Gin Tama, Vol. 1


Hideaki Sorachi - 2004
    In his days, Gintoki is joined by Shinpachi Shimura, a teenager son of a samurai who wants to learn about him, and Kagura, an alien girl who went to Earth to earn money for her poor family, but is unable to return home and threatens Gintoki to let her live with him. While Kagura and Shinpachi live with Gintoki, they meet a terrorist named Kotaro Katsura who participated alongside Gintoki in the war between samurais and aliens, and lost. Odd Jobs is forced to help Katsura escape from the Shinsengumi, a police force working for the Bakufu, after they accidentally perform a terrorist attack. The volume ends with a one-shot from Sorachi named "Dandelion", which explores the work of a pair of exorcists.

Ibitsu


Haruto Ryo - 2018
    at the hands of none other than this twisted sister! And tonight, another man will fall prey to the horror...

Buddha, Vol. 1: Kapilavastu


Osamu Tezuka - 1972
    Tezuka evidences his profound grasp of the subject by contextualizing the Buddha’s ideas; the emphasis is on movement, action, emotion, and conflict as the prince Siddhartha runs away from home, travels across India, and questions Hindu practices such as ascetic self-mutilation and caste oppression. Rather than recommend resignation and impassivity, Tezuka’s Buddha predicates enlightenment upon recognizing the interconnectedness of life, having compassion for the suffering, and ordering one’s life sensibly. Philosophical segments are threaded into interpersonal situations with ground-breaking visual dynamism by an artist who makes sure never to lose his readers’ attention.Tezuka himself was a humanist rather than a Buddhist, and his magnum opus is not an attempt at propaganda. Hermann Hesse’s novel or Bertolucci’s film is comparable in this regard; in fact, Tezuka’s approach is slightly irreverent in that it incorporates something that Western commentators often eschew, namely, humor.

Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture, Vol. 1


Shimoku Kio - 2002
    Should he fulfill his long-cherished dream of joining an otaku club? Saki Kasukabe also faces a dilemma. Can she ever turn her boyfriend, anime fanboy Kousaka, into a normal guy? Kanji triumphs where Saki fails, when both Kanji and Kousaka sign up for Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture.Undeterred, Saki chases Makoto through various activities of the club, from cos-play and comic conventions to video gaming and collecting anime figures - all thew while discovering more than she ever wanted to know about the humorous world of the Japanese otaku!