A real dark and depressing outing with war refugees, organ harvesting, and suicide galore -- and with gore.

My library has a couple more volumes (but not the whole series) so I'm putting those on hold. ( )

Manga aren't my usual thing. This is another case of being randomly attracted to the cover of the book and, in this case, the quirky display in our library as well.

My oldest son is a manga fan and he tried to get me to read the Saga comic book series which I understand is highly rated but I just don't get the concept of reading comic books for pleasure. Sorry, just not my thing. Even as a kid I collected and read Star Wars comic books for a while (yes, I still have my Star Wars #1 in a plastic sleeve) but beyond that, I just lost interest and have never really gone back.

So what about these manga? I found myself turning the pages and being interested in the story. I was reminded a bit of a much more gruesome version of the Scooby Doo cartoons I used to watch on Saturday morning but with more body parts, entrails and blood and brain spattered walls. Scooby Doo was a much more innocent time apparently....

That said, I liked the characters and the art work. I found the storylines interesting and I appreciated the jokes and dark humor. This was an omnibus volume but for practical reasons only known to Goodreads members who want to make sure they keep up with their book count, I broke it up into the three constituent books.

They are a lot of fun and in the back of each manga, there is a list of the "sound effects" in the books...basically a glossary that refers to the different hiragana, katakana and kanji characters you see floating around the pages. These are Japanese sound words that add to the story by allowing you to imagine the sounds made in any given scene.

Certainly these manga aren't for everybody...you don't want your 7 year old reading them for example...or the church lady down the street...and I am not even sure who I would recommend them to except my oldest son. All the same, give 'em a go if you are so inclined and you, like I do, enjoy technical drawings of body parts on the covers of books.

( )

Another really good volume of the manga, with some significant character development. If I had any real complaints, it would be due to some geographical problems with the storyline involving a deceased Iraqui immigrant. However, they're problems that could probably be fixed by doing a mental find-replace to change references to Iraq to references to Afghanistan.

Other than that, this manga keeps getting better. There will be a longer review on Bureau42.com later on (once we've gotten through all the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga reviews). ( )

A return to more of the individual "short story" type formats. The first one felt like it was a bit chaotic, but I rather like the last one. Averages out to a decent read.