Bento Baggins

Bento Baggins, otherwise known as Ben, is our resident literature and philosophy bro. When not reading manga or watching anime, Ben is one half of the popular podcast Words About Books.

You can find Bento Baggins on Twitter @BenboSwaggins.

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Blood on the Tracks by Shuzo Oshimi

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  I wasn't planning to write a review of Shuzo Oshimi's Blood on the Tracks. I wasn't planning to read Shuzo Oshimi's Blood on the Tracks. Borrowing its title from a Bob Dylan album that has absolutely nothing to do with the story, Blood on the Tracks is a psychological horror series about a 14-year-old boy and his "overprotective" mother. I knew about the plot of the first volume going into this. As a horror fan, I've heard about this series for years. As a person diagnosed with panic disorder, I'm reluctant to engage with stories that do a really good job of conveying what it feels like to experience intense psychological trauma. I had been informed that this was such a story and avoided it.  Then my wife purchased the first two volumes and read them both in about 30 minutes. After reading them, she walked to my desk and told me I had to read them immediately. It was very quickly apparent that Oshimi is one of, if not the, most talented horror artist...
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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Manga Spoiler Review

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First and foremost, as the title suggests, there will be spoilers for the entirety of the Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba series. This is a review about the manga, not the anime adaptation. The manga has been finished for almost 2-years at this point, but I know there are people who may stumble upon this only having watched the anime which is ongoing. If you’re interested in whether or not I liked it without getting into spoilers. The short version of this review is that I’d give it a 3.5 out of 5, but expect the anime to be a 4.5 out of 5. I like the story, but there were some missed opportunities to make me love the story. The author seemed uninterested in several key plot threads which leads to an underwhelming conclusion that lacks the impressive visuals that ufotable has brought to the animation. If you scroll past this image then you enter into spoiler territory. The Shonen Manga Grading Curve The mission of Words About Books is to read a lot and to read widely for the purpose of ...
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One Shot Review: Just Listen to the Song (フツーに聞いてくれ) written by Tatsuki Fujimoto and illustrated by Oto Toda

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I've fallen behind on my writing and my reading, so I'm about a month late coming in coming to Just Listen to the Song (Japanese, Futsuu ni Kiitekure, lit. "Listen to Me Normally") written by Chainsaw Man manga-ka Tatsuki Fujimoto and illustrated by Oto Toda. Toda is a former assistant of Fujimoto's who recently released a critically acclaimed short story collection called "To Strip the Flesh" in English. Coming in at only 20-pages, Listen to the Song is on the shorter end of one-shots, but it is no less impactful. It tells the story of a boy who confesses his love to his classmate by way of uploading a song he wrote for her to an online video sharing site. In an act of teenage cruelty, the girl then shares the video with everyone at their school, in addition to rejecting him. Before the boy can delete the video, it explodes in popularity. People begin reading all sorts of messages into the video that the boy never intended. Eventually, the video becomes...
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