Due to my YALSA committee commitments, I am unable to leave reviews. Please see www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub to see our future reviews for Great Graphic Novels for Young Adults. Thank you!

Rumiko Takahashi is a legend, a status that well earned by her contribution to the manga world. She’s the first mangaka I recommend to people, and she is one I will always read.

This volume is a bit different to her usual work, mostly because it’s short stories. Her series usually span 30 to 40 volumes, and while her imagination is great these short stories feel very surface level. It would’ve been great if she expanded them more, especially since they’re spooky. And I know Takahashi can write spooky. Just read Mermaid Saga to see how great she can be. If she had more time to flesh them out then these stories can be amazing.

I am so excited to see one of Rumiko Takahashi's story collections finally in English! This is a collection of single chapter stories, and it's neat to see a mix of old and new ideas within them. Be it nods to her older work or different takes on previous ideas, I had a lot of fun reading these! Personally, I could see a few of these stories as the basis for another longer series. I can hope that some of her older story collections might see an English release too! Fun and a little bit spooky!

Thanks so much to NetGalley for allowing me to have my first Graphic Novel presale read and review!
My grown kids love horror Manga and now I can see why. This is a collection of short stories in Manga format, so how you read the book is important. We lived in Japan for several years and know translations can be mucky. Some of the writing can fall into this category, but overall the artwork and stories overcome this. I didn't enjoy all of the short stories, but gobbled the book whole in an evening. It was a page-turner, even for me who does not normally read Manga.
4*

This title has several short stories and luckily they all had a fairly satisfying ending after being extremely suspenseful. Sometimes some suspense stories have an unresolved ending and I appreciated that these did not. Each story dealt with death in some way and related to daily life. I felt like it was fairly appropriate for teens and adults and some of the stories were quite fun even though they had an edge of horror to them.

I love Rumiko Takahashi, InuYasha was one of my first manga and anime series, so I loved seeing such a nostalgic art style and some new stories. I love reading about the cultural lore and learning about these new-to-me characters and captivating stories. I think this is a collection of previously posted manga in several comic books and magazines, but it is the first I've come across them, with one dating back to 1999. I enjoyed the journey I went on in each of these short stories and managed to feel a whole array of emotions reading them. We even got panels depicting the author's journey into becoming a manga artist.
Thank you Rumiko Takahashi! And thank you NetGalley and VizMedia for the ARC!

Can horror be cute? Absolutely. I enjoyed every last bit of this book (though the autobiographical bit at the end seemed a tad out of place, given the mood of the rest of the book).

This short story collection is varied and attention-grabbing. I'll not only recommend it to my shonen readers, but horror readers as well.

A great compilation of short stories by the famous Rumiko Takashi! She does a great job of keeping the stories light and fun but also spooky. I've always enjoyed her storytelling and am glad to see these published together in one volume.

The stories included in this volume are:
"Came the Mirror"
"Revenge Doll"
"The Star Has a Thousand Faces"
***"Lovely Flower"***
"With Cat"
"My Sweet Sunday"

*My favorite one!*

Thank you to NetGalley and Viz for a free advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Came the Mirror & Other Tales collects six of Rumiko Takahashi's short stories (with original publication dates spanning from 1999 to 2014). My favorite was the titular "Came the Mirror," but generally, I found the stories lacking in depth compared to other works by Takahashi. I would definitely recommend this collection to current fans of Takahashi, but if I were to recommend a Takahashi story or series to a first-time reader, I might choose something like Mermaid Saga where the mystery is given more space to build.


Translation: Junko Goda
English Adaptation: Rebecca Packard
Touch-Up Art and Lettering: James Gaubatz
Cover and Interior Design: Yukiko Whitley
Editor: Annette Roman
Original Cover Design: Koji INAMI + Bay Bridge Studio

3.5 rounded up, because even with limited character designs and plots that don't <i>quite</i> hit as hard as they need to in the end, it's hard to fault Rumiko Takahashi's shorter work. In part this because she's not stretching her ideas to translucency in order to keep a series going - in the short stories in this collection, Takahashi is able to tell a full tale without padding it out. That she can do that when most of her works run into the thirty-volume range (at least) is impressive, and more than anything shows that she deserves the praise heaped upon her. (And to be fair, I usually enjoy her longer work for ten to fifteen volumes.) The stories in this collection are primarily horror - a mysterious mirror that appears on the palm of peoples' hands forces them to purify monsters or be killed, a woman's stalker leaves foul-smelling flowers everywhere she goes, only everyone else think they smell great, a girl's cat possesses the boy she has a love/hate relationship with, and a struggling manga artist receives a cursing doll from a fan and doesn't hesitate to put it to use. The final piece, a joint reminiscence of getting started in manga with Mitsuru Adachi, is the most unique, but the strongest is probably the flower story, which manages to seem menacing without ever fully indulging in horror art or overt tropes. The resolutions of most of them (the cat story excepted) don't quite hit hard enough, and that does drop things down a bit in terms of overall enjoyment. But this is still a nice break from Takahashi's longer works and a good reminder that she really is the queen of shounen manga.

This collection from Takahashi was a lot of fun! The only story that I personally didn't care for was the final one, which was a collaborative story. I particularly liked the one with the cat, and when you read it, you know what I mean by that! ;)