Yen Press; $13.00

Imagine: one moment, you’re a normal high school student, living a perfectly mundane (if boring) day to day life, and the next moment, you wake up having turned into a spider! Such is the premise of So I’m a Spider, So What?, which follows a nameless young woman who wakes up in a dungeon filled with monsters – and, unfortunately, she happens to be one of them. As a weak and small spider, she must figure out the rules to the new world she’s been unexpectedly transported into in order to level up and survive.

There’s been plenty of manga and anime series where the basic idea revolves around being stuck in a video game, but this might be the first one where the protagonist has been turned into a monster instead of a hero character. It’s enough of a twist on what has become somewhat of a tired concept that it keeps things feeling fresh and interesting. The artwork is also delightful, with the titular spider being just cute enough to endear her to even the most arachnophobic readers. This is definitely a series worth watching out for.

-Carrie Wood