Mamotte! Lollipop Volume 4 By Michiyo Kikuta Publisher: Del Rey Manga Age Rating: Teen Genre: Romance Price: $10.95 Rating: The Magic Exams have arrived and changes are on the way. Nina will no longer have the cute boys Zero and Ichi to look after her. What’s a girl to do–perhaps go out for a lollipop? But which flavor should she choose? It’s the end of the Magic Exams, and everyone and their brother (or sister) is after Zero and Ichi. Nina finally gets the potion to remove the Crystal Pearl, but because she doesn’t want to be separated from Zero and Ichi, chooses not to drink it. She has second thoughts as the competition stiffens. She stays with them to end though, with new complications arising. The light-hearted romance of the last volume gets tossed out the window, as the final days of the Magic Exam grow closer. The first half of this volume shows that the Magic Exam isn’t supposed to the game the first three volumes made it out to be. Examinees get tougher, and no one is pulling punches. The entire end of the Magic Exam feels completely different from the story so far, and very out…
ANN has reported that the Japanese supernatural mystery manga, Majin Tantei Nogami Neuro will end this month. Starting in 2005, it’s racked up 21 volumes. The only thing I want to know, is WHEN ARE WE GONNA GET THIS?! I’m a professed lover of supernatural and mystery manga, so where there’s one that combine these two great tastes, I want to taste them together. I’ve seen some of Nogami. The anime was fansubbed, and being a mystery series, I had to check it out. And I loved it. Neuro is a demon who eats mysteries. The stranger the mystery, the better the taste. He teams up with (enslaves more accurately, he is a demon after all) a high school girl Yako Katsuragi. She loves to eat, and has an unsolved mystery about the death of her father. Neuro will help her solve the mystery if he can eat it. Neuro uses Yako as his “public face”. He solves all the mysteries, and she takes the credit. They are joined by Godai Shinobu, a yakuza who is roped into working for Yako and Neuro after he wins a bet and takes over the Yakuza’s small office, and Akane, a disembodied braid…
Mamotte! Lollipop Volume 3 By Michiyo Kikuta Publisher: Del Rey Manga Genre: Romance, Comedy Age Rating: Teen 13+ Price: $10.99 ISBN: 0-345-49667-6 Rating: Nina’s in love – but who’s the lucky boy? After all, what girl could choose between Zero and Ichi? They’re both wizards, and they’re both supercute! When a matchmaking witch slips Nina a love potion, will the magic spell help Nina choose her soul mate? It’s almost been six months since Nina swallowed the Crystal Pearl and the end of the magic exam is fast approaching. Examinees are still popping in, and Nina still can’t decide between Zero and Ichi. But it’s not like everyone isn’t trying to help her along… This volume starts with a staple of romance plots; the love potion. Nina accidentally pours it into lunch and everyone but Ichi falls for her. Only the kiss from someone who’s had the potion can break it, so she has to kiss Zero? Then Zero’s “fiancé” becomes an examinee just to try and get Zero to love her and puts a spell on him and Nina that will turn them into animals unless Zero agrees to go back with her. The last chapters have Nina getting…
These are just quick impressions of manga I read during the week. I’ll come up with full reviews some day. The Rating scale for these quickies are as follows: Must buys, Would trade for, or Good way to waste an hour or so. Fairy Tail Volume 5 – Gray’s past is revealed and Ezra, who came to retrieve Natsu, Lucy and Gray instead ends up helping them. There is some awesome battle action as Natsu tries to save the villagers, Gray and Lyon continue their grudge match, and Lucy goes against a giant rat and her goth-loli owner. Must Buy. Rave Master Volume 2 – Haru arrives at Punk Street to find Musica the Blacksmith to fix his sword. Demon Card is there and in control, of course, and he has to not only battle them, but figure out who the real Muscia the Blacksmith is. This second volume seems rather bland as typical shonen fighting. But what really made if hard to get through was the translation. What is up with the constant cry of “Snap!”? This book was painful to read, even though it shouldn’t have been. Would Trade For Translation: Epic Fail
Just a few comments about this month’s Previews catalog: Marvel/Del Rey collaboration: I have two words for the Wolverine manga; Emo Logan. Does the world REALLY NEED more emo Logan? I mean, honestly… The art looks great, I’m not gonna knock that. The Marvel catalog had some pictures of pages, and they did look nice. But this isn’t going to win anyone over from one side of the manga vs. comics camp, and really hope it was never meant to. If anything, this will probably fan the flames, but that seems to be the way Marvel likes it. Not that they want to come up with anything original…
Some of you out there may be wondering about my lack of posts lately. Most of you probably haven’t, but anyway… With the holidays and work, I’ve been really bogged down and quite frankly stressed, which tends to kill my creative juices. Distractions by things other than manga can also do it.
“On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, Twelve Ecliptic Zodiac Keys,” Lucy Heartphilia has always dreamt of joining the guild of mages known as Fairy Tail. While searching for the guild, she meets up with Natsu Dragonil and Happy, a blue talking cat. They are both members of Fairy Tail, though Lucy doesn’t know it at first. They have a few adventures together, where Lucy shows him her magic. She is a Stellar Spirit practitioner. She collects keys that allow her to summon spirits from another world and make contracts with them. The rarest of these keys are the gold Ecliptic Zodiac keys. At the start, Lucy already has two; Aquarius and Taurus. Natsu then invites Lucy to join the Fairy Tail guild, where the two are often paired together for assignments. Fairy Tail is a new series this year, and one I was hooked on from the first volume. It’s a great action adventure title with lots of comedy as well. Natsu is very much like Luffy or Goku. He doesn’t care about a lot of things, but the things that he does, he cares a lot. Lucy is very outgoing and determined. The…
It’s that time of year again when ghosts and goblins come out to play. Do you want to get into the Halloween spirit, but just don’t know what to get? Well, here’s a list of manga that I’ve either read, or know something about enough to recommend (or warn you away from). I first posted this on my Tokyopop blog, but I’m bringing here with a few updates. Well, I thought it was going to be just a few, but every time I start to think I’m done, I come up with another book! I tried to keep the books in this list to more appropriate to a Halloween theme, than just ghosts, vampires and monsters, etc. It would take forever to list ALL manga with those in it!
Ordering from the Previews catalog can be like gambling. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And I lost big time. See, the problem with Previews is, I’m ordering books 2-3 months in advanced, based solely on a picture of a cover, and a brief marketing copy that meant more to entice retailers into buying than the individual consumer. When there’s a new title in the catalog, I can sometimes try and research it, if it looks like something I want, as long as the US title is the same as the Japanese (or at least close to). But often, there isn’t much to find, and I’m stuck going on instinct.
It was really hard getting through Previews this month. In the catalog, May is Manga Month, so along with all the regular series, there were new ones coming out that had to be evaluated. Top that with a weakening economy, and you get some really tough decisions to be made with this month’s order. More after the cut.
Hell Girl by Miyuki Eto; Original Story by The Jigoku Shoujo Project Publisher: Del Rey Manga Genre: Horror/Shoujo Rating: OT 16+ (Teen 13+) Price: $10.95 Rating: I don’t get it. Someone really needs to explain this to me. What was so bad about Hell Girl Volume 1 from Del Rey? I just finished reading it, and can’t see any of the problems so many other reviewers seemed to have with it. I’ve seen the anime this manga is based on, and, on the whole, the first volume follows the first 4-5 episodes in it. There are some minor changes, such as Enma Ai is seen as a student at the schools the girls go to, instead of always waiting in her home with her “Grandmother” for a request to come through the computer. And in the anime, those that ask for Ai’s help get a straw doll with a red string around it’s neck. If they decide to make the contract with Ai, all they have to do is pull the string. Ai also gives those looking to make the contract a taste of what they will be getting after they die and go to hell. Other than those small…