CBG Review: Dark Metro, vol. 1

I have written a review for Dark Metro, vol. 1, available on the Comic Buyer's Guide website. Please remember that the CBG website uses a 4 star rating. Check it out!



Dark Metro, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

No posting Jan. 21-24th

Miranda and I will be traveling, visiting relatives and the like. As such, we may get in one or two reviews those days, but probably not. We will definitely return on Friday, Jan 25th!

-Ferdinand

King of the Lamp

By Takako Shigematsu
Published in the US by GoComi


Slugline: People who fall in love have sex?!?

This is a collection of shorts by Takako Shigematsu who has also done Tenshi Ja Nai!!, with three of the chapters linked together by the same premise and gives the collection its name. The King of the Lamp is about a King who took 1000 beautiful women to serve in his harem and is now forced to be a genie granting wishes to women who are already in love. He still makes out in this deal, because his magic requires kisses on the part of the wishees. What is interesting about this title is that it definitely was intended for an older audience than the typical shoujo, because with the woman's wish fulfilled and her boyfriend now acknowledging their feelings for each other, they fall into each arms and make love. Now, this series is not porn, it has what I would call soap opera sex, lots of sparkles, smooches, suggestive lighting and closing the curtain on the scene before they have to show anything. The same thing is portrayed in one of the other stories, so I would say this is among the first of the women's romance titles I have actually managed to read rather than just hear about. Just for that, King of the Lamp manages to eke out a 3 star rating despite the rather pedestrian storytelling because it is published a type of story that just hasn't been seen much in the US.

King of the Lamp is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and

-Ferdinand

CBG Review: Hell Girl, vol. 1

I have written a review for Hell Girl, vol. 1, available on the Comic Buyer's Guide website. Please remember that the CBG website uses a 4 star rating. Check it out!



Hell Girl, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

Missing: Spirited Away

By Gakuto Coda
Released in the US by TokyoPop


Slugline: You'd better remember to be nice to your friends after they drag you back from another dimension.

Kyoichi has always been a bit strange ever since he and his brother were abducted at a early age, and he was the only one to return. One day, merely by the sense of smell he spots another human that has been captured by the other side, and gets her recognized by others. But the danger is that if others can see her, they too can be assimilated into the elsewhere. His friends have to drag him back to our world and deal with an Agency that has make its own hard decisions on how to save people.

Despite the back cover text, the book is only peripherally about Kyoichi but more about his four friends that risk their very existence in order to find and recover him from the elsewhere that seems to be drawn him in. There is a bit of needless exposition in the middle, as the two separate sets of characters get the same information from different sources, but I can see the use of it since it separates them and gives them separate pieces of the puzzle. And one is told when to feel dread and fear, rather than finding out for ourselves. So while this good horror, it doesn’t rise above that. It is my understanding that this is a multi-volume series, so I am interested in seeing what the blowback from this story would be, and how Kyoichi interacts with the other characters.



Missing: Spirited Away is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

Aria, vol. 1

By Kazue Amano
Released in the US by TokyoPop


Slugline: Sometimes mellow flowing along can get a little bit repetitive

We have already reviewed Aria's prequel Aqua, and that review can be found here.

Akari Mizunashi is training to be an Undine, a gondolier of Neo Venezia, a reconstruction of Venice that was built on Mars, now named Aqua, after terraforming it covered with oceans. She has become a journeyman but is still in training to become an Undine, who also serves as a tour guide for the city. These are very much low key, slice of life stories, which are enjoyable with the sort of artwork that makes you want you join in with the characters in sitting back and appreciating it. I do think some bits of it are getting repetitive from Aqua, especially the fox wedding reminiscent of the congress of the cats from Aqua, but it is still a nice relaxing read. It probably should be savored, reading a volume every once in a while rather than tearing right the story.



Aria, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

SERIES UPDATE: Eternal Sabbath, v. 5 - 7

You can read our earlier reviews of Eternal Sabbath vol. 1 here, vol. 2 here and vols. 3-4 here.

Through these volumes, Shuro and Mine try to influence Isaac by way of his friend Yuri. Although they make careful moves, things take a turn for the worse. Isaac does show some signs of human emotion, but he doesn't know how to act on them correctly. In the process of erasing his "mistakes" he sets off another encounter with Shuro. When the scene escalates, Isaac actually seems off balance due to the emotional fallout from Yuri, and the plot begins to shift in a new direction.

Tough subjects are tackled in these three volumes -- child abuse, the stresses of parenting -- and this series will be staying on my short list!




ES vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3 vol. 4, vol. 5, vol. 6 and vol. 7 are all available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

Rightstuf Sale on Viz Anime and Manga

Just letting people know that RightStuf.com, one of our sales affiliates, is running a sale on Viz Anime and Manga until 11:59 pm CST of January 20th, 2008, including preorders. The sale is 33% off retail for books and 40% off retail for DVDs just by entering the coupon code "takenote". For a list of Viz titles we have reviewed go here. In particular, we really enjoyed the titles Deathnote, The Drifting Classroom and Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Prospero's Manga does take time for us to run, and sales through this RightStuf.com link or through any of our other Rightstuf.com links kicks us a percentage, which helps pay for the site. So everyone wins!

-Ferdinand

CBG Review: The Manga Bible

I have written a review for The Manga Bible, available on the Comic Buyer's Guide website. Please remember that the CBG website uses a 4 star rating. Check it out!



-Ferdinand

V.B. Rose, vol. 1

By Banri Hidaka
Released in the US by TokyoPop


Slugline: I suspect I would find this title much more affecting if I wasn't cursed with the Y chromosome.

We have reviewed two other works by Banri Hidaka I Hate You More Than Anyone, and Tears of the Lamb.

Ageha is disheartened when her sister Hibari announces that she is pregnant and thus getting married. Not that Hibari wasn't planning on getting married, but this is moved up her plans. Ageha has an idealized view of Hibari which cannot reconcile itself with this. Not even her hobby of making handbags tempers her disappointment, but it is her handbags that draws the attention of a pair of professional designers. Who of course happen to be Hibari's wedding dress designers. In the midst of a disagreement over Ageha's belligerence of Hibari's wedding lone of the two guys' (who of course are stunningly attractive) hand is injured, leaving Ageha to volunteer to work in their shop to make up for it. In working on the dress Ageha comes to terms with her sister's marriage and goes one step beyond, impressing the shop owners.

This a competently done title about a subject that just doesn't move me. I like some of the character bits and sparse yet powerful art lines that convey the grace and beauty that is necessary for a title about fashion to be convincing, but the actual topic of the story itself is only ho-hum. As an aside, I am wondering when someone is going to write about someone who loathes and despises their older sibling and works to undercut them at all costs? Sorry, I have seen more dysfunctional or at least tense sibling relationships than adoring ones. As for the story, I want to see what happens after the sister's wedding, because that will be the real meat of the series, trying to figure out what happens after the tension of the wedding no longer to drives things. Maybe someone who loves weddings, cuteness and the sense of elegance around the dresses would rate this title higher than I do, but like the slugline said, my Y chromosome is a curse in this case.

And if you have no idea what I mean by Y chromosome, remember your basic biology and which gender solely has the Y chromosome...



V.B. Rose, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and

-Ferdinand

Harukaze Bitter Bop, vol. 1

By Court Betten
Released in the US by TokyoPop


Slugline: Craziness that seems phony, but underneath the phoniness is a crazy truth

On the way to school Chiyoharu meets Souza of the North Wind, an amnesiac martial artist that seems indestructible and Kaede, a high school aged undercover detective, who decide to follow him. Chiyoharu has enough problems already in school, being considered a delinquent because he and his friends accidentally set a fire at the school that spread beyond their control. While his friends were caught, he wasn’t though it was suspected that he was involved, and so he continues to attend the school under a cloud of distrust. So Chiyoharu is left trying to put his life back together with the assistance of characters that seem to have to wandered in from another genre and what is worse, they start proving all their craziness seems to be true.

Not quite sure how to take the series, whether at it’s heart it is a serious or parody title, and for the moment it seems like a parody title’s set-up being taken seriously. That usually means things are going to go bad very quickly, because parodies are funny because they are extreme, and if you tried to live that way it would be dangerous. It is the combination of the pettiness of the extreme characters, parody and the attempt to deal with it that makes the story interesting. The art is nice and plain, and that is meant in the best way, because if you are going to convince readers of the intrusion of parody into reality, one has to believe the world is real. I like this title, but I am not sure whether or not they will be able to continue to balance the serious and the absurd.

Harukaze Bitter Bop, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

The Knockout Makers, vol. 1

Created by Kyoko Hashimoto
Published in the US by TokyoPop


Slugline: It is so easy to do a makeover when you can redraw your characters

I was all ready to hate it this with the hate of thousand burning stars. Large stars, not small ones like our Sun. But it wasn’t as bad as I feared. The Knockout Makers is about an elite team of makeover artists, who seem to solely help high school and college age women. Amazing coincidence that. I wonder how many Extreme Makeover episodes made it to Japan before someone had the brilliant idea to manga-ize it.

But beside that, this book isn’t about how a makeover will make your life all perfect and beautiful. It just says that by changing your outside you can let your inside come out. Still not the most progressive message, but at least only one story in the volume has the characters professing their love for each other and there is only one where the makeover to be about revenge over being dumped, and there wasn’t an attempt after said makeover to make the ex- regret his decision. I didn’t take a ruler out and measure the characters dimensions before and after a makeover, but in a drawn book makeovers can be a lot more successful than in real life. I don’t know, maybe it is my own biases showing through here, but I am never comfortable with these kinds of stories, that your life will change positively if you just were more attractive. I have tried to objectively read at this, but the characters and story, while competent, are just not engaging or believable to me, though I will say that this tried hard to avoid descending into cliché.



The Knockout Makers, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

SERIES UPDATE: The Demon Ororon, vols. 3-4 of Ultimate Edition

To see our review of the first half of The Deomon Ororon, the Ultimate Edition, click here.

At the end of v. 2, Chiaki has an Akira moment and destroys most of town. For final two volumes, however, all she does is scream and cry, making no real attempts to do anything. Around her, various demons come and go, nameless flunkies get picked off, and general havok reigns.

The politics of deposing the King of Hell were more interesting to me than Chiaki's crying over Ororon's suffering, since they were more novel. However, wading through the usual philosophical monologues to get to the politics makes for slow going. As it drags to its end, this story becomes less a romance and more an exercise in masochism. And as Ororon lies bleeding, Chiaki's inability to even try to help becomes more and more annoying.



The Demon Ororon, Ultimate Edition is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

CBG Review: Monochrome Factor, vol. 1

I have written a review for Monochrome Factor, vol. 1, available on the Comic Buyer's Guide website. Please remember that the CBG website uses a 4 star rating. Check it out!



Monochrome Factor, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

The Demon Ororon, vols 1-2 of Ultimate Edition

by Hakase Mizuki
Published in the US by Tokyopop as a Ultimate Edition


Slugline: The king of hell shacks up with an angel's child. Much violence ensues.

The Ultimate Edition is so thick I'm making two reviews out of it.

Ororon is the king of hell. Chiaki is the daughter of the archangel Michael, though she didn't know at first. She wants him to stay with her, which he does, and they start acting in the manner which in manga is referred to as "love." If you're new to manga, you might think that they're roommates who get along fairly well, but in manga this qualifies as being madly in love.

In the first two volumes, a short settling-in period punctuated by attacks by various predators leads to the start of a more serious assault on Ororon and the arrival of more interesting characters such as Ororon's brother Othello and Mitsume the one-armed assassin. Othello and Mitsume are responsible for most of the fun and emotional fireworks in the second half of the collection.

Due to the art style, everyone's limbs are a mile long, genders are indistinct and sometimes it's hard to tell people apart. I didn't find the first two volumes inspiring, though they were competent, but there's two more to come.

The Demon Ororon, Ultimate Edition is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Miranda

Short Sunzen!, vol. 1

By Susugi Sakurai
Released in the US by TokyoPop


Slugline: Wow! I haven't read anything exactly like this for almost two whole weeks!

I'm sorry, maybe it is the flu I am fighting talking here, but Short Sunzen! read like a half dozen other manga about violent girls with a heart of gold, the boys they like, who secretly like them back, but because no one ever notices what is right in front of their face, or even tries to talk to their friends, they are kept apart. Like I said, I've read dozens of versions of this story. The art in this version of the story is a little too busy, making the reading more difficult to get through. So only bother with it unless you feel the need to prove my analysis wrong, or that you really really think the previous dozen or so versions of this kind of story just was not fulfilling.



Short Sunzen!, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

Empowered, vol. 1

By Adam Warren
Published by Dark Horse


Slugline: A title that revels in its own absurdity.

Don't you wish that more people gave manga a try rather than just knee-jerking writing it off as something strange and foreign? I am going to give you the same challenge for Empowered, a title by the original OEL artist, Adam Warren. It is a title about superheroes. Yes, yes, I understand, superhero comics are the devil compared to the purity of the manga, but then you are just as guilty as the people that are decrying manga, right? And let's face it, are the ninja feats that Naruto pull off or badassitude of Rurouni Kenshin that far off superheroes like Batman?

And if you strip all that out, the genre trappings, this is ultimately a story about college aged people trying to figure out what to do with their lives. And screwing up, and wondering what the hell they are going to do to pay the bills until the stuff they really like doing starts paying off. With boyfriends, booty calls, going out with girlfriends until you come home more than a little tipsy. After reading probably hundreds of high school stories where everyone seems so prim and proper, even the hooligans following a constrained set of behaviors, it was great to finally read some truly bad and but also behavior that felt more real. And relationships that start with sex and hormones and evolve towards love and that other sort of stuff rather than vice versa.

Empowered is a superheroine with a name that was best she could come up with and a supersuit that nothing to hide her butt or any other embaressing body parts. Worse still, while bulletproof it tears easily, and until it regenerates most of her powers are gone, so she ends up tied up way too often. Fortunately she has her boyfriend Thug Boy and her girlfriend Ninjette to bolster her while Sistah Spooky and the rest of the Superhomies continually belittle her. As you can see, this is something of a parody, something of a slice of life and a whole lot of the funny.

And as for Adam Warren, his first OEL was the US version of Dirty Pair in 1989. He has the experience and style, learned through years of practice and experience, so that it comfortably straddles both US and Japanese art styles and so it has become its own. Read it and realize that OEL can be and is it's own thing, and should be judged for what it is, not what you think it should be.



-Ferdinand

CBG Review: Tanpenshu, vol. 1

I have written a review for Tanpenshu, vol. 1, available on the Comic Buyer's Guide website. Please remember that the CBG website uses a 4 star rating. Check it out!



Tanpenshu, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

-Ferdinand

20% off everything sale at Rightstuf.com

Just letting people know that RightStuf.com, one of our sales affiliates, is running a sale until 11:59 pm CST of January 6th, 2008 on all in-stock items. The sale is an additional 20% off retail by entering the coupon code newyear2008! Check out all of 4.5 star and 4 star reviews for some ideas!

Prospero's Manga does take time for us to run, and sales through this RightStuf.com link or any of our other Rightstuf.com links kicks us a percentage, which helps pay for the site. So everyone wins!

-Ferdinand

Hanami: International Love Story, vol. 1

Story by PLUS with Art by Sung-Jae Park
Released in the US by Dark Horse


Slugline: Is this story just about being stuck between two girls or stuck between Korea and Japan?

Joonho has finally had the courage to confess his love to Sae-un, the girl he has been attracted to in his Korean high school in and for once in these stories she actually reciprocates right there rather than refusing or running off. Unfortunately, as soon as he gets home from having his confession accepted, he find outs his family is moving Seoul that day. Once he complete the move he begins a long distance (well, medium distance) relationship with Sae-un, but his Japanese neighbor Hanami keeps on intruding on his thoughts and she keeps on finding herself thinking of him. But both of their lives in Seoul are complicated by cast of ludicrous characters.

I do find that there is an interesting subtext in the title. To say that there is an apathy between Japan and Korea on the cultural and historical level is to understate the case. Koreans who were relocated to Japan in World War 2, their grandchildren who remain in Japan are still not citizens. And let's not even bring up the issue of the comfort women (If you don't know what I am talking about, well, the wiki entry is here, and it is not pleasant.) So the fact that Hanami's grandfather actually married his Korean wife and then moved to Korea, well, just from that you can tell this is a manwha because the whole Korean issue is still very unspoken in Japan. That whole issue is something I hope that gets touched upon more seriously in later volumes.

Despite the cheese, cliche and chibi aspects of the story, the fundamental conflict that is driving Joonho and the story is handled well. Joonho is torn between Sae-un who he has been attracted to for a while before moving and the friendship and possibly something more he could have with Hanami. Sae-un is someone that he understands, liked for a while, but he is also separated from her, not by a great deal but still a distance. Meanwhile Hanami is right there, foreign and so exotic, yet needing him. But Joonho is right to wonder if she likes him on his own merits or because he is a substitute for the love she had previously lost. And while the issue of language/miscommunication is first played up for laughs it is then is played a little more straight. Joonho's sense of detachment and discomfort at the Japanese language study group feels right, and I think Hanami is purposely misunderstanding Joonho's explanation of his relationship with Sae-un. I wish that the early chibi /cliche aspects could just be forgotten, but if they continue to treat the love triangle as a real dilemma rather than an excuse for broad comedy, the series can only strengthen. If the story could perhaps begin to deal with Japanese/Korean issues, this could be an exceptional series.



Hanami: International Love Story, vol. 1 is also available from Right Stuf, Intl., an online retailer specializing in anime and manga.

- Ferdinand