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 By Usamaru Furuya
256 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
Usamaru Furuya’s Short Cuts is one of the strange, off-beat comics that Viz published in its PULP anthology back in the day, and which you still hear its fans talk about in hushed tones. It was silly, irreverent, and unpredictable, and a feature I always looked forward to. I’d never seen a comic longer than a one- or two-page gag strip by Furuya before, though, so Genkaku Picasso being translated into English felt like perfect timing. What I wasn’t expecting, though, was a bizarre mixture of "special powers to help others" mixed with pop psychology.
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 By Takehiko Inoue
192 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
I am rapidly running out of comics by Takehiko Inoue to read. When the next volume of Real is published in November, the translations will have caught up to the series in Japan. And while I have the last couple volumes of Vagabond stashed in reserve for a rainy day, once again the series in English is about to catch up to the series in Japanese. So, after quite a few years, it seemed like a good a time as any to read an older series from Inoue that’s being translated, his other basketball comic: Slam Dunk. Having read his more recent works as of late, going back to Slam Dunk feels a little surprising in places.
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 By Natsume Ono
208 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
With House of Five Leaves Vol. 1, another one of the SIGIKKI website’s online strips is making the jump to a print edition. As it’s by Natsume Ono (not simple, Ristorante Paradiso), I knew it wouldn’t be your typical samurai story. What I found, though, was a nice play on the genre where no one is quite what they seem, and I think it’s probably the best of Ono’s works brought into English to date.
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 Written by Tsugumi Ohba
Art by Takeshi Obata
208 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
It’s a fair statement to say that Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s series Death Note was a huge, career-making hit for them. It would also be a fair assumption by most readers, at that point, to think that Ohba and Obata were set for life in terms of publishers and the world of manga. As their follow-up series Bakuman shows, though, that’s hardly the case in the manga industry. Bakuman is two parts story, and one part manga business world primer, and I am finding it utterly fascinating.
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 By Kumiko Suekane
208 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
The idea behind Afterschool Charisma has a lot of potential: a school populated almost entirely with clones of famous historical figures, being all raised together. Told primarily through the eyes of the one non-clone (Shiro, the son of one of the professors), it offers up a chance to let us see how given a second chance these characters might either end up the same, or radically different. What we actually get, though, is a book that has a couple of great moments but otherwise ends up feeling more like a clone of far too many other manga series out there.
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 By Motoro Mase
240 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
I’ve noticed more and more that in this day and age where we have long-form stories running in comics, books, television series, and anything else you can imagine, audiences seem less inclined to jump into the middle of a series. I know I’ve been equally guilty of that problem, and so when I received a copy of Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit Volume 5 in the mail, I decided to put it to the test and see how well it would read considering that I’d never read volumes 1-4. As it turns out? I must have picked the right series of which to jump into the middle, because I had a blast.
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 By Seimu Yoshizaki
208 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
As you probably by now, in Japan, there are comics about everything. Cooking, tennis, life in the office, true stories of being homeless, you name it, there’s a manga for you. That’s part of the point of Kingyo Used Books, but I couldn’t help but be a little amused that with this manga, there’s a comic about the joy of comics. It’s simultaneously funny and really fantastic, isn’t it? I will warn you right now, though. Reading Kingyo Used Books might cause you to buy more comics, Japanese or otherwise.
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 By Takehiko Inoue
216 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
I don’t just dislike basketball. I actually semi-loathe the sport. At my office we have lunchtime discussions that veer off onto topics like, "Which reality show would be your worst nightmare?" and "What sport would you least want to be forced to watch hours of?" And for the latter, I must admit, basketball was a high contender. I mention this because I feel it’s important that you understand how much the sport is unappealing to me, so that you understand the power of the next statement I’m about to make. Real isn’t just a good comic about basketball. Real is one of the best comics being published, period.
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 By Natsume Ono
176 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
Viz looks to be making a major push on Japanese comic creator Natsume Ono. Several months ago had the release of not simple, and House of Five Leaves is running on SIGIKKI as well as getting its first print edition later this year. They’re both strong comics, and after experiencing both of them it seemed like a natural to try Ono’s earlier work that just hit stores, Ristorante Paradiso. What I found, though, was a surprise in several different ways.
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 By Eiichiro Oda
600 pages, black and white
Published by Viz
I remember reading One Piece when it was first published by Viz back at the launch of SHONEN JUMP and enjoying it. But in what was a modern golden age of manga translations, there were so many books being published at the same time that I quickly fell behind, and before long it dropped to the wayside. Now that Viz is putting a lot of publishing muscle behind the book (unleashing a wave of One Piece books to catch the series up to where it is in Japan, like they did before with Naruto, and releasing a series of 3-in-1 omnibuses), it seemed like a perfect chance to catch up with the series and see just what I’ve been missing.
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