What’s more, students aren’t allowed to leave campus until after they graduate. But, Lucy only learns that after signing the admission contract. There, students study the dark sciences, from cross-species transplantation to Basic Killer Robot Construction. Hollow Fields is the story of Lucy Snow, a nine-and-a-half-year-old girl who, while taking a shortcut in search of Saint Galbat’s Academy for Young Ladies, winds up at a very different boarding school: the eponymous Hollow Fields. Side note: as far as I’m concerned, Attack on Titan is an interesting enough idea with a less than satisfying execution, and all the anime did was draw things out unnecessarily, add a grossly saturated color palette, and try way too hard with its action scenes, leading to one of the most overhyped anime series in recent memory. Before that, I dabbled in a bit of Food Wars, and I managed to stumble across and read the first two volumes of Attack on Titan before the anime adaptation aired. It was great, and I fully intend to go back for more (read: I bought the second volume months ago, and I really need to actually sit down and read it). Most recently, I read the first volume of Black Clover earlier this year. Although, I have intermittently attempted to start back up over the last few years. I think it might’ve simply been that I got to a point where no series were really standing out to me, so I wasn’t reading anything, and I just sort of fell out of the habit.

Not that there’s a particular reason for why. Now, truth be told, I haven’t actively read manga for a long time. Sure, you’re inherently going to get some stylistic changes thanks to cultural differences, but if the general themes and tropes are congruent, then why should overseas works be excluded? Especially when there are people who dismiss any and all Japanese animation solely on the premise that they “don’t like anime.” This is despite the fact you might be trying to get them to watch Spirited Away, and all they’re familiar with is the likes of Bleach. I know some people have a huge issue with manga produced outside of Japan by people who aren’t Japanese, but I’m not really one of them. And in this case, that means the writer and artist is Australian. It’s an “original English-language” manga. However, Hollow Fields is not a part of the traditional industry. I can’t say I’ve heard of that being a particularly common practice, at least in terms of the traditional manga publishing industry. Cut to roughly and a half years later, and Seven Seas Entertainment has opted to re-release this full-color version. 1 was originally published in June of 2007 and black & white.

Hollow fields vol 4