Manga Monthly: Finish February with Fresh Picks

by Carrie Wood

We’re ready to turn the corner into spring here at Manga Monthly, and fortunately we have some great new volumes to cosy up to in the meantime! Take a look below at some of the highlights from the February PREVIEWS catalog, and be sure to preorder your favorites at your local comic shop!

Dark Horse gets us started this month with the second volume of Berserk: Deluxe Edition (FEB190389)! Kentaro Miura’s gorgeously violent adult fantasy is now available in a fabulous 7”x10” hardcover edition! Raised in torment, young Guts is hardened into a fearsome warrior, drawing the attention of the charismatic Griffith, commander of the elite Band of the Hawk. This crossroads will take Guts to fame and glory… and damnation! This edition collects volumes 4, 5 and 6 of Berserk.

Enjoy sci-fi? Then pick up the first volume of Heavenly Delusion (FEB192235) from Denpa! Masakazu Ishiguro returns to the science-fiction genre with a compelling tale of contrasting and potentially colliding worlds filled with their own unique horrors. Within the safety of the walls, youths are raised in a nursery setting by robots. Outside is a hellscape with powerful technology and equally powerful supernatural beings!

Kodansha has some brand-new series starting soon, including Witch Hat Atelier (FEB192285)! In a world where everyone takes wonders like magic spells and dragons for granted, Coco is a girl with a simple dream: She wants to be a witch. But everybody knows magicians are born, not made, and Coco was not born with the gift for magic. She's resigned to her un-magical life, until a traveling magician passes through her village, and Coco learns what what everybody "knows" might not be the truth.

Also making its debut is O Maidens in Your Savage Season (FEB192281), courtesy of Kodansha Comics! From the mind of Mari Okada (anohana) comes this moving, funny-yet-embarrassing coming-of-age story about high school girls. Kazusa was a quiet middle schooler, but she arrived in high school determined to make friends. So (as a huge Harry Potter fan) she decides to join the literature club. When one of the club's icebreakers is "say one thing you want to do before you die," one of the girls blurts out "sex." The prudish club president, the class beauty, and the other nerdy girls' reactions are wildly different. Far from a typical sex comedy, O Maidens in Your Savage Season depicts how these girls challenge and support one another when that word pushes them onto a variety of clumsy, funny, painful, and emotional paths towards adulthood.

Seven Seas Entertainment is gracing us with a new, award-winning autobiographical manga from Akiko Higashimura, the creator of Princess Jellyfish, with Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey (FEB192298)! High schooler Akiko has big plans to become a popular mangaka before she even graduates, but she needs to get much better at drawing if she ever wants to reach her goal. Looking for an easy fix, she signs up for an art class, thinking all her problems will soon be solved. She's in for a surprise: her new instructor is a sword-wielding taskmaster who doesn't care about manga one bit. But maybe this unconventional art teacher is just what she needs to realize her dreams!

Knights of Sidonia has been a sci-fi tour de force that manages to combine action and aesthetics, and now the series returns with the first volume of Knights of Sidonia: Master Edition (FEB192320) from Vertical Comics. This edition features larger print, colored inserts and omibused volumes. Each Master's Edition volume compiles 2 1/2 volumes of the original Knights of Sidonia volumes.

My Hero Academia has taken the world by storm, and now you can see your favorite heroes on their downtime with the first volume of My Hero Academia: School Briefs (FEB192175) from Viz Media! The U.A. High School hero course teaches young hopefuls everything they need to become heroes. Between killer events like the sports festival and internships, there's even parents' day! That's when all the kids get the chance to show their parents what they're made of!

For something a little more twisted, pick up Smashed: Junji Ito Story Collection (FEB192164), also being brought to you by Viz! Try not to be noticed when you eat the secret nectar, otherwise you'll get smashed... What horrific events happened to create the earthbound-people tied to a certain place for the rest of their short lives? Then, a strange haunted house comes to town, but no one expects it to lead to a real hell... Welcome to Junji Ito's world, a world with no escape from endless nightmares.

That’s it for this month, but we’ll be back before you know it with another edition of Manga Monthly. In the meantime, be sure to read through your copy of PREVIEWS in order to get a look at the full lineup of great new manga offerings headed your way!