Sakura of DOOM

The main story arc of the series finished in volume 7; these two volumes are collected short stories. Some feature characters from the main arc, and some are only related in the most tangential of ways. As Mori notes in the omake, she just wanted to draw them! Handwave the connection!

The stories here are about some of the maids Emma worked with, the Meredith family, Eleanor, Kelly Stowner, Hakim and William, and a slice-of-life story following the trail of a newspaper and another bittersweet romance about opera singers.

My favorites are the story about Mr. and Mrs. Meredith, the one about Kelly Stowner and the Crystal Palace, and the one about Eleanor. I am probably biased about the one on Eleanor, since I liked her a lot and was simply glad to see more of her.

I find some of the ones on the maids problematic; Mori does beautiful detail about people's daily lives, but the class issues (complete lack thereof) frustrate me. And oh, Hakim. I love the character, and yet, there is the same complete lack of talk about empire that is also even more wrong because it has Indian royalty befriending British bourgeoisie! Mori does say she wanted to talk more about empire in her notes, but I am kind of doubtful as to how critical she would be about it.

On a non-political note, I was also not initially charmed by the one about Erich Meredith and his pet squirrel—I am biased! Rats, infinitely better!—Mori completely won me over with her careful depictions of squirrel mannerisms. The squirrel scratches himself with his hind leg! He washes his face! It is SO CUTE.

Not that I am at all biased about cute rodents...

In terms of craft, I loved the story about Mr. and Mrs. Meredith the most. I'm impressed that almost all of it takes place between the two of them in bed (with the occasional flashback to other scenes), and yet, it was not boring. I loved the detailed observations about hands and hair, the intimate looks at the tiny gestures within their marriage, and the way Mori so perfectly captures those tiny gestures and small moments. My favorite part is probably the sequence that begins with Mrs. Meredith examining Mr. Meredith's fingers. It continues with hand clasps and both of their memories of hands on the violin, hands brushing back hair, hands offered out for help. And almost all of it is completely wordless and reminds me of what very good sequential art is capable of. It's just... very impressive.

Overall, this is a good display of Mori's strengths—attention to detail and small moments—although I don't know how much it will resonate with those who haven't read the rest of the series. I think some of the stories are good standalones (the one about the Merediths, the Stowners visiting the Crystal Palace), while others need more context (the one about Eleanor).

This 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.

1. ( CLAMP, xxxHolic and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle )



2. ( Higuri You, Cantarella )



3. ( Minekura Kazuya, Wild Adapter )



4. ( Mizushiro Setona, After School Nightmare )



5. ( Mori Kaoru, Emma )



6. ( Soryo Fuyumi, Eternal Sabbath )



7. ( Urasawa Naoki, Monster and 20th Century Boys )



8. ( Urushibara Yuki, Mushishi )



9. ( Yazawa Ai, Nana and Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai )



10. ( Yuki Kaori, Cain Saga/Godchild )



11. ( 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 )

Oh, I really love this manga, particularly Mori's attention to the tiniest details, of expressions and movements and still moments.

These two volumes are a little soapier than the previous ones; there's a level of coincidence that I don't quite find believable. But soapy for Mori Kaoru is so many levels below the usual drama of romances (shoujo and the romance genre), and I love the character Emma so much, that I'm willing to overlook that.

Also, Mori Kaoru's author notes are awesome, particularly the one that shows a pie chart of her brain (categories: Victorian-era maids, Edwardian-era maids, corsets, etc.).

( Spoilers )

I've read so much manga this year that I'm separating it out from my 2006 books post. I'm still a little stunned by the fact that I read 217 volumes of manga this year, and that's after not logging some random scanlations due to user oversight.

Like the books list, this is a list of manga that I read this year, not manga published this year. My favorites are rather capricious and down at seven instead of ten. I'm not sure if it's because I'm feeling a little grumpy today, or if some of the series that I would have put on here ended up losing some of my interest as I started reading volumes as they came out, instead of in one big chunk (Bleach, Tramps Like Us). Other series ended up not being in the favorites group because I haven't read far enough in them to figure out if I do like them long term (Paradise Kiss, Oyayubihime Infinity, Her Majesty's Dog, Eternal Sabbath, Monster). The only reason Nana isn't on here at all is because all I did was reread vol. 1 this year; I mean to one day catch up on the 16 volumes out in Japanese (really!).

I'm not actually going to write up detailed summaries or plot synopses; I've blogged all these series before and will link the titles to the relevant entries and/or tags. Also, I'm way too lazy to link up the entire list of 217 volumes, but rest assured, they are all meticulously memories-ed and tagged because I am obsessive compulsive and should probably find a better hobby that doesn't involve alphabetization. Extreme librarianism! It's almost like a sport! ;)

Listed below are my seven favorite series from this year, in alphabetal order.

1. ( Mizushiro Setona, 1999nen 7 no Tsuki Shanghai )



2. ( Mori Kaoru, Emma )



3. ( Nishi Keiko, Four Shojo Stories )



4. ( Takaya Natsuki, Fruits Basket )



5. ( Yuki Kaori, Godchild )



6. ( Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto )



7. ( Minekura Kazuya, Saiyuki Gaiden and Saiyuki Reload )

Total read: 217 (25 rereads)

( Complete list of manga read in 2006 )