Arakawa Under the Bridge #7

Hikaru Nakamura's offbeat riverside saga continues with this seventh volume, whose cover alone captures the series' delightful strangeness perfectly. A poised, elegantly dressed young woman — adorned with bee antennae, translucent wings, a striped bodice with fur collar, and ribbon-laced heels — sits coolly atop a honeycomb structure, holding a slender dagger with calm authority against a warm amber background. It's the kind of image that reminds you why Arakawa Under the Bridge has earned such a devoted following — visually inventive, a little mysterious, and impossible to look away from.