At the beginning of 2023, I vowed to post one review or essay per month, a goal I met for the first half of the year. Then work got busy, and my husband and I did some home improvement projects we’d been putting off, both of which made it harder to find the bandwidth for reviewing. The reviews I did publish, however, seemed to have found an audience, so I’m setting the same goal for myself in 2024 with the aim of writing more in-depth essays about older titles like Furari and BL Metamorphosis, as well as more reviews of classic, indie, and overlooked series. My other major goal for 2024 is to revive The Manga Review, though the upheaval on Twitter has made me wonder whether I’d reach more people with a newsletter than a weekly column. If you’ve been a regular reader, I encourage you to offer your two cents in the comments field! (Note that comment moderation has been set to stun due to an uptick in random links, so it may take a few hours for it be approved.)
As I was compiling this post, I spent some time reviewing my WordPress data and learned that…
- I’ve posted 332 articles and reviews at The Manga Critic since 2009.
- My most-viewed post is a 2017 review of Naoki Urasawa and Hokusai Katsushiki’s Master Keaton. To date, more than 23,000 people have read it.
- My second most-viewed post is a 2019 review of Ichigo Tanako’s Become You. To date, more than 22,000 people have read it.
- My most-viewed post of the 2020s is a review of Junji Ito’s No Longer Human, which I wrote in 2020. To date, more than 10,000 people have read it.
Focusing more specifically on 2023, I wrote one article, published seven full-length and eleven capsule reviews, and rediscovered a cache of essays I wrote for PopCultureShock between 2006 and 2009, one of which I shared with readers. I also created a new page at The Manga Critic listing some of the best manga podcasts in English, with help from dozens of Twitter followers. (Feel free to suggest more in the comments below!)
Here’s to a more productive 2024!
Essays and Features
Full-Length Reviews
- Blood on the Tracks, Vols. 1-5
- Innocent, Vol. 1
- Insomniacs After School, Vol. 1
- Lovely Muco!, Vol. 1
- Marmalade Boy: Collector’s Edition, Vol. 1
- Mitsukazu Mihara’s The Embalmer, Vols. 1-4*
- My Dear Detective: Mitsuko’s Case Files, Vol. 1
- Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon, Vols. 1-2
Capsule Reviews
- Ayashimon, Vol. 1
- Daemons of the Shadow Realm, Vol. 1
- Doomsday with My Dog, Vol. 1
- The Fox and the Little Tanuki, Vol. 1
- Issak, Vol. 1
- The Music of Marie
- Night of the Living Cat, Vol. 1
- Nights With a Cat, Vol. 1
- Orochi: Perfect Edition, Vol. 1
- Tatsuki Fujimoto Before Chainsaw Man: 17-21
- Under Ninja, Vol. 1
* This review was originally published at Pop Culture Shock in 2007.
