Shuuten Unknown by Sugiura Shiho

Shuuten Unknown

After spending almost ten years following the adventures of Rakan and Chigusa in Silver Diamond, I was lost when it came to an end. I followed the manga from the beginning and it was hard imagining the hobby without it. And then I saw the first images of Sugiura Shiho’s new manga, Shuuten Unknown (Last Stop Unknown). I learned to let go and embrace the excitement of seeing your favorite mangaka present a brand new setting and characters. We’re in for another fantastic ride.

Canis -Dear Mr. Rain- by Zakk

Canis -Dear Mr. Rain-

The Edge Comix lineup adds yet another striking cover with the release of Canis -Dear Mr. Rain-. Similar to Tokyo Shinjuu, this manga is the first tankoubon release of a new artist, Zakk. The manga is about two very different people, their pasts, and how their futures will intertwine.

Additions to the Fantasy BL Manga List

I originally meant to update my fantasy/supernatural BL manga list on a more regular basis. Oops. Well, you have to start somewhere. I thought of covering Mauri to Ryuu more extensively, but decided against it. However, it’s still worth a short recommendation, so here’s a few additional fantasy BL manga that I particularly enjoyed.

Mauri to Ryuu by Moto Haruhira
This collection of short stories features wandering gods who enrich the land. During their travels, they observe humans and sometimes fall in love. If that affection is returned, the gods take the human form of the one who loves them. The tone is simple and warm. At least until mpreg is clumsily shoe-horned into the last 2-3 panels or at most few pages of several stories. Or that the act of sex is there solely for baby-making purposes since the gods have more animalistic instincts or something. That was chilling. Ignoring that, overall, I enjoyed the work. My favorite story was about a small bird whose song calls forth the spring season. He meets a taciturn hunter who saves him from his captors. The hunter continues to protect him while he sings and leaves a trail of flowers and spring in their wake.

Tenkousei Jinno Murasaki by Tanaka Suzuki
With a single punch of his left hand, Jinnai Midori can purify all evil and malciousness from people. Even the nastiest delinquent becomes a honest person after one hit. However, it doesn’t seem to work on the new transfer student, Jinno Murasaki. There’s something really off about the guy: he’s kinda creepy, really strong, seems dangerous, and is oddly obsessed with Midori.

The manga is all about the two and the supernatural trouble that finds them. Jinno follows Midori around like a protective puppy, including the part where he tears up anyone who threatens Midori into bloody shreds. Jinno is the vaguely threatening, strong, self-appointed boyfriend Midori never asked for but gets stalked by anyway. The manga has a horror feel to it, with dark, violent encounters with supernatural beings that possess people. Shit really hits the fan in the surreal last volume of the manga: everything goes batshit insane, many characters die (slowly and while being tormented), Jinno goes full yandere.. so yeah, typical Tanaka Suzuki fun. I really liked the end. I would have never guessed the last volume would have gone in that direction based on the beginning.

Konya mo Nemurenai by Yamamoto Kotetsuko
In a desperate moment, college student Rikiya calls for help and accidentally summons a demon. Since Rikiya has no immediate wish for the demon to grant, Endo decides to stick around in the human world and many comical shenanigans follow. Endo is an impish, arrogant short guy, yet he can be supportive and insightful at times. The romantic aspect is not abrupt and allowed time to develop. This work is a good example of Yamamoto Kotetsuko’s ability to make cute and charismatic characters.

Shinseigokumon by Kuku Hayate
This is a collection of short stories with two of them having fantasy/supernatural themes. The title oneshot is about the guardians at the gate which separates the worlds of the living and the dead. There’s a black bull guardian and a white horse guardian who watch over opposite sides of the gate. While they work together, they can never be in contact with each other for long since the worlds must remain separated. It’s a short story with great character designs you’d expect from Kuku Hayate.

There’s more nice character designs in another oneshot, Foehn phenomena. It’s about a mountain spirit and a wind spirit. The wind guy is pretty pissed at the mountain guy for being all big and blocking his winds. Being a mountain, he tends to lay around and not move, after all. Soon enough, they get all friendly. Oh and those hot, dry Foehn winds? It comes from the two having sex up in the mountains, making the people who live below suffer the heat, ha.

Onigari no Mori de by Miyamoto Kano
Misono Kazuki wants to write a supernatural novel, but lacks the experience and imagination to make it very compelling. So he visits an old shrine to gather some ideas and ends up getting far more than that! Kazuki discovers a parallel world where a natural disaster poisoned large areas of the world, creating a very different world from our modern Japan. After that incident, their two worlds became connected through certain holes. These gates happen to be guarded by really hot guys. The two sides form a tentative alliance to stabilize the gates and their worlds. As expected from Miyamoto Kano, the art is beautiful and detailed with strong character designs and lots of attention given to the backgrounds to develop the surrounding environments and atmosphere of the manga.

Orenchi no Furo Jijou by Itokichi

Orenchi no Furo Jijou

Orenchi no Furo Jijou (The Circumstances of My Home’s Bathroom) is a worthy addition to the line-up of moe shoujo/josei manga that I’ve covered on this site. Instead of adorable monks or mischievous high school boys, this time we have a young man who collects monster boys in his bathroom.

Tokyo Shinjuu by Totempole

Tokyo Shinjuu

I saw the bright, stylized covers of Tokyo Shinjuu and its intriguing title (心中 can mean a double/lovers’ suicide) and knew I had to obtain these. I’m glad I did and I was definitely not alone–all the online stores quickly went through their initial stock and were sold out for weeks. Originally released as doujinshi, there are now four tankoubon under the Edge Comix imprint. This entry will be a quick peek into the series, hopefully highlighting what makes it so appealing in the vast sea of BL manga.

Shiny New Releases: Docchi mo Docchi!!

Docchi mo Docchi (Same Difference) is back for a second volume, titled Docchi mo Docchi!! Don’t blink, you’ll miss the difference in the title. It’s a continuation from the first volume that focuses on their building relationship. I love the bright, cute cover. It will be released on 3/9. Getting new Hiiragi Nozomu manga is always a treat, so I already ordered a copy last week along with the new Tokyo Shinjuu book before that has a chance to sell out!

Fantasy by Okachimachi Hato

Fantasy

Fantasy by Okachimachi Hato (aka Matsumoto Miecohouse) is a fantasy manga in two ways: some characters have supernatural powers and the main couple is a 14 year old girl pursuing a 59 year old man. Holy crap, 45 year age gap! To make things even more interesting, Fantasy was published in Manga Erotics F, so it’s not shy about pushing boundaries. Let’s find out how far it will take us while attempting to not break WordPress’s terms of use (too much).

Koban by Ishikawa Chika

Koban

Koban is a simple, yet very entertaining series by Ishikawa Chika. I was first drawn to her eye-catching art style and boldly colored covers, but stayed for the fun and endearing characters. She might be my favorite new (to me) mangaka of this past year. So I’m going to introduce you (the whole three of you who might actually care about this type of manga, ha) to the police comedy, Koban.

Torch Song Ecology by Ikuemi Ryo

Torch Song Ecology

Ikuemi Ryo has been drawing manga for a few decades now and there’s lots of titles to choose from if you want to sample her work. Torch Song Ecology is one of her newer series. The art is gorgeous and the tone of the work is interesting: it’s a mix of slice of life and supernatural. You have a man adrift in his own life who begins to hear a song in his head. The source is a young girl’s ghost that no one else can see or hear.. unless they are approaching their own death.

BL Fantasy/Supernatural Manga Selections

I’ve been kicking around the idea of a list covering favorite BL fantasy and/or shoujo/BL fantasy manga ever since I started my blog. But I always dismissed it as not very useful. What changed was that I actually felt like reading some new fantasy BL manga. So I peeked at those genre searches on MU/MAL and was met with a cesspool of horrific manga (most of which I already knew about). That’s no good. So installing a filter should prove somewhat useful to fish out any gems you might have missed hidden in that sludge.

Just like my previous lists, this is stuff that I like, so it’s not all inclusive (thank god). It’s a mixed bag: there’s old and new titles, popular and obscure, translated and untranslated. Some are new, possibly passing fancies while others are definitely tinted by rose-colored glasses. But even those titles are part of the experience, so if you skipped one, think about going back to see what it was about. I had to poke my fuzzy memory and ran out of patience while creating this baseline list, so it’s somewhat incomplete. I’ll add to it as I read, discover, and revisit more relevant manga. Particularly that last one–sometimes I just don’t remember titles or if I actually liked them. I’ve also been wanting to renew my hunt for good fantasy BL manga and this will let me record the stuff worth the paper it’s printed on.

So here’s some recommended fantasy/supernatural BL manga in no particular order. Unless I’m modding on MAL, I don’t bother differentiating between the two: if it’s weird shit that can’t happen in real life, it’s fantasy to me. There’s so little high fantasy stuff that it’s a moot point. So you’ll find angels, demons, dragons, magicians, spirits, and supernatural phenomena all listed below. Titles, artists, and a tidbit of information are given for each manga. If one catches your attention, begin your hunt for more information or feel free to ask questions here that Google can’t answer.