Saikano, Volume 1: The Last Love Song on this Little Planet, Shin Takahashi. A charming tearjerker of a manga, the plot concerns two socially inept students in small town Japan stumbling their way through the beginnings of a naively sweet romance.


It deviates from the unexpected in that the awkward schoolgirl has been remade by the government into an ultimate weapon, and struggles with her humanity as she "grows up" into a fearsome killing machine. Soft, childlike artwork paired with a charming metaphor for adolescence in a lovely tale of loss.

Read May 2007