This Looks Cool: Shima’s Lost Lad London

Lost Lad London story/art: Shinya Shima published by Yen Press | Release Date: May 2022 

First off, look at those cover designs. They are stunning, I love them! I want framed versions of them up on my walls. Shinya Shima’s Lost Lad London is a murder mystery set on the streets of London. According to Yen Press: “A murder on the London Underground and a mysterious bloody knife draw a regular university student and a grizzled New Scotland Yard detective into a web of crime and suspense”.

I don’t know, I get some major Luther vibes from the cover and some of the sample pages that I’ve seen on Amazon Japan. The art is very stylized, some of the panels remind me of linocut or woodcut prints, which makes sense considering the rich history that woodcut and woodblock printing has in Japan. I’ll definitely have this one on my radar. It is nice to see more mystery and suspense manga getting picked up by publishers. The author has an IG account if you want to check them out and get a feel for the art style. The manga is in black and white and not colour though, just keep that in mind while you are perusing the IG feed. There are a few colour pages in the Japanese version, hopefully Yen Press keeps those in the English edition