What I just finished reading and what I thought of it [NO SPOILERS]

[Gallarn]

After School Nightmare, one of the better mangas i read

Also reading....Highschool of the Dead, appearantly its stalled

[hrmn]

The Songstress (oneshot volume) - I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. The art was what caught my eye (along with the artist, Aki; she's in my favorite manga magazine :B ). It's very pretty. What surprised me, though, was how much I enjoyed the story. It felt like reading a bedtime story. It just sort of made me feel calm and nostalgic and I liked it a lot.

[Mattnumbers]

Shadow Star: it was really good, and it makes the anime just seem like a bonus video version of the first half/third of the manga. Very sad at parts, and more disturbing than the anime.
________
Sex Sex

[Omurqi]

Bitter Virgin
Simply a very good drama manga, full of heavy themes and love rivals.

Very happy it ended on a positive note, I have a soft spot for good-but-not-sugary endings like this one, or the one in Welcome to the NHK!

Talking about which, this is getting a rec with Welcome to the NHK! Themes are different, but the atmosphere and feeling both gave off were plenty similar (the NHK manga, that is).

Rating: 4/5

[hrmn]

The Day I Became a Butterfly (oneshot volume)

Really disappointed with this one. I bought it because the art is gorgeous (and part of me would recommend it just because the art is gorgeous), but the stories were just so boring. The characters were flat and dry and angsty... The same blank un-character seemed to keep appearing over and over. And everybody always had a gloomy look on their face. I'm not sure why. Usually I love "boring" plotless character-driven drabbles, but even I was uninspired. Maybe I'm just being hard on it because I was hoping it would be the greatest thing since sliced bread... Anyway, the art is fantastic.

Black Knight vol 1-2

Why is it that in so many shounen ai series I always end up more interested in the unimportant side characters rather than the main couple? In this series I'm most interested in the protagonist's dad. Something is amiss in my brain.

As for the actual series, it's going ok so far. It's pretty typical as far as both shounen ai and fantasy go, but it isn't terrible despite being a little slow. I was turned off by the main couple of the series falling in love at light speed in the first chapter (why do shounen ai manga always skip the best part?), but the politics and the plot might get interesting. All in all, it's nothing too special but it works just fine as mindcandy. Waiting for the rest of the volumes when my kind anime-lending friend returns from Hawaii. Sorely wishing that I was in Hawaii also. T.T

[Najaraja]

Gokujou Drops

I'm so sad it's over! I really enjoyed it and not just because it's yuri! (though, that's part of it, I admit).
It was just very cute and sweet.

[Hyperbole1729]

Originally Posted by Najaraja

Gokujou Drops

I'm so sad it's over! I really enjoyed it and not just because it's yuri! (though, that's part of it, I admit).
It was just very cute and sweet.

Exactly how I feel! It's a very cute and satisfying yuri manga
(and the characters strangely reminded me of Maria-sama ga miteru...)

[LinkSword]

Half & Half Manga | Anime-Planet -> 4/5

Pretty good one-shot *¬* It probably wouldn't work as a series, but it is quite great as it is.

[therik]

Just finished Tenna Toori no Kaidanji

Very good manga. Excellently plotted mahjong battles, nice use of alternate rules to create thoroughlky unusual, unpredictable scenarios, and plenty of the gripping, sustained tension that you'd expect from the author of Kaiji and Akagi.

Something which really impressed me was the characters. The anime adaptions of Kaiji and Akagi (haven't read the manga of either yet) are jam-packed with evil-for-the-sake-of-evil types, with their cackling and their cheating and their plans to kill the good guys. Not so much here. A lot of human adverseries, cheating on both sides, reasonable motives, etc.

Trouble is, having watched Akagi and now read this, I can't play mahjong without imagining an obnoxious narration of my every move and bursts of lightning every time I get a decent hand put together. Probably a small pirce to pay though.

Highly recommended if you have any interest in the tile game. If not, definitely give it a miss. On the version I have, the scanlators have kept the names of the hands in Japanese and there aren't any explanatory notes or whatnot, so it's pretty impenetrable for the lay man.

[Dralha]

The Third

It was nice to see Honoka again. This two-volume manga serves as a prequel to the series, before Honoka gains a reputation as the sword-dancing dune runner. Most chapters were stand-alone stories and tend to be light-hearted with comic elements.