Two doctors, the young, passionate and well-liked Osanai and the veteran, ambitious Tatsugaura, are both investigating the mysterious 'Monmow' disease, found only in one remote village, which causes bizarre bone deformation, making its victims take on a beastlike appearance before their deaths. Osanai is sent to the village by Tatsugaura to see if he can find a cause for the disease while also treating the victims to the best of his ability. But in reality, Tatsugaura is scheming against Osanai and intends to infect him with the disease in order to clear the way of any obstacles of presenting his own research, and thus gaining high prestige and rank in the medical world.

Deep into the twenty-first century, the line between man and machine has been inexorably blurred as humans rely on the enhancement of mechanical implants and robots are upgraded with human tissue. In this rapidly converging landscape, cyborg superagent Major Motoko Kusanagi is charged to track down the craftiest and most dangerous terrorists and cybercriminals, including "ghost hackers" who are capable of exploiting the human/machine interface and reprogramming humans to become puppets to carry out the hackers' criminal ends. When Major Kusanagi tracks the cybertrail of one such master hacker, the Puppeteer, her quest leads her into a world beyond information and technology where the very nature of consciousness and the human soul are turned upside down. (Source: Kodansha USA)

*Mine has been a life of much shame.* *I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.* Plagued by a maddening anxiety, the terrible disconnect between his own concept of happiness and the joy of the rest of the world, Yozo Oba plays the clown in his dissolute life, holding up a mask for those around him as he spirals ever downward, locked arm-in-arm with death. Osamu Dazai’s immortal—and supposedly autobiographical—work of Japanese literature, is perfectly adapted here into a manga by Junji Itou. The imagery wrenches open the text of the novel one line at a time to sublimate Yozo’s mental landscape into something even more delicate and grotesque. This is the ultimate in art by Itou, proof that nothing can surpass the terror of the human psyche. (Source: VIZ Media)

Opening a few years after the end of World War II and covering almost a quarter-century, here is comics master Osamu Tezuka’s most direct and sustained critique of Japan’s fate in the aftermath of total defeat. Unusually devoid of cartoon premises yet shot through with dark voyeuristic humor, Ayako looms as a pinnacle of Naturalist literature in Japan with few peers even in prose, the striking heroine a potent emblem of things left unseen following the war. The year is 1949. Crushed by the Allied Powers, occupied by General MacArthur’s armies, Japan has been experiencing massive change. Agricultural reform is dissolving large estates and redistributing plots to tenant farmers—terrible news, if you’re landowners like the archconservative Tenge family. For patriarch Sakuemon, the chagrin of one of his sons coming home alive from a P.O.W. camp instead of having died for the Emperor is topped only by the revelation that another of his is consorting with “the reds.” What solace does he have but his youngest Ayako, apple of his eye, at once daughter and granddaughter? (Source: Kodansha USA)

Michio Yuki has it all: looks, intelligence, a pedigree as the scion of a famous Kabuki family, a promising career at a major bank, legions of female admirers. But underneath the sheen of perfection lurks a secret with the power to shake the world to its foundations. During a boyhood excursion to one of the southern archipelagos near Okinawa, Yuki barely survived exposure to a poison gas stored at a foreign military facility. The leakage annihilated all of the island’s inhabitants but was promptly covered up by the authorities, leaving Yuki as an unacknowledged witness—one whose sense of right and wrong, however, the potent nerve agent managed to obliterate. Now, fifteen years later, Yuki is a social climber of Balzacian proportions, infiltrating the worlds of finance and politics by day while brutally murdering children and women by night—perversely using his Kabuki-honed skills as a female impersonator to pass himself off as the women he’s killed. His drive, however, will not be satiated with a promotion here and a rape there. Michio Yuki has a far more ominous objective: obtaining MW, the ultimate weapon that spared his life but robbed him of all conscience. There are only two men with any hope of stopping him: one, a brilliant public prosecutor who struggles to build a case against the psychopath; the other, a tormented Catholic priest, Iwao Garai, who shares Yuki’s past—and frequently his bed. (Source: Vertical)

Apollo’s Song follows the tragic journey of Shogo, a young man whose abusive childhood has instilled in him a loathing for love so profound he finds himself compelled to acts of violence when he is witness to any act of intimacy or affection whether by human or beast. His hate is such that the gods intervene, cursing Shogo to experience love throughout the ages ultimately to have it ripped from his heart every time. From the Nazi atrocities of World War II to a dystopian future of human cloning, Shogo loses his heart, in so doing, healing the psychological scars of his childhood hatred. (Source: Kodansha USA) *Note: The Japanese version of this manga includes the one-shot "Garakuta no Uta", however the English release does not contain this story.*

It is the 22nd Century, the Third World War (2099-2126) has decimated a large part of Earth even though nuclear weapons have not been employed during the conflict. Old nations such as England, France and China have survived but have difficulty restoring their power. On the other hand, new nations and organizations such as the Sacred Republique of Mumna and the Poseidon Organization have been born on the ashes of the world resulting from the Third World War. In this bleak future, we are introduced to ex-L.A. SWAT members Deunan Knute and Briareos Hecatonchires. Having survived the world conflict and living in a desolated city, they are found by a young woman called Hitomi who proposes them to follow her to the utopian city of Olympus which has become the world's most powerful organization and which registers the new relations in terms of politics, economics and military between new and old nations/organizations. In Olympus, they are integrated in the prestigious ESWAT (Extra Special Weapons And Tactics) organization, whose main mission is to protect Olympus from terrorist attacks and Olympus's interests in the world. From here on, the two main protagonists encounter a great number of other characters and organizations who will be implicated in international plots that target Olympus.

Monster Musume: I ♥ Monster Girls tells all new, all original stories in four-panel comic strip anthology format, including a short Monster Musume story from Shake-O, creator of Nurse Hitomi’s Monster Infirmary. Spun off from events and characters as seen in the original manga and anime series, this new manga expands upon the Monster Musume universe. *Source: Seven Seas Entertainment*

"Human Metamorphosis," a satirical Manga depicting human society compared to the insect world, focuses on the life of a devious woman. Tomura Toshiko, who is said to be a genius, is a rising star writer. Her novel wins the Akutagawa Prize for the best novel of the year. While she attends the award ceremony, another woman named Usuba Kageri commits suicide in another place. It turns out that Kageri and Toshiko used to live together, and the awarded novel was copied from Kageri's transcript. Toshiko is like a parasite: approaching talented people one after another, squeezing everything out of them and stealing their works for her own fame. Behind her success story, she has her secrets.

Wandering the packed tunnels of Shinjuku Station, famous author Yosuke Mikura makes a strange discovery: a ragged hippie who can quote French poetry. Her name is Barbara. He takes her home for a bath and a drink, and before long Barbara has made herself into Mikura’s shadow, saving him from egotistical delusions and jealous enemies. But just as Mikura is no saint, Barbara is no guardian angel, and Mikura grows obsessed with discovering her secrets, tangling with thugs, sadists, magical curses and mythical beings – all the while wondering whether he himself is still sane. Written in 1973 and 1974 and inspired by the classic opera “Tales of Hoffmann” by Jacques Offenbach, Barbara may be Tezuka’s most psychological and unsettling work, shattering the fine line between art and madness with masterful precision. (Source: DMP)

In the future, birds have taken over Earth and replaced human kind as the dominant species. With the assistance of bird-like aliens, the birds of Earth gained increased intelligence and began to attack humans. Now humans are treated as livestock by the birds who have moved on to create their own society with laws, currency, countries, and class systems. Ironically, the birds are following the same path as humans did. Now, the meat-eating predatorial birds and the insect and grain eating birds have begun a war amongst each other that has no end in sight. As they fight, aliens begin to consider what species should replace the birds as the dominant species of Earth in this science fiction thriller.

Amidst the chaos of World War II, two Japanese sailors hear of Zephyrus, an utterly captivating woman in the South Pacific. Many years have since passed, and now Zephyrus has resurfaced in Japan, wielding her mysterious power over all men to exact revenge for their crimes against women since the beginning of time. Gohonmatsu Seki is the only man with the ability to resist her allure, but even he seems ill-equipped to save his gender… (Source: DMP)