Happy belated New Year everyone! Today is our first batch of NetGalley reviews. We have several to get through so let's just get into it.
I received free review copies from the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.
Title: Dogs and Punching Bags
Author/Illustrator: Kaori Ozaki
Rating: 4/5
Published by Kodansha and available January 21, 2025,
Dogs and Punching Bags is a seinen manga following a woman's return to her small town home after heartbreak and her growing relationship with a strange young man with a tragic past. The rural setting is charming and captures the small town life where everyone knows everyone -- for better or for worse -- and the romance between the two leads is well done. This standalone volume will appeal to fans of rural settings, dramatic slice of life storytelling, as well as complex relationships and hopeful endings.
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Title: Fall in Love, You False Angels, Vol. 1
Author/Illustrator: Coco Uzuki
Rating: 3/5
Published by Kodansha and available February 11, 2025, Fall In Love, You False Angels is a shojo high school romance. I was interested because the summary likened it to Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, which I do like. This series follows two perfect model students who both have secret, darker sides. I don't think this part is very well represented, all they do with their other sides is be more assertive (while still being good) and I may be missing some cultural context but I just think that part of the story is rather underdeveloped. The art is really nice and the characters overall are cute and likeable, so maybe time will bring out more of their characterization. This is, after all, just the first volume.
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Title: Medieval Cats: Claws, Paws, and Kitties of Yore
Author: Catherine Nappington
Rating: 2/5
Published by Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press and available March 4, 2025, Medieval Cats immediately caught my eye as a medievalist and cat lover. And I really wanted to like this book, but several things hold it back. First and most egregious is its disregard for what the Middle Ages actually is. While the book itself places the Middle Ages between 500 and 1500 CE, which is a good estimate a lot of people use, it then ignores that and includes references to Shakespeare and even Isaac Newton, neither of whom were medieval. The images are properly cited fortunately, but there are no endnotes or other citations (at least in the ARC). I also couldn't find anything about the author (whose name I suspect is a pseudonym) and that bugs me. Overall it's got some good information about cats in the medieval period, but it's also unfocused and falls into the usual "Medieval means anything before the Industrial Revolution" folly so many non-academic things do.
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Title: I Want To Love You Till Your Dying Day, Vol. 1
Author/Illustrator: Nachi Aono
Rating: 2/5
Published by Kodansha and available February 18, 2025, I Want to Love You Till Your Dying Day is a yuri (girl's love) manga with an interesting premise -- a boarding school that trains magical girls for combat. It made me think of a bit of the controversial Elfin Lied, which was also of the Cute Girls Being Killing Machines genre. This series is just getting its start in English and this is the first volume but I wasn't particularly impressed. The worldbuilding leaves a lot to be desired (what are they fighting and why?) and the bits of the magic system that are explained are dubious at best. The big act of magic shown is transferring mana via kissing, which since this is a yuri manga is of course an excuse for girls to kiss, which wouldn't be an issue if one of the main characters wasn't said to be ten years old. This is on top of a trans or gender non-conforming character being called a "pervert teacher" multiple times, a stereotype that needs to end. Needless to say I'm not impressed, though the character design is cute.
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Title: Mujina Into the Deep, Vol. 1
Author/Illustrator: Inio Asano
Rating: 3/5
Published by Viz Media and available February 18, 2025, Mujina Into the Deep is the latest series from acclaimed mangaka Inio Asano, author of Goodbye Punpun. The summary caught my attention -- "In the near future, human rights aren't guarenteed, but they are for sale," especially since currently in my home country of the US human rights are very much up for debate. In this world, rights come with strict government control and people living outside these rights and control are called "mujina" (Japanese for badger). It is an interesting setup and I wonder how the story will develop for the main mujina, Ubume. I will say the constant sex is a little gratuitous and distracting, but the action is cool. It's rated M by Viz for some very good reasons. Because of how explicit it is I probably won't order it for my public library, but I am curious as to how it will turn out so I'll probably continue reading myself.
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Title: RuriDragon, Vol. 1
Author: Masaoki Shindo
Rating: 5/5
Published by Viz Media and available January 7, 2025,
RuriDragon is a shonen series I've been super excited for ever since I read the first chapter on Shuesha's Manga Plus app. Almost as soon as I started reading I was telling our teen manga selector that they need to get it for the collection. The premise is simple. Ruri Aoki wakes up one morning to find horns growing out of her head, and her mother reveals nonchalantly that the girl's absent father is a dragon. Ruri is an adorable character and her struggles with her new life are relatable to readers her age, half-dragon or not, like changing bodies and trying to fit in with peers. I think teen readers will really like this one. The art is cute and the story is just a nice slice of life thing about learning to live with unexpected developments in your life, a well as opening up to support from others-- because your friends really do want to help you.
