Manga Review- Ichigo 100%

Panties in your face…  A simple yet daring sentence that sums up the situation of the start of Ichigo 100%. What more could a guy ask for? Used panties in your face maybe. Something that almost happens in the beginning of the series because the girl didn’t take her panties off and is still wearing them. But hey, our hero is already having a nose bleed and couldn’t be happier. But we can.

Manga Review- Diabolo

Years back, before I could even tell you what a manga was, my friends bought me Diabolo. I was really into horror movies then, and my friends insisted that I would love this series. Without know anything about the manga, I opened the pages and began to read, jumping into the world of Ren and Rai, and how their fate was sealed from the beginning of chapter one. I was really attached to the characters back then, which really made me love the story.

Manga Review- Enchanter

Enchanter was a manga I found hidden away on a top shelf in the far corner of a small recreation store. I was looking for some manga worth buying, and just happened to notice its rather old dusty cover on the highest shelf. It was in fairly poor condition, old and slightly tattered, and the cover wasn’t exactly spectacular. I skipped through a few pages, read the description on the back and said, “bah what the hell, I’ll give it a gamble.”  This manga has probably been the biggest surprise of my reading career, as being funny, having colorful characters, and having a surprisingly interesting storyline.

Manga Review- I.S (Aiesu)

Don’t be discriminatory towards the strange title of this manga. Don’t worry, this is not yaoi, nor yuri, nor ecchi or hentai. In fact, this is one of the most touching and most mature shoujo/josei manga I have read. Of course, the main characters are intersexuals.

Manga Review- Rustblaster

Often, an interesting title will peek my interest and I’ll dig into the material, curious to see what’s under the cover. Rustblaster was one of these titles. I couldn’t help but feel curious when I first stared at the title. At first, I couldn’t even imagine what the manga was about, and I certainly didn’t believe that the manga would be about vampires.

Manga Review- Beast Master

Its a romance between a girl who gets along well with people, but is hated by the thing she loves most (animals)
and a boy that is great with animals, but has a beast-like personality that makes people think that he’s completely unapproachable.
I have to admit that I was trying my hardest to avoid reading this, because I’m not into the whole beauty falling in love with beast story.
But something about it just made me want to take a quick peek,
and I ended up reading the entire thing
lol I couldnt stop.

Manga Review: Rin! vol. 1

I love Yukine Honami’s artwork. The emotions of her characters are so evident, they don’t need a dialog assist, it’s all on the page. While I was able to able to put my qualms about Katsura (he’s 17 and looks 12) to rest due to the affecting manner in which the story is depicted, I admit to some initial reservations about the side story.
This short story is written and drawn by Honami exclusively, and shows Katsura and Sou hanging out together during the summer. Katsura is working on his summer homework when Sou embraces Katsura and begins to fondle him. Katsura is very embarrassed about the obvious outcome. None of this is presented in a vulgar fashion. There is little dialog and the action is depicted discretely.

Manga Review: Cat Girl Nuku Nuku

The series premise is extremely simple, and as a cat lover, I can even appreciate it. Inventor Kyusaku Natsume and his son, Ryunosuke, come across a fatally wounded cat and transfer the cat’s brain into an android body, thus creating Atsuko Natsume, or Nuku Nuku.
There’s really not much to this story. There’s no grand plot, just several stories about Nuku Nuku and her life as an android. In fact, the book summary on the back of the volume is completely inaccurate, for the majority of the book does not deal with the plot as described in the summary at all. Only small parts of the anime-based fourth chapter deal with the storyline as outlined in the summary, but even that is just a sidebar to what’s really going on.
Manga R
The resulting stories are pretty cute and much better than what I expected them to be. The initial story features what she’s like a year after she’s revived as an android. The following manga stories involve her trying to understand the human mind. These are very entertaining, for they involve more character development for Nuku Nuku than any sort of fan service. I loved the little cat-like behaviors she exhibits, like scratching the furniture, curling up and purring to get some attention and catching a mouse to show Kyusaku that she wants to make him happy.

The final part of the book is a story using anime art, called “Nuku Nuku goes to space.” Nuku Nuku comes across a badly-injured cat in the woods and discovers that it is a cat from outer space. Following in the same pattern as the manga stories, it is a relatively simple tale. But, this one has a lot more action and a lot less of the charm that the manga-style stories are given. Nuku Nuku and the others are given little to no character growth at all. Even Kyusaku loses the gruffness and insanity that makes his character interesting. I wound up scanning through this episode, as it felt completely pointless and went against the tone that the rest of the series set.

I have mixed feelings when it comes to this volume. The manga-style stories are very well done and are extremely entertaining to read. They have a bit of fan service, but a lot of heart and I liked them a lot. The anime-style story was pretty boring, and I found myself flipping through it pretty quickly. To me, the story behind Nuku Nuku is her quest to learn how the human mind works, and that is abandoned in that last story. Catgirl fans will love this series, and it’s worth picking up for the first three stories and the extra postcards featuring characters not seen in this book. However, I am extremely disappointed in ADV for mis-marketing this series and hope that future editions of this book will provide a more accurate summary of its contents.

Manga Review: High School Debut

A typical shojo plot — young woman desperate to get a boyfriend as she starts high school — is made highly entertaining through dynamic characters and art.

Haruna is used to working hard to get what she wants. She’s a softball player (and girls’ manga fan) who thinks that slavishly following teen magazines for fashion and behavior suggestions will gain her a guy. She doesn’t understand what works specifically for her body type and personality, though, so she’s been a failure so far… and an amusingly scary one.