently being serialized in Morning Two. Hikaru Nakamura is a talented comic creator. I fell in love with her work through Arakawa Under The Bridge and her voice and sense of humour is very clear and distinct in both series. I have been wanting to read this series for over a decade now so this is really exciting for me! Pick up a digital copy when you have the chance this one is not to be missed!

The winter 2019 anime season has come to a close, I’ve scaled back on my anime watching mostly to enjoy what I do watch more but also so I can keep up with what I do watch by the time the season draws to a close.  This season I watched three anime from beginning to end. Three seems to be my limit for ongoing viewing at a time.

Virtual-san is Looking- Winter is the time of year to watch things which require zero brain power in Canada. The snow has been present for many months, much shoveling has been done, the sun hardly ever dares to grace us with its presence, and the ground is a perpetual sheet of ice outside so please excuse me when I say this was exactly what I needed. Virtual-san is Looking is the show you put on to riff with friends and that was precisely why I enjoyed it. That also seems to be the show’s entire purpose for existing it does not aim to be anything more than a series of animated Youtube skits strung together and that is perfectly fine.

 

Dimension High School- this frankly turned out to be the biggest chore to watch of the three anime I spent my time watching this season. I was expecting something more in line with what Virtual-san is Looking turned out to be but Dimension High School desperately wants you to fall in love with its world and characters but fails completely. This was a show that opened mocking its own motion capture CG animation it did not need to attempt a serious narrative to bring the whole project together. The finale episode was by far the most baffling part and serves no other purpose beyond book-ending the series. The second to last episode wraps up the plot itself. I did enjoy the show’s experimental mixture of live action and animation footage and the villains were genuinely funny but that does not compensate for the rest of the show. I can easily say this can be skipped over even by the most hardcore animation fans as it provides very little new or compelling that has not been done before and is less fun than it should be.

 

Rinshi!! Ekoda-chan- this was a mixed experience but one I would still recommend if only for the insights  it provides into the animation process. The animated shorts themselves were fascinating viewing experiences as well. The only fault that made the viewing experience mixed was the interviews which dragged on far longer than I cared to watch them. Each episode includes an interview with the episode’s director and the lead voice actress which is longer than the shorts themselves. The talents attached to the projects made the interviews more interesting however as many were veterans who have been working in the anime industry for decades and seeing their insights into the project was fascinating at times. A few peeks into the animation production process which rounded out each episode also proved compelling on occasion. The most notable peaks into the animation processes include a segment in which rotoscoping animation development is show and an episode which used marionette dolls, live action footage, and pop art animation to animate the episode.

 

Altogether, winter 2019 was was an odd season for Japanese animation. There were drastic, abrupt changes made in the anime streaming scene which further confused matters. Many shows had severely delayed launches, so much so the pilots were added when future episodes had already launched in Japan. The anime simulcasting and streaming industry seems to be in a bumpy growing period presently. There is also discourse around Japanese animators burning out which also seems of concern to me. The following weeks will be the bumpy between season transition period they almost always are which I never look forward to. Try as people do to predict which shows end up where the torrent of announcements inevitably flows forth with indifference.

 

 

I finished catching up on Lala magazine only to fall woefully behind on all the other magazines I was caught up on they all have a whole issue out now! This wouldn’t be so bad except there are a lot of magazines I follow so sooo much to read. Lala is one of the more refreshing shojo manga magazines although many of them are too be fair. As a side note J finally picked up Coo sensei volume 2. Just 2 more volumes until I’m caught up on that!

Ultimately, I decided to spend New Years playing personal favorite classic video games like and reading volume 9 of Skip-beat. Animal crossing was a pleasant, calming experience. I wandered around town, shovel in hand, and went about digging up fossils and those inexplicable creatures with terrifying faces that make strange noises. Amid playing sessions of Animal Crossing and yet another replay through Chibi-robo I took breaks to read the final volume in my third Skip-beat omnibus. The pacing has slowed down significantly which if I am being honest makes it much more readable. Earlier volumes felt more cluttered but it feels like the author can now. One would scarcely have time to process one event the series threw at them before four or five more new ideas would appear. When reading a long-form narrative like Skip-beat I was anxious of feeling exhausted but thankfully a much more calming more consumable pace awaited for me.