James Nicoll Reviews

Princess Jellyfish, Volume One is the first tankōbon for Akiko Higashimura’s manga series. Kuragehime in the original Japanese, Princess Jellyfish was serialized in Kiss from October 2008 to August 2017.

Jellyfish-obsessed Tsukimi Kurashita arrived in Tokyo to find herself surrounded by glamourous and (in Tsukimi’s opinion) far more attractive women. The easily intimidated woman found safe haven at Amamizukan. Not only is Amamizukan an all-woman apartment, all of its eccentric residents have some consuming passion as intense as Tsukimi’s for jellyfish.

Which is to say, they’re all otaku.

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Blank Canvas: My So-Called Artist’s Journey, Volume One is the first tankōbon of Akiko Higashimura’s autobiographical manga series. Originally titled Kakukaku Shikajika (“So-and-So, Such-and-Such”), Blank Canvas was serialized in the monthly manga magazine Cocohana from 2011 to 2015.

Young Akiko has a simple and entirely reasonable plan: go to art school, make her stunning manga debut while still in school, accrue public adulation and money, marry actor Etsushi Toyokawa, and rest on her laurels as a successful and popular mangaka.

There’s only one small problem, which is that Akiko is a fool.

But first, a word about Miyazaki Prefecture.

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