More Great Manga SeriesHello again everyone! I opened up this new page because I have noticed for a long time now that there are a whole lot of really cool manga series that I have, and would recommend to others, yet do not feel confident enough about their plotlines to write summaries for them. My Japanese is usually good enough to follow along in manga aimed at younger kids, but a lot of the series I like that have beautiful artwork and look really interesting have vocabulary and kanji in them that I cannot understand ^_^ The lack of Furigana (small hiragana or katakana characters next to a kanji character to aid in pronounciation) slows me down when reading very much! I figure that just because I can't figure out exactly what is going on, that doesn't mean others out there can't, and y'all may be interested in some of the harder to read series that I like! Anyway, enough rambling! Listed below are series I purchased mainly for the artwork or for the author, but in most cases lack furigana to help in reading them, or have plots I just can't quite get!  The Young Magician, by Yuri NARUSHIMA I first discovered Yuri NARUSHIMA's 'Young Magician' through an article about the author and her art style in an issue of 'Comickers', a magazine about manga artists, supplies, technique, etc. I really~ liked the pictures in the magazine from the series, and after that I did what I could to track down as much info about it that I could find. I made a few winamp skins for the series from what pictures I could find, and then I finally found the manga! yay! The art in this is really cool. The characters are proportioned well, there is a lot of detail, and the extensive use of ziptone shading is done very well. Unfortunately this manga doens't have that much furigana in it, so I am a little slow at figuring out what is happening. There are 2 main characters, and both of them have unusual powers. They get involved in a lot of bizarre occult happenings and sometimes work together, and sometimes alone.
Midnight Sun, by Arina TOSHIMI The first volume of this I purchased was #2 because the store was out of volume 1, but the cover to this looked so cool, I had to get at it anyway. I am really glad I did because the artwork is so lovely in this! Actually, this series DOES have quite a bit of furigana next to the kanji dialog, I just still can't quite follow all of the plot. It features 2 guys, one is named Teruaki SHITOU and has longish blond hair. The other is Kaoru AYATSUJI. He has short black hair. The series is somewhat of an action/mystery story because it seems to follow Teruaki and Kaoru as they do some investigating in an effort to find something. They are always breaking into buildings and questioning people about stuff. Teruaki is also looking for his long lost oler brother I believe, because he has a lot of memory flashbacks of them together. I don't really know Kaoru's agenda, but he certainly is up to something. He is the quiet, cool, moody type who you never know what he is feeling. Teruaki is the baka boy in this. He is loud, excitable, and a bit headstrong. This series was published by Chara Comics, which means that this series probably ran (or is running) in the shounen ai/yaoi magazine 'Chara'. There haven't really been any yaoi/shounen ai scenes in this manga though, with the exception of a CPR scene, but personally I am hoping there will be more later on :) I have only seen 3 volumes of this so far.
The Prime Minister at the End of the Century, by Eiki EIKI I thought this manga was a really funny one, even though it is lacking a lot of furigana to help me read it ^_^ A lot of times they will put the furigana for a word the first time someone uses it, and then omit it from then on. This is the story of a guy named Kanata, who I think is either the Prime Minister, or next in line to be it. He's someone REALLY important at any rate, because he has several bodyguards and staff people always around him. It begins with him having run away and disappeared, and news reporters talking about the search for him. The main character is a girl named Minori, who goes to a video arcade after school one day and plays a game, beating her opponent sitting at the machine across from her. That opponent gets very angry that he was beaten and gets up to yell, but stops when he sees it was a cute girl like Minori who won. Yeah, the opponent is none other than Kanata. He takes an instant liking to Minori and pretty much claims her as 'his' right then and there. (He really likes her hair too, and seems to have some sort of strange hair fetish ^^;;) Kanata 'claiming' minori brings no end of problems, as Minori doesn't know who the heck this guy is, and after finding out, is still not that thrilled about him trying to invade her life. Kanata is very bossy and manages to invite himself right into her life whether she wants him to be there or not. Meanwhile, Sai, Kanata's advisor does NOT like Minori at all, and is doing everything he can to annoy the hell out of her. It's interesting to discover WHY he hates Minori! The artwork in this volume is pretty nice, very clean and detailed. As a note, there is a little bit of shounen ai in the story as well.
E'S, by Satoru YUIGA I had first been exposed to this series when I saw a really lovely pencil board for it. The artwork in this is really nice, reminding me a little bit of Clamp. The volume itself is larger and more expensive than many of the other ones I usually buy, running me about $10.00. Now if I could only figure out the story! ^_^;The main character is a 15 year old guy named Kai KUDOU (though he really doesn't look 15 to me...) He belongs to some sort of futuristic paranormal police force. He and his comrades investigate all sorts of strange happenings. Expect to see lots of people flying, uniforms that looks vaguely Nadesico/Silent Mobius-ish, and lots of buildings exploding and energy blasts all over the place ^_^ The artwork is very very tetailed, with clean lines and a lot of screentone shading. This is just the beginning of my list. I have plenty more to add later! :)  |
