Yuki Kaori - Grand Guignol Orchestra, vol. 01 (Chi. trans.)

(eta: changed series title to match licensed one)

It is a new Yuki Kaori series! With gender bending!! And killer dolls!!! Called Guignols!!!!

ILU YUKI KAORI ILU.

The Galatea virus somehow turns people into flesh-eating dolls who roam around trying to catch prey; people mostly live in walled cities to avoid them. A mysterious court rules the land. It's not quite sure what they do yet, but given that it is an authoritative figure in a Yuki Kaori series, i am certain they are corrupt and morally bankrupt.

Lucille, Kohaku, and Gwindel compose a (very tiny) orchestra whose music somehow destroys the Guignol dolls.

Right now, it looks like the series is fairly episodic, a la early Cain Saga/Godchild, but we're already getting very brief glimpses into Lucille's Sekrit Angsty Backstory.

( Spoilers as only Yuki Kaori can do )

Also, there is a pet hedgehog that lives in a hat. And offering your flesh to be eaten as an expression of true love.

And did I mention the FLESH-EATING DOLLS who can ONLY BE DEFEATED BY MUSIC?

So far, no zombie doll fetus armadas, but I am confident they (or something of that ilk) will be in future volumes! I'm also hoping that this is a nice long series with room for many, many cracktastic plot twists, because while Fairy Cube was fun, it was too short for me to get very attached to the characters. Also, the ending was largely incomprehensible, but that seems par for the course. I feel the solution to that is to just have more awesome middle so no one cares if they can't figure out the ending.

Ichijo Yukari - Pride, vol. 01 (Chi. trans.)

Asami Shio has it all: looks, money, talent. Midorikawa Moe doesn't. Neither of the two realize that they will be rivals in the quest to become Japan's greatest opera singer.

I keep wanting to read Ichijo Yukari's work because she's a fairly well-known mangaka, but I bounced off this hard. The volume I read reads like more old-fashioned shoujo with lots of glamour, tragedy, and overall drama. Unfortunately, with the glamour comes a ton of class issues. Shio's father ends up losing all their money, so we get her poor-little-rich-girl story, which I am actually guiltily fond of.

However, what's extremely annoying is the portrayal of Moe. She's introduced as a sweet girl, which fits right into the poor-but-hard-working-and-cheerful stereotype, but once she realizes she doesn't have half the advantages Shio does, she chooses to do whatever it takes to get to her goal. I feel this could have read as class commentary on how difficult it is to combat generations of privilege (Shio's mother was also a famous opera singer), but instead, the series paints Shio as cold and impractical but essentially trying her best in a cruel world, while Moe schemes, deliberately sabotages people, and may be driven to murderous impulses. Also, to hit all the stereotypes, Shio is drawn with light hair (blond on the cover), while Moe has dark hair.

Pass!