A few weeks ago, I was a guest on Anime News Network's weekly ANNCast podcast and talk turned to why reviewing anime and manga has some similarities, but in the end, they're not quite the same thing. It's kind of like comparing movie reviews and book reviews -- each has different concerns and audiences.
While there are manga series that are adapted into anime, and a few anime series that are shown as animated features first and adapted as manga later, it's a rare case when the anime and manga version of the same story has the same strengths and appeal to both subsets of fandom.
Case in point: Lucky Star by Kagami Yoshimizu, an otaku -centric comedy series about a girl gamer / anime/manga geek and her pals. The anime series is hugely popular with the otaku set -- but does Bandai Entertainment's manga version live up to its animated counterpart? That's the question guest reviewer Melinda Beasi asked, and came back with this review of Lucky Star Volume 1.
If you're not familiar with Melinda's insightful and fun manga/manhwa commentary and reviews, well, you should be! Here's a bit more about Melinda and where you can find her other reviews and articles:
Melinda Beasi writes about Japanese and Korean comics for her blog, Manga Bookshelf, for PopCultureShock's Manga Recon, and for her column, Tokidoki Daylight, at Comic Book Resources' Comics Should Be Good. Visit Manga Bookshelf for a full index of of her reviews.
Please join me in welcoming Melinda as a guest reviewer, as she tackles this, and hopefully more manga to come.
Image credit: © Kagami Yoshimizu, Kadokawa Shoten
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