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My internet access has been really spotty of late, and I can't stay on the computer long anyway because of my eyes, so I may be concentrating more on posting and less on commenting and reading for a while.
More on topic: I am not even sure why I am bothering to write this up, since no one will read it for a couple of months anyway. Still!
( Spoilers are spoilery )
More on topic: I am not even sure why I am bothering to write this up, since no one will read it for a couple of months anyway. Still!
( Spoilers are spoilery )
- It's Blogging against disablism day! Lots of good stuff linked there.
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skywardprodigal hosts the 9th POC in SF Carnival, What I Heard about You, And What That Meant For Me- Mely has a Yuki Kaori theme discussion! Spoilers for Angel Sanctuary and Cain Saga/Godchild.
- I am still trying to keep my head unexploded, so no links to the on-going WOC and feminism debate.
- shewhohashope read After School Nightmare!
- Project Blue Rose: Human Touch is coming out soon! Details here. I pimp partly because I wrote a story in there.
2007 manga write up
Wed, Jan. 9th, 2008 04:25 pmThis is why I don't make New Year's Resolutions to read less manga: the statistics would come out the next year, and I would laugh in my own face. The scary thing is this list doesn't include random scanlations or recent chapters of series I follow, and it's still at 275 volumes!
As usual, these are my favorite things read this year, not published this year. I'm also keeping manga separate from comics; this is an entirely arbitrary distinction and depends not only on the paper size of the book, but also whether or not I feel it's going for the manga feel or not. For 2008, I'm going to stick everything together as "sequential art," but since my spreadsheet from last year was set up to separate manga from everything else, no such luck for now.
Sadly, I have skimpy numbers for manhwa, which I am going to try to remedy this year. I was surprised to see I only have two repeats from last year (Emma and Cain Saga/Godchild), though I have four author repeats (Mori Kaoru, Minekura Kazuya, Mizushiro Setona and Yuki Kaori). I liked my runner ups much more than I liked my runner ups from last year, though that's mainly because I've been reading more manga. I know, what a shocker.
Continuing series Naruto, Fruits Basket and Saiyuki (including Reload and Gaiden) fell off my list this year. I don't even have Naruto on my list of manga read, but that's largely because I read chapters as they came out. Possibly reading individual chapters instead of volumes of manga dampened my enthusiasm, although I think a larger part of it is because we're stuck in another long fighting arc I don't care much about. I'm still waiting for my favorite characters to get back into action and very sick of Sasuke's angst about twenty volumes ago, thankyouverymuch. I just haven't read any Fruits Basket this year, aside from rereads, and while new volumes of Saiyuki Reload came out this year (most notably the exciting volume 7), they're all volumes I read last year in Japanese.
The only reason Honey and Clover isn't on here is because the first three volumes a) aren't out in the US and b) follow the anime so closely that I can't quite figure out what to say.
I have individual volume write ups linked via tags for the top ten and runners up, but I'm too lazy to link the entire list of stuff I read. Anything without an asterisk has been written up before; check my tags or memories. If you're curious about something I haven't written up, feel free to ask!
Series alphabetized by author.
Also recommended: Arakawa Hiromu, Fullmetal Alchemist; Svetlana Chmakova, Dramacon; Hayakawa Tomoko, The Wallflower; Ogawa Yayoi, Tramps Like Us; Takeuchi Mick, Her Majesty's Dog; Yoshinaga Fumi, Antique Bakery; Yun Mi-Kyung, Bride of the Water God
( Notes )
Total read: 275 (40 rereads)
( Complete list of manga read in 2007 )
As usual, these are my favorite things read this year, not published this year. I'm also keeping manga separate from comics; this is an entirely arbitrary distinction and depends not only on the paper size of the book, but also whether or not I feel it's going for the manga feel or not. For 2008, I'm going to stick everything together as "sequential art," but since my spreadsheet from last year was set up to separate manga from everything else, no such luck for now.
Sadly, I have skimpy numbers for manhwa, which I am going to try to remedy this year. I was surprised to see I only have two repeats from last year (Emma and Cain Saga/Godchild), though I have four author repeats (Mori Kaoru, Minekura Kazuya, Mizushiro Setona and Yuki Kaori). I liked my runner ups much more than I liked my runner ups from last year, though that's mainly because I've been reading more manga. I know, what a shocker.
Continuing series Naruto, Fruits Basket and Saiyuki (including Reload and Gaiden) fell off my list this year. I don't even have Naruto on my list of manga read, but that's largely because I read chapters as they came out. Possibly reading individual chapters instead of volumes of manga dampened my enthusiasm, although I think a larger part of it is because we're stuck in another long fighting arc I don't care much about. I'm still waiting for my favorite characters to get back into action and very sick of Sasuke's angst about twenty volumes ago, thankyouverymuch. I just haven't read any Fruits Basket this year, aside from rereads, and while new volumes of Saiyuki Reload came out this year (most notably the exciting volume 7), they're all volumes I read last year in Japanese.
The only reason Honey and Clover isn't on here is because the first three volumes a) aren't out in the US and b) follow the anime so closely that I can't quite figure out what to say.
I have individual volume write ups linked via tags for the top ten and runners up, but I'm too lazy to link the entire list of stuff I read. Anything without an asterisk has been written up before; check my tags or memories. If you're curious about something I haven't written up, feel free to ask!
Series alphabetized by author.
- ( CLAMP, xxxHolic and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle )
- ( Higuri You, Cantarella )
- ( Minekura Kazuya, Wild Adapter )
- ( Mizushiro Setona, After School Nightmare )
- ( Mori Kaoru, Emma )
- ( Soryo Fuyumi, Eternal Sabbath )
- ( Urasawa Naoki, Monster and 20th Century Boys )
- ( Urushibara Yuki, Mushishi )
- ( Yazawa Ai, Nana and Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai )
- ( Yuki Kaori, Cain Saga/Godchild )
- ( Yumeka Sumomo, The Day I Became a Butterfly )
Also recommended: Arakawa Hiromu, Fullmetal Alchemist; Svetlana Chmakova, Dramacon; Hayakawa Tomoko, The Wallflower; Ogawa Yayoi, Tramps Like Us; Takeuchi Mick, Her Majesty's Dog; Yoshinaga Fumi, Antique Bakery; Yun Mi-Kyung, Bride of the Water God
( Notes )
Total read: 275 (40 rereads)
( Complete list of manga read in 2007 )
Tags:
- a: yumeka sumomo,
- manga,
- manga: 20th century boys,
- manga: after school nightmare,
- manga: cain saga/godchild,
- manga: cantarella,
- manga: emma,
- manga: eternal sabbath,
- manga: monster,
- manga: nana,
- manga: tenshi nanka ja nai,
- manga: tsubasa reservoir chronicle,
- manga: wild adapter,
- manga: xxxholic,
- recs: sequential art,
- sequential art,
- year in review
This is possibly the oddest thing I've read all year, and I read Le Chevalier d'Eon this year.
Mashiro Ichijo has just been told that he needs to take a special after-school class in order to graduate. The classroom is in a basement that didn't previously exist, and instead of desks, the room is lined with canopy beds. It turns out that he will be entering a dream world and confronting his own worst nightmare. Several other classmates of his are in there as well, though they take different forms in the nightmare/dream world.
Mashiro's terrified that people will discover that his upper half is male, but his lower half is female, and things are further complicated when his male classmate Sou starts pursuing him romantically and when he's attracted to his female classmate Kureha as well.
As you might be able to tell from the premise, this series takes on questions of gender identity. I still can't tell if I like the politics or not; Mizushiro makes some assumptions that I keep wanting to question (why does liking Sou back mean identifying as female? what's so bad about being a woman? and I think the second is implied not only through Mashiro's fear of discovery, but also through the roles women have to play in the series so far and in the other Mizushiro series I've read). But the world is surreal and dreamy, edges bleeding together between the dream world and the real world, which seems less and less real as the series goes on.
Images that struck me: a girl so cut off that she shows up in the dream world as a body with a hole through her head and her chest instead of a face and a heart. Someone who manifests as long snaky arms, constantly grabbing and holding and winding around people. Empty desks and lockers at the school.
And the art is absolutely gorgeous; I mean to buy these just so I can have the color pages that GoComi includes.
Recommended for anyone who likes the strange and subtly creepy, particularly with a massive dose of gender identity issues.
Mashiro Ichijo has just been told that he needs to take a special after-school class in order to graduate. The classroom is in a basement that didn't previously exist, and instead of desks, the room is lined with canopy beds. It turns out that he will be entering a dream world and confronting his own worst nightmare. Several other classmates of his are in there as well, though they take different forms in the nightmare/dream world.
Mashiro's terrified that people will discover that his upper half is male, but his lower half is female, and things are further complicated when his male classmate Sou starts pursuing him romantically and when he's attracted to his female classmate Kureha as well.
As you might be able to tell from the premise, this series takes on questions of gender identity. I still can't tell if I like the politics or not; Mizushiro makes some assumptions that I keep wanting to question (why does liking Sou back mean identifying as female? what's so bad about being a woman? and I think the second is implied not only through Mashiro's fear of discovery, but also through the roles women have to play in the series so far and in the other Mizushiro series I've read). But the world is surreal and dreamy, edges bleeding together between the dream world and the real world, which seems less and less real as the series goes on.
Images that struck me: a girl so cut off that she shows up in the dream world as a body with a hole through her head and her chest instead of a face and a heart. Someone who manifests as long snaky arms, constantly grabbing and holding and winding around people. Empty desks and lockers at the school.
And the art is absolutely gorgeous; I mean to buy these just so I can have the color pages that GoComi includes.
Recommended for anyone who likes the strange and subtly creepy, particularly with a massive dose of gender identity issues.