For WWAC’s manga readers, 2022 has been a year of blood, guts and romance! Our top picks of the year include stories about vampires, high school sex-ed classes, and many more interesting and unusual stories that caught our attention and refused to let it go. And if you want to see what we loved in 2021, we have that too.
I Want to Be A Wall, Volume 1
Honami Shirono (art and story) Emma Schumacker (translation) Alexis Eckerman (lettering)
Yen Press
I already wrote a full review of it but I Want to Be A Wall is just so darned good. It’s joyous, so much fun, and balances serious topics with a light-hearted tone. If you want a slice-of-life story about a queer man married to an ace woman, both of whom are determined to care for each other to the best of their ability, read this book. It’s about caring regardless of your attraction to someone and it’s got lessons that anyone can learn from. Volume two comes out in January and I’ve just been waiting for it because I want to see where this married couple goes in the future and maybe get to learn a bit more about how they got to be together in the first place.
–Paulina Przystupa
Correspondence From The End Of The Universe, Volume 1
MENOTA
Seven Seas
Volume one of Correspondence from the End of the Universe is a swoon-worthy tale of a young man from Earth far from home learning that the most “alien” thing in the universe is –himself. When Marko, a college graduate about to leave home for the first time and travel the world with his lover, is abducted by aliens, his entire world is flipped upside down.
He’s stuck with a ten-year mission and while his new coworkers and boss are friendly and helping him adjust to a place far removed from Earth, he’s hopelessly homesick. Billed as a sci-fi workplace manga, Correspondence from the End of the Universe challenges its main character in everything he’s ever known from views of love from other planets to the simple but sacred creation of celestial bodies. At heart, it is a story about a young man’s longing for home and the dreams that are now on hold and the very human desire to get back to those, even if he’s several galaxies away.
– Carrie McClain
Sex Ed 120%, Volume 3
Kikiki Tataki (Story) Hotomura (Art)
Yen Press
This year brought the third and final volume of Sex Ed 120%. I was so sad to see the series end, but I loved every volume. In this manga series, a Health Teacher by the name of Tsuji-sensei strives in her mission to modernize sex education sections in the health class of the school she works. At. The story develops around this teacher, the school nurse and a few girls at school who take her lessons to heart. I especially loved this short series as it was the perfect blend of gag manga and educational with a femme lean.
From learning about how to use dental dams to explaining how harmful terrible stereotypes are, Sex Ed 120% never feels preachy and is so fun to read. Read this manga series to see not just the teen girls being supported but also for the budding romance between the two female teachers. Read this manga series for the random bits of trivia regarding sex and bodies–did you know that female sugar gliders have three vaginas? No? Now you do, be sure to pick up a copy because neither sex nor education is a simple binary and we all deserve more sex-positive manga!
– Carrie
The Poe Clan Vol. 2
Moto Hagio, translated by Rachel Thorn
Fantagraphics
Between Interview with the Vampire, What We Do in the Shadows, and First Kill, 2022 was the year to be a gay vampire. How fitting that, as queer creatures of the night flew onto our television screens, the long-awaited second volume of Moto Hagio’s The Poe Clan finally materialized out of the mist and onto our bookshelves. Originally serialized in 1975-76, The Poe Clan follows the golden-haired twins Edgar and Marybelle after they are inducted into an immortal clan of life-draining vampirnellas.
The episodic stories in this deluxe hardcover volume are packed with Gothic panache. In “The Last Will and Testament of Oswald, Earl Evans,” Edgar is stricken with amnesia and found by a wealthy family with connections to his past; in “Penny Rain,” Edgar turns his newest companion, Alan Twilight, into a vampirnella, with deadly results; and in “The Tale that Lambton Tells,” a series of priceless paintings risk exposing Edgar and Alan’s supernatural secret. Spanning roughly two hundred years, from the late 18th century to the then-contemporary 1970s, The Poe Clan has all the startling beauty of a giallo thriller directed by Aubrey Beardsley. Delicate and haunting, Moto Hagio’s manga masterpiece is an essential component of the vampire canon.
— Kayleigh Hearn
The Vampire and His Pleasant Companions, Volume 1
Marimo Ragawa (art) Narise Konohara (story)
Yen Press
The Vampire and His Pleasant Companions, created by Marimo Ragawa and Narise Konohara and published by Yen Press, starts with a meet-cute. In volume 1 we meet Al, a vampire who was not fully turned and thus cannot live a full life as a vampire or a human. He turns into a bat during the day and has no control over the transformation. An American from the midwest, Al survived by hiding near a meat factory and drinking the blood of slaughtered animals. However, he’s mistakenly frozen along with some meat, sent all the way to Japan, and discovered at night, naked and human, in another factory’s bathroom.
Through a series of further shenanigans Al, in bat form, is handed off to the anti-social Akira. The hand-off is literal; Akira holds bat-Al in his hands, and Al studies Akira’s handsome face closely until he gets a little bat blush. Akira, in turn, gives bat-Al flirtatious looks and gentle touches. Merriam-Webster defines a “meet cute” as “a cute, charming, or amusing first encounter between romantic partners,” and their first meeting is definitely cute, charming and amusing! It even involves meat.
Akira and Nukariya, Al’s other confidant, find joy, solace and—on Akira’s part, begrudgingly—acceptance within each other. At the beginning of volume 1 Al explains, “I pushed myself for two years trying to live like a human. In the third year I gave up and accepted the body I have.” This take on vampirism as disability is key to what makes this manga so freaking good. Vampirism in this story is a bodily condition that the world rejects, making it difficult for Al to function day-to-day without facing derision, discrimination and even incarceration. As the story progresses, Akira’s need to accept his own body is also revealed, and Al chooses to accept Akira, to complete the cycle of acceptance between them. This is love! Fighting against barriers to enable someone to live, pushing through one’s own assumptions and self-loathing to connect; all of these acts of love are present in The Vampire and His Pleasant Companions, an extraordinary and often gory manga about vampirism, disability, and the shocking intensity of human love and connection.
— Alenka Figa
Black and White: Tough Love at the Office, Volume 1
Sal Jiang
Seven Seas
Do you think all yuri manga is too soft and sweet and schoolgirl-ish? You should check out Black and White: a workplace lesbian comic that I hesitate to call a romance, given how the two leads resolve their sexual tension by hatefucking in the conference room. Not appropriate for all ages, this yuri. The rivalry between Shirakawa and Kuroda crackles with chemistry, and Jiang draws the two of them fighting and having sex with a specificity that makes the whole thing feel grounded, rather than the ethereal above-it-all purity older yuri comics often have. I also like how they’re both good at their jobs and have good relationships with their coworkers, who see them as reliable and helpful and sweet. The contrast between their public personas and how they beat each other up in private makes Black and White impossible to put down.
— Masha Zhdanova
Drip Drip by Paru Itagaki (VIZ Media)
I think Paru Itagaki should be allowed to draw whatever she wants forever. Drip Drip (which I discussed in a past Pubwatch) is incredibly weird, gross, and horny, much like her acclaimed longform series BEASTARS. But it’s also extremely interesting, and definitely a comic I will never forget reading. Drip Drip is about a woman so sensitive to germs that she gets a nosebleed every time she touches anything that isn’t 100% sterilized. She wants to find love and have sex, but every time she tries, her nosebleed scares men off and ruins the mood. When she finally finds a guy she thinks she can be with, it turns out he has dark secrets of his own. The single-volume story follows several of her attempts to rid herself of her curse, with a bonus unrelated one-shot about Santa Claus thrown in at the end.
Itagaki’s imagery and unusual choices of environments and locations make her comics very memorable: I haven’t reread this since October and I can still see the splash pages in my head like I’d read it yesterday. Itagaki and Tatsuki Fujimoto (of Chainsaw Man and Look Back fame) kind of occupy the same space in my head in their commitment to their singular, very specific vision. A kind of boldness I wish I were capable of.
— Masha Zhdanova
