You may remember Battan from Run Away With Me Girl, all three volumes of which were reviewed here on Okazu by Guest Reviewer Matt Rolf. Well, Battan is back with a new series that is unique and uncomfortable in equal parts.

Fatale Game, Volume 1 (ファタールゲーム) is the story of Tainaka Seri, a one-hit wonder of a manga artists. Her first story was a massive hit and she’s been in a slump every since. When she gets a new editor she is ready to leave the manga world altogether, until she meets Fukami Sumire, her incredibly passionate new editor. Proclaiming her love for “Nanakusa”‘s work, Fukami begins to light a fire in Seri.

But that fire, clearly, is also likely to burn.

Fukami is passionate, yes, claiming to be moved to tears by Seri’s work, but she also is a grounded taskmaster, requiring more than just average work from her charge. Seri is being pushed out of her comfort zone by Fukami, and part of that is Fukami’s way of not quite crossing the line into inappropriate intimacy. As uncomfortable as she, is Seri is drawing and writing again, and feeling some kind of spark between them. 

When Seri meets another of Fukami’s manga charges, things take a turn. Iwao warns Seri away from Fukami, claiming that the editor has a definite ranking in who gets time and attention. And we see that Iwao and Fukami’s relationship is more intimate than Seri and Fukami. 

As the volume concludes, Seri goes to an awards ceremony to see Fukami and is confronted with the fact that he editor does this for everyone she is in charge of. She loves their work and would LOVE to see them reach number one in the magazine rankings! Seri meets the others as they begin Fukami’s “game,” but what will that entail?

As I said, this book is equal parts interesting and uncomfortable. Fukami’s femme fatale method works, and clearly she uses her personal charisma to motivate her writers, even possiblysetting them against one another to compete for her favor. It also can be read as Fukami does genuinely deeply, personally love manga and genuinely, deeply, personally wants every single one of her mangaka to reach for the number 1 ranking.  Her behavior borders on (sometime crossing into) inappropriate, but her desire is not for the mangaka, but for their art.

It also could easily be that both these readings are true at the same time, depending on which perspective you take. I’m waiting to see how it pans out in the next volume.  I’m interested enough to see if this is a deep psychological game by Fukami and where it leads, or if the game is simply “kick these do-nothing artists into high gear.”

Ratings: 

Art – 6 I don’t care for the messy, wet look of Battan’s art, but YMMV
Story – 7 Could be good, could be bad, might be creepy, might not. Don’t know
Characters – 7 A bunch of soppy, slumpy manga artists and a femme fatale editor….what could go wrong?
Service – 4 Mild, but suggestive situations
Yuri – 4 There’s some projection happening and mopey crushing and an inappropriate kiss

Overall – 7

If you like Battan’s art, complicated and uncomfortable humans in complicated and uncomfortable situations or stories about stuck manga artists facing their own truths, give Fatale Game a try. 

Lycoris is the Queen of the Dragon Kingdom. She’s a western style dragon, who breathes fire in her beast form and has fiery red hair and a temper in her human form. So, you can imagine her reaction when Reifa, the first Princess of the Dragon Country, an Eastern style ice dragon, and emotionally cool as a human, arrives to marry her and bring peace to their two countries.  In Ryuu to Ryuu no Kekkon (竜と龍の結婚) two dragons find a way to bring their worlds together.  

Reifa and Lycoris fall for one another pretty quickly, but there is a lot to get through before they can be together. Another dragon is invading the Northern border for one thing and Lycoris is very loathe to actually propose marriage out of sheer embarrassment. When Reifa decides she wants a child, but Lycoris learns that birthing might kill her, it throws everything into turmoil. 

This one-shot manga by Ikuta Hana was a touching, slightly silly and very schmaltzy one-shot volume. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that it gets licensed, because it’s really quite cute. 

Ratings: 

Art – 8
Story  – 8
Characters – 9
Service – a teeny tiny bit of partial nudity
Yuri – 10

Overall – 9

The difference between 竜 and 龍 is, I believe the Western Dragon is more like a lizard (or turtle, based on the kanji) and the Eastern is more like a serpent. They are both pronounced “ryuu” but have fundamental differences in shape and function. ^_^

This manga first crossed my feed a few weeks ago, when I saw a social media post about it. Over on Bookwalker, I saw that I could read the first chapter for free, and so I did! At which point, this series came in and out of conversations on multiple platforms and in different contexts over and over for the next few weeks. So, when I saw Volume 1 at Kinokuniya, in our after-Yen Press Yuri Cafe visit, I grabbed it to see what the rest was like. Then, last week, Seven Seas announce they had licensed it as A Couple Drifting in the Wind.

Tayutau Futari, Volume 1 is a chance meeting that presages changes in two lives. First-year college student Kaori is huddling by herself on a bench, wishing she had some friends when a captivating beauty sits down, unzips her coverall to reveal a tattoo of a stylized centipede winding around her torso. Kaori asks if she can take a photograph, to which the answer is yes. This sets off a series of unexpected meetings and circumstances between her and the other woman.

The story moves quickly, almost too quickly for a collected volume. It will make more sense if you slow down, read a chapter, then come back to it in a few days or a week. That will give the story the time it needs to develop behind the scenes. Reading one chapter after another makes the events seem an almost ridiculously swift set of coincidences. Regardless, those coincidences gather two completely different women to set them on a path together in a tale that is charming and gentle. 

There is very little drama here, also very little of what we might think of as Yuri, except for Kaori being very aware of Momo’s attractiveness. There’s no time for romance or deep intimacy, but as a story of two strangers who become friends (and…maybe more as he story goes on? I have no idea, honestly) Tayutau Futari is a pleasant read. 

Ratings: 

Art – 8
Story – 7
Characters- 8
Service – The whole point is the tattoo
Yuri – 1

Overall – 7.5

A Couple Drifting in the Wind, Volume 1 will be headed our way in English from Seven Seas in December 2026