"A good fight should be like a small play, but played seriously. A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract. When he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, I do not hit. It hits all by itself." "Enter the Dragon" I do really hate how the English in this cover is cut off halfway... Just add those last few letters on the front side... Imoriya Mato is a high school student who at first sight might appear to be a somewhat self-absorbed girl who's good at playing cute in ..read more

"I have looked upon all that the universe has to hold of horror, and even the skies of spring and the flowers of summer must ever afterward be poison to me." "The Call of Cthulhu" There are good covers, there are great covers, and there are absolutely amazing covers. When Amy Griffith was young, she used to play with fairies at the prehistoric standing stone monument in her home town. She was caught on photograph talking to a mysterious light by a newspaper reporter, and briefly became known as the Fairy Girl, but later the adults assumed she must have lied or just imagined things. But about a ..read more

"Our readers are children! Millions of bloodthirsty little kids, and we give them what they want!" "Ellery Queen: The Adventure of the Comic Book Crusader" This might the first time since I started doing reviews of both the Detective Conan manga and films that I managed to get the film review out before the corresponding manga volume... Detective Conan volume 105 was released in April 2024, timed together with the release of the 2024 film Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram and it also serves as the very first volume released as part of this anniversary year, as the manga of Detecti ..read more

"The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death." "Salomé" I have to admit, I had heard of the term "Dance of the Seven Veils" before, but never knew it came from Salome! Set in the Taisho era (1912-1924), Yuuki Haruo's Salome no Guillotine ("Salome's Guillotine", 2024) starts with the Dutchman Cornelis van Lodewick receiving a letter from the Japanese painter Iguchi Sakuta. Van Lodewick hails from a prominent family in the Netherlands, but during his father's generation, the family had some financial problems, forcing them to sell some of the art they owned. A table clock Cornelis ..read more

Meeting you with a view to a kill Face to face in secret places, feel the chill "A View to a Kill" (Duran Duran) This is actually the first post I have written in over four months... Detective Conan manga & movies: Part 1: Volumes 1 ~ 10 Part 2: Volumes 11~20; The Timebombed Skyscraper (1) / The Fourteenth Target (2) Part 3: Volumes 21~30; The Last Wizard of the Century (3) / Captured in Her Eyes (4) Part 4: Volumes 31~40; Countdown to Heaven (5) / The Phantom of Baker Street (6) Part 5: Volumes 41~50; Crossroad in the Ancient Capital (7) / Magician of the Silver Sky (8) / Strategy Above t ..read more

All living things Into the spiral "Spiral" (Garnet Crow) And that wraps up another series... Over the course of about a year, I have reviewed the spinoff novels of Spiral ~ Suiri no Kizuna or Spiral ~ The Bonds of Reasoning, a mystery(-themed) manga created by writer Shirodaira Kyou and artist Mizuno Eita which ran from 1999 until 2005. Each of the novels I had discussed until now followed the same structure: one novella, featuring a completely original adventure with series protagonist Ayumu, and two shorter stories which were originally published online, which focused on Ayumu's big brother ..read more

Chance chance Chance Chance Catch your dream tonight   『Chance』（神谷明） "Chance"(Kamiya Akira) This is one of those books I got "started on" like three different times, every time reading the same first few pages again and me only really getting into the right mood the last time, but it went pretty fast once I got past that first part. Disclosure: I translated Yamaguchi Masaya's Death of the Living Dead. Mystery novelist Hiwatari Miyabi is one day driving along the highway, when there's an explosion at the nearby nuclear powerplant in Komaura. While he is quite some distance away, he can't ..read more

“I learned (what I suppose I really knew already) that one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back—that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a One Way Street, isn’t it?”  "At Bertram's Hotel" Now I think about it, it's been a while sinec I last stayed in a hotel... It was Kujuu Masanosuke who made the Palace Side Hotel into one of the biggest and most succesful in Tokyo. While the hotel started out modestly as the Palace Hotel with only about fifty rooms, Kujuu's aggressive, but inspired leadership led to the organization growing into a gigantic 35-floo ..read more

So when in tears ] The love of years  Is wasted like the snow "The Forest Reverie" I think this is the first time I read a "general" fiction book by publisher Tokuma, all the other Tokuma books I ever read where Ghibli-related... Kaji Tatsuo (1928-1990) was a mystery author who debuted in the fifties of the previous century and basically kept on writing until his death in 1990. Publisher Tokuma started re-publishing some of his books in their label Tokuma's Selection about two or three years ago, and these books have pretty interesting covers, which was what first caught my attention. I ..read more

「俺の名を言ってみろ」 『北斗の拳』   "Say my name!" "Fist of the North Star" As I write this review, I also looked back at the older reviews for this series and it's absolutely insane how this series manages to maintain this incredibly high level of quality throughout. Toujou Genya series 1) Majimono no Gotoki Tsuku Mono ("Those Who Bewitch Like The Evil Spirits", 2006) 2) Magatori no Gotoki Imu Mono ("Those Who Are A Taboo Like The Malicious Bird", 2006) 3) Kubinashi no Gotoki Tataru Mono ("Those Who Cast A Curse Like The Headless", 2007)  4) Yamanma no Gotoki Warau Mono ("Those Who Sneer Like The ..read more