The Otaku Exhibition

Tag: manga

  • The New Kaguya-sama: Love is War

    Written and Illustrated by Ran Kuze Published by Weekly Shonen Magazine Licensed by Kodansha USA In 2022, we lost the best rom com in manga. I’ve written about the series numerous times, and yet I’m struggling to find the works to eulogize one of the greatest stories ever written. There is peak fiction, and then…

  • I’m Obsessed with Blue Lock

    Every season, I pick up a couple of volumes of manga, in an effort to learn a bit more about the anime I’m going to review. It’s how I got into Horimiya, The Case Study of Vanitas, and more, but this time, something was different. When I took that first volume of Blue Lock off…

  • What’s Up with Attack on Titan’s Weird Fascist Cult?

    I’m about to discuss the ending of Attack on Titan, spoiling everything that the Final Season Part Three (no, for real guys, it’s the final final part) will cover. So, if you’re not caught up or willing to get spoiled, beware. There has been this bizarre divide in the fan base for a while now.…

  • Demon Slayer is Mid Except for the Animation

    You’ve heard it before. I lamented that you can’t go five minutes on the dumb bird app without someone saying Demon Slayer would be forgettable if not for Ufotable’s work on the series. I’ve pushed back against that line of thinking pretty much for the entire time I’ve spent writing on this blog, in an…

  • Why is Manga Better Than Anime?

    I started writing this essay a few months back, under the title Why I Love Manga, as something of a love letter to the medium. I’d have kept the name, but you know, rage-clicks pay the bills, so here we are. Kidding…mostly. The title’s only a little bit clickbait! Whenever I have a second to…

  • Horimiya is STILL the Best Rom Com

    It’s been quite some time since I last talked about Horimiya, in a way. Last year around this time, I lauded the anime adaptation’s ability to trim the excess and give itself a breakneck pace that separates it apart from other romance anime. However, in another, truer sense, I also talked about Horimiya in January,…

  • What Makes The Best Anime Protagonist?

    Last year, I wrote an essay on Lelouch, explaining how Code Geass created what I believe to be the best protagonist in anime, and I got a fair amount of disagreement from peers and readers. I mean, it’s a subjective question, but any time I’m confronted by our nature to needlessly debate that which is…

  • Chainsaw Man is the Perfect Shonen

    Chainsaw Man ages like fine wine. It feels like not too long ago that I read Chainsaw Man as it was serializing, and while I enjoyed it, I wasn’t blown away. I’m aware of what that says about me; perhaps I was simply inexperienced in analyzing manga, and what makes one truly great. It seemed…

  • Blue Box Review: Shonen Jump’s Sports Romcom Scores

    Art and Story by Koji Miura All chapters available on the Shonen Jump app I’ve been doing my best to catch more manga in the early stages so it feels like I’m actually reviewing a new series, not just what’s out there and popular. Unfortunately, that’s pretty hard if you’re not fluent in Japanese; by…

  • Kaiju No. 8 Review: Oh, No, There Goes Tokyo

    Art and Story by Naoya Matsumoto All chapters available on the Shonen Jump app For nearly 70 years, kaiju have been one of Japan’s most significant cultural exports. The precise cultural importance of creations like Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidora has been lost in translation, but the world at large has no qualms about enjoying…