Selections from What I Read in September: Digest Version, Part 2 of 2

September seems so far away now . . .

• b Boys Over Flowers 28-29: I will have to marathon this some day.  It might actually take three parts or so because I'm not sure I can put up with their ridiculousness for more than 10 volumes at a time . . .
• b Broken Blade 1: I got a kick out of the series. I'm fairly disappointed that I'll never get to find out what happens.
• o CLAMP School Detectives 3: I try to pretend that I'm not a completist.  I try hard. I fail.
• b From Eroica with Love 2-3: Just utterly ridiculous and fun.  Who knew NATO could be involved in such silliness?
• b Goong 7-9: it's funny that every time I get a volume of this series, for some reason I think it's going to be the last even though the series has some ridiculous number of volumes. I remember the same thing would happen with Fruits Basket and Hana Kimi.  For some reason, I can never accurately remember the number of volumes in a series.
• b House of Five Leaves 1: Okay, if I weren't a Ono fan before I read this, I would be now.  We really don't get enough serious samurai period drama manga over here for some reason.
• b Sand Chronicles 9: I wasn't sure how much value these exercise stories would add since the main story concluded already, but I'm really pleased.
• b Shaman King 30: I'm pretty sure I say this every single time, but how can I possibly forget how breathless the series makes me?  It's kind of funny that I forget, but I find myself doing about double time on the stair climber whenever I read this one while exercising.
• b Twin Spica 2-3: This is really an intriguing series. It might be a good series to show people the difference between manga aimed at younger teens and manga aimed at older people.  It's a school story, but it doesn't read at all like shojo or shonen.  It covers the same territory, but it does it with such a different tone and focus and execution that I'm not sure people the age of the protagonists would even find it interesting. I'd be curious to find out.  I love and hate every time the main story ends with a lot of pages left over. I whine every time, but I love those flashback stories . . .
• b We Were There 3: Yes, due to being poor, I'm way behind in this series.  I'm really liking the careful, sad brokenness this manga is not afraid to show.  People get screwed up pretty bad, and we stumble around hurting each other sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose.  And sometimes, when it's happening to our friends and loved ones, we just have to watch it happen because there isn't anything we can do to fix them.  It's a sobering realization you don't see in much of the manga that makes it over here. Bring it on!

Next up, October, which looks kind of scant until you see that I sort of binged on a whole series . . .  Look forward to it!