shut up and let me see your jazz hands

Title: Enigma
Author: Sakaki Kenji
Number of Volumes: 7
My Rating: 3.5/5

Summary: Haiba Sumio is an average high school student with a secret power. When he falls asleep, he has premonitions which he sleep-writes in his "dream diary". When a mysterious person calling themselves Enigma kidnaps Sumio and a seemingly-random group of other students, it turns out they all have mysterious powers, powers which just might help them escape if they can learn to work together.

Review: This series basically has two halves, only one of which is really interesting. The first half, where they have to escape from the school, was awesome and I really enjoyed it. But the author should have just ended the series there, because the second half just didn't work as well, and the ending was really half-assed (partly because it got cancelled, but also because I think the author just had no clue what they were doing anymore). So on the one hand, the first half is really fun and totally sucked me in, but I can't wholeheartedly recommend the series because it went downhill so much from there. :-/ (Also I really hate when older characters are drawn in a way that makes them look the same age as the kids. Everyone's dad here could be a fellow high school student and it's ridiculous.)

Since this was a Weekly Jump series, it's fully scanlated. (In fact, I had to read the final chapter in English because it was published in a different magazine and no one bothered to up the raws anywhere.)

1. Caught up on Bleach now, too. Soon Naruto will follow! I have to say I am kind of meh on Bleach at the moment. I found the ending of the last arc really unsatisfying, and I was actually enjoying it quite a bit before that. (Though seeing the Vizards in Soul Society was cool!) Also, if this final arc does not reveal Isshin's backstory I am going to be pissed. That is really all I am asking for.

2. I signed up for Remix! I ended up dropping out last year, but I am determined not to do that this year. I really, really want to write, and I love remix, so I'm hoping this will be just what I need.

3. So glad the time change is tonight, not tomorrow night. I don't work tomorrow until 1.45, so I have plenty of time to sleep in and won't miss the lost hour, but Monday I have to work in the morning, so I would definitely be feeling it.

Title: Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo: Renkinjutsushi Satsujin Jiken
Author: Amagi Seimaru & Satou Fumiya
Number of Volumes: 2
My Rating: 5/5

Summary:　In order to help out Detective Kenmochi pay off some debts, Kindaichi goes on a quiz show, where the winners are sent to a deserted island where a mysterious man's fortune is said to be hidden. Whoever can find the gold gets to keep it. However, before anyone can start treasure hunting, one of the film crew gets killed, and the only clue to the murderer is some video footage showing a masked person with a giant sword...who disappears after the murder. As the body count grows and Kindaichi's friend Reika falls under suspicion, it's up to Kindaichi to solve the case yet again.

Review: There really isn't a lot I can say about Kindaichi manga at this point that I haven't said before (and yet because these aren't technically in a series, I can't just do one review for the series as a whole). So. I love Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo. It's my favorite murder mystery series ever, manga or non-manga. And this was definitely a good mystery, although at this point I'm beginning to feel like the "stuck on an island" setting is getting a bit old (I mean, it's always stuck somewhere, otherwise the murderer wouldn't be able to keep killing people without interference, but how many islands can you get stuck on (I know, I know, what I should be asking is how many murders can you just happen to come across? But somehow I can handwave that...)). Anyway, these mysteries are (of course) super formulaic, but that's part of the fun. Especially because the murderer always turns out to be on a quest for revenge because the people they're murdering did bad things, and it's not just some random evil killer. XD I don't know why this series doesn't get translated (either pro or fan). It makes me sad.

OMG *flails* This manga!!! How is it so awesome!? I didn't really expect to like it that much. I mean, I had heard good things about it, lots of good things, but the premise just didn't sound that interesting.

But it is! It is awesome! So much intrigue! I love intrigue! And now I'm all caught up. I read all nineteen volumes plus however many chapters are out after that and now I have nothing to read! Gah!

( Spoilery )

So yeah, I am really loving this series!

Title: Chotto Dake Kaette Kita Dr. Slump
Author: Koyama Takao (author), Nakatsuru Katsuyoshi (illustrator), Toriyama Akira (creator)
Number of Volumes: 4
My Rating: 4/5

In the mid '90s, Dr. Slump had a short-lived revival in the gaming magazine V Jump. It was neither written nor illustrated by Toriyama Akira, but it felt and looked spot on to me. I was a huge fan of the original manga and I enjoyed this as well, though not quite as much as I liked the original. All the same old characters were there, as well as a new addition, a boy from Big City Island named Karte, who moved to Penguin Village with his family and ends up having a crush on Arale (not knowing she's a robot, of course). There are also cameos by Dragonball and Dragonball GT characters, as well as Chrono Trigger and Dragon Warrior (and one whole Dragon Warrior-based chapter where Arale, Senbei, and the others are inside the game). The whole four volumes are basically just fanservice, but if you liked Dr. Slump, I'd recommend it. It was definitely fun to revisit the series after all these years.

Top five manga you think more people should be reading

Hmm, wow, this is going to be a tough one! Mainly because I don't really have a good idea of what is being read outside of Japan. So this is just based on my impression of what doesn't seem to get a lot of notice in the English-speaking mangasphere.

1. Without question, #1 is Tamura Yumi's 7 Seeds. This is such an awesome, complex series. If you liked Basara, you will like this. It seems like a lot of people are down on her art as "old-looking" but I like it. Even if it were the fugliest thing on the planet, though, the story is just...wow. Basara was a post-apocalyptic world that had had enough time to form new societies and really feel separate from the present day. 7 Seeds, on the other hand, is a survival story. Knowing a meteor is heading for earth, the government comes up with several different survival plans, one of which is cryogenically freezing five groups of teenagers and having them auto-thaw when the sensors indicated the planet could once again sustain life. Oh, and they didn't tell these kids they were getting chosen. So the kids wake up and have no idea what the fuck happened, though each group has an adult guide who does know what's going on.

The series is currently on vol. 18 and there is just so much going on. These are teenagers, so there are crushes and some relationships going on, but romance defintitely takes a backseat here. This is an adventure story. I would talk about the fifth team and how their story blew my mind, but that is totally spoilery. I would talk about when some of the kids found a diary detailing some of the other survival plans and what had happened to those people, but that, too, is better read unspoiled. Tamura Yumi is awesome with her reveals. There have been so many times where I was just like "oh fuck!"

I don't know how well Basara did in the US and this is another long series, so I don't know if it will ever be released in English, but it should be. There are scanlations available, though. I have no idea of the quality and they're only up through vol. 9, but the group currently working on it does seem to be putting new chapters out at the decent rate.

2. Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo (Kindaichi Case Files). This was partially released in English but I guess didn't do to well, so they dropped it. There is a ton of them in Japan, though. The original series is 27 vols., there's a sequel with 10 vols., 6 vols. of short cases, two vols. featuring Inspector Akechi, the current series of sporadically published stand alones (11 vols. plus one story that hasn't yet been released in tankobon form), and nine novels. Not to mention like three drama series and an anime! XD The mysteries are really well done and interesting. If you can find them, I encourage you to check out the English release. The cases really stand on their own and you can read them in any order, so it's not that big a deal that they didn't release them all. It's not like you'll be left hanging. (Unfortunately there really hasn't been much scanlated.)

3. Psyren by Iwashiro Toshiaki. This is supposed to be released in English soon, so I'm hoping it does well. There are also quite a few groups scanlating and the scanlations are up to date with what's been released in Japan. Despite that, it doesn't really seem to have that big a following and I can't figure out why. It is really pretty awesome. It has loads of stuff that makes it feel tailor-made to me, like time travel and a post-apocalyptic world and psychic kids experimented on by the government and more! It also has lots of great female characters.

4. Tegami Bachi by Asada Hiroyuki. This has recently been released in English, so I hope it becomes popular! This is another one that has so much cool stuff that I love. It's a sort of fantasy/sci-fi series set on a planet with no sun and there's all sorts of government conspiracies and stuff going on. Really cool. The art is also just really beautiful.

5. Renai Catalogue by Nagata Masami. This is one of my favorite shoujo series (it's actually more towards the josei end of things as it's about college students, but it was published in BetsuMa). It's really long (over thirty volumes) and I doubt it will ever get lisenced, but it is being scanlated and up through vol. 16 is available. It's a fairly ordinary story of a girl and guy who meet in college and fall in love, but there's also a lot of focus on friendship. One of the things I liked about this series so much is that one of the friends is fat (and actually drawn so) and yet she also gets her own romance...and not after she's slimed down and prettied up. Yes, she does have a diet storyline and struggles with her weight over the course of the series, but it doesn't end with her losing weight, but rather becoming more confident in herself and finding a guy who loves her as she is. If for no other reason, that would endear me to this series, but there's so much else that's great about it.


Another one that really went long. Man, it was hard to stick to just five manga! There are so many great series that are not that well-known outside of Japan (and so many overrated series that are...).

Title: Doubt
Author: Tonogai Yoshiki
My Rating: 4/5

Fuuuuuuuuuuuck, this is one creepy-ass manga. So this group of teenagers who met each other through an online game meet up one day for karaoke. But then they all get knocked out and wake up to find themselves locked in this creepy old building. They all have barcodes on them, and one of them is already dead. Now they have to try and find their way out and figure out which one of them is the murderer.

Let me repeat, this is fucking creepy. I have read a lot of horror and mystery manga and none of them have brought the creepy quite like this (the Donnie Darko-esque rabbit heads are a nice touch). The fourth and final volume falls apart a bit, but wow, the first three are awesome.


It hasn't been officially released in English, but there are scanlations.

1. I got quite a bit done yesterday, including finishing up three things I was a little behind on.

2. I finally caught up on the last two chapters of Tegamibachi and D.Gray-man. Um. ( Spoilers for both )

Gahhhh! I had two chapters of each because I'd been too busy to read when they came out last month, but now I have a whole other month to wait!

Daily Happysong:

Madonna - Revolver
I just heard this for the first time today (had downloaded it ages ago, but just now got to listening) and instantly fell in love with it. Sooooo catchy!