As we head into another December, it's time once more for another round of Holiday Reviews at The Manga Test Drive. That means 25 days of reviews starting on December 1st, covering some of the best and worst manga to come out in 2023 (along with a lot of stuff in between). It also means it's time once more for our annual Holiday Review Giveaway.
The rules, as always, are simple. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post or at this BlueSky post about your favorite manga of 2023 sometime between now and midnight (CDT) on Christmas Day. New or old, long or short, as long as it was a manga that was new to you this year it counts! One commenter will be picked at random to receive a $25 gift certificate to Bookshop.org so you can buy some new manga while supporting your favorite local independent bookstores.
We've got a great line-up of books to talk about, so make sure you follow us either at our BlueSky address or on our Patreon (preferably both!) so you don't miss a single one. We look forward to seeing just what our manga our readers have been enjoying this year!
I finally read Ooku this year, after it was slowly accumulated on my shelf for years! (I read the first few vols when they came out, but damn, that was more than a decade ago and now I feel ancient). Damn, what a journey! Though, a bunch of this would've likely been spoiler territory if I actually knew Japanese history during the Tokugawa era. I don't want to say too much due to overall spoilers, and it's a dense read that took forever, but I'm glad I finally got around to reading it!
ReplyDeleteFinally reading, and fully catching up, with Vinland Saga this year was certainly a treat. I've always been pretty into Viking history, as a lot of my college friends over the years were medievalists or anything adjacent to that, and this form of historical fiction was really up my alley. It was a delight to read another Yukimura work so many years after reading Planetes for the first time. It actually inspired me to read Planetes again, and I enjoyed it all the same.
ReplyDeleteI recently started Dogsred and got sucked in! It's surprisingly fun for a manga based in hockey, which I don't have much interest in IRL.
ReplyDeleteI finally sat down and read Uzumaki after owning it for a few years. No idea why it took me so long!
ReplyDeleteI succumbed to temptation and purchased the (only? I think it's no longer licensed) 4 volumes of Kingyo Used Books. I like the central conceit very much: there's a bookstore with such an eclectic collection that it has to have at least one manga that will suit today's customer, and what an assortment of customers they get! It's totally episodic, so I don't anticipate any cliffhanger feelings, but I would still love for the remaining dozen or so volumes to get translated into English.
ReplyDeleteI recently discovered and binge-read the josei thriller, Burn the House Down and yeah it was super super good. It was about a young woman masquerading as a housekeeper in order to get revenge on the person who burnt down her family home and ruined her mother's life. Highly rec it! Apparently there's a Netflix drama too but I haven't seen it yet.
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