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Super Manga Blast
(I cried at some parts of Oh My Goddess)
The 5 manga on offer are What's Michael, Shadow Star, Seraphic Feather, 3x3 Eyes and Club 9.
Club 9 is a new manga introduced in issue 4178084179870148970489123879214* to replace the 'lost' episodes of Oh My Goddess. So far, it seems to be reasonably amusing. Although possibly not as good as Oh my Goddess...
What's Michael is a light comedy about a cat called Michael, also written by Makoto Kobayashi.
Shadow Star is an 'action fantasy', centred around creatures, which some call 'shadow dragons'.
Seraphic Feather is a somewhat complicated tale involving powerful beings, telekinesis, and the vacuum outside a spaceship.
3x3 Eyes is a long-running manga with 36 (!) volumes available in Japan under the name Sazan Eyes. It revolves around adventuring and finding out stuff, and killing stuff just to stay alive, or - in some cases - just because you're evil and you feel like killing someone.
*This is not the correct issue number. I didn't know the right number when typing this, so I just made something up.
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rating : 4
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This is my favourite manga anthology magazine being published in the English language. Although it doesn't have any articles (and often doesn't even have a letters page), the manga themselves are excellent.
Overall, I'd say that Super Manga Blast is a strong anthology, offering manga of various genres and of a high standard. Seraphic Feather is a bit hard to follow - I'm still not sure what's going on - and Shadow Star can also take a wee bit of getting into. However, even if you are only now starting to buy Super Manga Blast, you can still get the previous instalments as a graphic novel. What's Michael is immediately accessible to anyone since each episode is a totally seperate story and Club 9 is pretty easy to follow, so there's stuff there that you'll enjoy immediately.
One thing to remember is that with anthologies or single issues you really need to buy a few copies before making a judgement. But anyway, I recommend this, I really do. Apart from the lack of articles, I can't fault it.
3x3 Eyes
Animerica Extra
Banana Fish
Baoh
buying manga
Cartoon Network
Dark Horse
Dragonball
Dragonball Z
Inu-Yasha
Kia Asamiya
Lone Wolf and Cub
Lone Wolf and Cub Glossary (unready)
Maison Ikkoku
Pulp
Ranma ½
Rumiko Takahashi
Super Manga Blast
Usagi Yojimbo
Viz
What's Michael?
And if you think that my reviews are shit (perhaps because they are) and want to have a go yourself, just write a review up in Microsoft Word and e-mail it to me. It should be up on the site within a week.