I am a manga reader more than an anime watcher, which is only half useful for understanding all of the references my students have in Japanese Culture Club, but that’s okay. Reading is my jam so it’s natural to lean on manga more than anime.
For several reasons since school let out for summer, it’s become manga summer. I’m still reading many books for my committee work and plenty for preparing for upcoming presentations, but also plenty of manga. Thank God for the public library– several intensely stocked libraries who I lean on for filling up my TBR queue.
Here are three things I have learned about manga from the thirty I’ve read so far this summer:
- The sheer volume of manga publications means that just like any genre, subgenre, or type of book, there are the good, the bad, and the ugly. I won’t like them all and that’s okay.
- It’s rare to find standalones, but when I do, there’s something a little special about them that I cherish more than the serialized manga.
- Fa-SHUN. I basically want the closets of more than half of the characters in the stories.
And here are my top five recently-read picks:
Readers Be Advised 