Vertical Manga Reviews and Ratings

Two teenage girls live on the outskirts of town, and have an unusual after school job: they must hunt down and kill the zombies that are dropped in their turf.

As the youngest daughter of the Tenge family, Ayako has been locked away for most of her life to keep the family's secrets secret. But as she grows up, her family's dysfunctional hierarchy begins to crumble.

Shy and somewhat anti-social, Hikaru is content to spend her high school years just wearing her headphones and closing herself off from her classmates. But all that changes when an alien takes up residence in her body, and she becomes involved in a manhunt of intergalactic proportions.

In Osamu Tezuka's graphic novel Apollo's Song, Shogo Chikaishi is a young sociopath whose disdain for love incurs a curse from the gods: He is doomed to fall in love and lose his beloved over and over again in various lifetimes. Read a review of this bold and surreal graphic novel for grown-ups by the godfather of manga.

Black Jack is a rogue doctor who cures the incurable and heals the gravely injured, but for a price. But beneath his scarred face and reserved demeanor, Black Jack serves up justice, often in unexpected ways.

In the second volume of Black Jack, Tezuka's rogue doctor gets involved in international intrigue, and child-woman Pinoko tries to go to school, with mixed results.

Read a review of Dororo Volume 1 , a shonen manga series by Osamu Tezuka from Vertical. A fantasy series originally published in 1967-1968, Dororo is the tale of Hyakkimaru, a wandering warrior who’s on a quest to retrieve his 48 body parts that his father, a feudal warlord sacrificed to demons in exchange for power and influence.

Read a review of Dororo Volume 2, a shonen manga series by Osamu Tezuka from Vertical. In this second volume of a three-volume fantasy series, Hyakkimaru is reunited with the father and mother who cast him aside at birth, and who may yet want him dead.

Originally featured in Big Comic magazine from 1976 to 1978, MW is a suspenseful series about an amoral, gender-bending killer, his Catholic priest lover/accomplice/enemy, and the military and political cover-up of a deadly poison gas leak.

Read a review of Peepo Choo Volume 1, a seinen manga series by Felipe Smith from Vertical. Milton is an American otaku in Chicago who dreams of visiting Japan, the home of the anime and manga that he loves. But Milton's in for a surprise when he wins a trip to Japan and finds himself on a collision course with a homicidal yakuza mobster, an assassin and a bikini model with a violent streak.

Read a review of Twin Spica Volume 1, a seinen manga series by Kou Yaginuma from Vertical. 13-year old Asumi is a small girl with a big dream – she wants to be an astronaut. She’s already been accepted into an elite space academy, but Asumi soon finds out that passing the exam is only the first of many challenges she must face before she can go conquer outer space.