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The Manga Test Drive
@mangatestdrive.bsky.social
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Reviewing the first volumes of manga to sort out the classics from the clunkers. Check out our sister site Renaissance Josei for longer reviews, essays and more!
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The Manga Test Drive @mangatestdrive.bsky.social · 8d
Our Holiday Review Extravaganza for 2025 begins tomorrow, but our Holiday Review Giveaway begins tonight! Just leave a comment here or in the post below about your favorite manga of 2025 and you might potentially win a $25 Bookshop.Org gift certificate!
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/11/its-...
IT'S HOLIDAY TIME!
The end of the year and holiday season is upon us once more, and that means it's time for another round of our Annual Holiday Reviews! Tha...
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There was still plenty of shojo manga to be found in 2025, including a new title from Meca Tanaka. Alas, Teppeki Honeymoon isn't one of their stronger efforts, where a strong but poor is girl forced into a fake marriage with the heir of a security company.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/12/holi...
Holiday Review #8: TEPPEKI HONEYMOON
Of course, we got plenty of shojo manga this year as well (even if it continues to be a struggle to get anyone - even the publishers - to ma...
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com
December 9, 2025 at 12:21 AM
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Yet there are still publishers willing to dig into josei's past to find unsung works such as Miss Ruki, a gentle gag strip about a free spirit and her best friend from a ladies' magazine published at the peak of Japan's economic bubble.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/12/holi...
Holiday Review #7: MISS RUKI
I continue to be pleased that there are a precious few publishers out there willing to delve further back into josei's past to uncover accl...
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December 8, 2025 at 12:42 AM
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Of course, a lot of the josei we got this year were smutty ladicomi romances. Don't Hold Back, Lord Hades is a pretty typical example (in both good and bad ways), albeit with a mythological spin.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/12/holi...
Holiday Review #6: DON'T HOLD BACK, LORD HADES
Of course, most of the josei we got this took the form of smutty ladicomi from Seven Seas such as this series, which itself is part of a wi...
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December 6, 2025 at 7:34 PM
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2025 was a shockingly good year for josei manga (even if most of it wasn't marketed as such). I certainly can't complain if it means we got Fumi Yoshinaga's latest work, Tamaki & Amane, which might be her best short story anthology yet.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/12/holi...
Holiday Review #5: TAMAKI & AMANE
This was a good year for josei, even if most people didn't realize it because nobody was marketing their josei releases as part of that dem...
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December 5, 2025 at 8:12 PM
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Of course, there were also some more recent sports manga released this year. There's Dogsred, a hockey manga that's also the latest from Golden Kamuy creator Satoru Noda.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/12/holi...
Holiday Review #4: DOGSRED
There was one more notable shonen sports story from a familiar creator this year, albeit one of more recent fame and a far cooler sport. DOG...
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December 4, 2025 at 9:19 PM
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We saw quite a few releases of sports manga from notable creators this year, including Short Game. This anthology from Mitsuru Adachi revolves around relationships and (of course) baseball.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/12/holi...
Holiday Review #3: SHORT GAME
Since we're already on the topic of long-awaited releases of sports manga by legendary creators, we might as well talk about one of Denpa's ...
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December 4, 2025 at 2:32 PM
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We go from one Itagaki to another, as this year saw the first print release of Keisuke Itagaki's infamous martial arts manga Baki the Grappler.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/12/holi...
Holiday Review #2: BAKI THE GRAPPLER
Now I can switch from talking about Paru Itagaki to her far more infamous father.  It's not the first time his best-known manga been release...
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December 2, 2025 at 7:28 PM
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Naturally I had to start this year's Holiday Reviews with Sanda because why wouldn't I start with the manga that's literally about a boy who turns into a buff Santa?
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Holiday Review #1: SANDA
Well obviously I have to start this year's holiday reviews with the manga about Santa Claus! SANDA, by Paru Itagaki.  First published in 202...
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December 1, 2025 at 6:07 PM
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Our Holiday Review Extravaganza for 2025 begins tomorrow, but our Holiday Review Giveaway begins tonight! Just leave a comment here or in the post below about your favorite manga of 2025 and you might potentially win a $25 Bookshop.Org gift certificate!
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/11/its-...
IT'S HOLIDAY TIME!
The end of the year and holiday season is upon us once more, and that means it's time for another round of our Annual Holiday Reviews! Tha...
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com
December 1, 2025 at 12:28 AM
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For our final Mecha Month post, we're going to find out if Blind Target truly is the best of the Gundam Wing manga or not:
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/11/revi...
Review: MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM WING: BLIND TARGET
So my friends over at Giant Robot FM claim this is the best of the Gundam Wing manga they've read, but can this humble one-shot manage to ...
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November 24, 2025 at 7:07 PM
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Eureka Seven is a cursed mecha franchise. It's not just that its anime sequels and spinoffs are all bad, but even manga spinoffs like Gravity Boys & Lifting Girl are tedious bores.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/11/revi...
Review: EUREKA SEVEN: GRAVITY BOYS & LIFTING GIRL
During the brief time period that Bandai Entertainment tried to be a manga publisher in the US, the majority of their titles were manga spin...
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November 18, 2025 at 5:12 PM
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From the creator of D.N. Angel comes the manga adaptation of one of Yoshiyuki Tomino's most notorious works: Brain Powered. In some ways it improves upon the material, but there's only so much anyone can do to clarify this mess.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/11/revi...
Review: BRAIN POWERED
I guess it's finally time for me to look at this manga adaptation of one of the worst mecha shows in history, albeit from a surprising sourc...
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November 10, 2025 at 10:45 PM
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It's mecha month once again at The Manga Test Drive! There's been a recent wave of mecha-related isekai manga lately and I Was Sold Dirt-Cheap But My Power Lever Is Off the Charts is...frankly pretty typical of the genre, with all that implies.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/11/revi...
Review: I WAS SOLD DIRT CHEAP BUT MY POWER LEVEL IS OFF THE CHARTS
It's mecha month once more, and that includes isekai manga.  There's been a recent spate of isekai light novel adaptations featuring mecha a...
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November 3, 2025 at 7:00 PM
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One last spooky review for you all, and it's a doozy: Naoki Uruasawa's legendary serial killer manga Monster.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/10/revi...
Review: MONSTER
Of course, perhaps the most unnerving sort of manga are those about people whose minds and hearts become twisted enough to kill their fellow...
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November 1, 2025 at 10:37 PM
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We return to the spooky world of Kanako Inuki with School Zone, where supernatural forces convene upon a group of schoolchildren in an interconnected but flawed anthology:
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/10/revi...
Review: SCHOOL ZONE
It's the perfect time of year to look at yet another series from a legendary horror mangaka...just maybe not her best one. SCHOOL ZONE ( Suk...
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October 28, 2025 at 6:25 PM
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Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-Kun is a more modern and friendly take on spooky shonen manga, where a kind young boy gets sold by parents to demons only to find himself making friends and fumbling his way up the social ladder in a hellish school for demons.
Review: WELCOME TO DEMON SCHOOL! IRUMA-KUN
Thankfully, there's a much more recent shonen manga with a spooky theme that is a lot more confident in itself and its purpose, even if the ...
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October 20, 2025 at 11:19 PM
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We're looking at horror manga this month, starting with Lycanthrope Leo. I came to this hoping for a simple werewolf tale, but what I got was a weird old shonen manga that can never quite decide on its tone.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/10/revi...
Review: LYCANTHROPE LEO
It's October, which means time for more spooky manga.  I picked this one out hoping to get a neat werewolf story, which is something of a ra...
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October 14, 2025 at 11:31 PM
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Let's end this month with another 1960s manga, albeit one far more obscure and far less loved than Lupin the 3rd: the gritty vigilante motocycle gang shonen series Wild 7.

mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/09/revi...
Review: WILD 7
Let's cap off this month with another 1960s gekika title, albeit one focusing on people fighting crime instead of committing them. WILD 7 (...
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September 30, 2025 at 8:02 PM
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Gon might be one of the more challenging manga I've ever reviewed, but the challenge is worth it to talk about such a wonderful and unique manga.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/09/revi...
Review: GON
This series might be one of the most challenging old-school manga to review, but who am I to back down from a challenge? GON, by Masashi Ta...
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September 24, 2025 at 7:22 PM
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Kamikaze Girls is a 2000s shojo manga adaptation with a surprisingly long shelf-life for a stand-alone volume, but there's a lot of good reasons for that: mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/09/revi...
Review: KAMIKAZE GIRLS
Let's talk about an old but beloved little one-volume wonder from the glory days of Shojo Beat. KAMIKAZE GIRLS ( Shimotsuma Monogatari ), ba...
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September 19, 2025 at 5:25 PM
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It might be a little later than usual, but it's time once more for our annual Old-School Month! We're starting with the original Lupin the 3rd manga, which was very much a work-in-progress in its early chapters.
mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/09/revi...
Review: LUPIN III
It's time once more for Old-School Month here on the Manga Test Drive (even if it's a little later than usual), and we're starting with one...
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September 3, 2025 at 11:51 PM
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Let's finish up the month with Maid War Chronicles, a shonen adventure series that at the very least uses the maids in the title like characters and not just as fanservice fodder.
Review: MAID WAR CHRONICLE
I wanted to end this month on a tidy and hopeful note.  I don't know if I entirely succeeded with this choice of manga, but it's probably as...
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August 31, 2025 at 11:16 PM
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The Food Diary of Miss Maid is a perfectly calm, pleasant food manga featuring a maid adrift in Japan...so why did it leave wanting something more substantial?
Review: THE FOOD DIARY OF MISS MAID
We could stand to read something more pleasant after that last review...perhaps a nice, soothing food manga?  With a maid? THE FOOD DIARY OF...
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August 27, 2025 at 6:30 PM
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Steel Angel Kurumi is the tale of a wimpy boy who accidentally gains his own devoted robot maid protector, but it's also proof that Kaishaku were hacks from the very beginning of their career:

mangatestdrive.blogspot.com/2025/08/revi...
Review: STEEL ANGEL KURUMI
We go from isekai maids to robot maids as I dig up this forgotten bit of nonsense from ADV's manga division. STEEL ANGEL KURUMI ( Kotetsu Te...
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August 20, 2025 at 12:22 AM
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We're back! And we're going to be looking at some maid manga while we get things back in order after our long summer absence. We'll start with the tale of a maid-obsessed Japanese girl who gets all she wants and then some in Heroine? Saint? No, I'm An All-Works Maid (and Proud of It)!
Review: HEROINE? SAINT? NO, I'M AN ALL-WORKS MAID (AND PROUD OF IT)!
Alright, time to tidy things up after that long, unplanned summer absence, and that means it's time to cover another round of maid manga. HE...
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August 14, 2025 at 6:22 PM