Mayumi OKABE

The X Button - Machine Music
Todd gazes upon tri-Ace's End of Eternity, Dream C Club, the latest and possibly last Guilty Gear XX upgrade, a Bastard!! game, and all sorts of heavy-metal references. 2009-04-15

RIGHT TURN ONLY!! - Samurai Dunk
With the NBA playoffs right around the corner, it's time for another review of Slam Dunk! Or maybe Samurai 7 is more your style? Others might gravitate toward High School Debut. Come on in and find something you like! 2009-04-14

Shelf Life - Spring Cleaning
Spring cleaning reveals some titles that have been swept under the rug over the months.
- Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan
- Kyo Kara Maoh v.2.9
- Nerima Daikon Brother complete
- Rocket Girls complete
2009-04-13

Astro Toy with Rob Bricken: Kingdom Hearts Play Arts Vol. 2
Rob fails to contain his joy over Square Enix's latest batch of Kingdom Hearts figures. 2009-04-12

The Gallery - Rebecca Barnes
An up-and-coming fantasy artist talks about the hectic world of Gaia commissions, self-study, and how to kill time in rural Michigan by picking up an art hobby. 2009-04-11

Lovely Complex GN 10
Against all odds, this series still manages to pull out moments of bouncy comedy and deliciously heartwarming romance—even when everything starts to look despairingly familiar.

Menkui! GN 1-3
The manga's protagonist Kotori is much too ordinary and too unmemorable a hero or lover to be the embodiment of an untranslated Japanese word "menkui." Better—or should I say worse?—to say that Suzuki Tanaka's first multi-part series itself is “menkui,” a manga of appalling stunted scope and pinched ambitions.

Bleach GN 26
This is the average shounen-action training arc done exactly by the book, and it almost runs the entire series into the ground.

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order -Angel Goes Nova GN 10
Despite getting too ridiculous for its own good and seeming to be running short on ideas, this series still kicks butt on the artistic front and still tells a solid story. Above all, it still has Alita, and she is back, front and center, where she should be.

Love Pistols GN 1-3
Perversity in one's choice of manga reading material, if Tarako Kotobuki's Love Pistols is any indication, is a habit that, enjoyed once, may well become permanently addictive.

Baccano! DVD 2
Can a series that sometimes gets tremendously gory also be tremendously fun? This one seems intent on proving that a series can be both. Its plethora of converging story threads, combined with the ongoing antics of Isaac and Miria, make watching this an involving and highly entertaining experience.

Akihabara@DEEP GN 2
Much of volume two of Akihabara@DEEP takes place in the world of a fictionalized MMORPG world, but if you think you are merely in for a hackneyed version of .hack, you are in for the surprise of your life: One of the top manga series first published in English in 2008 is getting even better.

Ghost Slayers Ayashi DVD Part 1
A novel hybrid of adventure and education: call it a monster-bashing kanji lesson.

Psychic Power Nanaki GN 1-3
Psychic Power Nanaki is a series that you should feel safely empowered to avoid entirely.

Darker than BLACK DVD 3
It's just a shame that Tensai Okamura and his raft of talented collaborators couldn't swing something better than “good enough.”

Jinki:Extend DVD 2
Although it still has a cute look, enough mecha action to satisfy mecha action junkies, and some decent story elements, this volume suffers too much from its overly-condensed story and poor execution in key dramatic scenes.