On The Shelf – October 17th, 2012
More Tenjo Tenge and a new Vertical title!

We're in the mid-month slow phase this week with only four new books scheduled to hit store shelves. Still some great ones, though, including a brand new title. Quality over quantity, after all!

Kodansha Comics vies for the role of page count winner this week but falls just short with their second omnibus volume of Kitchen Princess. The culinary romance continues as Najika's quest to discover the identity of her prince within the Seika Academy walls is on-going. She's now torn between two boys – who are naturally the most popular and beloved boys in her school – but hits a road bump when she's told that her true prince may not be so charming after all.

KODANSHA COMICS

• Kitchen Princess Omnibus (Vol.02), ($14.99/US, $16.99/CAN)

Vertical Inc has a new series with their first volume of Keiko Suenobu's Limit (check out our review). The synopsis for the book is interesting in how it focuses so much on the main character, Mizuki Konno, and the struggles she faces as someone both academically-focused and on the good side of the popular kids as well. Her torn-between social life presumably becomes the least of her worries when a bus accident kills the majority of her classmates, however. With only five girls alive, whose hair looks the nicest or whose grades are the highest are the least of their concerns, or helpful determinants for who survives.

VERTICAL INC

• Limit (Vol.01), ($10.95/US, $11.95/CAN)

While a new Vertical title would usually easily earn my top pick of the week, a new volume of Viz Media's March Story wins by a captivating hair today. New volumes of this freaky fairytale only come out once a year so it's a real treat when it arrives (and of course always within a couple weeks of Halloween!). Several of the stories are episodic in nature. They tell the tale of humans lured into possession of a demonic race known as the Ill who cause them to do all manners of horrific things in pursuits of their desires. The title's lead – March – is a young woman who hunts the Ill under guise of being a young man. She herself has an Ill inside her, and while she does well to keep it contained, the barriers of control get weaker when she starts giving in to feelings of love for her friend and mentor. In this fourth volume, we're going to see her abilities thoroughly tested when she accompanies aforementioned friend to a ball and is forced to confront her blood-stained past.

Last up, it's another omnibus, though one that's considerably less fluffy than Kitchen Princess and beats it out by a few pages - Tenjo Tenge (Vol.09). I'm sort of curious about this volume just on the off-chance I can see more of that crazy contraption the girl on the cover is wearing. What 'is' that?!

VIZ MEDIA

• March Story (Vol.04), ($12.99/US, $14.99/CAN)
• Tenjo Tenge (Vol.09), ($17.99/US, $21.00/CAN)

That does it for this week's On The Shelf – what on the list are you most eager to buy? Any must-have recommendations? Share your thoughts in our handy comment area for all our readers to see!

* All dates are based on distributor listings and may not necessarily reflect exact release dates. Some books may ship prior to or after the date listed above varying by location and availability.