Manga Drought 2010! What To Read When There Is No New Manga.
By Mat K.
Jeez, I cannot believe this month. Last week all we get was one manga, and this week? Nothing. Well, okay there is one single item coming at us from TokyoPop, but I’m not sure if it can even be considered manga. And not for the usual reasons I don’t count half the stuff coming from TokyoPop as manga, this is going to be TokyoPop’s first legitimate single-issue comic book. Here’s the deal. You all love and remember Priest by Min-Woo Hyung (which technically makes it manhwa in the first place, but let’s not nit pick). Well coming out this week is the official comic for the upcoming Priest movie “Priest: Purgatory” that’s going to be starring Paul Bettany (Silas from The Da Vinci Code and the voice of Jarvis in Iron Man). Basically, A veil of evil threatens to engulf humanity, and one man stands in the way of the apocalypse: our hero, a fallen priest who sold his soul for the power to battle evil and fight for humanity’s redemption.
Moving on to other stuff since these past couple weeks have been money saving weeks (since next week begins September, there better be a hell of a lot of books coming), let’s move on to stuff you should be reading. Frankly, I have fallen in love with Arata The Legend, the first shonen style series by Yuu Watase (of Fushigi Yugi and Ceres fame). In an alternate universe where gods live in weapons and are wielded by chosen few and governed by a princess and her 12 guardians, the current princess is has run 2 terms because a replacement has not yet been born. In an attempt to buy time Arata’s grandmother put him as a girl on his birth certificate when he was born. When he’s dressed up and brought to the ceremony to take the princess’ place, the 12 guardians turn on her and slay her, claiming Arata was an assassin. He runs for his life into a forest where he switches places with an outcast descendant in modern Japan. It’s actually pretty awesome, and I always love her artwork, not to mention pretty swords with magic powers.
One more thing you should all be reading if you aren’t already: Higurashi When They Cry. What’s amazing about this series is that each story arc only spans 2 books, and each arc is completely different except for basic commonalities. The basic story is a boy and his family move into a very rural town where the school only has one class for all the grades, and he quickly becomes close friends with a group of girls. The problem is this town is protected by a deity, who some declare to actually be a demon. A couple years back a dam was going to be built and destroy the town, but there was a massacre, and every year someone who supported the dam, or is related to someone who had something to do with the dam is killed and another goes missing. But in every arc the culprits and victims are different. Fantastic. Anyway, that’s all the news that’s fit to print. See you next week, hopefully with much more stuff to talk about.
Ja Ne!
