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Three must reads, a newcomer, a novel (say it ain’t so!), a magazine of Lolita porportions and two love stories: which is the one to pass on, and which is the one you should be reading above all others?

Jasmine Callihan, teen literary heroine (Bad Kitty and Kitty Kitty), is back on the case in volume one of Tokyo pop’s Bad Kitty. Jasmine has the hot boyfriend, the sidekick group of friend (think the Scooby gang) and has a day at the mall to hang with all. But things don’t go as planned: there’s a jewel heist, her friends are about to lose an inventor competition, and the pretzel stand is out of ice. Oh, and her ultra hot boyfriend confessed his love, and Jasmine froze up. What’s a teen detective to do? Solve the crime, naturally. Get the boy back. Skip the pretzel. The art in Bad Kitty could be worse - it could be the plot, which may work on the written page, but in manga form the story just falls flat. Add in the romance-ometer at the beginning of every chapter, and, well, it’s just not that great. The series gives a tease of promise at the end, with the introduction of a kidnapping story, but I’ll pass on volume two, thanks.

You Will Drown In Love is the tale of two men who find each other through their jobs at a fabric store. The boss, son of the company’s owner, is the weaker of the two while his assistant is pushy, sarcastic, and the one of forces the relationship into fruition. I say forces, because I cannot count how many times the boss says no during each of the lovemaking scenes. Though he does, eventually, give the go-ahead, I found Jin, the assistant, to be too pushy to empathize with, despite how very prettily he is drawn.

Bleach volume twenty-seven: you could call it one of the issues when the proverbial shit hits the metaphoric fan. At the end of twenty-six, Orihime was confronted by one cold and calculating Uquiorra, who tells her exactly how it will be: Aizen wants her, and her powers. If she does not abide by Aizen’s wishes, she will die, her friends will die, the whole freaking world will die. Or something. So Orihime has a choice: go with Aizen and spare her friends, or, you know, else. Orihime, whose heart knows no bounds, makes the hard choice, and is given one person to say goodbye to. Her decision, while predictable, is heartbreaking and beautiful, and her absence will stir up the hornet’s nest that is Ichigo’s temper. Even Aizen should know that messing with the emotional center of the group is a good way to piss off the strawberry soul reaper, and once this volume is over, you’ll get a really good look at the nasty storm that is to come. Bleach is the big man on campus in the anime\manga world: it is the mark that most franchises measure themselves by, and this volume is a knockout punch. You’d be foolish to miss it. 

For Lolita lovers everywhere, there is no greater gift than the Gothic Lolita Bible. The spring edition was wedding themed, and could it have been any lovelier? Add in the spread with Bizenghast creator M. Alice LeGrow, and it was enough loli action to last us the long wait for Bizenghast six, which hits any day now. And as if all the springtime wedding goodness weren’t enough to make this beautiful magazine a must have for Lolita fans, the collection of adds and utterly gorgeous, if somewhat unaffordable and available only on websites in Japanese, loli clothing will make you drool. There’s a fabulous article on cake making that will make you pissed if you’ve been married and didn’t have a Nightmare Before Christmas cake (my birthday is on Halloween, as was my groom’s, for the love of Jack and Sally! If anyone deserves a Nightmare cake, it’s us!) and a Rococo photo shoot that channels the hidden Marie Antoinette in all (so pink! So pretty! So bustled!). Naturally, there is also the hidden packet of patterns in the back so that one might not just adore the loli, but become the loli.

And where Lolita is beauty in everything, Black Lagoon is beautiful in the carnage, the violence, and the ultra-massive booby bombs that Revy sports. Now that the Japanese mob storyline has finished up (and what a lovely story it was, with Jumbo and his magic bullet splitting katana action, Revy as the big bad wolf in the bowling alley, we move on to the Greenback Jane storyline, which is the tale of one very naïve little counterfeiter and the people who exploit her plight for money - and quite reasonably so, as she’s really very annoying in her dimwittedness. You can’t help but cheer Revy and Eda on as they extort this little blonde for all she’s worth - and she happens to be worth a pretty penny. So what could possibly be better than seeing the return of Revy’s good friend from the Taliban plot line (you know the one: the crazy broad with the knives)? Roberta. She graces the cover of volume six, and when you see this maid with her braids all akimbo and her hands full of guns, you know that some seriously bad shit is about to go down and in the world of Black Lagoon, that’s the best possible thing. Rei Hiroe’s book about lawlessness and guns is one of the best mangas out there right now, and the action is second to none. This is a series you should be reading, comrades.

And speaking of violence, welcome to the world the preview issue of a new manga, Dogs. The book is glossy and pretty in a way that makes you almost not want to touch it for fear of getting grubby little fingerprints on it, but when you open it up and get a gander at the color pull out picture in the front, you’ll be glad you did. Dogs looks to be the story of a group of violently abled people and the life that brings them together. I say ‘looks to be’ because this is the prelude issue, volume 0, and this little prelude is more than enough to get your attention. It also has a little something in common with Black Lagoon (other than violence) that I find very sexy indeed - the explicit content marker on the front of the book. Yes, this series has potential aplenty.

So what’s it about, already? Mihai is a mob hit man, charged to teach the don’s son about mob life and ends up with a dead girlfriend and a vendetta. Badou is an information broker who stumbles across something too hot even for him and learns that his nicotine fits make him a mad killer not to be crossed. Naoto is a girl whose parents were killed, and she takes up with their killer, to learn how to be an expert blade maiden so that one day, she can kill him. Heine is a guy looking for something in the underworld, his only companions his Mauser and Luger, when he stumbles across a girl. And don’t a lot of epic stories start this way? However it ends, though, these four will cross paths and become the leads in Dogs. So far, the manga is tightly paced and very good. Here’s hoping it continues on into volume two.

The last manga here is another title everyone should be reading: 20th Century Boys. From the guy who brought us Monster (Naoki Urasawa), 20th Century Boys is a mystery about cults, the supernatural, and the end of the world. All around Japan a strange cult has come to rise, led by a man who simply calls himself ‘friend’. As the cult gains power, strange things begin to happen everywhere; mysterious deaths, a virus, and now, a bombing. Kenji, the operator of a convenience store, is the central character of this strange tale, the one who puts the pieces together, who realizes that this madness is somehow connected to his childhood, to a story of world domination that he himself wrote as a child. And as the circle of suspects gets smaller and smaller, the entire world becomes the playground for this ‘friend’ and his machinations. It is up to Kenji and his little band of childhood friends to find the evil, root it out, and become the 20th Century Boys who will save the world.

The manga is only on its third volume here, but the story is exciting, amazingly well developed and characterized, and utterly engrossing. Only have enough cash for one book? This is the manga you should be reading above all others, this is the story that will suck you in and won’t let you go. For fans, the news only gets better and better: 20th C.B. is being adapted into a trilogy of films, as high budget as it gets in Japan and with a cast of over three hundred. Viz, who brings us delightful little wonders like Bleach and Death Note will be bringing the first installment to theaters this fall, so lookout.

And now, for something completely different: Viz, ever expanding our fandom into different dimensions, is bringing a collection of Japanese novels across the world to our grubby American otaku hands, and began with The Stationmaster by Jiro Asada. This lovely little book is a collection of eight short stories, beginning with the title story itself. From Otomatsu the railway man, who reflects back on his life as the railway line he devoted it to shuts down to an estranged couple rediscovering their love for each other and even a little family horror, all of these tales are quiet with a tinge of the supernatural - in fact the author, in the afterward, calls the supernatural found within “Miracles so simple they could happen to you”. And what a lovely way to put it. The stories are masterfully put together, award winners in their own right and very good. Don’t expect massively spooky or fantastic themes; expect, instead, life, and a little bit of wisdom.

(Amanda Rush likes to think of Otaku Girls like Bond girls, but with more anime. Follow her on Twitter: @Brokenamanda)