New Manga Read - Fist of the North Star, Volume 12
Welcome to the apocalypse!
Volume 11 is about this man on the cover, Falco.
Falco is the inheritor of Gento Kōken (roughly translated as Original Dipper Imperial Fist). The followers of Genko Kōken were sworn to protect the Celestial Emperor (Tentei) from harm.
In this volume, Kenshiro is returning to help the Hokuto Army which is led by Lin and Bat to free those under the thumb of Jaco. Falco, who appears to be nothing but good and compassionate, is somehow the evil Jaco's second in command. Why? Jaco has kidnapped the Tentei and kept them hostage.
This volume is filled to the brim with reveals. Some about Lin. A lot of backstory about Falco, which makes him such a fascinating character. Also, the reveal about the Tentei and who they are was HUGE. Doing minimal spoilers despite this manga being as old as I am.
Falco has a prosthetic leg due to Raoh destroying his leg in the past. Raoh told him that he needed to kill Jaco or, one day, Jaco would manipulate and dominate him. Raoh was right.
While we get a brutal match between Falco and Kenshiro, the ending of the volume is well done with a cliffhanger for the next volume.
ALSO (which I say a lot), Fist of the North Star constantly reminds you that toxic masculinity is bad and that you can be masculine and have feelings / cry. Kenshiro feels, always. Kenshiro allows himself to cry over loss, cry over the suffering of others. He allows himself to feel. There is nothing un-masculine about having emotions. Kenshiro constantly reminds the reader of that...amongst all the brutal violence.
Sand Land is interesting. This was a single volume, self contained story from the late Akira Toriyama. It tells the tale of the titular "Sand Land," where after a major apocalyptic event, there is limited water and the King hoards what remains, selling it to the people at high rates. There are also demons walking the world for reasons.
Enter our heroes - Thief, a sneaky and balding demon; Beelzebub, the son of the King of the Demons; and Rao, a human on the mission to find a secret water supply to the south to free the people from the King's tyrannical rule.
The story follows this trio as they travel south, run into various fights, and eventually save the day. In the process, the story rails against those who hoard resources and has some social commentary about how governments / militaries lie to their people. There is also sub-textual commentary about climate change and how certain governments treat indigenous populations and (sometimes purposefully) disregard their existing knowledge of the world after crushing them.
Overall, it's a fun story and I'm glad I had a chance to re-read this great, physical edition before the new anime / video games drop. Toriyama gave us a bunch of stories before he passed and I hope you get a chance to check out some of his stories outside of Dragon Ball.
As we're closing in on Christmas, I decided to bust back out Sweet Rein and give it a re-read. I had not read it since 2021 and let me tell you, it's cheesy, but fun.
For those who don't know much about it (which may be many), Sweet Rein is about a girl named Kurumi who bumps into a boy named Kaito. Afterwards, a long invisible rein appears between the two of them, tying them together!
What we learn is that Santa (or Santas) are everyday people who connect with a human-reindeer to give out presents in their specific area once a year. This boy, Kaito, is Kurumi's reindeer. The story then follows Kurumi and Kaito as they are clearly having a crush on each other and also give out presents, work as Santa for Christmas, and overall try to make people's days brighter.
It's cute. I don't remember how it ended, so I'll have to finish it up before Christmas!
Have you read Sweet Rein? If so, what did you think of it?
This weekend I read Volume 2 of One Operation Joker. Much like Volume 1, it continued with the parenting jokes. This time we brought in Harley Quinn a couple times to help the Joker get baby Batman into a good daycare facility. Also, Alfred Pennyworth showed up as said daycare facility happened to be owned by Wayne Enterprises.
It's such a goofy concept and it was able to keep the gag going through a second volume. I feel like this series maxing out at 3 volumes is probably for the best because I'm not sure how much more they can do with this same baby Batman gag.
This weekend I finally got to reading #SailorMoon Volume 5, from #Kodansha's new Naoko Takeuchi Collection reprint of the series. Let me tell you - fantastic.
This set of chapters introduced us to Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, who had such a fantastic introduction. The duo as Mugen Academy students infiltrating the school; Sailor Uranus' sexuality and gender expression; and the pair's willingness for brutality introduced some new elements into the series that just made it hard to look away. I plowed through this volume this weekend.
Overall, solid volume, can't wait until the next one arrives for me in January.
From Halloween until Christmas is, officially, The Nightmare Before Christmas Season! So, let's talk abut the official manga adaptation.
Do you already like the movie a lot and are super familiar with the plot? If so, this is a welcome addition to any collection you may have for that series. If you are not, watch the movie first. While the art is great and fitting for the series, the pacing is okay but moves a bit too quick through certain plot points that without some baseline familiarity with the material a person may get lost.
That said, I've seen the movie likely a hundred times at this point in my life. So, I enjoyed it!
Have you read the manga adaptation? Or have you seen any of the spinoff manga?