Crayon Shinchan, Volume 1Crayon Shinchan is a very long running anime in Japan which had a shorter run in the US. It’s also an anime I’ve watched over and over again. When I saw the Crayon Shinchan, Volume 1 by Yoshito Usui was available to read on Scribd, I jumped on it.
Buso Renkin, Vol. 1 If there is one genre of manga and anime I love above all else it’s shonen. Recently, I began Buso Renkin, Vol. 1 by Watsuki Nobuhiro, a series I know through the anime but have never read.
Dragon Ball: That Time I Got Reincarnated as YamchaEvery once in a while something magical happens. Sometimes we’re blessed with fanfiction that gets sanctioned by the series. Sometimes, we get manga like this. Dragon Ball: The Time I Got Reincarnated as Yamcha is by Dragongarow Lee, a fan artist who is well known in the community.
All-Rounder MeguruOne of the genres of manga that quickly became an unexpected favorite was sports manga. I’d not heard of All-Rounder Meguru Vol. 1 by Hiroki Endo before so, obviously, I read it immediately upon receiving a copy.
Jaco the Galactic PatrolmanMaybe it’s because I tend to lean towards long-running shonen series, but it isn’t very often I come across a standalone volume of manga. Jaco the Galactic Patrolman by Akira Toriyama is exactly that.
My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, Vol. 3Out of the many spin off series that exist in the world of manga My Hero Academia: Vigilantes is probably my favorite. It offers a very different look at a society where everyone has quirks – superpowers. Instead of following teenagers trying to be young heroes we follow a regular college student named Koichi who moonlights as a vigilante.
Blissful Land, Vol. 1The Blissful Land, Vol. 1 by Ichimon Izumi is a very slow, lovely slice of life manga centered around a 13-year-old boy, Khang Zhipa, who is apprenticed to his father, the town’s doctor. It is a sweet, slow manga that is more iyashiki than slice of life. Iyashikei, for those who are unaware, are very slow manga that focus on the everyday activities of people, the tiny, happy moments in life, and nature as a calming, healing read. The emotional and plot driven stakes are virtually nonexistent, instead presenting the reading with a very calm, mellow story.
There have been a lot of fantastic books this year. Some of my favorites have already been outlined in my Top 2018 Books list. Everything I enjoyed couldn’t have possibly fit in one list, though. And some books I still want to talk about weren’t necessarily full 5 star reads. But they were good nonetheless with interesting plots and themes and characters I really cared about. I noticed something in common with some of these: they didn’t have a lot of reviews on Gooodreads.
Here it is, the long awaited Top Reads of 2018 list. I read a lot of books this year – 224 of them according to my Goodreads list. I’m not exactly stingy with 5 stars, either. If it’s a great book, then I’m going to give it a high rating. And I gave 4.5 to 5 star ratings on a whopping 50 books. I’ve managed to whittle that list down a bit since then and while still it might not be a short list, but it’s certainly more manageable than before! All of these books have been published in 2018 in the United States, though several were published prior in other countries.
It’s here! Shonen Jump has officially changed its format, and in a rather radical way. Instead of either a physical or digital magazine requiring a subscription Shonen Jump will be posting all new chapters of their ongoing series for FREE. These will be coming out the same day as Japan, which is Sunday afternoon in the US. Yesterday saw the rollout of the new platform, and while it seems the Shonen Jump team is still ironing out the kinks in the new system things are set up for a wonderful change.
Welcome to Looking Glass Reads! We review speculative fiction novels as well as manga, light novels, and graphic novels.
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