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RightStufAnime.com is the #1 dedicated manga and anime online retailer in the US. In my opinion, they are the best in terms of balancing price, quality of packaging, and speed of processing orders. I rarely buy from amazon anymore, because Rightstuf beats them hands down in terms of sales, and their careful packaging is so much better than amazon these days.

That being said I would note a few things about Rightstuf:

• Prices: Rightstufanime.com has everyday sale prices of 25% off. You can also get a 10% off coupon just for signing up for their mailing list. Then they have recurring publisher sales (ex. all Viz published items on sale) of 33% off on a cycle around the year with a different publisher every week. 
• Their biggest sales every year are in the summer, the Birthday Sale and their Winter/Holiday Sale starting around Black Friday every year. During their biggest sales, the prices can get as good as 47% off on bundle deals!
• Free Shipping: Rightstuf has free shipping in the US on orders over $75. It's great for when you want to buy a whole series or such at the same time. It's not so great for buying individual books one at a time. Also, they offer free shipping to Canada at over $250, but I've heard that unless you can get together and put together a group order with friends or something then other Canadian based retailers like Indigo.ca or sites like BookDepository (they have free international shipping) are cheaper.
• They also offer international shipping at around the actual cost. I wouldn't recommend buying internationally from them unless you are buying Rightstuf exclusives. Odds are that manga retailers in your own country or closer will be cheaper.
• Covid Shipping Times, Preorders and Out of Stock
• The pandemic has wrecked havoc on the supply chain worldwide, and manga is no exception. This is making package transit times increase, and it's also been delaying and pushing back preorder dates. Plus many popular manga have been cycling in and out of stock as the printers struggle to keep up with the high demand. 
• Rightstuf does preorders and out of stock orders in a queue system. So the sooner you place your order, the higher up in the queue you will be when it is restocked.
• If you order with a credit card, your preorders and out of stock orders don't get charged until they ship. Paypal orders get charged right away. Also note if your order is a mix of in-stock and out-of-stock or preorders to reach the free shipping threshold, the whole order might be held until the out of stock items or preorders are available.
• Manga Quality Control by the Publishers/Printers has slipped a bit in recent years.  This isn't Rightstuf's fault, but now it's now fairly common to get very minor manufacturing defects on many new manga, such as small nicks, dents and bumps. If you are very particular about your new manga being flawless, you're better off buying it from sellers who can provide pictures of the books before you buy it. More information on quality control here.

• Rightstuf also has cheap shipping insurance available through Route. For a few bucks you can replace anything that has been lost, stolen off the porch or damaged during shipping. It's really worth it imo.

Manga Deal: Pandora Hearts Boxset Available in US/Canada for a limited time

https://yenpress.com/9781975339951/pandorabox/

If you want to collect the Pandora Hearts Manga Boxset, there is a limited reprint of the Omnibus collection rare boxset only being sold directly through the Yen Press website. It will likely not be available at other retailers, and once it's sold out, that will probably be it. Shipping to USA and Canada only. Last time they printed this, it went out of stock fairly quickly so if you want it, grab it soon.

Blog Revamp and Updates Coming

I know it's been a long time since my last update. Even though I was getting a good amount of traffic for a new blog on the days that I updated back then, I felt like my reviews fell short of what I wanted them to be. They weren't quite as consistent and as helpful as I wanted, but it took me a long time to figure out where I felt I was falling short. But I'm finally back and I am planning to implement a number of changes to this blog soon:

• The Tier List will be reordered with Letter Grades instead of Numbers. I think this popularity ranking system will be easier to understand for new readers to the blog. (Ex. SS, S, A, B, C, D, E)
• Review Format Revamp: I took a long break to try and figure out how to improve my review format. Some reviews were too long, others were too short. I also felt like in my desire to avoid being like those highly opinionated manga reviews out that I might have gone too far sometimes and written my reviews too impersonally. I'll still note what the popular consensus says, but I will be adding my own opinions as well.
• New Reviews: I never stopped reading manga this whole time, and there are a ton of new reviews coming. They will be added in between fixing up the old reviews to the new format.
• Star Ratings: I will also be adding breakdown star ratings as a quick summary.
• Interior Art Examples: I wanted to add these before, and now I finally have a scanner and can add these.
• Art Reviews: I will add short reviews for how popular the art style is among the majority of readers and note major highlights or drawbacks of the art.
• More Collector's Notes: I will be adding more notes for things Manga Collectors care about in the notes. Stuff like Spine Logos, Editions, Box Sets, Color Pages, Differences in translation and etc.
• Manga Sales and Deals. Also planning on adding a list of recommended online stores and revamp the Digital section.

Cage of Eden (Rank 2)

Publisher: Kodansha

Volumes: 21/21 (Complete), In Print

Shounen

Genre: Survival Horror, Ecchi, Scifi

Summary: Have you ever wished your life would change? Akira Sengoku feels overshadowed by his childhood friend, Rion Akagami, who is top at gymnastics and one of the hottest girls in his school. And his best friend Kohei Arita is an ace volleyball player, and tall and good looking. Meanwhile Akira is not particularly good at anything. All of them, plus his entire grade from school are returning from a school trip to Guam on an airplane, when suddenly disaster strikes and the plane crash-lands on a jungle island. Only they soon discover it’s no ordinary island, as they are attacked by creatures that should be extinct! What’s more, the island isn’t on any map! Akira was never good at anything before, but he’s brave, quick thinking and good at winning the trust of others. Is now finally his chance to shine? And what’s up with this crazy island?

Plot Overview: As the story starts, Akira wakes up in the jungle and finds himself separated from the others, but soon meets up with class nerd Mariya and flight attendant Ms. Ohmori. They search for the plane crash site only to find out that although the plane landed safely, the place is deserted and the captain of the plane was murdered. They meet with Rion, Akira’s childhood friend who tells them what happened and how everything descended into chaos and everyone left in groups.

They stay at the crash site for the night for shelter, but giant anteater-like creatures descend on the plane and try to get inside. Akira lights the plane on fire to scare the creatures away and rescue the others. With the plane ruined, they are forced to look for a new safe place for shelter, while they also look for other survivors and try and convince them to work together while fending  off attacks from various other creatures.

Volumes 2-10: Initially the story seems like it’s heading towards a bloodbath as a number of survivors from the crash have gone crazy and are out to show the others that the only rule of survival on the island is the survival of the fittest. And meanwhile, they fend off attacks with varying success from various deadly creatures. But Akira and his group believe that their best chances of survival lie in working together and combining their strengths and they try to convince the others they meet to join them. 

Volume 10-20, the story takes a notable shift as they meet another like minded group while checking out a mysterious man-made structure of some kind in the center of the island. From that point on they have gathered enough people to form a small village, and they organize themselves into making a safe settlement to live in. While they create further expeditions to investigate the other man-made structures on the island, things climax to a big showdown between their group and a stronger group led by a ruthless man who rules through fear and paranoia.

Volume 21: Ending

Review: Overall I thought Cage of Eden had some great strong points, but also a number of parts where the story fell short, too. On the plus side, I thought it was really cool to see a survival horror series where they are trying to survive pitted against various extinct animals other than dinosaurs. Don’t misunderstand me, Dinosaurs are cool and I’ll still watch/read those anytime. But while there are literally dozens of stories out there with man vs. dinosaurs, other extinct animals get curiously neglected in fiction. I always thought it was strange, because there are literally tons of other various bizarre creatures in our fossil records and many of them were just as fearsome and dangerous as Dinosaurs. Anyway some of the extinct animals featured in the manga were really fascinating and terrifying, especially that freaky long-armed bear is going to haunt my dreams. 

As an out of civilization survival horror story goes, it’s surprisingly wholesome. There are many times the series seems to be veering towards murder sprees, but thankfully most of them don’t come to pass. The majority of the deaths actually happen due to the attacks by the extinct animals and the harsh environment and not so much due to murder. As well, the series also has major themes about the virtues of good leadership, teamwork, friendship, and love and overall it isn’t as cynical as I expected from the beginning.

That being said, I was also disappointed how overall the characterization of all of the characters, even the main characters, are all fairly shallow. A lot of the characters can have their personalities summed up into something simple, like computer nerd, delinquent with a heart of gold, optimistic girl and etc. etc. And sorry to say that they all do not grow that much beyond their initial character specs either. Sometimes I felt like forgiving the author since there are about 10 main characters and dozens of minor characters, and it’s clear he wanted the focus to be on the setting and the situation. But other times when he tried to write deeper characters, a lot of times, it just didn’t work very well. Still, the setting and the overall plot was still interesting enough on it’s own to keep reading, so I didn’t mind that much.

The teen girls and the women fare even worse in characterization than the guys, to the point where the series reads fairly sexist. Many Shounen manga have significant female readership, so usually they will add a few girls as main characters who are equals to the guys, and have their own stories. But not so much here, where the guys are almost always solely in the spotlight, and nearly all the girls and women are just there as potential romantic interests. The women and the girls are there to get ogled, lose their clothes and get rescued over and over again. And yet strangely enough, somehow there is very little romance happening in this series. For the longest time Akira and Rion don’t get any closer in their relationship, despite many nudges from fate and helpful advice from the others. And it’s not a harem at all until towards the end, when suddenly all the girls decide they like Akira, which was dumb.

The first half of the manga is about survival and overall, this part was the best. The plots are pretty varied as they face threats, human and nonhuman. They learn a lot about the strange environment they’ve been forced to live in, struggle to adapt and there’s a sort of debate about who should be in charge and how they should be organized. Then the second half of the series is focused very strongly on solving the mystery behind the island by piecing together clues they find. Overall, I was happy with the second half of the journey, which had many fascinating clues. But when it came to the final ending, I felt like the ending fell a bit short. 

While the ending was overall fine and definitive enough to answer the question of the truth behind the island, there were still some major plot holes of things that were never explained. For example, the reason why the plane crashed in the first place is never explained. There are also a number of clues which we were told were important, but are also never resolved either. And a couple of these clues seemed tantalizing and potentially important too. For example, one of the clues they find is a naked mummy sealed in a barrel with a key in it’s mouth. They do find out where the key goes, but the rest is never explained. And I’m still wondering about it. 

Recommended: Overall this popular survival horror manga has an interesting scenario and a mystery driven plot, but also suffers from shallow characters and sexist writing. The abundance of ecchi fanservice may also be a potential turnoff to some as well. But at least the extinct creatures are awesome. And the ending while overall it was fine, suffers from a few major plot holes.

Age Rating: Older Teen: mostly for violence and some gore. Most of the series isn’t that graphic, but then again, sometimes you’ll have characters bleeding from their eyeballs. There is also an abundance of cleavage, underwear shots and female nudity. There is also some attempted rape but not that graphic. There is also one cross dressing boy who manipulates some pedophiles into helping rescue some friends late in the story by leading them on, but at least it’s for a good cause... 

Other Works in English by this Mangaka: DEATHTOPIA (Seinen)

Other Notes: The first 10 volumes of this series are currently free to read with a Comixology Unlimited/Kindle Unlimited Trial.

DEATHTOPIA (Rank 3)

Publisher: Kodansha

Volumes: 8/8 (Complete), (Digital only)

Seinen

Genre: Horror, Ecchi, Fighting, Police, Scifi, Conspiracy

Summary: Koh Fujimura (19) thought he was an ordinary guy until one day he was involved in a mugging that turned into a hit and run accident. His eyes were injured, and he was sent to the hospital. But while he was there, he was attacked by a serial killer woman posing as a nurse, who tells him he needs to die, because he is a threat to “them.” He is saved by 3 beautiful cops, but bizarrely enough the serial killer woman, who was shot and fell from the fourth floor, got up and walked away!

After he recovers and leaves the hospital he discovers he can see something no one else can see- bizarre looking people who look like their heads are dark clouds of scribbles. He is soon forcefully recruited by the group of women who saved him before and discovers he has the ability to see what they call “Cheaters,” who are mutants. While not all Cheaters are violent criminals, those who are, are exceptionally dangerous because they possess superhuman abilities. The 3 women, Maya, Yui and Saki are part of an elite squad that investigate and take them down. As he joins the special squad to discover more about his own special ability, he discovers that someone is targeting him and his family specifically, under a mysterious plot from a man named “UD.”

Review: As the group of Maya, Yui, Saki and new rookie Koh take on new missions and aim to keep notorious serial killers from striking again, it becomes increasingly clear that the Cheaters are organized and in communication with each other. They are taking orders from a mysterious man code named UD who has a particular interest in Koh’s abilities, for some unknown reason. Meanwhile, Maya, Yui and Saki who were recruited with their own special skills, all have their own reasons for joining.

That being said, while the central plot was alright and kept my interest in finding out the truth behind Koh’s ability, I found the level of Ecchi to be way overboard. It starts off normally enough with your usual underwear shots, cleavage, skimpy skin tight outfits, and Koh accidentally walking in and finding the women naked after a shower more than once. But it ramps up to 11 as basically every single serial killer they fight are all rapists, even the women. One of the women cops gets raped as well, (although by another woman, which apparently doesn’t count, gross). They also practically continuously get their clothes cut off them until they’re fighting naked quite often. It ramps up around volume 3-4 and then thankfully drops off to a more typical level. If you have a strong stomach for this stuff, then I would only rate it moderately worse than average, but honestly I found a lot of it to be pandering and in poor taste. 

Overall, I had mixed feelings about this series. There were parts of it that I liked, including parts of Koh’s and the other main character’s story arcs. Some of the villains that they take down also had some interesting powers. On the other hand, a lot of the series felt like it was trying to make up for the lack of writing ability by giving the readers extra naked women, instead of trying to create more compelling reasons to convince the readers to keep reading the story. Also, the main plot line I found somewhat frustrating as the main characters know they're being manipulated for the longest time, but aren't able to finally turn the tables on those behind the scenes until the last volume. But at least the ending was fairly solid.

Recommended: TLDR; Overall this series about the good guys trying to take down psychopathic serial killers with superpowers before they kill again, while uncovering the truth of a dastardly plot behind everything, is not bad. But you need to be able to tolerate a lot of rapey behavior from the villains and quite a lot of gratuitous fanservice to be able to enjoy this series.

Age Rating: R for both violence, gore and sexual stuff. The gore is kind of inconsistent, some parts are fairly tame, and some parts are literally tearing people’s faces off or cutting them in half and so on. The sexual stuff is like that as well. Sometimes it’s tame underwear shots and cleavage, and other times it goes full on rape. But thankfully there’s only one actual rape scene, but it has also some other weird rapey scenes that are dreams and otherwise not real.

Other Works in English from this Mangaka: Cage of Eden (Shounen)

I’m in Love and It’s the End of the World (Rank 3)

Publisher: Kodansha

Volumes: 5/5 (Complete), (Digital only, so far)

Shoujo

Genre: Romance, Twins, (Relationship) Sisters

Summary: Mahiru Yanase and Mayo Yanase were supposed to be identical as twins, but Mayo became an outgoing popular girl, while Mahiru became “the other Yanase.” After an incident in middle school where the only boy who ever liked Mahiru instead fell for Mayo at first sight, Mahiru has lived in her sister’s shadow ever since. She became a superstitious girl who avoids talking to people who are too friendly, for fear that her luck will balance itself and something terrible will happen soon after.

On the first day of high school, Mahiru bumps into a friendly classmate, Aoi Satomi. And he’s way too friendly! But even though he’s way out of her league, he only has eyes for Mahiru. Can she let go of her superstitions long enough to give Aoi a chance? Can she find her confidence in herself? And what’s up with him? 

Review: The beginning of the story starts out sort of average. At first Aoi pursues Mahiru, and while she is interested, she is scared of getting involved with him at first, citing her bad luck will eventually bring about the end of the world. But in truth, it becomes clear that it’s her lack of confidence in herself that prevents her from wanting to date anyone, and she doesn’t believe any boy could ever find her attractive over her sister. But after he reveals at the end of volume 1 that they’ve met before, and he fell for her back then, the story really starts to blossom. As volume 2 starts, Mahiru finds herself wishing she could change, and then she finally decides to give Aoi a chance even if it means the end of the world.

I won’t spoil anything past that point, but I was really glad I gave this slightly obscure title a chance. It becomes a very endearing story about two people who save each other through their love, at a very dark time in their lives. While the majority of the story is about Mahiru getting over her inferiority complex about her sister, there is also a good bit of the story about Aoi and his difficult life as well. It’s not a title that will amaze you, at least not at first, but it slowly and steadily gets better, and it’s a story that is told very well. And I was impressed with the ending, it was great.

Recommended: TLDR; All in all while this romance title starts off a bit plain, it gradually becomes a story about two people who saved each other through their love during a dark time in their lives. The story starts off with a focus on Mahiru and her obsession with luck, but soon shifts to being about her and Aoi’s relationship, as well as their friends and Mahiru’s sister. It’s an underappreciated manga and is highly recommended.

Rating: PG: Thanks to Mahiru’s lack of confidence, they only kiss. 

Other Notes: This title is only available digitally only so far, but Kodansha has been printing the bestselling ebooks into physical books. If it gets more popular, they will print it. The first two volumes are currently available free on Kindle Unlimited/Comixology Unlimited.

Other Works in English from this Mangaka (from Most to Least popular):

• House of the Sun (Shoujo)

• Atsumori-kun’s Bride to Be (Shoujo)

Yokai Rental Shop (Rank 3.5)

Publisher: Seven Seas

Volumes: 4/4 (Complete), In Print

Shoujo (reads like), Yaoi Interest

Genre: Yokai, Supernatural, Fighting

Summary: Hiiragi thought he had no family left in the world, but on her deathbed, his mother told him that he had an older half-brother, Karasu. He goes to the Pet Shop that Karasu owns to meet him, only to discover the Pet Shop that seems to sell exotic animals is actually just a front for an even rarer service- a Yokai Rental Shop! For an exorbitant sum of money, a customer can rent a yokai to grant any wish. At first Hiiragi is determined to shut down this dangerous scam, but soon is swept up in Karasu’s plan to get revenge on their father- who is still alive!

Review: This is such a strange manga that mixes and matches several genres, I barely know where to start. I expected this manga to be more like the mangaka’s other most popular work, Nightmare Inspector, which is a series of mostly short stories around the theme of helping customers with their nightmares. The beginning of Yokai Rental Shop series was very similar at first, starting off with 4 short stories around the theme of “being careful of what you wish for.” These stories were enjoyable cautionary tales and I loved the Yokai, which are drawn differently in a Japanese brush painting inspired style. Yokai inspired stories can be so fun, they’re fascinating, often intelligent monsters/spirits that can be good, evil or anywhere in between and they have bizarre special abilities. 

But partway through the second volume, the story takes a sharp turn and changes its focus to the two half brothers as they try to rescue a young girl who was kidnapped by their father to be his bride. While there are a few more Yokai that are featured in the later volumes, the plot gets hijacked into being about the father of the two brothers. It becomes a story about two half-human, half-yokai brothers rebelling against their powerful and cruel father, who seeks to breed the ultimate half-human, half-yokai hybrid to survive climate change, funnily enough.

While I thought the rebellion plot itself was sort of interesting, I was disappointed that from that point on the Yokai become helpless pawns in the struggle between the brothers and their father, and are no longer the focus of the story.

But the thing that bothered me the most is how this manga mashes up Shoujo, Shounen and Yaoi and somehow creates a manga that won’t please many readers at all. The artstyle is very Shoujo, the main characters are all very feminine pretty boys, including even their Father. But it lacks the introspection, character development and the focus on the feelings and the relationships of the characters like Shoujo has. And while there’s plenty of fighting like a Shounen manga, yet it lacks the strategy and determination like Shounen manga has. And finally while there’s a lot of Boy’s Love subtext enough to make those who like to ship characters together happy, it’s not actually a Yaoi romance. Even if it’s got two pretty boys who would die for each other and sometimes tearfully hug, and swear to be there for each other, it’s all technically non-romantic, which is honestly weird.

If you've read this far, and you're not put off from reading it and want to know how the ending was, it was fine. For Shoujo I would say it's a normal happy ending. I enjoyed it but wished there was more to it.

Recommended: TLDR; All in all fans of Nightmare Inspector are probably going to be disappointed that this is totally different. Shoujo and/or Yaoi readers might find something of interest in this beautifully illustrated manga about two half-brothers rebelling against their cruel, powerful father, but it’s lack of romance may be a turn off.

Age Rating: PG13: lots of blood, some violence but very little gore.

Other Works by this Mangaka: Nightmare Inspector (Shoujo, reads like)