Renaissance Josei

It's been a good long while since our last course.  Indeed, just enough time for Crunchyroll to clean out a bunch of Kodansha titles and replace them with a few more .   That just means that our manga palates have been nice and cleansed, just in time for the latest round of titles: COURSE EIGHT: LOVE THEORY, AS THE GODS WILL, & NANBAKA

t's been a while since we enjoyed our last sampler.  Since then, the number of manga on Crunchyroll just keeps growing, so the Crunchyroll Manga Sampler menu only grows bigger.  Today's trio is a rather dark and grim set of works.  In a way, it feels weirdly appropriate for the atmosphere of the world today.

Bookwalker  is one of the few digital manga sites of recent years that could be considered a success.  It started merely as a digital spinoff for Kadokawa with only a barely localized site and a handful of titles to its name.  These days they've got partnerships with Viz, Seven Seas, Yen Press, and other notable manga publishers and their digital manga offerings represent one of the biggest and most diverse selections to be found.  While digging around in their library, I found a trio of food-themed manga that practically begged to be examined for our most literal Manga Sampler yet. Bookwalker Manga Sampler: Ekiben Hitoritabi, Shiawase Restaurant & Seiwa High School Bento Club!

his might be the weirdest sampler we've looked at yet.  It's time to plumb the bottom of Crunchyroll's manga page a little for our latest Crunchyroll Manga Sampler: Course Six: Barom One, Takahashi-San Is Listening, & The Diary of Ochibi-San

We may be currently caught up in the dark, cold, bitter depths of winter, so what better way is there to pass the time than to stay in and read some digital manga?    After all, Crunchyroll added a few more series before the end of last year, so maybe we’ll get a chance to look at some of them!  

It's a new year and that means it's the perfect time to resolve to read more manga online! I hope you all saved some room after your holiday feasts and your New Year's Even drinks as we've got another Crunchyroll Manga Sampler of three very different series.

As I noted before on my review of  The Man of Tango , it's unusual that Viz took so long to get into the yaoi business. Still, you can't say that they haven't tried their hardest to distinguish their  SuBLime imprint  from yaoi publisers of the past. They've got a slick website with a fairly active social media presence. They've not only amassed a solid collection of original works in both print and ebook form, but a equally sizeable collection of digital license rescues. All their digital offerings are available for DRM-free download in all the standard e-book formats along with free previews of just about everything in an easy-to-search format. I'm genuinely impressed at how hard SuBLime has worked to push their distribution model into the 21 st  century at a time when so many manga publishers (including their parent company Viz) have struggled to do the same. That being said, I'm not here to talk about the site, but the works they have to offer. Than...

Once again, we've got another strange trio of titles to choose from with this course, ranging from shonen romance to seinen slice-of-life to a bit of corporate synergy. Let's serve up yet another course of the Crunchyroll Manga Sampler!

I swear I did not rig this week’s selection.    I just happened to get very lucky with the random number generator this time around.    That’s probably a good thing considering the rather eclectic offerings we’ll be looking at today.    Without further ado, let’s take a look at the second course:

Sometimes the simple act of choosing what to read can be daunting.   When you don’t have a clear idea in mind, a shelf of books can leave you feeling frustrated as you sort what looks good based on the cover art or your mood or whatever other sort of random criteria you want to choose.   Digital distribution sites are no different, which is how I found myself staring at Crunchyroll’s manga library one night, trying to decide just where to start.   That’s when a thought struck me: how many other people were out there having just the same problem as I was?   How many other people were staring at their screens, trying to decide which bit of cover art or which blurb sounded the most appealing?   Wouldn’t it be useful if someone could take a quick look at all of them and sort out which ones were worth anyone’s time? I knew then what I had to do. I set a couple of rules for myself early on.   First, I would look at the first volumes of three series at a time ...