Back in April, Cass and I were wandering around Powell’s and I found a few graphic novels and manga that I was curious about. I’m not buying any new books this year so I checked to see if Multnomah County Library had them…and THEY DID!! I put them all on hold and they all arrived at my local library really quickly.

Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, Volume 1 was the first to come in at the library. I love that it’s about a harem of beautiful men and that women have taken over the titles and jobs that are traditionally exclusively for men.

However, I got bored/lost in some of the back stories. I got mixed up between characters and time jumps, but by the end I (think) I got them all sorted out. Eventually I want to come back to this series when I can approach it with more focus because I think it’s a really fascinating story.

A noir graphic novel set in Oregon featuring a flawed female detective? YES, PLEASE! I had a lot of fun reading this first volume. It was a stand alone story so I was relieved that there wasn’t a cliffhanger at the end of the volume because it seemed like it was heading that way.

I think the hardest part was trying not to compare Dex to Jessica Jones. There are a lot of similarities between the two and it’s really unfair to compare a graphic novel character to a show character.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of the style of artwork, but the writing was strong so it pulled me through. I’ll definitely check out Volume 2 in the near future. I doubt the library at Kadena will have this series so I better read it before I leave Portland.

Finally, I read the whole Erased series.

Basically this is about a 29-year-old man named Satoru who travels back and forth in time. In the past, he is 11 and is trying to prevent the disappearance and death of his classmate. In the present, he’s being framed for murder by the murderer from his past.

I enjoyed the first 3 volumes, especially his efforts in the past to prevent his classmate from dying, but the 4th volume lost me with all the recapping. If I hadn’t just read the first three volumes, it wouldn’t have irritated me so much. There was a lot of recapping and “reviewing what we know” in general throughout the series as he goes back and forth. Sometimes it was helpful to kind of wrap my mind around everything that happened. Sometimes it was annoying and I just wanted to get along with the story already.

I think the translation was just okay. Some of the word choices or syntax are odd, but not technically incorrect.

Overall, I’d say I enjoyed the series a lot. I might do a spoiler post in the future with more specificity on my thoughts.

Netflix did an adaption, but I’ve only watched the first episode. I hadn’t finished the series and I was worried it might span the whole manga series and I didn’t want to get spoiled. When I have time/focus, I’ll sit down and finish the Netflix series because I really liked what I saw so far.