Appare Jipangu

Title:  Appare Jipangu
Mangaka:  Yuu Watase
Length:  3 Volumes (Completed)
English Translation?  Nope.  You'll have to read it online for English.
Demo/Genre:  Shoujo/Historical/Comedy

Yusura was orphaned while still just an infant.  She was found beneath a cherry tree with a single possession:  the staff, Kongoumaru.  This staff glows blue as it absorbs the sadness of those around her, which she is then able to fire back on someone so that they feel the sadness they have caused others.  Now fifteen years old, she makes her living "battling sorrow" and helping the people of her village.

How did I find out about it?  I've read several works by Yuu Watase and investigations into her catalog led me to this one.

This series is pretty short and simple.  Unlike most manga, it wasn't published in a magazine.  Watase-sensei wanted to write a series without having to worry about the page restrictions of a magazine.  The result is Appare Jipangu!  The art is pretty much typical Watase, which is good (in my opinion).  While there is romance in the series, the focus is on the comedy.  Yusura's romantic interest is a young samurai named Samon who has terrible eyesight (a running gag in the manga).  AJ also makes many self-referential jokes, which I think is always nice.  It's generally just a fun romp.  Each chapter is pretty much stand-alone.  This isn't a manga that sticks with you for very long afterwards, but it was very fun to read, and if it were available in the States, I'd definitely get it.

This review was short, but there really wasn't much to say about it.  It's short, it's fun, and it's funny!  Well worth the read!

Kim's Review System

Since I'm more or less using my own system to score my reviews, I thought I'd break it down for you.

Each series will be rated on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.  Currently, I'm planning on avoiding half stars for the sake of just keeping things at their simplest.

 Poor.  I either didn't like anything at all about this manga, or anything that I did like wasn't enough to redeem it from its miserable standing.  I probably didn't even finish a manga with
this rating, and I certainly won't be collecting it.

 Below Average.  There were things I liked, and I'll probably read any new releases (if it's ongoing), but I doubt I'll be re-reading it or collecting it.  The bad outweighs the good.

 Average.  Far from perfect, but not too bad either.  I probably enjoyed reading this, but I didn't fall in love with it.  I probably still won't collect one here, but that depends on the situation, I guess.

Above Average.  Probably still flawed, but I really liked it anyway.  These are the series that I want to reread and will probably make it a point to collect.

Excellent.  It may be flawed, but I don't care.  I loved a five star series through and through and will be doing my best to add it to my own library.

So there you have it.  Pretty easy, right?  Also, I'd like to add that my scores don't reflect the quality of a manga.  They are only to show how much I personally enjoyed the series.

Alice 19th

Title:  Alice 19th
Mangaka:  Yuu Watase
Length:  7 Volumes (Completed)
English Translation?  Yes!  All 7 released by Viz Media.
Demo/Genre:  Shoujo/Fantasy/Romance

Alice Seno has always lived in the shadow of her older sister Mayura.  They have both fallen for Kyo Wakamiya, and Alice is heartbroken when the two of them begin dating.  After rescuing a white rabbit (that ends the Alice in Wonderland references), Alice learns that she is potentially a Lotis Master, one who can draw out the power in words.  When Alice and her sister argue over Kyo, Alice screams out her wish for her sister to disappear, and her powers make it so.  Nyozeka (the anthropomorphic white rabbit) explains to Alice that her sister has become lost within the darkness of her own heart, and it is up to Alice, as a Lotis Master, to dive into the Inner Heart and save her.

How did I find this series?  I had read other works by Yuu Watase and investigations into her other titles led me here.

I am a fan of Watase-sensei's art style, and it shines through here.  Something I particularly love is that for a shoujo artist, she draws the grotesque really well.  There are some rather twisted images that appear late in the series, and she does wonderfully, in my opinion.  I found that the character models in A19 had a bit more diversity as well.  All in all, I was very pleased with the art in this series.

I really liked the lead characters.  I don't always identify with Watase-sensei's female characters, but I found Alice to be one of her more interesting protagonists.  She's young and naive, but she's also courageous and determined.  I felt that Kyo was particularly well done.  Sure, it's cliche to have the handsome male lead have a shady family history, but it's cliche for a reason:  if done well, it works.  It was easy to empathize with Kyo.  Mayura played the part of villain for much of the series, albeit the manipulated sort.  While I understand that she is meant to have been consumed by darkness and that that would give one a degree of tunnel vision, I would have liked to have seen some added depth to said darkness.  Instead of it just being, "You stole my boyfriend, and now you're gonna pay," there could have been a "I've envied you my whole life, and now you've stolen my boyfriend, too," kind of spin on the story.  Basically, it was just a little too shallow.  Alice spent her life jealous of her sister.  Mayura could do no wrong.  Wouldn't it have been interesting to read how Mayura was also jealous of Alice, perhaps because she didn't have the pressure of the being the older, more responsible one placed on her? I'm just running with ideas here.  I guess I'm just trying to say that I think it was a missed opportunity for more character development.

Which brings me to my next point:  this series suffered from some serious lack of character development in the supporting cast.  Watase-sensei introduced three new characters pretty late in the game.  I would have loved to have spent more time with them and gotten to know them.  To me, it seems a little pointless to introduce characters in a story that won't be given pasts and personalities.  More missed opportunities...

Ok, as much as I've complained, now allow me to explain why I loved this series!

It was very original.  I really loved the whole concept of the "Inner Heart."  It was an alternate reality, or shared-consciousness if you will, that reflected what was in someone's heart.  In order to cleanse someone of their own darkness, Alice and Kyo had to dive in and battle back that darkness with the light of the 24 Lotis Words.  I loved the imagery of the Inner Heart (which brings me back to how much I enjoy Watase-sensei's art style).  The romance was also very sweet, and fairly mature (emotionally, not graphically...).  Alice is only 15 years old, but she understands that she can't pursue Kyo while he's dating her sister.  She tries to prepare herself to give him up so that her sister can be happy.  After the two of them split, she finally musters up the courage to be honest with Kyo about her feelings, but when circumstances still prevent them from being together, she handles it very well, putting the task at hand as her first priority.  I loved that she didn't fall apart without him.  She loved him, and she wanted to be with him, but she wasn't going to lose herself over him.  I had the same respect for Kyo.  As I mentioned before, he had a troubling history, and it shows in his character.  He had to grow to know and understand himself throughout the series, and I enjoyed watching his journey.

Overall, I really liked this series.  Yes, it's flawed, but so many things are done so well that it didn't dampen my feelings for A19.  Would I collect it?  Yes, and actually, I'm in the process of doing that right now.  At the time of this post, I have five of the seven volumes of Alice 19th, with the sixth on its way.  I would definitely recommend this series to shoujo fans!

Absolute Boyfriend

Title:  Absolute Boyfriend
Japanese Title:  Zettai Kareshi
Mangaka:  Yuu Watase
Length:  6 Volumes (Completed)
English Translation?  Yes.  All 6 volumes published by Viz Media.
Demo/Genre:  Shoujo/Sci-Fi/Romantic Comedy

Riiko Izawa has only ever known rejection by boys.  One day, she returns a cell phone to an oddly-dressed stranger, and to thank her, he refers her to his company's website.  On the site, Riiko is given the opportunity to design her ideal boyfriend.  Not taking it very seriously, she fills out all of the options, only to wake up the next morning with a very naked and very handsome young man on her doorstep who meets all of her specifications. With one kiss, he awakens and is completely devoted to her.  Then, to give us a nice love triangle, Riiko's childhood friend takes this time to finally confess to her.  And thus, our story begins...

How did I find out about it?  A college bestie told me about it.  She's one of my very few otaku friends, and she's given me several recommendations.  I think this is the only one we've disagreed on at all.

First, I want to say that I do like Watase-sensei's art style.  It's clean and fairly simple.  I like the way she draws the menfolk much more than her female characters.  Her girls tend to have round, baby-faces with little detail in the mouth that make them all seem childish.  This, combined with the bubbly personalities that she often gives them, makes them a bit harder for me to relate to them.  This is also true of Riiko.  While I didn't necessarily dislike Riiko, I didn't find anything about her to be particularly memorable either.

The men, on the other hand, were quite interesting.  Night (Riiko's "absolute boyfriend") was handsome, funny, and spanned a rather large emotional spectrum, despite the fact that he isn't a human being.  I've always enjoyed storylines that explore the moral and emotional implications of creating life-like robots, so I was very taken in by the dilemma at hand.  Does Riiko choose Night, who is the perfect boyfriend and will always be devoted to her?  Or does she choose Soushi whose human heart loves her for all that she is, good and bad?  Is Night's love truly real?  I like this sort of thing.

So what didn't I like?  The ending.  I was reading, and everything was going just fine and dandy.  I really liked this series.  Then I came to the ending.  I greatly disagreed with it.  I won't go into anymore detail here, lest I spoil it for you.  I think I may type up a blog just to discuss my feelings on the ending.  I'll post a link to it here once it's done.  It's almost amazing how an ending can ruin a great series.

Overall thoughts:

I liked AB.  Watase-sensei has a penchant for the melodramatic, but she's still great at conveying emotions and helping readers to connect to her characters.  Would I collect this series?  Possibly.  I have others that are much higher up on my priority list.  I liked it enough to want to reread it.  The ending wasn't horrible.  It just didn't go in the direction I felt it should go...

An Introduction

After a few months of chewing on this idea, I've finally decided to start up a blog devoted to my manga obsession.  I imagine it will take me a little while to get it up and running the way I want it to, so for now, just bear with me (wait...there's no one reading this at this point, so I guess it doesn't matter?).

First, a little about me.

My name is Kim, and I am an otaku.  I read manga way more than I watch anime.  I read just about everything:  a lot of shoujo, quite a bit of shounen, some seinen, and the occasional josei.  I do most of my reading online, but I always collect the series if I like it (as fast as I can reasonably afford to).  I first discovered manga about 10 years ago.  For whatever reasons, I stopped collecting early on and forgot about this little hobby for many years.  About a year ago though, I fell back into it with a new fervor and have been trying to make up for lost time!

What will you find here?

Reviews!  Not pro-level reviews, mind you, but more like my thoughts on the series I have read.  I found that I was searching out peer-reviews to help me find new titles to read/collect, and so this idea was born.  I can contribute to, can't I?  I'll also probably blurb from time to time about what I'm currently reading or collecting.

I suppose that covers the basics.  I guess I'll go ahead and try to post a couple of reviews so I can play around with the lay-out!