2 screenshot limit

I was at Comic-Con when they announced this title, and from the little blurb that the CMX representatives read about this series, I already knew that I would be all hearts and rainbows for this title when it came out.

And I am! It’s been a while since I’ve felt so -giddy- for a shoujo manga.

Takami is tall and tomboyish. She grew up with four older brothers, so her mother, in an attempt to keep her somewhat ladylike, sent her to get piano lessons. That’s where she meets Akira, a half-Japanese, half-Caucasian boy who’s absolutely talented in the piano. Takami is drawn to him because of his soft, beautiful features, even going so far as to being his protector when people tease him for being so pretty. Now, Takami is sixteen, dating all the wrong boys, not realizing that little Akira is now a young man himself and who’s been watching (and loving) her all this time.

This series is so predictably shoujo. In the first volume alone, you get all the cliche tropes: the unrequited love confession, the determined rival, the school festival, crossdressing, the ferris wheel ride… I don’t know what else remains for the rest of the volumes. So, if you’re one of those types who can’t stand to read yet another story employing these plot devices, maybe Venus Capriccio isn’t for you.

BUT! If you’re one of the saps like I am, there’s just something so sweet about the relationship between Takami and Akira that made me melt. Despite Akira’s confession — that Takami didn’t really respond to — their relationship is so grounded on their friendship that there’s not too much awkwardness when they see each other the next time. They like each other that much, and simply spending time with each other despite the changing nature of their relationship.

Also, I really like Takami. Like other tomboyish shoujo heroines such as Ito (W-Juliet) and Haruna (High School Debut), she’s somewhat dense. She also takes up the protector role far too frequently, even when it’s not beneficial for her. But I do like how she also does like Akira, even if she’s not sure really where in the point of the friendship/love spectrum they’re in now.

I so adore this series already and <3 CMX for bringing it over.

That’s actually Deb Aoki’s phrase, I’m just borrowing it temporarily for the purposes of this post.

When the roommate and I lived in the Fangirl Abode of Doom ™, we shared 4 Ikea bookshelves between us, and all shelves were packed with manga. We were smug about our respective collections, and prided ourselves on purchasing manga that few people in the fandom cared about.

Then, there was a point when I stopped buying manga every week. The books were no longer on the shelves but on the floor, and honestly, I think I was only reading half of the books that I bought. I was only buying the manga out of obligation to the series. I felt like I was being “loyal” to the publisher and manga-ka by continuing to purchase the series on release day. Like Deb, I felt like I needed to give these unloved books a good home, and what better home than an apartment shared by two fangirls?

But the money can only go so far, and I actually wanted to buy or do other things than read manga — hence the manga-buying break. Gaps suddenly grew in the collections. I think the long shonen manga series suffered the most since I would forget what was the last volume that I had so I avoided buying the newest volume since I didn’t want to buy duplicate copies  (which still happens, but hey, it’s an occupational hazard).

Now that I’m in a serious manga-reading period again, I’m realizing that not buying the books as they were released is backfiring against me.  Publishers are dropping out, licenses are expiring, books are going out of print, and certain volumes of books which are OOP are selling for ridiculous amounts in retailers.  I was looking to purchase volume 7 of Please Save My Earth, and was aghast to discover that not only is it nearly impossible to find, but the few sellers that do have are asking hundreds of dollars for a $10 manga.  As much as I love the series, I will not pay that price for one book. At that point, I’m not supporting the publisher nor the artist, but the unscrupulous middleman.

It’s getting to be trickier to be a manga fan. I want to support the manga industry, but at the same time I don’t want to be in debt, broke, or starving to indulge the hobby.  I have to figure out how to find the middle ground in this, but right now, I haven’t found yet it.

It’s rare that I know about the anime prior to knowing the manga. Usually, I would stumble upon a fairly unknown manga series, read a few volumes, and then think, “wow, maybe this’ll turn out to be a good anime.”  Such wasn’t the case for Nabari no Ou — I actually thought that the anime was an original story created specifically for the show.

So, as you can presume, I was pretty excited to get my hands on the manga. Yen really does such a nice job with their covers; they don’t litter it with a lot of extra logos or match it to fit a pre-styled company template. I really appreciate that they try to stick to the look of the original volume as much as possible.

The story itself starts off fairly generically: Miharu Rokujou finds himself in the middle of a clan battle between opposing ninja tribes, as he posseses the secret of the shinra bansou, which is the most secret art of the ninja.  He is protected by his teacher, Durandal Thobari Kumohira, and his classmate, Kouichi Aizawa. Thing is, despite all this excitement going on around him, all that Miharu wants is to return to an indifferent and boring life.

Yes, like that other uber-popular manga series, the central characters in this series are ninja. Thing is, the characters and their behavior are far more believable here because it’s not as eccentric as the characters in Naruto. Meaning, nobody powers up and gets crazy abilities every two chapters.

Most of all, though, I really adore the interactions between Miharu and his protectors. Thobari-sensei is adorably quirky (his fear of trains and all moving vehicles is hilarious), and I love how Miharu can easily disarm him with his devilish charm. I also have a bit of a soft spot for Aizawa and Raimei — yes, they’re capable warriors, but they’re also children, so they still make mistakes and somehow, that’s okay.

I highly recommend picking this series up, but well, I adore this series so of course I’d say that.

I usually post the quickie manga reviews on livejournal, but I think I’ll start moving them here just for consolidation’s sake. I never know how to review later volumes in long-running series. I figure, if you’re still reading the series past volume 10 or so, you don’t really need the recommendations from a manga review blog to tell you if it’s good or not to keep reading. So yes, basically, these manga quickies are self-serving posts, valuable to nobody else but me (probably).

Bleach 26 – Ichigo is still training, and Hiyori is getting frustrated that his progress has moved so slowly since he started a month ago. Ishida is sparring with his dad, trying to regain his Quincy powers. Chad is being trained by Renji, as Urahara’s proxy. And Rukia and Orihime have teamed up to do some training of their own back in Soul Society.  Yeah, there’s a lot of training and sparring in this volume. It’s looking like the calm before the storm, before the you-know-what hits the fan, as it were.

xxxHolic 13 – Nice to finally get some closure on the Kohane arc. I really like her as a semi-recurring character, and I really am glad that some things ended up with a reasonable resolution. Am I the only one who thinks that Doumeki possibly misses the spazzy Watanuki? He’s just not the same if he’s not yelling and twirling around Doumeki in anger. I want that Watanuki back!

This volume also presumes that the reader is extremely familiar with the current events in Tsubasa, which I’m not. Maybe it’s a sign that I need to start picking up that series again…

If you’re any sort of science fiction fan, many of the themes that are brought up in Jihai should be familiar.

17-year old Aoi is a courier who’s developed a reputation for being able to deliver his messages with unbelievable speed. Nobody realizes why that is until it’s revealed that he’s a custom-made revant, a clone.  As a revant, his lifespan is marked as a tattoo on his body, and it turns out he only has one more year to live.  He only has one more year to find the killer of someone he’s cared about and to exact his revenge.

One of the first things that I noticed about Jihai is how beautiful the art is.  I haven’t had the chance to check out the other series by Nigoshi (The Flat Earth Exchange, btw) but I think I will do that, since I really think the art in Jihai is amazing. It’s clean and detailed without going overboard. Nigoshi does pack a lot of action in each page, thus picking up the pace of the story. It’s an action-packed story that takes full advantage of the artists’ paneling style to keep the story moving forward.

The other characters in the book are also pretty engaging. We have Tristram, the lavender-haired bishop (who I think resembles Gunther from Kyou Kara Maou ^_^;;) and Disfield, his stoic  and mysterious friend who runs the town’s diner.  While not explicitly BL, I think Jihai treads that line with the relationships between the males in the series, especially with Aoi and Disfield.

So, if you’re the mood for an interesting manga with its fair share of pretty men and compelling story, give Jihai a run. I wasn’t expecting anything when I picked it up, but thankfully, I enjoyed reading through it. Maybe you will too.

Preview of volume 1 is available at CMX’s website.

At the Forbidden Planet in Union Square, there was a point when they had copies of every single volume of Tower of the Future on the discount manga rack, except for volume 1. Usually, I would’ve taken that as an opportunity to start collecting the series even though I don’t have the first book.  But considering that I haven’t even finished reading/collecting all the volumes of Please Save My Earth, I’ve held back on purchasing this series. I think there’s only so much Hiwatari that one person can read at once…

Okay, what an idiot I was. I was able to find v1 of Tower of the Future at FanimeCon, and am now sad that I don’t have the rest of the volumes (yet).

If PSME is any indication, this first volume is obviously a warm-up for bigger things to come. It starts out feeling very normal and innocuous — middle-schooler Takeru is your average normal kid. He has friends, is busy prepping for the high-school exams, and writes fantasy-based stories in his spare time.  Then one day, his mother is involved in a dangerous car accident, and her dying wish is for him to accept a half-sister that he never even knew about into their home. Teenage angst ensues. He runs away from home (granted, he ends up running away to a friend’s house who lives maybe a block away from home) and rebels against his father and what Takeru perceives as infidelity towards his mom.

Hiwatari, as much as I adore her, is a bit of a hard sell to fans who are used to the slick, cute art style that’s common among many of the artists working right now. Her art in Tower of the Future has the smushed noses and the wacky hairstyles and fashion choices that was cool in the early 1990s.  I have to say, though, that the payoff for reading and sticking with one of her stories is more than worth it. She is a master at characterization and motivation, and it’s in the subtle things that she does with this knowledge that makes her a wonderful mangaka.

1) The location is great. First off, The convention center is incredibly accessible. Maybe it’s partially the design of downtown San Jose itself, but even our hotel (The Fairmont), which was the furthest, was only a three-block walk. After years of walking long blocks to get to the Baltimore Convention Center, this was such a welcome relief. If I was feeling especially lazy, the light rail stops right in front too.

And inside, the space has enough room for the ~14,000 otaku who descended on SJ for the weekend. There’s a bit of a bottleneck around the Stage Zero area on the 2nd flr, but it’s still navigable and the rooms for the other events or panels aren’t too far off either.

2) Panels didn’t seem to be the big draw for this convention. Granted, I only attended a couple,  but in both instances, there were only a couple of dozen people in attendance, if that.  Maybe the Momoi and Yamaga panels got more people in the rooms… so I could be totally wrong.

I did get the impression that a lot of people were watching in the video rooms though. I had some time to kill in-between things so hey, why not watch some anime? Surprisingly enough, otaku filled up the video rooms, even for titles that you’d think they’ve already seen elsewhere *cough* — like Claymore, Darker than Black. And basing from the collective reaction, it seems like for the lot of them, this is the first time they’re viewing it.

FYI, I saw a bit of their One Piece marathon and I think I want to start rewatching it again.  Just need to catch up on 300 episodes or so…

3) Having a purikura machine is basically printing money. I’m really surprised this is the first time that I’ve seen one in any anime con.

4) West Coast cosplayers seem so much more laidback and genuinely appreciative that (a) you recognize the character they’re portraying and (b) that you want to take their picture. They also get bonus points for posing in character.

5) Dealers need to realize that with this magical thing called the internet, people can actually check how much items regularly cost and know if an item is overpriced. You must think that I’m stupid if you think I’m going to buy a manga that’s on sale for $8.00. That’s not a bargain and we both know it.

That may be it for my summer con season — I don’t think I want to go back to Otakon (unless they miraculously get Mamo-chan as a guest) and I really can’t afford to head out AnimeExpo or SDCC. Fanime was nice and I’m glad that I went.

Makoto Tateno is better known in the English-language manga community for her BL manga titles like Hero Heel and Yellow.  I was aware that she had also done a couple of regular shoujo titles, so I don’t know why this particular title escaped my radar.

King of Cards follows Manami Minami, a girl who starts playing a trade card game called CHAOS, mostly out of the prodding of her cousin, who’s the head of the school’s gaming club. She buys her first card set, and has the (un)fortunate luck to find the rarest card possible in the entire game, Sahgan the Mighty Sorcerer. Other players find out about this, and Manami now has to fend off all the possible challengers who come seek her out with the sole intention of winning Sahgan for themselves.

I know very little about Yu-Gi-Oh except the basic premise that it’s a shonen manga about a boy who wants to be the best at playing a trading card game. I read over the other manga reviews that wrote up King of Cards and the overall consensus is that this title is the “shoujo version of Yu-Gi-Oh.”  I think that’s a little bit unfair to King of Cards, since I think, at the heart of it all, it’s a shoujo manga through and through.

How so? For instance, as soon as Manami obtains the Sahgan card, she suddenly starts having premonition dreams of Sahgan. We find out in the progress of the volume that Sahgan is giving her hints on how she can win her next match. Manami, as the other characters even realize, is not a good card player — but because she has a deep emotional connection with her cards, fortune smiles down on her and leads her on the path to victory. If that isn’t deep shoujo territory, then I don’t know what is.

Even if you’re not remotely interested in trading card games, Tateno puts on a cute spin on it here. And her art is so nice that you may not mind the somewhat predictable outcomes of each of Manami’s matches. I’d really want to check out the rest of the series and see where this goes.

Click here for a few more cosplay pics

I know everybody was all about the K-ON cosplayers at this con — and admittedly, I saw a couple of girls who looked really cute in the ED outfits — but it was this Hina that made my heart go all a-flutter. California girls are hot.