Title: Shaman King Kanzenban
Author: Takei Hiroyuki
My Rating: 3/5

When the original run of Shaman King ended as it did, I blamed the author. It seemed he had painted himself into a corner and when he couldn't figure out how to go on, just stopped. I've heard that instead the series was cancelled because it dropped in popularity, so maybe it wasn't his fault after all, I don't know. (It seems odd that it would drop so much in popularity right when nearing the end, though, idk.)

Either way, years later, he's finally finished it up properly, adding a volume and a half of new material for this Complete Edition. (Rather than reread the whole series, which I don't have time for, I just read the new material.)

I...don't really know if this was worth the wait, honestly. It still seemed too rushed (probably not his fault, as he almost certainly had a limit to how many new chapters he could write), and the way things were settled with Hao was just weird.

I loved this series a lot while it was running, especially when all the stuff about Hao and Yoh was revealed, and I still love the art, but I don't know. I just wasn't really feeling it. Maybe I should have reread the whole series before tackling these last chapters.

I don't even know why I'm bothering to post since no one else reads it, but omg ( flails! )

Gah! I love this series so much. I loved Basara a ton, but this is EVEN BETTER. Basara was post-apocalyptic, but it was also very far post-apocalyptic, whereas this is immediately after. I like both types of stories, the sort of societies that arise after and the immediate survival type of story, but here I'm definitely liking the survival aspect a lot. And the whole setup with the five teams (and the backstory of Summer A, omg, not to mention the side trip down "what happened to the people in the shelters) and the travelling across a completely changed landscape and EVERYTHING.

It's such an awesome series. More people should read it! It is being scanlated, though it's pretty far behind the Japanese release. Looks like it's done up through most of volume eight, but that's less than half of what's out. (And I have no idea what the scanlations are like in terms of quality. Hopefully they're not too bad, since it's a complicated plot.)

( Naruto )

( Bleach )

( Bakuman )

( Psyren )

( Fullmetal Alchemist )

This is not a proper review, because I don't do reviews of manga except for completed series, but OMG YOU NEED TO READ THIS MANGA WHY IS IT NOT MORE POPULAR???

Ahem.

So. It starts off when, in order to rescue a classmate, Ageha uses a mysterious phone card and gets sucked into a world called Psyren. It turns out this monster-filled wasteland is actually the future, and Ageha and his friends have to back and forth through time to try and stop this future from coming to pass. Since this is a Jump series, there's got to be special powers. In this case, the atmosphere of Psyren awakens everyone's latent psychic powers.

I zipped through the first seven volumes + approximately two more volumes worth of chapters and now am feeling completely bereft. A Jump series hasn't grabbed me like this for a while. It's got a lot of stuff I love, like time-travel and post-apocalyptic futures and mysteries. I love how the future keeps changing based on the actions of Ageha and the others in the present. (I really, really, really love that part.)

The art wasn't that great at the beginning, but it's really improved as the series went on and I really like it a lot now. It has sort of a similar look to Bleach.

I like the characters a lot, too. There are quite a few female characters (though of course there are more male characters) and while a few of them sometimes fall victim to Irrational Woman Syndrome (think any Takahashi Rumiko heroine), it's not constant. Also the three healers? Are guys. I know. I'm amazed. People have various types of psychic powers and for once it's not the girls who get the healing powers. All the female characters can take care of themselves (to the extent anyone can; for example, while the series starts out with Ageha rescuing Amemiya, she rescues him in the next chapter) and play an equal part in the battles instead of being relgated to the sidelines.

Anyway, it's just really awesome and has totally become my new favorite Jump series.

A bunch of people are scanlating it. The scanlations I've seen have not been that great, and have had some mistakes that completely change the meaning, which is even more crucial in a series like this, but...it's better than nothing, I guess. It will probably come out in the US eventually, because it's Jump, but it doesn't seem to be out yet.

1. I got my Jump scans pretty much on time last night, and both Naruto and Bleach were pretty short, so that made up for the fact that Bakuman was super long. (Three pages were sketches of the characters' manga, and each page had four of the mini manga pages, so there were essentially nine pages extra to translate. Argh!)

Oh, speaking of Bakuman... ( Very vague spoilers, but mostly fail discussion. )

2. Brizzly seems pretty cool for using Twitter via the web (I always use the web interface anyway). One nice thing it does is it unpacks shortened links (which on Twitter is almost all of them). I think it's new yet, though, because it seems a little glitchy (even more so than Twitter, which is already plenty glitchy itself).

3. I love this Wondermark to death.

4. It got warm again yesterday (I knew I would jinx it!), but it wasn't bad (nto as muggy maybe) and it still got nice and cold at night.

5. anatsuno pointed me to this call for submissions to a supernatural gay erotica anthology. She was thinking of a story I actually hadn't written (helens78's Jude/Ewan vampire fic; not a surprising mistake, since like 90% or more of the Jude/Ewan fic out there is indeed written by me), but I do have a formerly-LotRiPS one with a ghost that might fit. It's more horror than erotica, despite containing sex, so I don't know. But it's also a story I've already origified (apparently I actually submitted it somewhere three years ago, according to the date on the file) so all I had to do was send it in. The #1 reason I don't try harder to get published is that looking for places to submit stuff is a huge pain in the ass, so the fact that the story was already ready to go, and ana did the work of finding the call for submissions for me made it easy. :D It's only $25-30 if it gets published, but like I said, I didn't have to do any work, and $25 is better than $0.

Title: Kabocha to Mayonnaise
Author: Nananan Kiriko
My Rating: 4/5

Miho and Sei are living together, but there's no passion to their relationship, which is strained by the fact that Sei is a struggling musician who mainly sits around all day drinking and watching TV instead of looking for a job. Meanwhile Miho turns to sex work to support them and is pining for her old boyfriend who was a complete asshole.

I liked this a lot. It's understated and very realistic and feels very grown up. I love the art, too. It's all outlines with minimal use of ink and tones.

I wish it were easier to get my hands on this sort of manga, but the bookstores here don't tend to stock a lot of ladies manga and most of what they do stock is BL of some sort. Ladies also gets scanned much less frequently than seinen, shounen, or shoujo, so it's hard to find online, too.

Scanlations can be found here. (I translated chapters 5-10.)

Title: Kaikisen
Author: Kon Satoshi
My Rating: 2.5/5

For generations, Yosuke's family has kept the "mermaid's egg" in their temple. Yosuke doesn't believe in mermaids and thinks the egg is just a legend, but strange things start happening when construction begins on a new resort that will the nearby island where the mermaid supposedly lives.

This was a decent enough story, but it didn't really feel that compelling. I could tell exactly where it was going to go and it just didn't feel like there was anything new and different about it. The art was okay, in a retro-looking way (it was published ten years ago, but looks like it could have been twenty or more).

Scanlations can be found here. (I translated part 3; part 4 should be posted later today, and the final part next Sunday (both by me as well).)

Title: Darling wa Gaikokujin 2
Author: Oguri Saori
My Rating: 4/5

This comes between Darling wa Gaikokujin and Darling no Ataman Naka by Oguri Saori (I wasn't able to get them in order, but it doesn't matter) and is pretty much more of the same: a mix of observations about Japan and Japanese, foreigners, and just these two people and their individual differences. I really enjoy Oguri's humor and am looking forward to reading more books in the series (if you can call it that) if I can get my hands on them. There seem to be quite a few!

I hear people complain about the misogyny in Death Note a lot, but to be honest, I didn't really have a problem reading it. I hated the way Misa was portrayed, and I'm sure there was skeevy stuff with the reporter, but it's been so long I don't remember. So it could be that I just wasn't reading as critically at the time or that it was stuff that didn't push my buttons in the same way the stuff in Bakuman does.

But oh my God, Bakuman. I like the story of struggling mangakas and would probably still follow it even if I wasn't scanlating it, but. Almost every chapter makes me want to stab Oba Tsugumi in the face and the most recent one, chapter 52, was particularly egregious.

( Spoilery rant. )

If you're going to comment about how none of these things are problematic or sexist and I'm reading too much into it and being unreasonable, go ahead, but don't be surprised when I don't answer your comment.

Title: Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo Short Story Collections 1-6
Author: Amagi Seimaru, Kanari Youzaburou, & Satou Fumiya
My Rating: 3.5/5

These six volumes of short stories are really only necessary to read if you're a hardcore Kindaichi completist (which I am). There's some really good stuff in there, but there are also a few duds, and I just don't think the short-story format works quite as well for these.

It was interesting to me to read them because they're fairly old and thus have characters who have since sort of dropped away and been forgotten about. Hajime's cousin Fumi is a major character in many of them (and even has one or two where she is the detective), as are Kindaichi's classmates, who have not featured in the new series at all, but who showed up more in the old series. There were also several Akechi-centric stories that were then compiled in Akechi Keishi no Yuuga Naru Jikenbo and Akechi Shounen no Karei Naru Jikenbo.

I did like that the first three volumes had a text short story as well as manga, though for some reason that didn't continue through the whole series. I also liked that the art was closer to the new series than to the old. (There were some encyclopedia type pages at the back of several of these, with pics from early volumes and damn, I'd forgotten how bad the art was then. Satou Fumiya has really improved over the course of this manga (not surprising, since Kindaichi's been running almost twenty years).

Title: Akechi Keishi no Yuuga Naru Jikenbo
Author: Amagi Seimaru & Satou Fumiya
My Rating: 3.5/5

This has four short mysteries starring Superintendent Akechi from Kindaichi Shonen no Jikenbo. The first two are reprints from the Kindaichi short story collections and the other two are brand new. All are framed by Akechi telling Kindaichi & co. the stories, which was pretty unnecessary, but I guess they wanted to make sure Kindaichi himself actually showed up in all of them.

The stories themselves were all enjoyable (and I especially liked the poker one), though I really do prefer full-length mysteries to these mini ones. I also prefer Kindaichi & co. to Akechi, who gets on my nerves.

Really only necessary to read if you love Akechi or are a Kindaichi completist.

Title: Akechi Shounen no Karei Naru Jikenbo
Author: Amagi Seimaru & Satou Fumiya
My Rating: 3/5

This had three short mysteries set when Akechi was in high school (one of which was previously printed in the Kindaichi short story collections). Like the collection of adult!Akechi stories, these are all framed with him telling Hajime and Miyuki what happened (which doesn't really add to the story, IMO). They were all okay, but I think at this point maybe I was just tired of mystery short stories. :p (I didn't think such a thing was possible, but this was eight ~250-page volumes in a row.)

D.Gray-man is back! Sort of. There was a 50 page chapter in the summer issue of Akamaru Jump, and apparently it will be serialised in Jump Square starting in the December issue (which is put out in November). Jump Square is a monthly mag, so hopefully she'll be able to keep to that schedule and there won't be any more hiatuses.

November seems like such a long wait, though! D:

( Spoilers for ch. 187 )

1. Watched the second-to-last episode of Better Off Ted season one last night. We're saving the finale for tonight. It was sooooo good! I love that show so much, and I especially love Poria di Rossi. It's going to be a long wait until season two, though.

2. We had super yummy grilled foods for dinner. Grilled up hamburgers, hot dogs, onions, and corn on the cob (we were supposed to do asparagus, too, but forgot it). I had one ear of corn with butter and salt, and one that I had brushed soy sauce on before grilling. The latter was good, but I think I should have soaked it more, maybe. I wanted a stronger flavor. Anyway, also had a hamburger with cheese, grilled onions, and bacon guacamole. Mmmmm...

3. I finally, finally, finally got my hands on scans of Kawahara Kazune's new series Aozora Yell yesterday! Just volume one, but I'm hopeful someone will scan vols. 2 and 3 soon. Or maybe Book Off will have them when we go next week. It's such a cute series. I mean, how could it not be? This is Kawahara Kazune we're talking about, and I have loved everything she's done.

This one is about a girl who sees this high school baseball team play at Koushien (national championship) when she's little, and falls instantly in love with the trumpeters in the brass band. She joins the music club in elementary school, but never gets up the courage to say she wants to play the trumpet. In jr. high everyone convinces her not to try out for the music club. But finally in high school she sticks to her guns and goes to the school she saw in the championships and joins their brass band.

If you like any of Kawahara's stuff, you'll like this. The focus on club/sport and sort of timeless quality is reminding me a little more of Sensei! than High School Debut (which felt more modern to me), though I realise the latter is what people outside of Japan are more familiar with.

( Short spoilers for chapter 252 )

Two one-shots by the author of Sunadokei (Sand Chronicles). I really loved that series, but I'd never read anything else by her, so I wasn't sure how these would stand up. Seems like scanlations are available for both.

Title: Chouchou Gumo
Author: Ashihara Hinako
My Rating: 4/5

These stories were cute, but I didn't love this nearly as much as I loved Sunadokei.

The title story is the best. It has a similar feel to Sunadokei. There's a group of four, two boys and two girls, whose feelings are all entangled, and various ones of them do things they regret because of it. Also one of the girls comes to a small town after having been raised in the city, and her mom was from the small town and ran away with a guy from the big city and is now divorced. Same setup as Sunadokei. It also moves from childhood to adulthood just as Sunadokei does. But even with those similar elements, it really doesn't feel like the same story. The actual details of it are different enough, and of course it's only a oneshot rather than ten volumes. If you liked Sunadokei, I'd definitely recommend this one, though.

The other three stories were linked by the theme of junior high, one for each year. They were cute, but ultimately forgettable, and I really disliked that the middle one had this girl who had been sexually harrassed for years, both by strangers on the train, etc. and by boys in her class, and yet it seemed to be saying because one time this one guy caught someone in the act of feeling her up, her life was totally going to change now.

Title: Yubikiri
Author: Ashihara Hinako
My Rating: 4/5

This has three stories. The first is about a girl who sometimes contemplates suicide. One day while she's up on the roof leaning over the railing and thinking about it (but not really planning to do it), a boy sees her and pulls her back. They start sort of going out and he makes her promise never to kill herself, but then one time says to her that sometimes while he's riding his scooter, he thinks of just drifting into traffic in the oncoming lane. I won't tell any more, because it has some twists, but I enjoyed it.

The second was an interesting one. It was about a girl who has no friends except this one boy. Guys are always hitting on her, so she can't be friends with them, and girls always hate her "for some reason", as she says (the reason is she's always sleeping with their boyfriends). She's being raised by her stepmother, but her birth mother was her father's mistress, and while her stepmother tries to care for her, she's very bitter and when the girl was little, she used to always tell her how cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds' nests in order to trick the birds into raising their children, an obvious dig at the girl's mom. Then one day she falls for a guy who happens to be married... Again, this one had some interesting twists and didn't go where I thought it would, but I liked it.

The last one was more typical. A girl who never was able to make friends at school learns she's going to be moving in sixty days. She doesn't think she'll miss her school at all until she's assigned to the class committee for the upcoming sports festival, where through a series of events, she actually starts making friends. This one was enjoyable, too, though.


I also read Aoi Hana 1-4 by Shimura Takako, author of Hourou Musuko. I didn't like it quite as much as HM, but it's really good! It's about four girls who go to all-girls high schools (two different ones) and their friendships and loves. If you want manga high on female characters, this is one for you. There are only three guys in it and all three play fairly minor roles. I also liked that while there is some "it's okay to fall for girls because this is an all-girls school" and some relationships that feel like the typical yuri "we're not gay, we just love each other" stuff, at least one of the main characters is shown to have been in love with multiple women. It's available scanlated, and the anime is apparently also being subbed on Crunchyroll the same day it's aired in Japan.

Reading more one-shots! These are all by Nakahara Aya, author of Lovely Complex, which I still haven't read yet (but I have read a couple of her earlier short series). All of these have been scanlated.

Title: Seishun no Tamago
Author: Nakahara Aya
My Rating: 1.5/5

This had six short stories, and honestly I wasn't that thrilled with any of them.

The first is about a girl whose family runs a boarding house, and she has a crush on one of the college boys who lives there.

The second is about a girl who has a crush on a boy in her class whose father is a dentist. She purposely gives herself cavities in order to have a reason to see him outside of class.

The third is about a girl who has a bit of a complex about her pretty older sister. One day one of her sister's friends sees her and falls in love with her at first sight. She's not that into him at first, and then just when she's realising she's falling for him, she starts to worry that he's only using her to be near her sister. This is the one I liked the best, mainly because of the guy, who was cute and cheerful and happy-go-lucky.

The fourth is about a girl who's in love with her childhood friend, but can't seem to figure out how to go from friends to something more.

The fifth is about a boy who has a complex because his girlfriend is taller than him.

The last one is a very short story about a boy who dies and comes back as a ghost, but the only person who can see him is his (female) best friend, not the girl he had a crush on.

I have liked stuff by Nakahara Aya in the past, but these just didn't grab me at all. One thing that bugged me was that all the girls cried constantly.

Title: Tokimeki Gakuen Ouji Gumi
Author: Nakahara Aya
My Rating: 4/5

This has four stories set in the same school and tied together with the themes of student council and the upcoming school festival. I wasn't sure how much I was going to like this at first, because it starts off looking really cracky. The school is named Tokimeki Academy (like, Heart-Racing Academy) and later a student transfers from Yakimochi Academy (Jealousy Academy), and instead of having class numbers, they're like Rose Class, Lily Class, Sunflower Class, etc. which might be appropriate for kindergartners, but is ridiculous otherwise.

So because of those elements, I was figuring it would be too over-the-top for my tastes, but as it turned out, the stories themselves were pretty standard fare. Each one is about a girl who ends up with a boy who is called something-something Prince (one was the Honey Prince because he was so cute and sweet, one was the Festival Prince because he loved school festivals, etc). I enjoyed them all, though the last one had a trope I dislike, the "boy shows girl how to have fun in life because he knows better" trope. (Though that's somewhat balanced out because one of the other stories was a girl showing a boy how to have fun in life.)

Title: Himitsu Kichi
Author: Nakahara Aya
My Rating: 4.5/5

This is a collection of four short stories all centered around secrets (the title means "secret base"). All of these were really cute.

The first is about a 10th grade girl who likes this boy she sees at a cafe, and after hanging around for a while, asks him out. It's only after he says yes that she finds out that he's not in college like she thinks, but in 6th grade. XD

The second is about a boyish girl and a girlish boy. Her secret is that she has a crush on another boy at their school, but doesn't feel like she can tell him because she's such a tomboy no one would like her. I would have really, really liked this one except that it ended with the girl determined to learn to be more feminine from the boy, and him determined to learn to be more masculine from her. Ugh. They were cute how they were! And made an adorable couple! :(

The third is about a girl who is very plain but is really good at makeup and looks like a totally different person with it on. I liked this because in the end she decided to stop wearing makeup and just be herself.

The last one was about a boy who's embarrassed by his father, who is a really bad comedian.

Title: Girl x Girl x Boy -Otome no Inori-
Author: Kujira
My Rating: 3.5/5

Riri and Fuuka have been best friends since they were kids, and lovers since they were in jr. high. Then one day Riri tells Fuuka that she's fallen for a boy and they should just go back to being "normal best friends". Unfortunately the boy doesn't like Riri back...he likes Fuuka.

( Spoilery )

Like most yuri, there's a "only gay for you" vibe to it (though Fuuka clearly states that she doesn't like guys at all), but still it was cute.

Title: Hoshi no Koe (The Voices of a Distant Star)
Author: Shinkai Makoto & Sahara Mizu
My Rating: 4/5

When Noboru and Mikako are in 9th grade, Mikako is drafted to join a squad that will explore the alien Tarsian civilization found on Mars, and follow the traces of the Tarsians further into space. She and Noboru communicate by email, but as she moves further and further from Earth, her messages take longer and longer to reach him. In addition, thanks to some lightspeed jumps, she's aging at a different rate than everyone back on Earth. As she fights the Tarsians, Noboru goes on with his life but is unable to forget her.

I liked this quite a bit, though I wish it hadn't been so derivative. The kids in giant robots trope has never been a favorite of mine (and here they don't even bother to explain why they're sending kids into space, I don't think (unless I'm forgetting something)), but this especially feels so much like it's copying Eva. The character designs, the organic-looking ships and robots, the aliens. Even the style of the manga in terms of layout and the sort of dreamy quality of the narration.

I've been going through all my one-shots and reading those before deciding what series I want to tackle next. Here is one by Mizusawa Megumi and two by Yoshizumi Wataru, two of my favorite shoujo writers.

Title: Orange Kakumei
Author: Mizusawa Megumi
My Rating: 3.5/5

I've always liked Mizusawa Megumi's stuff. This wasn't one of the best I've ever read, but it was cute. The first three stories are about a girl named Natsu who's classmate always teases her and jokes around and says he likes her. She doesn't take him seriously at first, but eventually grows to like him, too. The fourth story is about her sister, Aoi, whose best friend is really pretty and outgoing and Aoi is always jealous of her. I liked that the pretty best friend was a genuinely nice person, and that when a bunch of other girls accused her of using Aoi to make herself look better, that wasn't the case. (There was a romance in this one, too, but the friendship was equally important.)

Title: Cherish
Author: Yoshizumi Wataru
My Rating: 5/5

I love Yoshizumi's shoujo stuff, but I've never read any of her ladies manga before (in fact, I didn't know she wrote ladies at all until I saw this). I don't know if she's written any more, but if she has, I hope I can get my hands on it, because this was awesome.

There are two stories. The first is about a girl whose mom dies when she's three and she's then raised by her mom's best friend and his partner. Flashforward to when she's in college, where she's reunited with a boy she broke up with in jr. high because he couldn't accept her gay dads. If I had known that's what the story was about, I would have read it a lot sooner! Gay supporting characters aren't too rare in shoujo, but I've never seen one where the parents were gay (outside of BL). It's great to see casual positive portrayals like this in manga.

The second story was about a guy who falls for a woman who has an eight-year-old son and tries to convince her that he's not put off by her being a single mom. This was a cute story, too.

Title: Quartet Game
Author: Yoshizumi Wataru
My Rating: 4/5

This is a collection of some really early manga of hers. It's not the best of her stuff I've ever read, but all the stories were enjoyable.

The first story was a mystery. Four kids at a music school are assigned to play as a quartet. One day as they're practicing, they stumble onto a clue that may have something to do with a missing teacher. I was totally not expecting the mystery in this, so that was a nice surprise.

The second story was a fairly ordinary school romance. A boy has a crush on his classmate, but thinks she's going out with their teacher.

The third story was the best. It was about a girl who gains the ability to "time slip" after being hit by a truck. She can't control it, but she usually only slips back a few hours or at most a day or two. Then one day she slips back five years and meets two boys who try to help her get back to her own time.

Title: From 701 Goushitsu
Author: Fujisaki Kou
My Rating: 1/5

I used to read a lot by Fujisaki Kou and vaguely remembering her as being one of the better BL writers at the time, so I was curious what I would think of her now. She does rely really heavily on a lot of annoying BL tropes, especially physically (her semes are always really tall and muscular and older, the ukes are always short, thin, and younger, and she usually has one light-haired and one dark-haired, because God forbid the pairing both have the same color hair!), but one thing I do like about her stuff is that her ukes enjoy sex. Even if it's their first time and they're not sure about it or even think they'll hate it, they end up loving it right away, no crying and protesting.

As for this particular volume, I honestly wasn't that thrilled with the stories. There are four, focusing on two different pairs (which is her usual method, IIRC). The first two stories are about a guy who starts having sex with his brother's friend because he thinks the friend is after his brother. It turns out that the friend had a bet going that he could get this guy to sleep with him, so of course there are hurt feelings and angst and then finally they realise they both like each other and get together for real. It's a cliched plot and not one of my favorites, but over and above that, I really disliked the uke saying he could no longer get it up for anyone else because the seme had "made him this way". Ugh. Also the uke was rescued from a gangbang by the seme and then comforted with sex, which again, really cliched and not a favorite of mine.

I liked the second set of stories a little better, because while it was also a cliche, it's one I like: fuck buddies who start having feelings for each other. Unfortunately, I really didn't like the way it played out, so I still didn't enjoy it that much.

Title: Hadaka no Shougun!
Author: Fujisaki Kou
My Rating: 0.5/5

The first story is about two cousins competing to see who will take over as head of their family's ryokan. I wasn't that into the plot and one of the guys raped the other because he just lurved him so much and couldn't hold back! *eyeroll* At least the guy who got raped was angry, but of course in the end they still got together (and his anger seemed to be more about thinking the other guy just wanted him for sex rather than the fact that he'd been, you know, raped).

The second story is about a guy who puts an ad in a magazine for a sugar daddy and specifies no sex. I could totally get on board with this plot if it were written differently! I like the set up, but the execution, ugh. He thinks the guy who answers his ad is using him as a stand-in for his dead lover, because his friend saw this guy leaving flowers by their school everyday. But no, it turns out that the flowers were really for him, and this guy had a crush on him for years and never said anything. In fact, he'd been taking pictures and had a bunch of albums of stalkery photos. And of course this was presented as cute and romantic (though weird). Not only that, but he continued his stalkery ways once they were together!


I had downloaded two others that were new to me, but after reading these, I decided to skip them. My tolerance for BL is just not as high as it used to be.

Title: Inuyasha
Author: Takahashi Rumiko
My Rating: 4/5

Today I finally finished reading Inuyasha. I've been reading it from the beginning, which according to Wikipedia is about twelve years. D: At fifty-six volumes total, this is the longest completed series I've ever read (well, the longest, period, though One Piece is already at fifty-four volumes, so it will soon outstrip it).

So, basic plot. Kagome is a 9th grader whose family owns a Shinto shrine. One day she gets sucked into a well and travels back in time to the Sengoku period. Only it's a fantasy Sengoku period with magic and demons and stuff. She meets Inuyasha, half-human/half-dog demon, and a bunch of other people, and they set off on a quest to find the shards of the Shikon Jewel and kill Naraku, the big bad who is also trying to collect the shards for his own purpose. Unlike many long manga, it really sticks to this main plot the whole time, which is part of why it feels pretty slow and repetitive in the middle.

I really don't remember much about the early volumes. I didn't follow it faithfully, either. I let it sit for years somewhere in the twenties and then just the past couple months read the final thirty-some volumes. I will say that I don't think Takahashi is very good at drawing out a popular series. I remember the same feeling with Ranma. At some point it just got really repetitive. There are some authors who are good at coming up with new plots to keep the series going, but I don't think that's her strong suit and I wish this hadn't been stretched out as long as it was.

Even so, once I got over the slow part in the middle and things really started coming to a head with the final fifteen volumes or so, I was really hooked again. That may be reflecting my overall grade, I don't know. It's definitely something I would rec, despite the length.

I'm pretty pleased with the ending. She wrapped everything up pretty well. ( Tiny bit of spoilers ) So yeah, I'm glad I did finish it up. I think overall it was well worth the read.

( Fullmetal Alchemist ch. 97 )

Title: Boku wa, Onna no Ko
Author: Shimura Takako
My Rating: 3/5

This is a collection of some early shorts by the author of Hourou Musuko. It's pretty hit or miss, really.

The title story is what drew me in, but it wasn't as good as I'd hoped. It's about what happens when everyone in the entire world is switched from male to female and female to male. There were a few interesting bits. I really loved the brief appearance of a trans woman who became a man and was saying she ought to have stayed a man before, then she'd be a woman now. There was also one former-girl now-boy in the main character's class who said he'd always wished he was a boy, so he was happy now. So you can definitely see the seeds of Hourou Musuko in this, but overall it wasn't that great.

The stories I really liked were Sweet 16, about a high school girl with a crush on her (female) tutor, and Flowers, which is a short story about Yuki, the trans woman from Hourou Musuko.

Sweet 16 has been scanlated and can be found here, but none of the other stories have.

Title: Honey and Clover vols. 1-4 (out of 10)
Author: Umino Chica
My Rating: 2/5

This is a ladies slice-of-life manga about college students at an art school. I wanted to like this series, since it seems to be pretty popular, but I just...didn't. It's cute, but I wish it would decide if it wants to be a cute college slice of life thing or if it wants to be wacky crack, because I don't like the combination of the two. Also, the story is not keeping my interest for this many volumes. I had really meant to try and read the full series since it's only ten volumes, but I tried to read volume five and I was just bored and finally thought, Why am I forcing myself to read this just so I can say I read the whole thing? So I gave up on it.

I also was weirded out by the fetishisation of Hagumi's childlikeness, both in terms of her looks/size and her personality. Not only does it make it kind of icky for guys to be in love with her, but I'm just kind of over that obsession with female innocence/purity. It's not special and attractive. It's just kind of icky.

Title: Darling no Ataman Naka
Author: Oguri Saori
Rating: 5/5

This is the third in the Darling wa Gaikokujin series (though I haven't got my hands on the second one yet) and unlike the first one, which focused more on the differences between Japanese and foreigners, this one is more about language and linguistics and the differences between Japanese and English. Lots of interesting stuff.

Today was the last day of my first week of reccing for lgbtq_recs so I thought I'd post a round-up over here. I have recced all of these on my journal at some point or other, so to long-time readers they may not be anything new.

Graphic Novel: Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki
Author: Ali Smith
Manga: Hourou Musuko by Shimura Takako
Movie: Imagine Me & You
Book: Luna by Julie Anne Peters
Music: The Cliks
Book: City of Night by John Rechy

I'll be doing a second week at the end of the month. :)

This was absolutely hilarious. And educational. The title means "The Japanese the Japanese Don't Know", and it's a collection of stories about a teacher of Japanese in Japan and her students, what sort of questions they ask, what sort of mistakes they make, etc. There's also a lot of interesting background on the Japanese language, like where certain words came from and such. I was familiar with some of that, but a lot of it was new to me. For example, masu/desu is now standard Japanese, but it used to be geisha-speak. Men came to the capital, heard geisha speaking that way, and took it home and spread it, thinking it was the way everyone in the capital spoke. There was also a lot about keigo, and how even Japanese people get it wrong a lot.

Oh hey, I got hooked on another ongoing series. Wasn't I going to STOP DOING THAT? But when you read this review, I'm sure you'll see why I couldn't resist it. Guys. It's a manga about trans kids!!!

Hourou Musuko (Wandering Son) is in many ways a very typical slice of life manga. Except the main characters are Nitori Shuuichi (aka Nitorin), who is mtf and Takatsuki Yoshino, who is ftm. There is also Ariga Makoto (Mako), another mtf kid in their year at school, and Yuki, a trans woman they meet and become friends with. The story starts when the kids are in 5th grade and they are currently in 8th.

I love this story so, so much. Unlike with IS, I really have no reservations about this and love it wholeheartedly. (I mean, I could wish for it to be more queer, yes, but I'm not afraid the eventual ending might disappoint me, the way I am with IS.) I have never read another manga like this. Japanese media often features okamas (a term that can be applied to trans women, drag queens, or just (usually effeminate) gay men), but they're usually comic relief or bad guys. Even when they are sympathetic, they're likely to be very minor characters, and like in western media, it's much, much harder to find representations of trans guys.

As I said, this is your basic slice of life manga, just following the characters as they grow up. While the main characters are trans, it's not really an issue manga. It's about growing up. And some of the people growing up happen to be trans. I really love the art, too.

I pretty much devoured this over the past couple days, and I just argh! I don't want it to end! I want to read more! Why does it have such a slow release schedule!? (Seems like so much seinen is on super slow release... Why!?) There are just so many little things that ring true. I think one of my favorite bits has been Chii-chan, a new girl they meet in 7th grade, who occasionally comes to school in a boys' uniform, or wearing a tie with her girls' uniform instead of the ribbon she's supposed to. She's not trans or genderqueer, just likes doing what she wants to do, and I love how Takatsuki envies her, because for Takatsuki it's not that easy because it actually means something to wear boys' clothes.

This been completely scanlated, to the most recent chapter available in Japan (download here or read online here). If you read Japanese, you can order from Amazon Japan or download the first eight volumes here. There are currently 8+ volumes, with vol. 9 scheduled to come out this autumn (sadly, this one is released only one volume per year). Unfortunately I've so far not been able to find Japanese scans of the chapters that will eventually be volume 9, only scanlations. Really bad, since vol. 8 ended on a cliffhanger...

This is not a proper review, since I don't like to review before a series is finished, but I mainlined these ten volumes over the past few days and I wanted to talk about this manga.

If you missed my previous posts on this manga, it's a josei series that has a serious, realistic take on intersexuality. Scanlations of the first eight volumes can be found here (though sadly it appears to be discontinued by the group who was working on it). The author has worked closely with an online intersex group to make sure she has her facts straight and isn't getting offensive or appropriative, which shouldn't impress me as much as it does, because it should be how everyone approaches fiction, but we all know that's not how it works, so I do admire her for how respectful she's been with this topic, especially considering the fact that her original idea was for a generic fantasy story that had a "hermaphrodite" hero/ine and it was only when she started poking around online for research that she realised, hey, this could be offensive, and then trashed that idea and wrote this story instead.

( An outline of the story )

( There's a lot I love about this story )

( but what I really want is a queer story, and this is often depressingly heteronormative )

I just...in so many ways this manga is awesome and is showing a better way, rather than unthinkingly regurgitating society's wrongness. But I want it to question more. I want the characters to realise that there's a better way than what they're told. And I don't know if they will. I don't want to come to the end of this manga and be disappointed, but I'm so afraid I will.