AirCommodore's avatar

AirCommodore

  • Oh, you know, around.
  • Joined Jun 8, 2009
  • 34 / F
sort

Eien no With

Nov 22, 2011

Eien no With is the story of a young girl who volunteers to raise a dog for a year until it's old enough to be trained as a seeing eye dog. I bawled through the entire first chapter, but was disappointed with the latter two. I attribute this to the time-skip: I don't find teenage (or adults who act like teenage) characters as sympathetic/interesting as children, and a lot of teenage emotional drama comes across as too angsty. The art style also changed dramatically after the first chapter, which may have contributed to this (the new art style is more generic). Anyway. If you love animals and are looking... See full review

?/10 story
?/10 art
?/10 characters
7/10 overall

Garden (Yuichi YOKOYAMA)

Aug 2, 2012

STORY Despite the middling score I'm giving this, Garden is far from average. I've read a fair share of manga, but have yet to see anything else quite like it, and the atypicalness of the thing makes it difficult to shove into a tidy 10pt scale. As for the actual plot: Some characters break into a garden and explore. Granted, it's not a normal garden: instead of trees and various shrubbery there are huge, inorganic structures. But that's it. There's no drama, no mystery, no conflict beyond "how do I cross this river made of balls?" or "why is there a mountain made of glass?". Though... See full review

?/10 story
?/10 art
?/10 characters
5/10 overall

Haunted House

Nov 3, 2009

STORYSabato is a normal high school boy who tries to have a normal life, but his plans (all of which involve him trying to get a girlfriend) are repeatedly foiled by his morbid family. The first seven chapters followed a strict pattern- Sabato gets into some hijinks, flirts with a pretty girl, then gets angry as his family messes everything up somehow. Fairly silly fluff throughout, except for the last chapter, in which Sabato learns a valuable lesson (aww...). There were several pop culture references, which were rather odd, as they all seemed to be all American pop culture (Donnie Darko, &c.).ARTThe... See full review

5/10 story
7/10 art
4/10 characters
5/10 overall

He Dedicated to Roses

Nov 22, 2009

Ah, the Shoujo soap opera. Most beloved of all the nonsense genres (I don't actually know if that's true, I just can't think of anything else to put here). Ha ha! I didn't realize this was a manhwa at first, so I read the first ten or so pages manga-style. Upon recognizing my mistake, I re-read them, and it made way more sense. STORY After her family goes bankrupt, Choi Ida is taken in and bullied by her childhood not-so-friend, Shin Mimi, who forces Ida to do anything and everything she wants. Ida is unable to stand up to Mimi (or her family will be turned out on the streets), so she takes out her... See full review

?/10 story
?/10 art
?/10 characters
4/10 overall

Hotel

Dec 23, 2009

I usually hate anything and everything with an environmental theme (way too preachy), but I thoroughly enjoyed this. It reminded me of Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question", the plot and tone were along the same vein. The art was attractive, especially the couple of full-color pages in the beginning. It's pretty short (one-shot), so there isn't much more I can say, but I recommend it! (Didn't get full marks because the brief chibi-humor felt weird, and I wasn't quite pleased with the ending, but everything else was great)

See full review
?/10 story
?/10 art
?/10 characters
8.5/10 overall

Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu

Oct 8, 2011

STORY- 6

I’ve never been quite sure what to think of horror mangaka Junji Itou, master of mainstream macabre. I find his manga highly entertaining, but for all the wrong reasons- as a fountain of camp and nonsense instead of a pit of unsettling despair. You can imagine my interest when I learned that he had penned an actual comedy manga, shedding the façade of horror and leaving behind only the wonderfully deranged comedy that had hindered his previous works from becoming truly terrifying.

The autobiographical slice-of-life/gag manga revolves around the unwilling... See full review

6/10 story
9/10 art
8/10 characters
7.5/10 overall

Kamichu!

Nov 7, 2009

Kamichu! is one of my favorite anime, so I decided to check out the manga version. The manga did a good job of fixing continuity issues from the anime series (the anime came first, I believe), and taking out the stories that I felt were the weakest from the anime. Unfortunately, even though improvements were made in the story, I still preferred the anime, bacause the world and all of the cute spirits are just more charming in color. Also the manga added quite a bit of fanservice-y bits (bath scenes, weird "camera" angles, etc.). I can't figure out how some of those middle school girls got such... See full review

?/10 story
?/10 art
?/10 characters
7/10 overall

Message to Adolf

Dec 29, 2009

Adolf is one of Osamu Tezuka (one of, if not the, most prolific mangaka)'s last manga.STORYSummary: Sohei Toge is a Japanese reporter observing the Berlin Olympic games in 1936, when his younger brother is murdered. However, his neighbors claim he had never existed! It's as if the Nazi party had wiped him off the face of the planet. Upon investigating his death, Sohei unearths some mysterious clues, and priceless information about the Nazi party which he must protect at all costs. At the same time, in Kobe, two young German boys, Adolf Kaufman the son of Nazis, and Adolf Kamil the son of Jews strike... See full review

?/10 story
?/10 art
?/10 characters
7.5/10 overall

Ryuuguuden

Nov 28, 2011

This manga is weird. The synopsis should have given that away, but the weirdness goes beyond merely the plot. What I find most peculiar about Ryuuguuden is its tendency to switch genres and moods every volume. The first volume is a whimsical supernatural fantasy, then the second turns into a sort of post-apocalyptic science-fiction, and by the third (final) volume, it has become a time-traveling super-powered action story, complete with light sabers. Don't get too attached to anything (and I do mean anything) in the story, because it will change. The artwork is sparse. Screentones aren't used at all, and... See full review

?/10 story
?/10 art
?/10 characters
7/10 overall

Thermae Romae

Jan 16, 2013

Ancient Roman architect Lucius Modestus accidentally (and repeatedly) time travels to modern day Japan, where he tries to copy Japanese inventions/bathing culture in order to impress the ancient Romans once he returns home. It's a pretty weird concept, which starts out fantastically but gradually gets less interesting as the novelty factor wears off. It kind of feels like Yamazaki ran out of ideas, since some of the later scenarios barely have anything to do with bathing (namely, the chapter with the lady gyrating on a giant dick statue. Ok then)- kind of surprising that this has reached 5 volumes in... See full review

?/10 story
?/10 art
?/10 characters
7/10 overall

Uzumaki: Spiral into Horror

Nov 5, 2009

STORY "A town haunted by a spiral pattern? Really Mr. mangaka? Really? Well alright, I'll read it anyway, if only because it's rated so highly." And really that's the story in a nutshell. Spirals are taking over the town (egad!) in a myriad of ways (oh no!). Soon after picking this up, I had a flshback to the first time I watched Rocky Horror Picture Show. Before watching/reading, I knew next to nothing about either of them, except that they loudly proclaimed to be "horror". And then quickly turned out to be ridiculously campy. Don't get me wrong- it's an entertaining read, it just... See full review

?/10 story
?/10 art
?/10 characters
6.5/10 overall