Anime

Land Volume 2 Manga Review – Review

Published

3 months ago

May 10, 2026

They say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. In Kazumi Yamashita‘s Land, that takes on a very different meaning. At the end of the first omnibus, An and her twin Anne (this second spelling begins to be used in this volume, and since it makes it easier to differentiate between the two, I’ll use it going forward) discovered that beyond their Heian-era society, there exists what looks like a modern city. This omnibus reveals that that is, in fact, what lies beyond: a regular city with some futuristic technology…that is somehow in charge of the place the twins were born, an area they call The Land.

Although we don’t get any straight answers about the city (thought of as The Beyond by people in The Land), we do get some tantalizing hints about what may be going on – and have happened in the past. Kazune, who appears to be about fifteen, is clearly much older than that. Flashbacks show him and his brother, Amane (possibly his twin brother, which would add another set of twins to the tale), living in what looks like our time as little boys. The two of them are in an elevator when an unknown disaster strikes, and then time skips ahead to the story’s present day. Kazune looks like a teen, but Amane is now a decrepit old man who views the outside world through Kazune’s special video-equipped contact lens. Amane and Kazune seem to have created The Land, and at first, my thought was that they did so to supplement the declining birthrate in urban areas. But if they control The Land and authored its culture and rules, that means that they also came up with the idea of sacrificing children, which would seem to run counter to the birthrate issue. But then, we know that An and Anne’s father spared children, and this volume reveals something about the sacrifices’ guardian that suggests that this, too, is part of the plan. It may be nothing more than Amane and Kazune creating a world to play with, something that Kazune seems to be growing weary of, or at least to believe is wrong as time goes on.

That latter would make a lot of sense given some of what we learn about the ways The Land and The Beyond interact. You may remember in volume one that An’s friend Heita’s father reached his chimei: he attained the age of fifty and was taken to The Beyond. For most of the people in the village, that means that he died and left in a spiritual sense, but the truth about chimei isn’t that nice. Instead, it seems to be a way for The Beyond to gain workers for menial jobs that no one wants to do, which runs contrary to ideas that the elderly are owed reverence and care, while also turning the notion of abandoning the no longer useful elderly in a remote place. The people from The Land believe themselves to be in a better place once they reach The Beyond, which makes it look awfully like they’re being raised like livestock, naïve and taken advantage of.

Kazune’s rebellion against Amane, or the entire Land situation, is a deceptively small one. While he seems to have Amane’s blessing to bring Anne to The Beyond, he doesn’t appear to when he teaches An to read and write. The fact that there are at least two sets of twins in this series, both separated by The Land’s mandate that if twins are born, one must be sacrificed, would seem to indicate that Amane wants to see what happens when two outwardly identical people are separated and raised in different circumstances.

An and Anne, despite this, still seem to share a basic curiosity. Anne is more brash about it and much more reckless, but she and An both are always looking for a way to get around rules, to learn what they’re not supposed to know, and to find a way out. For Anne, that becomes more literal when she moves to The Beyond, but An has to be a bit more clever about it. Stuck in The Land with her mentally ill aunt Mari and her overprotective friend Heita, An gathers knowledge like fruit and preserves it. While I’d hesitate to call her the smarter sister, her circumstances mean that she has to be cautious, and that means more problem-solving. Anne, even in The Beyond, is able to get by with her physicality and quick wits. An has a much stricter framework she has to work within, requiring more creativity.

As you might guess, Yamashita’s worldbuilding is spectacular. It’s an important piece of the story to the point where the setting is nearly a character in its own right, and one that makes for a very unreliable narrator. Everyone views it a little differently, and through combining all of these viewpoints, readers come to their own conclusions. Any or none of them could be the truth, and by giving us snippets of reality with each storyline, Yamashita forces us to really think about what’s real and who determines that. Is The Land a false existence? It’s real to Heita, who’s working on making a life there. Is The Beyond a better place? Maybe for Anne, but Kazune may beg to differ.

Yen Press‘ jumbo omnibus is, quite frankly, a bit overwhelming. While it’s good to get so much story at once, it also can be a lot, and it almost makes sense to read this one volume’s worth at a time so that you can think about what you’ve read. Still, the book isn’t too heavy (though if you have arthritis or other hand/wrist issues, it will be difficult to hold), and the covers don’t show smudges. The spine is flexible enough for easy reading without cutting any of the art, which is important because Yamashita’s artwork is beautiful.

Land is neither fantasy nor science fiction, nor is it historical fiction. It’s close to all of those, but it settles for none. What it is is an excellent read, a combination of classic shoujo and modern seinen sensibilities. It’s simply one of the most interesting series being translated into English, and you don’t want to miss it.

Anime

Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. Season 2 Casts Yusuke Shirai – News

Published

3 hours ago

August 8, 2026

qasimgillani

The official website of Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc., the television anime based on Sekka Iwata and Yū Aoki‘s Magilumiere Co. Ltd. (Kabushikigaisha Magilumière) manga, announced on Sunday a new cast member for the second season.

Yusuke Shirai plays Shō Manao, a mysterious, but gentle man without a past or history.

magilumiere-2 — Image via Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. anime’s website

Viz Media and MANGA Plus release the manga in English, and Viz Media describes the magical girl workplace story:

Kana Sakuragi is an excellent candidate for the job. Any job! She’s motivated and organized, and has a fantastic memory. So why has she interviewed at over 15 companies without receiving a single offer? She’s trying to keep a positive attitude, but it seems like her bad luck is only getting worse when a monster crashes her latest interview. As havoc ensues, she finds herself helping the magical girl who comes to their rescue and ends up with more than just her life in return. Meet the newest magical girl at Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc.!

The previously announced cast members for the new season are:

Riki Fukushima (Beyblade the Movie: Fierce Battle, Skate-Leading Stars) is the new director of the anime at J.C.STAFF. Michiko Yokote (Prison School, RIN-NE) is the new script supervisor, Masahiro Fujii is returning as the character designer, and Makoto Miyazaki is returning to compose the music.

New staff members for the new season include assistant director Hiroyasu Oda (Delico’s Nursery, Honey Lemon Soda episode director), sound director Yoshikazu Iwanami (Ajin, Ghost in the Shell Arise), art director Shun Yoshii (background art for 2.5 Dimensional Seduction, One-Punch Man season 3), CG director Shunsuke Kasuga (Honey Lemon Soda 3D director), and editor Yūji Kondō (Fate/strange Fake, Sword Art Online: Alicization). First season’s episode color coordinator Asuka Hino is now the new season’s color key artist, and Yūsuke Noguchi, who worked on compositing and cinematography (also known as “photography”) on episodes of the first season, has been promoted to the new season’s compositing director of photography.

VTuber Marine Houshou performs the new ending theme song “BooooM!!!”

syudou×Yūsei Yagi (FANTASTICS) perform the opening theme song “Latte Magic.”

The new season premiered on NTV on July 4 at 24:55 JST (effectively July 5 at 12:55 a.m.).

The first season of the anime aired in Japan from October to December 2024. Amazon Prime Video streamed the anime globally.

Writer Iwata and artist Aoki launched the manga on Shueisha‘s Shonen Jump+ service in October 2021, and ended the manga in its 160th chapter in July 2025. The 18th and final volume shipped on September 4.

Sources: Magilumiere Magical Girls Inc. anime’s website, Comic Natalie

Anime

Voice Actor Rika Kinugawa Announces Marriage – Interest

Published

3 hours ago

August 8, 2026

qasimgillani

Rika Kinugawa, the voice actress behind Zombie Land Saga‘s Yūgiri and other roles, announced on Saturday that she had gotten married. Kinugawa stated she married a non-celebrity and thanked her fans and supporters. “My husband is a non-celebrity who wholeheartedly supports my free-spiritedness with both firmness and great kindness.”

As of press time, Kinugawa’s announcement has received 21,000 likes and over 640 replies, most of which are congratulations from her fans and colleagues. Fellow Zombie Land Saga cast member Minami Tanaka (Lily Hoshikawa) replied to the announcement saying, “Kinu-chan!!! Seriously, congratulations…!! Every single word in your letter made me cry…! I hope you’ll be happy together for a long, long time!!!”

Kinugawa has appeared in Ascendance of a Bookworm as Corinna, The Great Cleric as Lummina, Orange as Takako Chino, and Sakuna: Of Rice And Ruin as Kokorowa Hime, among others. Her agency lists her full résumé.

Sources: Rika Kinugawa‘s X/Twitter account, Minami Tanaka‘s X/Twitter account, Tokyo Actor’s Consumer’s Cooperative Society via Comic Natalie

Anime

Episodes 16-17 – Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 3: Adopted Daughter of an Archduke

Published

5 hours ago

August 8, 2026

qasimgillani

aobw4171 — ©Miya Kazuki,TO Books./Ascendance of a Bookworm Project 2026

I’m back from a weekend at Otakon, Rosemyne is back from her adventure gathering materials, and it’s back to business as usual for both of us. Maybe it’s best I’m getting back in the swing of Bookworm reviews with a two-for, as the season’s 16th episode on its own is absolutely one of those “workaday recap of Rosemyne’s to-do list” entries. There are some fun highlights, of course, and plenty of momentum propelling the overarching story, but it’s thoroughly pedestrian proceedings barely above the action of a montage before things shift around only a little more in the next episode.

Maybe it’s my fault for snarking about the Bookworm anime’s occasional dip into this kind of material converse to all the action in the previous episode. And as I said, there are advancements! The bookkeeping behind this Bookworm is business brought to the Gilberta company by Rosemyne’s advancements in study materials. It’s funny seeing Benno vacillate between coveting the extra customer base and trying not to let slip that his ability to actually manage it all is only a little overwhelmed. These are the realities of economics that Bookworm isn’t entirely based around depicting (it’s not Spice & Wolf or anything) but still has to acknowledge in its setting and scale. So the natural conclusion reached at the end, to spin off the bookmaking business into its own independent company, makes sense as a next step. But these are just the beginning and end of an episode that’s littered with a lot that’s only tangentially connected—to that plot or any of the others.

Otto quitting being a soldier to join as a merchant? Makes sense, and a nice way to keep components of Rosemyne’s previous life moving up through the story. Same for the reveal of the completed, working printing press itself. This is the big advancement that’s going to boost that bookmaking business, obviously, and this show is, as usual, going to linger on the loving depictions of the actual mechanics of the thing. It’s cute seeing Rosemyne react to it, but beyond presenting the press for its own sake, there’s not a lot of immediate tie-in to everything else that happens this episode.

That “everything else” is to the point that I’m actually glad I had to put this off to a double review so that it doesn’t simply wind up being a bullet-pointed list of every vignette. Seeing Brigitte get the titular new dress and tease at a relationship with Damuel is cute. But the dalliance with Hugo potentially becoming Rosemyne’s personal chef feels like an aside to the aside that the Italian Restaurant subplot has always come across as in this show. It’s the weakest of stock isekai storytelling: introducing something into the fantasy world purely for novelty because the writing thinks it might be neat for the main character to have. The only actual engaging instances are as fleeting as the rest of those: Rosemyne inadvertently sending a magical reply to a correspondent of the previous, executed High Bishop, and she and Wilfried learning to hold down the fort of the Mana Replenishment Hall while Sylvester is off at an Archduke Conference. But the actual occurrence of ArchCon 2026 doesn’t actually take place in the episode, so even these nominally dramatic elements feel like naught but casual errands run at this point.

Not that the story shifts up to rip-roaring as soon as Sylvester does head off to the conference in the next episode. Sure, it’s not like I was expecting Rosemyne and Wilfried to throw a raging house party now that their parents aren’t home (I’d watch it), but I was still a little taken aback by how much this shifted structure simply leads to another string of daily life being depicted. The most major shift is that Rosemyne is able to sneak in some extra reading time during these days, being flustered when it’s still not enough.

Seeing this in line with the previous episode does make the continuity of some of these tasks clear. Brigitte’s still showing off her new dress with the plot teasing that Rosemyne will need to find a way to get her and Damuel together. But of course I’m mostly going to be delighted by Angelica coming back. At first I was mildly annoyed that they just skipped over her studying and passing her classes, but in hindsight that sort of busywork wasn’t going to be the entertaining part. No, now I get to be here for her “reward” in Rosemyne charging her manablade, Ferdinand’s interference, and the resultant talking sword Angelica gets saddled with. It’s a very dryly amusing inclusion, which also showcases the outside-the-box ways Rosemyne manages to help people with—sometimes unintentionally! So Angelica basically having her own virtual assistant in the form of a sword that sternly talks with Ferdinand’s voice is a funny way to make sure she stays on top of things, even as I don’t expect it to come up a ton in the show after this.

The other continuing element is much more impactful. Gilberta company splitting off the printing business makes sense…except then the show reminds viewers that part of the plan was for Tuuli to start apprenticing with the company, meaning she won’t get to stay close to Rosemyne if her bookmaking portion gets spun off. As Lutz laments, it’s something all those close to Rosemyne must consider as her efforts and influence grow. Being brought to Rosemyne herself resonates the same way: they’re able to finagle Tuuli’s apprenticeship to keep her close for now, but the logistics of Rosemyne staying close to those she cares about are only going to get more complex. It goes in hand with Rosemyne learning about the compromises she needs to make in her principles and leadership style as she gains more authority and learns the “real” way of serving as a high-ranking member of the church. The detailed, “real-world” stylings of Bookworm‘s constructed fantasy world can’t let things shake out conveniently or optimally all the time, so goes the slow process of Rosemyne growing up.

She’s got others looking out for her. There’s a cute, mildly funny subplot in the 17th episode about Rosemyne’s adoptive grandfather watching over her, stricken by the fact that his resting bitchface might aggravate her mana-overloaded condition. It is kind of too bad that Rosemyne never actually realizes he’s got his heart of gold, but there’s time in the future for that. And it’s nice to see Otto formally transfer in to start working for the company through Rosemyne. It’s narratively satisfying for the guy who originally loaned her his tablet and initiated her quest for reading and writing in this world to loop back around into her story this way—it keeps Bookworm‘s story feeling rich and interconnected in its long-term ambitions. Touches like that make the 17th episode come off stronger than the 16th, even as it’s ostensibly the same sort of day-to-day checklist. It’s a good comparison of what the show does effectively compared to some of its lesser habits as I return to it this week.

Rating:

Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 3: Adopted Daughter of an Archduke is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.

Chris is back to hit the books. You can see him posting about anime, transforming robots, and other quality reading material over on his BlueSky.

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