Count_Zero (Level 20)

The last volume of Hayate the Combat Butler set out to setting up a new status quo for the series – by moving much of the action to Hakuou Academy. This installment sets this up a little further, by changing our big three locations from the Sanzenin Estate, the Saginomiya ...

It says a lot about how self-aware Hayate the Combat Butler is, that when the series starts a major arc (where a TV series would start a new season), it lampshades this by calling the chapter "If This Were an Anime, the Opening Would Change!"That title could basically be the ...

Hayate The Combat Butler's third volume puts it strongly in the position of the "Light Beer" of comedy manga. The volume has a lot of one-shot little stories, and a brief over-arching plot, but doesn't get too ambitious. While this means the reach of the series doesn't exceed its grasp, ...

Red Hot Chili Samurai is a manga that feels like it's not sure what it wants to be. The manga follows samurai Kokaku Sento as he fights various criminals in rural Japan during the Shogunate. Kokaku's strength and weakness is his dependance on hot peppers, which he eats regularly, and ...

In the anime portions of Gainax's OVA series Otaku No Video, there's a sequence where the main character is being shown the various types of Otaku that the members of his friend's club are part of. There's the vehicle and mecha otaku, who is a geek about engines and how ...

When it comes to gag manga that aren't 4-Koma, you have three ways you can take the manga - you can go for a bunch of stand-alone one-shot gags, you can try for some over-arcing plot, or you can find some middle ground. Most comedy manga tend to pick the latter ...

When it comes to manga, the first volume is tough. You have to introduce a boatload of important characters, quickly flesh them out, set up your overarching plot line (if you have one), and keep everyone interested. If you're doing a comedy manga, then you also have to be funny.  Fortunately, ...

This is adapted from a review I wrote from Bureau42.com When you're creating a magic system for fiction, it's important to lay out some rules. If you don't have rules, then characters can do whatever the heck they want, which can ultimately make the story boring, as if they can ...

One of the nice things about manga, comics, and Sci-Fi/(Urban) Fantasy in general (Anime and Manga included) is that it makes for a good medium for serious social commentary. Anime and Manga perhaps is famous for including philosophical and geopolitical commentary in series and shows fairly often. However, this commentary ...

Tokyo Babylon is something of a spiritual successor to X/1999. So, when I decided to start reading that series, I wanted to get a bit of a primer from CLAMP's earlier work.  That said, while Volume 1 of Tokyo Babylon gets off to a good start from a narrative standpoint. From ...

I've previously reviewed the original manga of Magic Knight Rayearth on Bureau42, and this review is adapted from a review I did at Bureau42 of the full series. Usually, when a manga gets adapted to an animated series, the pacing suffers some. Either the studio runs out of manga and to ...

 The Macross franchise, thanks to the success of the late Carl Macek and others at turning it into Robotech, is one of the most successful gateway franchises in anime. Unfortunately, because the rights to to ownership of the series can best be described as in a state of confusion, only ...

 In the prior volume of X/1999, we were introduced to Kotori, Fuma, and Kamui, three teenagers with entangled fates, with the world's ultimate destiny in their hands. In this volume, we learn a bit more about the three's back-story, and why Kamui had to leave in a hurry with his ...

 When I first started reading manga in High School, one of the creators whose works I read a lot of was Masamune Shirow's work, mainly Ghost in the Shell, with a little bit of Appleseed as well. With that sense of nostalgia in mind, I watched Shinji Aramaki's adaptation of ...

 While I'd consider Tokyo Babylon the first of CLAMP's urban fantasy series, it's certainly not the best known. That title falls upon X, known in the United States as X/1999. The first volume of the series follows Kamui, Kotori and Fuma. Kotori and Fuma are siblings, a brother and sister ...