What I read in June 2013: Digest Version, part 2 of 3

b Dawn of the Arcana 10: By golly, yes, they did go there.  I sort of expected some kind of Loki-enabled intervention, but I forgot this is the series where they totally killed off a pretty major antagonist far earlier than I expected (and made it hurt the reader more than expected).  It turns out that she didn't make the decision, though, which makes me a bit glad because that would have been really hard for Nakaba.  And then everything falls apart.  Nakaba and Caesar return to their respective kingdoms where they divorce each other and start pursuing the same future even though they are separated: they want peace in their generation, and they will lie, scheme, and kill for it if they have to.  A dangerous game, and they're both growing up fast playing it.

b Grand Guignol Orchestra 5:of 5:  The end is nigh!  Hooray!  We'll maybe sort of find out at least part of what is going on, right?  Then again, this is Kaori Yuki; viva style over substance! More goth costumes, more zombies, more treachery and tragedy and sorrow and songs.  Maybe some folks even make it to the end alive?

b Kamisama Kiss 9:Our heroine is actually thinking for once, and she's realized that her loving Tomoe might not be good for Tomoe.  But then they end up on Tengu mountain, and wow.  Their tengu pop star acquaintance has had a visit from a little brother telling of bad times on the mountain.  He doesn't care, but Nanami does (and she's curious to know about his past).  The mountain (where women are kind of forbidden) isn't exactly welcoming, but Nanami is determined to figure out what's going on and help whether they want her to or not.

b Kieli: The Dead Sleep Eternally in the Wilderness, Part I: Oh, the end is nigh, and I'm thinking it won't be a particularly happy one for anyone involved.  Kieli meets her father and finds out a lot of very sad truths while things start to spin out of control in the capital.  Joachin continues to be something of an enigma with his seemingly random acts of strange kindness.  I think I may go through and re-read from the beginning when the last volume comes out, so I can remember everything, but that will require copious puddles of sunlight in the winter time, which might mean that I actually put it off until next summer, when I can bathe in sunlight while reading through all the horror and sadness again. 

"He was supposed to be the great wall of evil blocking her path.  It wasn't okay for him not to be.. . . [I]t wasn't okay  for the ringleader behind all kinds of unforgivable things, Kieli's most hated enemy, to be just an exhausted, normal man like that.  The people Kieli loved had been tormented all this time because of a stupid little enemy like this?" 144

"So normal human beings . . . Are allowed to let other people help them?  Oh.  Huh." 163

"Yup, I'm fighting a lot of losing battles right now, so I'm pretty pathetic." 207

b The Last Airbender Prequel: Zuko's Story: I am still slightly bitter about many things about the Last Airbender movie (especially the revamping of Uncle Iroh), but I do like additional bits of backstory.  It hurts the brain a little to try to reconcile both versions of the story, but at least one can see that although Iroh's appearance was changed in the movie, he's really still the same character.

What I read in August: Digest Version, part 2 of 2

Is Goong cancelled?!  NOOOOOOO!!!  Yen, don't do this to me. 

b 13th Boy 12: Oh, our crazy anthropomorphic, fried-chicken loving cactus may have made the ultimate sacrifice, but that doesn't guarantee a happy ever after for the characters who remain.  The characters stayed true to themselves, so I was pleased even as I wanted to kick some of them in the head.  The happy ending was earned, and a bonus story shows that some of the other characters may be in for happy endings of their own.  Except for the cactus.  I cried about the cactus.

b Blood+ Kowloon Nights: Dark Horse, sometimes you really baffle me with the things that you publish. I mean, I'm a big fan of Hagi, and I was pretty curious about what he was doing when Saya slept, but this book didn't really add anything new to his character.  Good thing he's a pretty good character anyway.

b Dogs: Bullets and Carnage 6: No idea where I last left off this story in volume 5.  It's been a long time.  Pretty quickly, I don't care because we get some of that clear back-story for Heine, and it's about as brutal as I expected.  Wow.  Don't make deals with the devil in any of his incarnations, dude.  Bad things happen.  Now Giovanni makes more sense, too.  This series is probably still more focused on style than substance, so it's good that the style it has is enough to keep me reading despite the sword-fights, bullets, and extreme carnage that earn this bad boy its M rating.

b Gon 6: In this volume, Gon helps out some baby birds, helps an ancient elephant make it to his final resting place of choice, and climbs a mountain in a howling blizzard just because it's there, and he's a badass little dinosaur who can do anything he sets his mind to.  He does other things, and this wordless comic still amuses me to no end.  Oh, Gon, I will be sad when you are over with the next volume, but I will re-read you.

b Lizzie Newton: Victorian Mysteries 1: This was really a lot of fun for the part of me that likes Sherlock Holmes mysteries and people bucking the class system.  He was a street urchin who rose through the ranks to become a famous lawyer and then gave it up to become her butler.  She's a woman of noble-birth with a penchant for writing mystery stories and solving real-life mysteries when she can get the chance.  They both have ways of obtaining information to help solve cases that the other lacks.  He loves her; she still sees him as an annoying childhood friend.  It's all rather gruesome (the murder mystery) and delightful (the character interactions).

b Sakura Hime3-4: More bad things happen; some things are made clearer; other things are obscured.  Character revelations are made, and they are more than a little horrifying.  It reminds me a bit of the anime Strain where by the end I was pretty sure I sided with the folks who just wanted to blow all of humanity away.  I am not totally on the side of the poor, beleaguered, butt-kicking non-humans, but I completely understand where their boss is coming from.  Good thing Sakura is made of stern shojo stuff.

b Toradora 4:  Ah, the pool bits.  Hilarious and horrifying in equal measures.  We get some insight into the minds of boys during pool classes (and their own body-conscious worries). And I did find out what vale tudo is.  You can, too, if you Google it.

b A Zoo in Winter by Jiro Taniguchi: Wow.  There is something solid and quiet and calm about his art style in this that somehow prevents any of the drama from seeming like melodrama (even when it sort of is).  They get away with lines that would induce eye-rolls because they are serious about this stuff, and they probably did talk like that, and it's all kind of fascinating.  And then it just sort of . . .stops.  It doesn't really end because that implies some sort of wrap-up of some kind.  It just stopped, and I wanted to read more.

"Maybe this place is haunted because there's something mysterious that possesses people in places of creation." 66

"Doing what you love for work.  Sounds idyllic!"
"They say you can't do this if you don't love it."

What I read in June: Digest Version, part 1 of 3

Natsume's Book of Friends has been licensed to be released on DVD!!!!  Eeeeeee!!!!!!  Ahem.  I am excited.

b 13th Boy 8: As many others have said, I should not enjoy this as much as I do.  I mean, the protagonist is kind of a horrible person, and I don't really like her and am not really rooting for her, but that doesn't necessarily matter because this is fiction.  And, c'mon, sentient cactus that transforms into pretty boy?  And what's this, a couple sides of the love pentagon might be leaving?!  Well, anyway, I'm in it for the long haul.

b Blood Blockade Battlefront 2: Just as bloody and action-packed as volume 1.  Dark and weird, yet somehow lighthearted, full of mystery and mayhem and weird demonic powers.  The character designs are distinctive, and it is nothing like Trigun.  It's a wild, fun, scary ride.

b Boys Over Flowers 31: It's been a long time since the last volume, and I am looking forward to a marathon when I collect them all.  Maybe things will be more coherent, but I suspect they will also be more annoying.  Oh, long-running shojo full of ridiculous misunderstandings and escalations: why do I still love you as much as I do?

b Dawn of the Arcana 4: The cast expands a bit here, and the heroine really starts developing a spine, as does her husband.  Danger swirls; secrets are revealed.  I hope this gets better and better because it seems to have worked out a lot of its early jitters.

b A Devil and Her Love Song 3: Can I punch the teacher in the face?  Or talk to another teacher to point out what's going on?  This is really pushing the bounds of what I'm willing to accept.  Through it all, these awkward, quirky characters continue to swirl around each other and smash into each other and do unpredictable things.  Oh, the lovely spin . . .  I have no idea where this one is going.  Part of me hopes the teachers are irredeemable and all get fired, but that's unlikely.  I don't really want them to be redeemed . . .

b Ghost Hunt 2: Oh, this is the one with the super creepy doll!!  It is super creepy in a way that a static medium should not be able to be creepy.

b Gon 5: Okay.  Bugs.  Huge, prehistoric bugs and spiders.  Gross, gross, gross.  Beautiful and lively and amazingly able to tell a coherent (if yucky) story with NO WORDS AT ALL.

What I read in December: Digest Version, part 1 of 4

After all my patience and patronage, I am still not going to get TurnA Gundam.  I was so close.  Oh, the humanity.

b The Betrayal Knows My Name 2: More angst!  More sad backstory!  And a twist so unsurprising the author was actually shocked that so many of her readers didn't see it coming.  (I saw it coming; that should tell you how obvious it was.)  This series takes me a long time to read because there's a lot to savor in the artwork and the tragedy of it all.  I was ready to be really impressed at one point when I thought some foreshadowing came true in a big way with an actual character death, but no dice.  There's always next volume.

b Black Butler 5: Y'know, I can see why this series irritates some people.  There are gut-wrenching serious bits, but then they're surrounded by fluff that just seems crappy in comparison.  However, without the fluff, this series would likely bog down in horror.  Also, Queen Victoria = random + awesome.

b Blood Alone 5:  I read someone saying somewhere that this volume clearly indicated there was a romantic relationship going on.  Did we read the same volume?  Because mine didn't indicate any hanky-panky.  It's true that I'm likely to willfully not notice things I don't like, and my memory is crappy, but I really thought there wasn't anything even vaguely like that.  Just more darkness and awkwardness and tenderness not connected to sex in any way.  I swear it is still not creepy!  Okay, um, maybe I should say that it still isn't definitively that exact kind of creepy, though there is a lot of other kinds of creepy it does well.  Moving on . . .

b Blood Blockade Battlefront 1: Okay.  Nothing like Trigun.  Awesome anyway.  Kind of kooky and sometimes confusing with lots of mystery, the occasional emotional gut punch, and instances of super-gory violence, this volume has me hooked.  Sign me up for the next one.

b Bokurano Ours 3:  If you are looking for a positive and uplifting series full of cuddly puppies and happy children, you should look somewhere else.  Right now.  I thought volume 2 was harsh and depressing, but I had no idea volume 3 would be even more horrific.  Like, far beyond what I could have reasonably anticipated.  Part of me wants to hold off on future volumes until the whole series is out in order to make sure I can marathon the depression all in one day, whiplash-inducing plot twists included.  Another part of me remembers Shadow Star Narutaro's cancellation and cringes.

b Book Girl and the Captive Fool:  Oh, Book Girl!  More little bits and dribbles of the narrator's tragic past get dropped, and gosh, they're juicy ones.  Especially because of that lovely, unexpected plot twist at the end.  Bring on the next volume of literary-themed intrigue and school hijinks!

b Chi's Sweet Home 7: My favorite fictional kitten is back and being adorable and obnoxious in equal measures.  Poor Chi learns why you shouldn't eat things you find on the ground.  Gross and sad.  Somehow still adorable.

b Dengeki Daisy 6-8: Thank you, Barnes and Noble and ST, for letting me marathon these over Christmas.  They were delicious.  ST made the comment that she was glad the explanation was long and complicated and serious because she was ready to be really ticked off if all this drama and trauma were the result of the usual silly shojo miscommunication/misunderstanding.  No fear of that.  I also like how everyone makes it clear that they are only relating their side of things.  Next volume is the resolution of it all.  I would like to trust this unconventional series to end with a satisfying and not-illegal bang, er, conclusion.  Don't let me down, Daisy.

What I Read in March: Digest Version, Part 1 of 4

b 7 Billion Needles 1: Wow.  Really, this one's kind of amazing.  Alien crashlands and accidentally kills girl; resurrects her to help him hunt down an evil alien somewhere on the planet.  She's very antisocial, so finding this evil think, which is also possessing a person, is going to be difficult.

o Abandon the Old in Tokyo: Well, that was depressing.  Good variety of short stories.  Your mileage will vary.

b Adventures of Young Det 1: I still really like this series.  I give props to any series that takes more than one volume to create a backstory that is rock-solid, amazing, and tragic.  I just wish I were as interested in the later story.  I also wish this one had actually been finished . . .

o AX Volume 1: A Collection of Alternative Manga: Your mileage will seriously vary, as the content of this wild collection of alternative manga does.  Probably not for the fainthearted or those who love mainstream manga.

b BECK 5: Ah, the art is so ugly, but the spirit of the story is so powerful.  Oh, Tokyopop, why did you stop publishing this and then why did you go out of business before starting again?  And why didn't you just publish starting after where the anime left off?!

b Black Bird 7: Still doing its best to earn that 16+ rating but also trying to explore the main character with some more depth as she tries to adapt to this weird new world she's a part of where the people around her aren't human and don't come from human cultures.  Lots of people have lost patience with this series because all they see is smutty shojo, but I really feel for the main character.

b Black Butler 3: Well, that was depressing, too.  Sad story about Ciel's single remaining relative.  Ciel's such an ambiguous character sometimes.  I love the way his actions can be interpreted multiple ways and the way Sebastian so cruelly mocks him . . .  And then seems to care for him.  It's hard to get your balance with this series . . .

b Bokurano Ours 2: If you read the first one, you won't be surprised to find out that volume 2 was super-depressing, as well.  I mean, what joy and happiness can you expect from a giant robot story where all the pilots die, and you know they will, and you get sucked into their individual stories anyway?

o Butterflies, Flowers 5: Still ridiculous.  I really need to give up on this one.  It has moments of humor, but it's just so offensive that I just shouldn't care what happens to its protagonists.  Why am I still reading it?

Selections from What I Read in December: Digest Version, Part 3 of 4

Okay. 

b 20th Century Boys 12: Oh, I love it.  Urasawa knows how to keep the suspense going and how to veer off in directions you never expected.
b Clover omnibus: I always have to read it the original way and then backwards.  You have to be really careful not to break the spine (or buy it used with the spine pre-broken), but those color plates are amazing.  This is such an odd, sad story both artistically gorgeous and gorgeously told.  There's more mood and atmosphere than actual story, but I don't care because it's so beautiful.
b Crimson Cross: Wow.  Great mood and creepy content.  Nice art, too.
b Cross Game 1: Well, with that bummer out of the way at the beginning . . .  This is such a unique manga being published here in the U.S (being a sports manga and a slow-moving shonen drama).  I hope it does well because it is great. 
b Gente 2: Sort of low-key, relaxing stories about a bunch of middle aged Italians.  What's not to love? As long as you like leisurely pacing and the quirky art, a chapter every so often will do wonders for your blood pressure.
b House of Five Leaves 2: Whoa.  Natsume Ono somehow makes even danger, intrigue, and action seem somehow more languid . . .  I love it.  Who are these people?  How did they get together?  The more I learn, the more I want to know!
b Library Wars 3: Oh, no!  What a crappy cliffhanger!  Still digging this fun and quirky series about armed librarians in the not-so-distant future and contemplating the evils of censorship and how easily good intentions can turn into totalitarian oppression.  Also romance and action.
b Love*Com 7: Oh, dear.  I do love this series.  Goofy fun even on the re-reads.  Especially on the re-reads, actually.
b Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy: Yeah, I already gushed about this one.
b Tsubasa 28 of 28: Well.  So.  Was that a happy ending?  It was definitely a CLAMP ending, anyway.  I'll need to marathon this some day, I think, possibly at the same time as xxxHolic.

I read so many books in December that weren't manga, but I also got a manga marathon or two in.  That will be part 4, I think.

Selections from What I Read in October: Digest Version, Part 3 of 3

Hooray!  I'm caught up right now.  I will bask in the moment!

• b King of RPGS 1: This was awesomely silly.  I do not play RPGs and have never played collectible card games or anything, and I still got a kick out of this one.  It's one of the better east meets west attempts.  The over-the-top shonen bits made me look forward to a second volume that will probably never come.  Sadness.
• b Kingyo Used Books 2: Still best served one chapter at a time.  Reminds me of the power of books, even if it gets a bit clumsy about it sometimes.  I'll be writing more about that soon . . .
• b Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service 11: Oh, dear.  Light refraction suits and the nature of good and evil.  Also lots of corpses and a really creepy long story that is just really horrific.  Also those amazing notes.
• o Mail 1-3: Meh. There were times when this was genuinely creepy and disturbing, but I'm not a big fan of just creepy and disturbing.  I wonder what the authors could do with this if they gave it another run in 5 years.  I'll admit that the Pinoko-like assistant twist toward the end was weird and creepy.
• b Prince of Tennis 18-19: Ah, light, breezy, intense shonen action.  No romance, no corpses.  Stupid kids injuring themselves to (fail to) prove a point.  Then again, they are only 14 or 15, so it's not out of character for them to be a bit too narrowly focused.  (Like I should talk after all the injuries and illnesses I played through.)  And I know coaches in Japan are different and that their junior high and high school sports are way different from ours, but I can't believe the coach let that happen.  Seriously.  Coaches get fired for that here.  Fun times.  :)
• b Venus Capriccio 1-4: Gentle.  Nice.  Unfinished.  Drat.  Oh, CMX . . .  I like the ones that involve music, no matter how melodramatic they get.  VS is another one I'm trying to track down a few last volumes of, so I can finish that one.  Ah, Nodame, when are you coming out next?

While the last few months have been a bit lean, November, due to a couple of book binges, was pretty great.  Look forward to it.  :)

Selections from What I Read in September: Digest Version, Part 1 of 2

Ah, September.  When suddenly I remember why I hate the short warm time we call summer up here that starts in June and ends in August.  Well, that's not true.  It reminds me why I hate the cold time that runs from September through May.  This is a temperate zone, right?  I've got my manga and exercise to keep me warm.

• b Chi's Sweet Home 1-2:  Totally adorable.  Seriously.  Warm fuzzies and short laughs as you follow a cute kitten and the family that takes her into their pet free apartment and has to hide her.  Also found out where her cute name came from and nearly had a spasm.
• b Jihai 1: I have read people tearing this one to shreds as boring and lame.  I like it.  I really do.  Those end-of-book cliffhangers were great the first time through, and I didn't think knowing how they resolved hurt the reread value for me (since I sort of forgot most everything).  I liked all the various characters with their tortured pasts, too, and I liked the somewhat nonstandard ways they dealt with redemption and atonement. 
• b Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service 9-10: I talked about these already.  Same acid dark humor.  Same fantastic notes at the end.  How to know if you'll be able to handle the horror within: Can you look closely at the cover and not throw up?
• b Maison Ikkoku 12: Just like with the real people bumbling around in romantic relationships in your life, you just want to shake these people sometimes, too.
• b Saturn Apartments 1: Totally great.  Seriously unusual.  Earnest, sweet, and sad.  The story of a future when Earth is uninhabitable, and everybody lives on a big ring around the earth.  Mainly follows the story of a young orphaned boy who chooses to be a window washer, a dangerous and sometimes thankless job (the job his father died doing).  Slice of life sci-fi.
• b Silver Diamond 3: Can the power of nice save the world?  Find out here.
• b A Tale of an Unknown Country 1-2: I'm pretty bummed there won't be more of this one.  It irked me a bit because it got my hopes up when it laid out a really serious, realistic sort of scenario in a broken relationship between brothers.  Then it shojo-powered through all the careful setup and tried to bulldoze on with the power of genki.  I shouldn't have let it get my hopes up, but situations like this particular one that break relationships between siblings are of interest to me, and I wanted to see how they dealt with it.  Now I'll never know if they redeem themselves by treating it seriously again.  Alas.
• b Tsubasa 27: I'll admit that I have no idea what that was all about.  I think some day when I marathon this series, it will make (more) sense.
• b Tuxedo Gin 1:  So he dies, but he gets to come back as a penguin, live out a penguin's natural lifespan, and then be returned to his body.  He picked a penguin for sentimental reasons.  I wouldn't picked the shortest living critter I knew about.  But that's because I'm not in love with someone who adores penguins.  Well, and there are other reasons such as reality . . .

 A lot of variety here this month.  Good month.

On corpses (their delivery services, anyway)

I was just reading volume 9 of Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, and I must once again say that the editor's notes at the end are pretty much worth the price of admission (if you can stomach the horror that leads to it).  Smart, funny, clear, and informative, they're like the best kind of extras on a DVD.  In this volume, we got some alien hand puppet awesomeness and a bit of history on two of the lesser known characters.  There was, of course, a lot of gross, but at least one story involved possessed dolls, so things in that one were less gruesome than usual.

Reading another volume made me once again think about Kurosagi as an anime.  I couldn't watch it.  I already have to be careful as it is not to think too hard about the content I'm reading or risk a stomach revolt, and nothing's even moving in full creepy splendor, let alone with sound effects.  It makes me once again grateful that I can't visualize (see pictures in my head); if I could, there's no way I could even read Kurosagi, and that would be a shame.  Sometimes you need your humor smart and acid black, and, if so, Kurosagi is the place to go.

Randomly, on my way to work I pass this business development called BlackTern, and their logo and name always make me think of Kurosagi, which may explain why I had the sudden urge to catch up a bit, despite my stomach's recent tetchyness.  :)