Refocusing my reviewing (and taking a break), plus a couple of work-related links
Recently on Twitter I commented that it was a little funny that I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t had time to post that I’ve gotten too busy to review regularly at MangaLife anymore. But a couple of weeks ago I spoke to the current Editor in Chief at ML about stepping down as a reviewer there; two years is a very respectable run, and I have enough else on my plate at the moment that reviewing felt like over-committing myself. (Of course, in a month or so I’ll undoubtedly hit a dry spell to make up for all that’s going on now, but that’s how it goes.)
So for now I’m taking a complete break from reviewing. I hope to come back to it once I’ve recharged my internal reserves a bit, though, and when that happens I plan to post any reviews here on my blog instead of on another site. Meanwhile, there’s still a backlog of reviews I’ve submitted to MangaLife, so there’ll be another batch or two of links here as they come out [see below].
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On the work front, this month saw the release of both Animal Academy: Hakobune Hakusho volume 4 and Fruits Basket: Banquet (don’t ask me why the title doesn’t exactly match that of the first fanbook, which came out as Fruits Basket Fan Book -Cat-. Such mysteries are beyond my ken).
Cover art has come out for Zone-00 volume 4, which is due for release in June. I think that volume has the distinction of being the only book I’ve ever adapted when all of the preceding volumes were already out in English and I had a complete set of hard copies to refer to for consistency. Obviously release schedules don’t ordinarily allow for that, but it was a treat.
Meanwhile, I was excited to hear that TOKYOPOP has rescheduled Demon Sacred for this fall. I adapted volumes 1-2 quite a while ago, and now they’re coming out as a double volume. I’m looking forward to getting to read more of the series. It’s by the creator of Jyu Oh Sei, and it has a lot of strange but intriguing stuff going on.
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And finally, here’s the first of my final heap of reviews over at MangaLife. I think there’re about eight more reviews still waiting to be posted there.
Arata: The Legend vol. 1 (B+)
Skip Beat! vol. 20 (B)
We Were There vol. 8 (A)
There was also one final batch of mini reviews [vol. 9 of Honey and Clover (Chica Umino), vol. 9 of We Were There (Yuki Obata), vol. 7 of Mixed Vegetables (Ayumi Komura), vol. 15 of S.A. (Maki Minami), vol. 4 of Black Bird (Kanoko Sakurakoji), vol. 11 [the series finale!] of The Gentlemen’s Alliance † (Arina Tanemura), vol. 17 of Kaze Hikaru (Taeko Watanabe), and vol. 2 of Natsume’s Book of Friends (Yuki Midorikawa)].
A Radical Interpretation of the Text 