Here’s a webtoon/manga for the goth kids. :). This doesn’t follow the Tappytoon themes I’ve described earlier (a modern person wakes in a video game or novel), but instead this is a straight story.
Ophelia’s beautiful mother, Isolde, has married yet again! This time, rather than watching her stepfather die of a mysterious ailment like his predecessors, Isolde dies with her new husband in a tragic – and very strange – carriage wreck.
Ophelia is bereft. Alec, her young step-brother, asks Ophelia to to stay in his family home so he won’t be completely alone, and while the household is unfriendly, she may not have any better options. But when investigators come about the carriage crash, and people start turning up dead, Ophelia wonders what she’s gotten herself into, and whether she can keep her mother’s secrets.
This is a drama, a murder mystery, a story about self-absorbed parents, a tale of vengeance, and possibly a warning about trying too hard to attract romantic attention. It is 50 chapters long, the story is complete, the period costumes from [some European period setting] are pretty, and the images of Isolde float charmingly in a halo of her daughter’s affectionate memories. I enjoyed it.
I’ve written about several manga still being serialized, and want to provide an update on how far along they are now.
Ghost Reaper Girl by Akissa Saiké (at viz.com) went on a hiatus from May 2022 until returning October 2023. I hope this fun artist is back in full health! I likely wrote when there were twenty-something chapters: now, the latest Chapter is 37. Chloe Love is winning battles and scaring her demonic enemies, which is funny when you realize she is fighting Cthulhu mythos-y sorts of characters.
Kaiju No. 8 by Naoya Matsumoto (at viz.com)had 54 chapters when I last wrote about it, and now has 97! The situation has… escalated into some very organized kaiju wars, and the defense forces may not be ready for monsters who can THINK. Many chapters are a few minutes in a single battle in the greater war – there is a whole lot of fighting going on, and each character is pushing themselves to succeed for their own reasons.
Spy x Family by Tatsuyo Endo (at viz.com) was at volume 58 when I wrote about it. At the moment (in late 2023) there are 91 chapters published at Viz.com, and we’ve seen each member of the family at their most skilled at what they do, plus workplace crushes, actual hostage situations, and inappropriate brotherly love.
I’m still reading each of these, and look forward to additional issues.
This is the MOST FUN manga I’ve read in AGES.I laughed out loud! I squealed! I found myself impatient for new chapters! I have screenshots of the hot dad character saved on my phone! [*squeal*]
How on earth did this romance-action-comedy win me over, when I usually like my stories packed with sci-fi vehicles and dystopian struggles?
There are several good answers. CHARM. Enthusiasm. Humor. Artists who adore the characters they are drawing! COMEDY OUTTAKES and IN-HOUSE FAN ART AT THE END OF MANY CHAPTERS! Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to shout, but those are the areas where I have the highest squealing-and-screenshot ratio.
Background: Tappytoon.com is a website for manga / comics / “webtoons” authored in Korea, which are serialized and sold in chapters. A common theme across the romance and action comics on this site is that a contemporary young person works themselves to death in the REAL world, and wakes up as a character in a favorite book or video game. Rather than being the hero/ine, they (often) find themselves in the role of a doomed villain, and (having read the book or played the game that is the secret script for this world), set out to upend the story by making very different decisions to change their fate. These are stories of redemption, heroism, second chances, and (for the romance heroines) opportunities to learn selflessness to earn the love of all around them.
This webtoon is my favorite of this model so far!
Plot: Our rich, pretty, noble-title-bearing heroine, Juvellian, wakes up in her book role, knowing that she loves a man who will betray her, she has lost the affection of her widowed father, and that she is fated to die a horrible, lonely death in a dark place. She wakes in the timeline after she is established as a villain but before things go completely rotten, and she decides that she will DO BETTER.
She starts a program of self-improvement, shedding the man she has been chasing and painstakingly redeeming her terrible reputation one person at a time. She is sincere, and wants to survive!
Comedy in the story takes many forms: the heroine is terrified of small, cute animals, but not the things/people that are life-threatening; ongoing mistaken identity situations lead the heroine astray in her conspiracy to dodge a marriage to a murderous royal; there is abundant, awkward teen romance silliness; there are constant father-daughter misunderstandings; there are masks; an overprotective and supernaturally handsome father terrorizes his daughter’s suitors; we see the stresses of small animals from their own points of view…
I laughed out loud at this man’s fantasy of how his poorly communicated message would be received.
This is a period drama set in an imaginary version of [unspecified European place] so that everyone central to the plot can be rich, have too many fasteners on their clothing (a favorite theme of the illustrators!), live in palaces, have lots of idle time to get into trouble, AND can be at risk of execution by petulant local royals! There are politics, but also curses, vicious rumors, evil stepparents, very forbidden dungeons, poisons, neglected veterans, and rock-star-handsome knights.
The humor can be dry and very funny. Comedic, child-like (chibi) versions of the characters represent them in emotional moments. Cartoon wallpaper hovers behind them when they think they are being clever. There is overstatement, understatement, exaggeration, and so many other good humor-tools well applied.
This comic has teen-romance values: all the young ladies love the handsome knights because they are so “pure” (!?!), there is no kissing, nothing is racy, and marriages appear to be mostly made for class & political reasons. The heroine is very young, so the romance is a why-is-my-heart-racing, oh-gosh, how-did-I-never-notice-how-handsome-he-is slow path. And that’s fine! Both Juvelle and her eventual partner grow up and become better, braver, more responsible people during the events of this story.
There are giddy posts from other characters in the manga AND in our real world online about how handsome Legis Floyen (Juvellian’s father) is, and it was clear it was fun to draw him and his entourage. The artists’ giddiness is adorable (they love him in glasses, they love him at the beach, they love him with medallions…). I will show restraint, and share just one of those charming, in-house-fan-art images… with his shirt on. There are other favorite WHOLESOME images of Legis I could share, but they could hint at spoilers, and he is supposed to remain a mystery for many of the 123 chapters (!) I happily paid for. (Note that these comics are presented in English, but some fan sites used other translations, so Legis is Regis, Juvelle is Jubel, and the name of the comic itself has variations.)
Pinup Dad: Duke Legis Floyen
Any comic that keeps me reading for 123 chapters and can make me laugh out loud is a winner. This comic has so much going for it: high quality art (in color!) with lots of digital fabric textures, a brave and modern girl trying to set things right, action, curses, family secrets, monsters, garden parties, monsters at garden parties, ADORABLE characters, deathbed confessions, rivalries for the hot male lead title, excessive fasteners, and high stakes battles. It’s a winner! I love it! This team should hurry up and illustrate more stories about Legis so I can keep buying them!
In a grim future, giant alien insects invade earth and violently devastate the population. A heroine appears to fight them; after her death, through risky experiments, the government imbues a group of orphans with her powers. These young people are humanity’s only defense against body-snatching and massacres by these aliens.
One day, another child appears, and seems to also have insect-battling abilities. How is that even possible? And will his arrival turn the tide so that humanity can finally win?
This is a dark tale of a brutal future where children with differently manifesting powers fight on behalf of people who both admire and ostracize their heroes for their freakish abilities. Meanwhile, the arrival of a new child suggests the government keeps strange secrets.
It is high stakes and somewhat dark in subject matter. Kids risking their lives to fight aliens (while adults… don’t) is a grim topic, though it gives them some agency, and they fight to win.
This was my first Tappytoon comic, and I found it well-paced, well drawn, and interesting.
False Stars by Sayaka Mogi published by Glacier Bay Books 2021 (ish?)
Orphaned little werewolf Mani finds a bright, fallen star, deep in the forest. Her adoptive father, a human hunter named Wul, worries that a false star could lure her away… this is a charming chapter about an unlikely family in the forest.
Ambitious and outgoing Taiga is eager to be a famous actor and play heroes. At his school drama club, he immediately develops a crush on one of the girls on stage… but while Maria was raised as a girl by her determined mother, off the stage, he is a brave and traumatized boy named Arima.
This is a beautiful story about love, bravery, and being true to yourself. I was deeply moved, and impressed by both the quality of the illustrations and the sensitivity and strength of this story.
(I was crushed to learn that the extraordinarily talented young author, Peyo, recently passed away.)
Westalis and Ostania are on the brink of war. Twilight, a handsome super-spy working for Westalis, must infiltrate elite society where politicians mingle: to do that, he’ll need a family – by the end of the week – to get into position to collect intelligence on a deadline.
He can’t be fussy.
He quickly adopts a child from a sketchy orphanage, and agrees to a faux marriage with a nice young woman who asks him for assistance, successfully assembling the Forger family. He doesn’t know the child, Anya, is hiding the fact that she is a telepath, or that his innocent-looking wife, Yor, is a professional assassin. Thanks to a series of misunderstandings and barely kept secrets, he won’t understand his (fake) wife or (fake) child any time soon!
This is a light-hearted comedy is attractively drawn. The faux-European setting provides a pretty-yet-tense backdrop, as government security services abduct and torture citizens who: show any hints of disloyalty, are turned in by envious acquaintances, or even are just a little different. The Forger family’s ability to fit in feels ‘high stakes,’ and while each of them has their own reasons they need to pass for normal, they all feel safer together.
Petty office rivalries, secret crushes, childhood bonds, misunderstandings, and sharp objects keep things moving along amusingly! EVEN THE DOG HAS A SECRET!
Viz’s Shonen Jumpcurrently provides subscribers Chapters 1- 58; the compilation books are up through Volume 6 (Chapters 1 – 37).
Spy X Family is a nice way to take your mind off [gesturing]… the state of things.
This Viz preview below sets the scene in English; the Japanese preview below it has catchy music, and shows more images of the characters in action.
Kafka Hibino has a dirty job: cleaning up the mess after giant monsters (kaiju) that attack his home city are violently “neutralized” by the nation’s Defense Force.
Kafka didn’t PLAN to be cutting up monster guts: he planned to fight against the kaiju directly at the side of childhood best friend, Mina Ashiro. But his plans went sideways, and decades later, he handles sanitation, while Mina leads the Defense Force’s third division as a national hero(ine), using weapons made from previously killed, powerful kaiju.
But… one day, things go very wrong, and Kafka becomes a part-time kaiju himself. Which is… SO AWKWARD. How will he ever get into the Defense Force and work with Mina if he is the enemy?
This is a charming adventure with dangerous monsters, dangerous humans, loyalty, teamwork, men gossiping in bathhouses, monster intestines, secret identities, partial kaiju transformations, very sharp blades, unexpected alliances, and fun illustrations between chapters.
I subscribe to Viz’s Shonen Jump, so I have access to all available chapters (1 through 54 as of mid-January 2022), and have been delighted by the story so far! Chapters 1-7 are available in book form, and I imagine the rest of the story will be bundled and released in the future.
I’m looking forward to future issues!
VIZ | Read Kaiju No. 8 Manga – Official Shonen Jump From Japan
The world’s most popular manga! Read free or become a member. Start your free trial today! | Kaiju No. 8 – Kafka wants to clean up kaiju, but not literally! Will a sudden metamorphosis stand in the way of his dream?
All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka published by Viz Media, LLC (San Francisco) 2004 and 2014
I was impressed by the movie Edge of Tomorrow (whose posters read. “Live, Die, Repeat,” a slogan which was better known than the movie title). While perusing my new access to the Viz Shonen Jump library, I checked out this title, and… it is the story that Edge of Tomorrow was based on!!
And… it is somehow… darker!?!?
For those of you who didn’t see the movie, the premise is: aliens attack earth, and they are nearly indestructible. A solider dies in battle, and then wakes up the morning before his death. He has to live through that day, the battle, and his death all over again. And again. And again. Though he can change things, he still always winds up dying. And he’s the only one who appears to be repeating that same day – for everyone else, it’s a new day, and they don’t know what is coming. This experience, of brutally dying daily, haunts and hardens him.
Since nearly any skill can be mastered with repetition, and repeating one day IS brutal repetition, he trains to become a super solider, to see if surviving the day can break the loop.
And then, he meets someone else who is experiencing the same thing. And may have figured out how to end it.
It’s a great, painful, dark story. It differs from the movie – it is more compact, there are fewer characters, the deaths are more gruesome, and the mechanics of the time trap are different. Different enough that, even if you’ve seen the movie, you may be impressed with this more cruel and concise version.
VIZ | Read All You Need is Kill Manga – Official Shonen Jump From Japan
The world’s most popular manga! Read free or become a member. Start your free trial today! | All You Need is Kill – If there’s one thing worse than dying, it’s coming back to die again…and again…
I recommend each and every one of these seventeen chapters zealously.
Ghost Reaper Girl Header from the Viz Shonen Jump website – nicely composed, and what lovely colors! The burnt oranges are really well chosen…
Ghost Reaper Girl by Akissa Saiké (Akihisa Ikeda) published by Viz Media, LLC (San Francisco) 2020 – present (2021)
I read all available chapters (1 – 29) of this manga yesterday, and I think it’s lots of fun!
Chloé Love, a struggling, 28-year old horror movie actress, gets her big break in an unexpected way: she allows herself to be possessed by a spirit from Hades to battle evil, and a video of her defeating monsters goes viral. After learning that she is a “spirit medium” who can take on the powers of the spirits who possess her, she starts making friends PLUS fighting evil professionally, with enemies that include the nightmarish creatures of the Cthulhu mythos.
It’s fun! The drawing style is lovely, and consistent in a way I appreciate. Everyone is attractive! Chloé is adorable, caring, and makes friends with everyone!
If I wanted to totally misrepresent this manga for fun, I would say it is about handsome men from Hell who come to the normal world to cook for adoring women, as illustrated by this panel. That is a swoon-worthy idea! These friendly domestic scenes are SO CHARMING!! This clever manga offers so much.
Working for a Great Old One who hides its form by doing sexy-nurse cosplay is light-hearted fun. There is a ‘knowing’ sense of humor in the work about manga conventions generally, and I appreciate the way this manga pokes gentle fun at those conventions while also utilizing them smoothly.
While Chloé does often go to battle in a swimsuit and stockings, her character is proportioned respectably, and is treated with affection. Consent is sexy, and she consents to her possession by her spirit friends for battles.
The action scenes are pleasingly composed, too! The artist uses thoughtful design that gives the action sequences clear progress, which is a major accomplishment that should be recognized. (Too many manga have so many battles that are just movement lines and loud noises, so I really appreciate the thoughtful, well-designed battles with strong visual continuity.)
This is a lovely series from a talented artist that includes humor, supernatural action, great design, and a pleasant cast of characters. It sold me on the idea of subscribing to Shonen Jump (link below), and I’m looking forward to future chapters!
VIZ | Read GHOST REAPER GIRL Manga – Official Shonen Jump From Japan
The world’s most popular manga! Read free or become a member. Start your free trial today! | GHOST REAPER GIRL – The latest from the mangaka of Rosario+Vampire! A scrappy girl’s had it with grabby ghosts and fights back! Note: At the creator’s request, this series will read left-to-right.
