A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

Wild Adapter 6: Tokitoh gets kidnapped, Kubota gets mad. The same plot as one of the earlier volumes but with less emotional interaction between the two and a comedown from the genius that was # 5, though a good solid noir when considered independently. I had a hard time placing this chronologically-- does anyone know when in the timeline this volume occurs?

Silver Diamond 2: I am grateful to Tokyopop for preserving the color front leafs, as the banquet of flowers is gorgeous in color and not half as much in black and white. This volume doesn't have the amount of cool discovery of the world as the first, but the ins and outs of the plot and the sweet character relationships are progressing nicely.

Sand Chronicles # 1: Delicate, touching story about a city girl who moves to the country because of her mother's illness. Tragedy, first love, and growing up ensue. What makes this special is the emotional honesty and specificity of the events and characters, and the poignance of the central metaphor of the hourglass and the fact that the whole thing is told retrospectively: a woman looking back at her life as a girl. Lovely.

Rure 1-2: An excellent prologue and interesting set-up, involving rival sisters who are heirs to a mysterious island in the real world, gives way to generic girls-in-fantasyland action hijinks. I got bored.

RIP (Requiem in Phonybrian): I am just not that into Mitsukazu Mihara (Dolls) though I like the starkness of her blacks and whites: her storytelling is either one-note "people are mean and doomed, isn't it ironic" or one-note emo loligoth.

This one-volume manga, in which an angel rescues an undertaker who committed suicide so together they can redeem lost souls, in one-note accidentally hilarious emo. The undertaker's real name is Phony Brian. His girlfriend thought her love was distracting him from his music career, so she committed suicide by ripping out her IV when she was in the hospital and drinking it.

Tokyopop has given Shiho Sugiura's inventive fantasy Silver Diamond a deservedly beautiful production, with color pages and detailed notes on the meaning of the character names.

Rakan is an orphaned (or is he?!)-- but refreshingly non-angsty-- teenage boy in our world, with an overgrown garden and a highly unusual past. Chigusa is a mysterious young man from another world, with an organic gun, a very weird and clever healing power, and a whole lot of angsty past. When Chigusa appears in Rakan's garden -- and is soon followed by several other, otherworldly visitors-- an intricate story of intrigue, magic, and human connection begins to unfold. And I will stop there, as a lot of the fun of the volume involves discovery.

The worldbuilding is excellent and unconventional, the characters (including a snake that is also a katana) are great fun, and the story is compelling. This might well appeal to fans of prose fantasy who don't generally read manga, as the fantasy elements are central and beautifully detailed. This is one of the best first volumes of manga I've read in a while. Don't miss it.