Notice for Review Requests

I receive review requests weekly. However, my personal schedule is hectic and I no longer review actively. (I also manage another blog called The Toronto Cafe and Food Blog). I do read every request sent but I apologize in advance that I do not reply to them all.

If I do take on a request, I will forewarn that it may take some time before I can review it. I am now looking to review adult fiction and self-help books instead of young adult fiction because I have grown out of it. If you are to request a review for either adult fiction or self-help, I will more likely to give it a shot.

In the meantime, Stop, Drop, and Read! serves as an archive book review blog. When I have the time, I may post a review. Thank you for understanding.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Reiko the Zombie Shop by Rei Mikamoto

Title: Reiko the Zombie Shop
Mangaka: Rei Mikamoto
Age Group: Older Teens
Series is: Completed with 11 volumes
Volume(s) Reviewing: 1
My Rating: 4.5/5

You can't bring the dead back to life, unless you are Reiko. This young and beautiful high school student could easily have anyone who is deceased walking and talking again. Of course, only if you pay her well. But no worries, she'll charge depending on how much you make.

Popular with her services, Reiko encounters many dangerous cases. Known as Reiko the Zombie Shop, she'll always get the job done. Of course, it doesn't mean that the safety of her customers would be definite. After all, you are messing with the undead!

With my desperation for anything zombie-related, I scoured long and hard for any manga that contained some. Unfortunate, there isn't much. I lucked out though, discovering this title through Deb Aoki from the popular Manga About.com.

When I first saw the art, I was like "Hmm". Sometimes I found Reiko's head to be awkward compared to the rest of her body, but if you were to just see only her on the page, you wouldn't expect that there would be so much gore following after. While reading, the art sometimes went to the extreme, with guts everywhere. It wasn't creepy until I actually thought about the artwork and story once I was done reading.

A few of the situations that Reiko ended up in went by a little too quickly. What bothered me was the question on how did Reiko obtained the power to bring the dead back? Was it because she fiddled with dark magic? Through bloodline? The first volume never covered the background story of Reiko and I really wanted to learn more about her.

Despite all that, I enjoyed the manga. It gave great doses of creepiness, blood and zombies with interesting background stories to it. Reiko the Zombie Shop is a great read for horror fans but not to those who are not into mangas with quick, short stories.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Cecelia said...

Looks like you have a spam commenter ahead of me. Kind of funny! I don't usually read manga, but the combination with zombies just might be worth it. And the premise sounds cool. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

Diana Dang said...

Haha, yeah. This is my second spam already! Wanted to delete it earlier but for some reason my school computer did not let that be possible.

If you do pick it up, hope you enjoy! And possibly get into manga! :D

Anonymous said...

I love zombies, but can't seem to find any decent zombie manga except high school of the dead. Zombie loan is a bit pathetic I think. Will definitely check this one out.

cia said...

I quite enjoyed the story as well. If you haven't read the next installations to the series yet I won't spoil anything for you but tell you that you do find out that the 'Zombie Shop' ability is passed down from her parents and there is a story arc that begins in probably the fourth book or so and continues nonstop from there.