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It is cloudy and cool today. Pearly gray days, like rainy ones, are sweet and cozy, so long as I can stay indoors and warm and watch the clouds through my window. I'd get sick of it if it was like this all the time, but they are only occasional in Los Angeles, so they seem like special treats. The maples are turning a translucent red, like bottled wine.
I think I will go to the manga store and look for Saiyuki 5 and Nana 4, and retire with them to Starbucks to read them over a hot apple cider with caramel syrup drizzled over a mound of whipped cream.
I have worked hard this month, what with cat-boys and pirates and samurai. (I wonder how a manga about a cat-boy samurai pirate would sell? I'd buy it in an instant.) I think I deserve a break today. So when I return, I will take a brief moment to do laundry, then watch Princess Tutu, which I just got via Netflix. (Is the series complete in six discs?)
Manga recommendations of the week:
Yakitake Japan, a hilariously funny story structured just like a fighting manga, about competititve bread-baking, alternately erudite, faux-erudite, and completely deranged.
Her Majesty's Dog, the sweetest manga I've read all year, about a misfit girl who can banish ghosts, and the hot-tempered demon dog (who is also a handsome boy) who loves her. Funny, great characterization, and so genuinely uplifting that you could patent it as an SSRI.
ES (Eternal Sabbath), a psychological thriller about a young man who can enter the minds of others, a socially inept female scientist who reminds me of Buffy's Willow, and the disturbing amorality of even quite normal children. The art makes great use of empty space, with many panels wordless and even lacking in sound effects, to create a sense of quiet dread.
I think I will go to the manga store and look for Saiyuki 5 and Nana 4, and retire with them to Starbucks to read them over a hot apple cider with caramel syrup drizzled over a mound of whipped cream.
I have worked hard this month, what with cat-boys and pirates and samurai. (I wonder how a manga about a cat-boy samurai pirate would sell? I'd buy it in an instant.) I think I deserve a break today. So when I return, I will take a brief moment to do laundry, then watch Princess Tutu, which I just got via Netflix. (Is the series complete in six discs?)
Manga recommendations of the week:
Yakitake Japan, a hilariously funny story structured just like a fighting manga, about competititve bread-baking, alternately erudite, faux-erudite, and completely deranged.
Her Majesty's Dog, the sweetest manga I've read all year, about a misfit girl who can banish ghosts, and the hot-tempered demon dog (who is also a handsome boy) who loves her. Funny, great characterization, and so genuinely uplifting that you could patent it as an SSRI.
ES (Eternal Sabbath), a psychological thriller about a young man who can enter the minds of others, a socially inept female scientist who reminds me of Buffy's Willow, and the disturbing amorality of even quite normal children. The art makes great use of empty space, with many panels wordless and even lacking in sound effects, to create a sense of quiet dread.
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Ooo...thanks for the manga recs....I think I'll pick up Her Majesty's Dog this week (ahh, the joys of working in a center with a Borders...)
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I rilly like the art of ES, though I sometimes have trouble telling the more attractive characters apart just by their faces. I also like the story, if it comes to that.
---L.
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I am gobbling up The Cain Saga and Godchild.
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Yay! More people need to be exposed to the utter Gothic cracktasticness that is this series!
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Although it's my first manga, so I often have difficulty figuring out what's going on.
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Saiyuki, the one with the exquisitely gorgeous art (see my gallery labeled "Salty Dog") and the four wisecracking demon-slayers (three of whom are at least part demon) driving a Jeep across ancient China. I loved it from volume 1, but some people think it doesn't really take off till volume 4.
Naruto, ostensibly about kiddie ninja kicking butt; actually about love, loneliness, and found families. The first volume is pretty weak, but it picks up steadily, and never stops improving-- over thirty-two volumes to date. I fell in love with it at the hilarious volume 5, which concerns the ninja SATs.
Fruits Basket, about a cursed family and the girl who loves them; quite funny, especially in the early volumes, but it develops into a heartwrenching meditation on dysfunctional and functional families, and whether or not people can be saved by love. The family curse, by the way, is that members turn into their animal of the Chinese zodiac when they are hugged by a member of the opposite sex.
Of the ones I mentioned in this post, you might like ES the best (and that one is extremely easy to read.) Its mangaka, Fuyumi Soryo, has an extremely addictive high school soap opera called Mars, about the romance between an artist with an unhappy home life and a bad boy who wants to drop out and race motorcycles.
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Also, if we end up meeting up over the weekend, you are most invited to come over and raid my manga! I'd want to sic Saiyuki on you, along with Mars, ES, Nana, and Angel Sanctuary, even though AS is a labyrinthe of plot and panels.
But it has zombie angels and gender-bending and I think you would like it.
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Although it's my first manga
Um. Oh dear. Yuki Kaori has pretty wretched panelling skills -- they do get better, but she's never as clear as, say, Takaya Natsuki. So there's strike one against comprehensability. And, of course, her plots are on total and complete crack and are difficult to figure out anyway. Good luck! I still haven't figured out what's going on with her other manga series.
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I never recommend Kaori Yuki to people for a first manga because her page layout leaves a lot to be desired, although she does improve over time -- there's a big difference in art and layout between The Cain Saga and Godchild, because she took a six-year break to do Angel Sanctuary, for which there is a similar and noticeable difference between V1 and V20.
I love Kaori Yuki so much. There is no crack in the world like the crack produced apparently entirely naturally by her brain. I mean, you haven't even seen the one about the serial killer and the boy prostitute or the good twin of the self-destructive rock star or the one starring David Bowie in leopardskin coats as an extremely sadistic fairy tale prine.
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(also, I intend to thrust it into Rachel's hands the second she steps into my place, muhahahahahaha)
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