With more people reading manga and Webtoons (aka vertical scroll comics) than ever before, Beat’s Bizarre Adventure gives three writers an opportunity each week to recommend some of their favorite books and series from Japan, Korea, and elsewhere. This week we have more Chinese fantasy, a Lovecraftian cat, and, of course, ballet.
Kaedegami
Writer/Artist: Jun Harukawa
Translation: Casey Loe
Lettering: Mark McMurray
Publisher: VIZ
Jun Harukawa’s Kaedegami is a hauntingly beautiful new series that blends myth, action and emotional depth into an East Asian dark fantasy. Serialized by Shonen Jump since June 23, 2025, Kaedegami tells the story of Kou, an orphan raised in the mountains by a powerful Shenguai (demonic entity) named Chiyou—once known as the fearsome God of War. After a mysterious defeat thousands of years ago, she lost her body and has been wandering ever since, her spirit fractured and her form forgotten by time.
What starts as a classic boy-and-monster setup evolves into something far more emotionally layered. Kou offers himself as a vessel to Chiyou so that she may reclaim the scattered remnants of her lost body. Their relationship oscillates between dependence and affection, familial tenderness and reluctant sacrifice. It’s an unusual dynamic for a shonen battle manga, even though the first chapter reminds me of an ecchi Naruto or Demon Slayer with a Chinese aesthetic. That said, everything is pretty well balanced.
The artwork is nothing short of breathtaking. From sweeping mountain backdrops to the elaborate Chinese-inspired character designs, Harukawa crafts a world that feels ancient and otherworldly. Chapter 2 even opens with a subtle nod to the Chinese idiom “喜怒哀乐” (pleasure, anger, sorrow, joy) that anchors the narrative in cultural resonance. I wished they would use these Chinese characters in the English version too.
Kaedegami’s simple narrative allows for character development and layered world-building that unfolds gradually, but with purpose. Side characters are fun and cute too, like “Chiyou’s Informant”, which features a Shenguai “Bianqiao San Niangzi” taken directly from a Chinese fairy tale.
The series shares an editor—Seisuke Araki—with Akane-banashi, another title I’ve previously reviewed and enjoyed. That same sense of tight visual composition and emotional pacing is present here as well.
Kaedegami may be a newcomer to the manga scene, but it’s already shaping up to be one of the most compelling East Asian action series in recent years. — Ilgın Side Soysal
Cthulhu Cat
Writer/Artist: Pandania
Translation: Zack Davisson
Lettering: Steve Dutro
Publisher: Dark Horse
Have you ever wondered what life would look like if you could take the eldritch horrors of an H.P. Lovecraft novel home as fuzzy wittle kitty cats? Well, wonder no more as that’s the very premise explored in Pandania‘s hilarious and engaging Cthulhu Cat.
Each story is a four-panel gag comic with a running and ever-evolving narrative that comes to a satisfying conclusion. The series follows a young boy who adopts a stray cat he found in an alleyway. This cat just so happens to be the Great Old One, Cthulhu, in cat form. Life is relatively “normal” for our protagonist, his other (normal) cat Ur, and Cthulhu, until one day other Great Old Ones begin popping up in their lives.
A game for the survival of the world begins that wraps everything and everyone into a cosmic cat fight. It’s big brain writing condensed into approachable, adorable, funny as hell fur to fur warfare.
Pandania’s easy going and deadpan humor makes so much of this work. Events in the story are played straight so that the absurdity on display can really shine. The artist’s style is also cute, rounded and easy to follow. This is something a child could read quite comfortably as an introduction to Lovecraftian horror without losing their minds. [Editor’s note: Hopefully with less of Lovecraft’s signature racism…]
Cthulhu Cat isn’t very long but there’s a lot to love about it. I want a Cthulhu Cat plush now. In fact give me plushies of all of these different god-cats. Blind box’em, I don’t care. Just let me own them too! — Derrick Crow
Swan
Writer/Artist: Kyoko Ariyoshi
Translation: Maya Perry
Lettering: Sno Cone
CMX Logo and Publication Design: John H Hill
Additional Design: Ed Roeder
Publisher: CMX
I had a manga series write-up ready to go this week, but then I went to Otakon and stumbled across the first three volumes of Swan in the manga library. Did you think I was going to miss the opportunity to write about a classic like Swan? I don’t think so.
Swan is a manga series by Kyoko Ariyoshi that ran from 1976 to 1981. It’s a classic sports manga about Masumi Hijiri, an enthusiastic but inexperienced teenage ballet dancer. Masumi wants to perform on stage, and so enters a ballet competition featuring her idol, the professional dancer Alexei Sergeiev on staff. Along the way she befriends some of the most talented young ballet dancers in Japan including Sayoko Kyogoku and Hisho Kusakabe. Does Masumi stand a chance against these geniuses? Or might she one day outshine them all?
You’ve seen this story before; the heroine faces an impossible challenge, trains hard to overcome it, and overcomes her limits with the help of her friends, only to move on to the next impossible challenge. Swan, though, benefits from applying this framework to ballet. Despite how effortless it looks on stage, the form can be gruelling, and Ariyoshi milks as much as she can out of the physical and mental discipline required to succeed. Even confident dancers like Sayoko sweat and struggle on stage. To say nothing of Masumi, who despite her latent potential must undergo endless training just to stand a chance of being competent.
But you don’t read Swan just for the story. You read it for Ariyoshi’s art, which is justly famous. You might have seen her spreads on the internet before: gleaming dancers frozen in time, every individual movement its own “frame” co-existing in negative space as panels shower the background. It’s the height of 70s shojo expressionism, the kind that you never see anymore in manga published today.
Appreciating comics like this does require you to be in the right headspace. In the third volume, there’s a scene where Sayoko suffers a fall on stage that could prematurely end her career. As she crumples on the ground, every character pops out of the background to shriek “Noooooo!!!!” It’s a loud, absurd moment that would be right at home in a soap opera. But it also rules, because Swan as a comic knows and respects the stakes of ballet and what it means for someone to put their body on the line for their art. Just one wrong step can be the difference between glory and life-annihilating defeat.
CMS published fifteen volumes of Swan in the United States before going under. Nobody else has touched it since, despite the series maintaining a cult audience among shojo readers to this day. It’s too bad! Melodramatic as it may be, Swan’s craft is miraculous, as if it was one of Masumi’s impossible performances. I’d love to see the rest of the story published here eventually. — Adam Wescott
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