Baka to Test to Shokanjuu: High school comedy in which testing is administered much like an RPG. Every student has their own “character” and their stats are determined by how well they do in school. Students are grouped into classes A through F, where A has the highest grades and the nicest classroom, while F has  the lowest grades and the shabbiest classroom. Very light-hearted, generally likeable characters. Not a masterpiece by any means, but good entertainment value.

Kore wa Zombie desu ka: Ecchi Harem which mixes together some of the wackiest characters in science fiction/fantasy (zombie/magical girl, anyone?) into one show.  The story follows a zombie who was brought back to life by a necromancer and his daily adventures as he meets a magical girl (whose powers get absorbed by the zombie) and a vampire ninja who hates his guts. Tons of laughs to be had during this show; although most moments that are almost serious (such as the ending) get bulldozed by a gag, which can be funny or unfortunate.

Hourou Musuko:  a serious slice of life story about a boy who wishes to be a girl and a girl who wishes to be a boy. Refreshing story on cross-dressing, a concept normally used for comedy has now been looked at as a serious issue in regards to gender identity.  Characters seem to act old for their age (they’re in middle school, but don’t really act it), but still an interesting (but melancholy) tale.

Shiryaku! Ika Musume: A squid girl who comes from the ocean to invade earth and rule humanity because they are polluting the oceans. Unfortunately, she puts a hole through a beach cafe’s wall, and ends up having to work there instead. Episodic form anime with some hilarious moments and some very touching stories as well (Mini-Ika Musume chapter). One of the better moe animes out there.

Yumekui Merry: A story about a girl from the “Dream world” who finds herself in reality. Meets up with a boy named Yumeji and together they try and get her back to the Dream world. However, the appearance of dreams in the real world living inside human hosts and the many cases of people who have completely given up their hopes and dreams originate from a more sinister character. Had a great concept, but was pretty disappointing by the end. Many plot points and characters they introduced that I would have liked to have seen explored further weren’t, the story became pretty typical shounen after around the halfway point.

Here’s a bit of a walk through the first episode:

The episode opens with one of the main characters, later to revealed as a girl named Merry Nightmare, in a dark, bleak-looking world having just woken up to the sound of crows. She gets up and starts walking and there’s a focus in on this large clock … not sure if it has any significance yet.

After the theme song (which is pretty awesome), the story then cuts to a boy in a strange world who is being chased by a horde of cats… and there’s a large fish skeleton there. Not sure why. Cats like fish? These cats (who walk on two legs instead of four for some reason) end up catching up with the boy, but end up leaving him, since they are out of time and tell him that he is to face their master one-on-one. The sequence is then revealed to be a dream.

It turns out that this boy (named Yumeji) is able to predict dreams making circles with his index finger and thumb, and using said circles as “glasses” to see coloured dots on a person. The percentage of red, green and yellow dots that appear determine the contents of a dream to happen that night. He also seems to be an aspiring author.

Inevitably, these two character meet in an animesque style: Yumeji is walking around in the morning and she lands on him while jumping out of a tree. After a bit of confusion, Merry leaves him to look for her hat, which Yumeji picks up.

Later in the day, Yumeji finds a cat underneath the hat, and a moment of deja vu leads him to meet the cats’ master, who wants to get out of the dream world and into the real world by using Yumeji’s body. But just in the nick of time, Merry shows up, demanding the cats’ master to take her back to the dream world. And so an epic battle begins and ends with Merry victorious, but still unable to get back.

I believe that the series does have some potential. I am liking the majority of the characters so far: Merry is headstrong, but she does have a bit of a “human” side to her (although I’m not sure what exactly she is). Yumeji’s classmates, while standard for a high school setting, still seem like a lot of fun. The only character I’m a bit worried about is Yumeji, since there is the possibility of him ending up as the clumsy guy who is in the middle of a love triangle for no particular reason (possible girls in this love triangle include his childhood friend Isana who he is living with, and of course, Merry) or there’s also the other possibility of him becoming another Ichigo from Bleach (please don’t let that happen).

The concept of being able to travel between dreams and reality is not entirely new, but Merry seems to be unique in the sense that she was originally from a dream, somehow managed to get to the real world, but wants to go back. There have been many tales of people losing touch with reality, but I don’t think I’ve seen any situation like Merry’s before, so I look forward to what’s to come.

Also, I figured that I wanted to talk about more than just manga, so I changed the name and decided to include anime, light novels and general Japanese pop culture that I’ve recently gotten into.

There really isn’t any reason why I chose the particular new title. Yay for festivals? I don’t know. I’ll try and get some content up soon.

• yay for badass ED
• greed and ling = :O
• lol shrimp
• HOLE IN THE CHEST O_O
• huh. gives a whole new meaning to a facepalm.

Friend:

• yea
• so this is the commentary you were refering to

Me:

• yes
• I tend to do this
• XD

Friend:

• so… done reading?

Me:

• lol no
• I’m on page 36
• :O
• Hohenheim :O
• he finally called him dad

Friend:

• yea

Me:

• Ed look so bad ass with the human transmutation circle!
• 
• YAAAAY
• AL’S GOING HOOOME
• lol ling
• “please don’t wage war with other clans”
• “okay!”

Friend:

• yea, despite being over 100 pages long, it’s still a bit rushed

Me:

• yeah… I mean, the battle part was over so fast O_O

Friend:

• they don’t show Lin when he gets back , they should

Me:

• I think an epilogue is needed

Friend:

• yes

Me:

• lol
• “I Dunno who the rockbells are, but you’re useful, so I saved you”
• I love how blunt General Armstrong is XD

Me:

• “When mustang finds out scar’s alive, his blood will turn to ice” XD
• yay for Den~!

Friend:

• Den?

Me:

• the dog
• his reaction to Al was PRICELESS XD
• just look at that face XD
• yay Winry
• wait whut
• selim?
• what’s he doing there?
• Al’s travelling the world

Friend:

• I am sort of confused at selim too…

Me:

• lol at Ed and Winry

Friend:

• they had to finish that somehow

Me:

• aaaawww that’s soooo cuuuuuute
• whoa
• waaaaait a minute
• he’ taller than her now
• :O

Friend:

• it’s 2 years later
• so it sort of makes sense

Me:

• he did a shit-ton of growing then XD

Friend:

• growth spurt

So I am working on writing some more stuff… I have like 4 drafts on stuff I want to write about and are barely started, and I want to finish FullMetal Alchemist today since it’s my all-time favourite manga… expect a review for it soon.

I may or may not go through some of my old reviews and reread the manga and re-write the review since some of them really kind of suck. But hey, I started this blog when I was in 9th grade, give a break on those older reviews XD .

Now that life is officially meaningless since FMA is over, I will be taking a look at some series I’ve meant to read for a while now such as Nodame Cantabile (I bought the first volume!) and getting back to some of the more mediocre WSJ series I started and abandoned so that the tiny chapters could accumulate for some bulk reading. Of course, this means I’ll have to recap on parts of the series I’ve already read, since it’s been a while.

So much manga, so little time!

Anyway, I’m going to do some little posts about the first impressions of the manga I’ve bought, and the first one I’m gonna do is Tokyo Babylon, an early 90s manga by the female manga-ka group known as CLAMP.

Personally, I love the 90s artwork of CLAMP, but there’s one thing that always seemed a bit off to me: male characters always have these huge shoulders  and then a skinny waist and spaghetti legs… it’s kind of ridiculous, but it’s okay.

So. Sumeragi Subaru is a onmyoji, a person with the power to tame, manipulate and vanquish spirits. To be more specific, he is the 13th descendant of the Sumeragi clan, whose purpose is to defend Tokyo from hostile spirits. He lives with his sister, Sumeragi Hokuto and their supposed rival Seishiro from the Sakurazukamori (wow, what a long name O_O) family, who are also onmyoji, but prefer to hide their identity. Seishiro is actually a veterinarian. So basically, we follow Subaru’s life as an onmyoji, who is tasked with various supernatural phenomenon he has to deal with.

Oh, and there’s a couple of twists: Seishiro is in love with Subaru, and they are both male. This seems to be a relationship they’re not supposed to be in, as no one in the Subaru clan outside of Hokuto knows that they associate with each other… although the forbidden part of their relationship seems to stem more from the fact that their families are rivals, rather than the fact that they are of the same sex.

Anyway, for those who aren’t comfortable with reading shounen ai (there doesn’t seem to be anything to explicit, so I don’t think it’s anything more than that), you probably won’t enjoy this, as Hokuto finds great joy in emphasizing their relationship and babbling on about how they would be such a great couple and is constantly trying to set the two up: even when Subaru has a job to do on the Tokyo Tower, Hokuto is adamant about the two spending time with each other since Tokyo Tower is apparently considered a place you *have* to go with your loved one to… yeaaaah.

Something weird: One case that Subaru deals with is a girl who has been asleep for months who also happens to be a childhood “friend”.  Basically, no one has been able to wake her up, and thus, they’ve come to the conclusion that she must be afflicted with some sort of supernatural sickness. Personally, I thought that the medical staff (she was in the hospital when he meets her) would first assume that she was in a coma or something… not just immediately jump to the conclusion that she has had a ghostly run-in or something. But what do I know. XD

So far, it’s been okay though. A little weird and very 90s, but as someone who spent most of their childhood in the nineties, that’s okay with me ^_^ . If you’ve read Tokyo Babylon before, let me know what you think of it! Talk to you soon!

I was a little on the fence about going to this con, since I didn’t really know anyone else going, except for one person and we have very different tastes in manga/anime.

Then I went back to look at the Anime North guest list… and lo and behold, the name Vic Mignogna (or Vic Migderpaderp, for those who’ve watched way too many LK vids) popped up.

So yes. I think I’ll be going to Anime North this year ^_^

I have a copy of the omnibus edition of Clover in my room, which I haven’t been able to read because of midterms.

I’m caught up on FullMetal Alchemist, and am extremely excited for the next chapter.

In scanlation, I have finished proofreading Kanojo na Tonda hi chapter 3, and I’ve finished typesetting Esprit 8 (which should be released soon)… will start working on Esprit 9 and the 4th chapter of Kanojo soon-ish. Can’t say how long it’ll take.

I will post a review or something after my final exams are done.

That’s all!

As some of you may know, I’m a pretty big fan of the manga-ka team known as CLAMP, the creators of well-known series such as Chobits and Card Captor Sakura and the spaghetti people that are the main characters of works such as Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles and xxxHOLiC.

Well, I was at Chapters yesterday, and lo and behold, there was an omnibus edition of Clover on the shelves! Which means that all four volumes were combined into one large book and they are selling them for around fifteen bucks. This is pretty exciting because Clover has been out of print and while it was scanlated by Be With You Scans, they have ceased distributions of their scanlations and while I could probably find a copy somewhere on the internet, I’d rather respect their wishes of not having them distributed.

Unfortunately, I was devoid of money when I saw this wonderful book… and when I asked my dad, who I was with at the time if I could get it… he said no O_O. I know, it’s sad when a university student to ask their parents to get something for them… but that’s an issue I’d rather not discuss here XD . So you can probably imagine what I’m going to do the next time I go to Chapters in Waterloo, or if I’m with friends at the mall anytime this reading week…

Anyway, I will be getting to some seinen reviews hopefully when university calms down a bit, and if I manage to get my hands on a copy of Clover, you can bet your bottom dollar that I’ll review it ^_^ . Stay tuned!

The Cast of Paradise Kiss

So, the josei love has finally arrived on my blog, and it comes in the form of “Paradise Kiss”, a manga about a girl who gets caught up with a group of students who attend an arts school. The manga-ka of this story is Ai Yazawa, which most of you may or may not recognize as the manga-ka of “Nana”, her more popular series which is on hiatus yet again at the time of writing this review. This is also the sequel to a lesser-known unlicensed manga called Gojinko Monogatari or Neighbourhood Story, which follows the sister of the character Miwako.

This story is licensed by Tokyopop, but the first two volumes are not available new. If you’re worried about missing anything by reading this before Gojinko Monogatari, don’t. At the most, there will be references to the characters in Gojinko Monogatari, but their back story isn’t integral to understanding Paradise Kiss.

So, let’s dig into Paradise Kiss, then, shall we?

I’m going to be unusual today and actually start by mentioning the art. If you’ve already read Nana, you can draw many comparisons to some of the characters’ appearances: Arashi definitely has the same style as shin, Kaori looks like a non-punk Nana Osaki and while this might be a stretch, you can probably try and come up with similarities between Miwako and Trapnest’s lead singer (sorry I can’t remember her name O_O;; Reira or something?).

So the story starts with our female lead Yukari, a studious girl who goes to a prestigious private school. However, her life is turned upside down one day when George and his group of fashion designers, students from Yazawa Art School (known for its eccentric students), approach her and ask her to be their model. Obviously, Yukari has her prejudices, and thinks they’re a bunch of freaks, and looks down on them at first. She make this obvious enough, causing one of the group members, Arashi, to yell at her.

Now, obviously, this story wouldn’t have any plot if she simply refused them, so you can probably guess that she ends up joining them as their model and so the story progresses.

As for the characters, I found Yukari, who is later nicknamed Caroline/Carrie, is kind of a drag: she starts off as this goody-two-shoes stuck-up girl who goes to a prestigious high school and is studying to go to college. Then she does a complete 180 degrees and decides she wants to be a model instead and wants to drop out of high school to pursue her career. I guess there is a little bit of realism in her character, I mean, after being pressured to be the best at absolutely everything and watching her brother being showered with affection because of his smarts after trying so hard to please her mother, something’s gotta give I guess. I did like the fact that she had more realistic flaws than what you see in other manga: she starts off prejudiced to the bohemian-esque lifestyle of George and the other Yazawa Art school students, but really, she just wants an escape from the world that’s trapped her in this small box and narrow-minded way of living. She’s not dumb, emotionally slow, or like most female leads. And as much as I don’t really like her, in terms of character design, her character was done quite well.

George Koizumi, on the other hand, is a perfectionist and a great fashion designer, but many of his designs are much too elaborate for everyday wear and sometimes, even too outrageous for special events. In terms of personality, he is pretty cold-hearted and

If you don’t know this already, I love crossdressers, gender-bender situations and split personalities in manga. So naturally, when I was introduced to Isabella, one of the people in George’s group, I was delighted.

The last two in the group are Arashi and Miwako. Arashi definitely looks a lot like Shin from Nana; with the overloaded punk style, but a soft spot for Miwako, who overflows with a bubblegum pink cuteness and is the one who gives Yukari her nickname of Caroline. They’re a bit more generic than the other characters, but are enjoyable to read about and have an interesting relationship.

Other characters include Tokumori, Yukari’s initial love interest and Mikako, a fashion designer who helps Caroline out in her modelling career and is also Miwako’s older sister.

Going off on a tangent: For some reason, Gojinko Monotagari (the prequel) is classified as shoujo while Parakiss was josei, even if they followed a similar style of storytelling. Maybe it’s because of the end. Yeah… if you read a lot of generic shoujo manga, you will be disappointed by the ending. But personally, I think it makes a lot more sense than fairy tale endings.

Overall, I did enjoy this story, however I think that Gojinko Monotagari was a bit better (maybe it was because I like Mikako more than I liked Yukari). But it is refreshing and great for anyone who’s tired of reading generic shoujo manga and wants something new.