Some more quotes of awesome from 2011

David Welsh on Cross Game: "It may seem unlikely to link that phrase, defining a wistful awareness that everything ends eventually, to Adachi’s baseball comedy, but Adachi is about as good at embodying this haunting, preemptive kind of nostalgia as just about any of his peers."

Sean Gaffney on Velveteen and Mandala: "But just because the ending didn’t quite satisfy didn’t mean the journey wasn’t worth it."

Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith on shoujo:
MELINDA: I think where I often find solace in shoujo manga, is that it offers exactly what you describe—a reality that contains the stuff of dreams—but held together by real human feeling, such that even the wildest tale can often shine much-needed light on our real-life emotional turmoil. At the heart of all this strange, sparkly fantasy, there is a solid base of real emotional truth, which is sometimes easier to face when it’s presented in a pretty, dreamlike package.
MICHELLE: Well put! I think that’s one of the major strengths of genre fiction in general, actually, no matter the media.

Michelle Smith on So I Married an Anti-Fan: ". . . finds peace in her presence because, since her opinion of him is already as low as it could get, he doesn’t have to worry about maintaining an idealistic image."

Brian Hanson on magazines: "That's the thing, really - no artist on the planet turns to a serialized magazine like Shonen Sunday or a big TV network like NHK to unleash upon the world their Singular Artistic Vision of Staggering Depth and Intensity."

Connie at Slightly Biased Manga on Skip Beat 24: "But Valentine’s Day isn’t just Ren.  Because this is a super-evil shoujo manga, and that would be too easy.  Ren is merely the handsome boyfriend candidate.  The good one.  There’s also Sho, the asshole that dumped Kyoko back in volume one, and Reino, another huge jerk from somewhere ten volumes ago.  Both of these are bad men.  Both are also trying as hard as they can to court Kyoko, mostly out of spite." . . . "Also a nice touch: The chocolates that Kyoko makes for Reino say “you go to hell” and have the word “hate” inscribed on them, as well as crying dog faces. This is why no comic is better than Skip Beat."