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   live up to the potential of volume 1.  Some really bad storytelling, multiple   
   wordy infodumps that grind things to a stop, and what I initially thought was   
   a flashback but turned out to be "present day" events compressed into a few   
   pages.  It felt like what happens when a continuing series has a movie   
   special, and the regular series just does a quick recap to fit the movie into   
   the storyline...but there was no editor's note or other indication that there   
   was a full story to be had.  Dropping this series now.  (A bit of salt in the   
   wound that in making sure I didn't get the ebook, I accidentally got a   
   hardcover version I didn't know even existed, so paid twice as much for this   
   dross.)  Avoid.  Hardcover $24.99/$35.99Cn, paperback about half that.   
      
        Touring After the Apocalypse vol 2-3: Yen Press - Picked up hardcopy of   
   #1 too.  Note, the cultural footnotes would be a LOT more useful if the pages   
   were consistently numbered.  There's maybe ten pages total in each volume   
   with a page number.  Maybe that's a flaw in the translation, preferring   
   larger art at full bleed and trimming most of the page numbers, but it does   
   render the notes page kinda unhelpful.  Anyway, the crumbling chamber of   
   commerce stuff continues without any further contact with organic humans   
   (there was an uploaded human in vol 1), but some hazards such as wildlife   
   that no longer fears humans and leftover AI weapons that no longer recognize   
   civilians.  Hints of the nature of the apocalypse continue to be dropped, but   
   I get the feeling that the author has no interest in resolving this any time   
   soon...Youko and Airi know what happened (or at least think they do) and   
   never really feel the need to discuss it for the reader's benefit.  One   
   mystery they do seem to have is the matter of Youko's eerily realistic dreams   
   that seem more like memories of her big sister's life.  Volume 3 even ends   
   with a touch of magical realism that suggests AI might have ghosts.  There's   
   a lot of directions this could go, not all of them satisfying (I reallllly   
   hope it isn't "this is all a simulation/dream and there's been no   
   apocalypse"), but this is very literally and overtly about the journey rather   
   than the destination, so I'll stick with it for at least three more volumes   
   (which is what's out at the moment).  Recommended.  $13.00/$17.00Cn, Rated   
   Teen LV (some wildlife violence and the implication of mass death in the   
   past)   
      
        Shy vol 11: Yen Press - Shy needs to stay out of the public eye because   
   it's clear she's being specifically targeted, and the irony is palpable,   
   because now she WANTS to be in the public eye helping people.  Other heroes   
   help cover Japan as the villains seek to draw her out, while she experiments   
   with the new wind powers she inherited from the ninja sister in the Tokyo   
   arc.  There is a strong suggestion that the rings that empower the villains   
   were not created by their leader so much as found and corrupted by him,   
   beyond the mere fact that Shy has a cleansed ring now.  The art is slowly   
   getting better in terms of portraying action without being confusing...or   
   maybe I'm just getting used to Miki's style.  I do think the "Shy needs to   
   stay out of sight" thing was a little forced, especially since one of the   
   villains seemed to come for her civilian ID in vol 10, but it's possible that   
   this seemingly inappropriate tactic is a hint of a deeper game.  Or the   
   author might just be having a rough patch in the plotting.  Mildly   
   recommended.  $13.00/$17.00Cn, Rated Teen LV (still not seeing any rough   
   language, I am starting to wonder if Yen Press just slaps that on everything   
   to be safe)   
      
        Isekai Samurai vol 2: Yen Press - Okay, volume 1 set up the premise and   
   some of the fairly-generic LitRPG world.  This volume does a bit more setup,   
   including laying out the rules of magic (mostly, it seems, so that when   
   someone violates them almost immediately it's a sign that they're a Big   
   Deal). But this volume is mostly about setting up three (or maybe two, I   
   suspect the first two are connected) conflicts to carry through the series on   
   various scales.  The first involves the greedy jerk "hero" briefly shown in   
   volume 1, and her path crosses Ginko's...well, the path of Ginko's   
   ARROW...this volume.  Suffice to say it is not a great friend-making   
   opportunity, and she's at the very least going to be a long term problem for   
   Ginko and her friends.  The second is a larger scale threat, in that someone   
   has been boosting the power of monsters and giving them intel on when the   
   capital city is easiest to attack.  It is during her work to deal with such   
   an attack that Ginko makes an impression on the greedy hero.  A deep   
   impression.  Some of that V in the rating below is involved, by accident,   
   honest.  Anyway greedy hero might be the one behind the attack, creating   
   opportunities for money-making, but she might also be completely innocent of   
   this, in which case there might be a later rapprochement between her and   
   Ginko.  Still, regardless of how that all plays out, it's small potatoes   
   compared to the HUGE, ontological conflict established in this volume.  Ginko   
   has an insanely solid ethical code (as she demonstrates this volume), but   
   it's a code developed in a world where there are no "monsters."  This is the   
   sort of LitRPG world where there are thinking beings called monsters who are   
   due no particular ethical consideration, as opposed to people (humans, elves,   
   dwarves, etc) who are.  Will Ginko find this problematic?  Perhaps, but she's   
   too busy shocking the hell out of everyone with the fact she will kill PEOPLE   
   under rigidly defined circumstances.  This world does not have war between   
   People races, just People against Monsters and vice versa.  Mass-murderers do   
   exist, of course, but the idea of a "good person" who would ever kill another   
   human is anathema.  At the end of the volume, Ginko is set up to fight a Hero   
   of Justice rather than submit to imprisonment, but her existence is going to   
   rock civilization to its core if she gets away with being a hundred-killer.   
   On the one hand, a silly and frothy (if some of that froth is bloody)   
   Groo-like fight story.  On the other hand, it's not like Groo stories are   
   without depth (even if Groo himself tends to be), and the creator of this   
   series seems eager to tackle some hard moral issues raised in fantasy warrior   
   stories.  Recommended.   $14.00/$18.50Cn, Rated Older Teen LV (lots of   
   spraying blood, and this DOES have some foul language, mostly from the greedy   
   hero antagonist)   
      
        Cat + Crazy vol 2: Dark Horse Manga - So, in volume 1 it was possible   
   that "sensei" was just a highly trained weirdo, and it was even plausible   
   that this took place in the same world as Cat + Gamer.  This volume it   
   becomes clear that magic is real and there's multiple shadowy international   
   organizations focused on cats, even if the average person lives a life much   
   like our own without any certain knowledge of all of this.  The tone is kinda   
   like Yu-Gi-Oh, but with cats instead of card games.  As if to lampshade that   
   these worlds are separate, there's an implication that Cat + Gamer is   
   actually fiction within this world, as an actress featured in one story is   
   apparently going to play the C+G protagonist in a movie.  All that aside, it   
   continues the C+G tradition of talking about real cat behaviors and   
   psychology, as part of the protagonist's training involves working at a   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)