Manga Monthly: Warm Up With Hot Manga!

Welcome back to Manga Monthly, your monthly update on the latest and greatest upcoming manga books straight out of your PREVIEWS catalog. We’ve got both classics and brand-new series this month, so be sure to preorder your favorites at your local comic shop to make sure you get yours!

We start this month with the legendary Ghost in the Shell, being reprinted in a deluxe hardcover format by Kodansha. Both the first (NOV161661) and second (NOV161662) volumes are available. This also marks the very first time that the book will be printed in English in its original right-to-left format. With the new trailer for the Hollywood live-action adaptation now out, hype for this series has never been bigger in America – so there’s no better time than right now to start reading!

Deep into the 21st century, the line between man and machine has been blurred as humans rely on the enhancement of mechanical implants and robots are upgraded with human tissue. In this rapidly converging landscape, cyborg superagent Major Motoko Kusanagi is charged to track down the craftiest and most dangerous terrorists and cybercriminals, including "ghost hackers" who are capable of exploiting the human/machine interface and reprogramming humans to become puppets to carry out the hackers' criminal ends.

When you think of “magical girls” you probably think of bright colors and light-hearted action – well, that’s about to change with Magical Girl Site (NOV161753) from Seven Seas Entertainment! In this ultra-violent survival story, an innocent girl gets sucked into the murderous world of the sailor girls from hell. Asagiri Aya is a young girl who has fallen victim to bullies at her school. Looking for a way to escape her troubles, she looks to the internet for distraction, when a mysterious website called "Magical Girl Site" appears. Simply viewing the page is all it takes to hurtle Aya headlong into the deadly world of the Magical Girl Apocalypse. There, it's fight or die, against a seemingly endless array of savagely adorable, frilly-skirted killing machines, each armed with magical powers and an unquenchable thirst for blood and chaos.

On the flip side, when you think of demons you probably think of murderous creatures from the underworld! Seven Seas continues to turn these ideas on their head with the debut of There’s A Demon Lord on the Floor (NOV161761)! Amon Patricia is a Demon Lord who ruled the land but after just barely escaping the Clan of Light finds her way to the Human World. Now there, she goes about searching for work and starts by looking at a family restaurant by the name of "Humming Dining." With her seemingly bottomless appetite and love of our hero's food will our hero be able to keep his sanity as he goes about making her an exemplary employee and fill her stomach?

Halloween might be in our rear-view mirror but the master of Japanese horror manga, Junji Ito, never stops! Vertical Comics is bringing a wonderful collection of Ito’s most horrific tales to the West with Junji Ito’s Dissolving Classroom (NOV161967)! Detailing the depths at which a teen will go to get revenge on the world, Dissolving Classroom is J-Horror at its most beautifully grotesque. Teenager Yuma Azawa transfers to a new high school but something strange seems to have followed him there. Is it a curse? Or is he cursing those who have been putting him down?

Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon release this month, but you can look back to the Unova region and relive some of your favorite memories with Pokémon Adventures: Black 2 & White 2 (NOV161980)! Viz Media continues their tradition of the Pokémon manga with this new book in the Adventures line! Colress, the new leader of Team Plasma, is attacking the Unova region. His machines control Pokémon, wielding their powers for evil instead of good. Fortunately, a way to jam the signals is stored on a memory card. But who has the card...? A girl at the Pokémon Trainers' School! Maybe that's why our hero is such a flirt-he's just doing his job gathering intel. But he'd better stop playing the field and find that card fast before someone beats him to it!

For fans of The Legend of Zelda, Viz is continuing to expand that manga line as well with the second volume of The Legend of Zelda: Legendary Edition (NOV161993), which covers the storyline of Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons! Link's adventures across Hyrule introduce him to two powerful allies - the Oracle of Seasons and the Oracle of Ages - and pit him against a pair of negarious villains - General Onox and the Sorceress of Shadows. To win the day he must quest from winter to summer and beyond the veil of time itself! These storylines were originally the focus of a pair of Game Boy Color titles from the late 1990s – so this may be the first time that newer Zelda fans have encountered them!

Yen Press continues to expand their catalog with the first volume of Isolator (NOV162015)! Mysterious objects from space have landed, embedding themselves within human beings around the world and granting them impossible powers according to their deepest wishes. Seventeen-year-old Utsugi Minoru's only wish is to be able to live apart from the world and events around him. But will he remain the same after experiencing his new powers - and new dangers?

Big Order (NOV162011) is another brand-new series from Yen Press! A boy with a special power finds he had better be careful what he wishes for. When Eiji Hoshimiya was asked his heart's desire, the young boy could never have predicted the catastrophic consequences. Ten years after the "Great Destruction," the world has been reshaped with gifted individuals called "Orders" emerging, people capable to reshaping reality to their whims. When some of these Orders start hunting Eiji, though will he have to summon the power that nearly destroyed the world?

That’s it for this month – but as always, this is just a small taste of the many manga offerings in your PREVIEWS catalog! Be sure to take a full look at the lineup for this month and pre-order all your favorites soon! Check back next month for another look at manga with Manga Monthly!