PopSyndicate.com

Every book in this review rocks, and they are all available for your reading pleasure.

For anime fans, a new Miyazaki movie is a high holy day. Titles like Princess Mononoke (my favorite Miyazaki), Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and My Neighbor Totoro make the man a god of anime, royalty in a field of imagination and unlimited possibilities. Tons of us flocked to the theaters to revel in his newest release, Ponyo,and with good reason. Unfortunately, movies must end and until it’s released on DVD, we are left with memories.

And a badass book.

The Art of Ponyo is everything a Miyazaki fan could want for. The book, a hefty little bugger, kicks off with some of the most amazing artwork you could imagine. Beautiful watercolor concept art with insight into Miyazaki’s creation process and behind the scene info on the making of the movie is how this book begins… and it just keeps getting better and better. Screencaps, character sketches, storyboarding (in pencil and watercolor), a complete visual breakdown of the film, all of these things make this book insanely magnificent, something to dig through over and over again. And if all of that wasn’t enough, they slap the script on at the end. This book is a masterpiece, and if you adored the movie like I did, it’s something you’ll love.

Viz describes the new manga series Tegami Bachi as steampunk-esque. I’d put the emphasis on the -esque. There are a few nods to steampunk (which is an elegant, beautiful and insane movement), but what Tegami Bachi is really is just flat out good. The story of a strange otherworld, mail carriers, called letter bees. Gauche Suede (I know, I know) is one such mail carrier, and his latest delivery is a little beyond the norm. This letter is actually a little boy named Lag Seeing, and the two of them make the long journey to deliver Lag to his aunt. They become friends over the course of their adventure, and Lag, who is plagued with the memory of his mother’s abduction by unknown foes, is determined, by the end, to become a Letter Bee so that he can solve his mother’s mystery. This series has tons of heart, and an amazing world with fascinating alterative technology and creatures. Then there’s the small matter of a little girl named Niche, who I suspect will be the character to watch throughout the series. I really enjoyed this first volume, and can’t wait for the next one.

Viz is well known for their incredible action manga, and their newest, Dogs is freaking amazing. We got a small taste of Dogs with the volume zero prologue book not too long back, and finally book one is here. This manga features guns, guns, guns, and a wildly varied and kick ass group of people wielding them - plus one chick who is a master of blades. Gritty, hard-core, this is another book you’ll buy sealed up with an explicit content label, and you’ll love every moment of it. While the prologue gave us a hint of underworld (a literal underworld) plot, volume one drives deep into the action and from start to finish, never lets go.

And the best, as they say, is last. 20th Century Boys is the manga right now. I don’t care how broke you are, how bad the recession is, how small your allowance is. This is the one you buy. This is the series you obsess over. It’s like the Lost of manga - you’ll catch yourself at work, staring off into space, puzzling over the clues and the hints and wondering what you’ve missed, who is the culprit, where this is all going. The story of a group of childhood friends who came up with a story of a villain and their triumph over him only to discover, after they’ve grown up and the magic of childhood has faded, that one of them is following their story like a how-to-be-an-evil-genius manual and it’s up to them to stop him is the best story in manga right now. Brought to us from the maniacal, crazy bundle of awesome that is Naoki Urasawa (who previously brought us Monster), this series has won tons and tons of awards in Japan and is currently being made into a trilogy of films that are the most expensive film project ever undergone in Japan. It’s their equivalent of Lord of the Rings, but with ray guns and a giant people-killing robot.

Volume four of 20th Century Boys seems, at the beginning, to be the slowest of the four released here thus far (there will be 22 volumes in all), but never fear - you’re just being lulled into a false sense of backplot before the book grabs you by the throat and you get your first glimpse of something so awesome that your brain just might be in danger of exploding. Plus? We get Kenji in a bunny suit. He’s gone underground and the mystery of a missing classmate gets solved, and by the end of this volume there is one more inhabitant of the secret clubhouse, one more boy to help in the fight to save the world.

Read this manga. You won’t be sorry, though the wait for the next volume might drive you a little mad. This is the best series being released here right now. You will love it as much as I do.

(Amanda Rush is looking for an anime\manga twelve-step group - or just twelve people to help fuel her obsession. Follow her on Twitter: @BrokenAmanda)