Sakura of DOOM

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 )

Er, more apologies for spamming. Still am not caught up....

I started reading Soryo because of her insanely addictive, somewhat Gothic, very angsty shoujo manga Mars. I tried her older works as well, but her art style really matured in Mars, and the plots of the older ones are somewhat Gothic and very angsty, but not nearly as interesting.

Thankfully, ES has the best of both worlds, gorgeous art and a nifty storyline (at least so far).

Akiba Ryousuke is actually an escapee from a lab, a genetically modified human who can read and manipulate minds. For some reason, he's decided to masquerade as a normal high school student.

Kujyou Mine is a scientist who keeps messing up omiai (sort of like blind dates to arrange marriages) because she has absolutely zero social skills and talks about the mating rituals of lions to her terrified potential-date.

They meet. They do not fight crime.

I am not quite sure where Soryo is going to go with the plot; there are more lab escapees in volume 2, and I suspect said lab escapee is the beginning of the first major plot arc.
I'm enjoying the manga so far because Ryousuke is almost entirely emotionless; when he does show emotion, he often seems psychotic and amoral. Mine's not that much better, particularly when it comes to her poor social skills. I'm very much looking forward to how these two social outcasts end up relating to each other (or not), and I like that it's not happy, fuzzy and romanticized.

I anticipate some more rather Gothic storylines, though they may only feel Gothic to me because of Mars.