Comics books from Japan
I may have had some New Year’s resolution, but some things stay the same. BOOKSTORE HAUL! BEGINS AGAIN!
I believe I bought the first volume of this manga series a while ago. I only started reading it over the winter break. It was good enough that I want to read the rest. I believe they are up to three volumes released in the US. So here’s the second one.
They’ve also done a drama series based on this manga in Japan. Let’s find the torrent.
Erased Vol 2
I’m not really buying manga as much anymore. Too much idol stuff. But when they release a new volume in the series I still sort of read I will buy it. Here’s two I bought just because they are one of the last few series I still am reading.
No Matter How I Look at it, It’s You Guys’ Fault I’m Not Popular 10 — Watamote!
A Bride’s Story 9
I guess if I do this I have to go all the way.
First off, I forgot to put this manga on the previous haul. I picked it up because it should start to get awesome. It’s about ballroom dancing, and I figure that it will be like a sports manga where the main character has to overcome his weakness to excel in ballroom dance. Perhaps. Maybe. Or I won’t be getting the next volume.
Welcome to the Ballroom Volume 1 by Tomo Takeuchi
To get to the next part, let’s say I have already tons of cookbooks about Japanese food. What do I do with another one besides not reading it? Sure. Maybe make something. This one’s the Iron Chef’s cookbook about home cooking Japanese style. Perhaps it will get me a Japanese girlfriend? O. Perhaps not.
Mastering The Art of Japanese Home Cooking by Iron Chef Morimoto
Before each and every “Bookstore Haul” post, I put some preliminary sentences trying to sum up something I thought of as I browsed the aisles. This is one such sentence.
In reality, I don’t know what I am going to say about the group of books I bought this past trip. Yes, they are comics. I’m hoping that the blue monday one is also a slice of life comic. The Bride’s Story is sort of. It’s really good. I’m hoping that blue monday is as well.
This is a sentence to end this segment. Bye bye!
blue monday volume 1 by Chynna Clugston Flores
Bride’s Story by Kaoru Mori
The blogs been bleak lately. I haven’t written anything good. It’s nothing but movie reviews and links of the day with not much to say and terrible writing. The movie reviews are quickly jotted notes making no sense. The links of the day only interest me. Then there are the idols. Nobody but me knows about idols. I doubt my readers do. What little I have of them. I need to mix things up and get back to some writing. Good writing would be helpful. But any writing at the moment would be great.
Let’s try something different…
I go to the bookstore just about every week. I usually buy something which I end up not reading. I buy it and put it on the nightstand. It stays there for years before I decide to read it. Maybe I can write reviews of what I read.
But first, let me write about what I bought and the motivation to buy it. Maybe writing why will help me read the book.
Yotsuba&! Volume 13. The best manga out there. I love how it makes me feel so happy to see the fun adventures of Yotsuba, the 4 year old, kawaii kid. She’ll worm her way into your heart. You should be reading this.
The Complete Peanuts: 1999-2000. I have several of the early volumes but haven’t bought any of the latest. This is the last book of the run. It’s got the final chapters of the Peanuts strip. I adore the Peanuts strip. If I could draw, I would love to do a comic strip. Maybe it should be my next profession.
Silver Screen Fiend by Patton Oswalt. I have a need to read some stories about movies. Hopefully, Patton Oswalt’s diary of the movies he’s seen as he gained fame will help me with my movie viewing writing. Like I said, this blog is just bad movie writing. But in it contains the movies that I have seen in the theaters these past 12+ years. Maybe, like Oswalt, this is my Silver Screen Fiend.
Link of the Day [9.20.15]
I didn’t know that Dark Horse Comics released volume 14 of The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service this past July. I only found it in my Local Comics Shop today. I then went to see if it was an advanced copy which it wasn’t, but found out that Dark Horse will release an omnibus edition of the first three volumes of this manga.
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is a great manga. It follows a bunch of esp’ers whose job is to return dead bodies to their rightful place. The dead speak to them and they help the dead move on into the afterlife. It isn’t a creepy manga. Sometimes it’s gory, but most of the time it is dark. Also, funny as well. Unfortunately, it is coming out really slow as volume 14 has collected the most recent chapters from the Japanese manga magazine. It’s going to be another couple years before the next volume comes out. You should collect the omnibuses in order to catch up. Or you can borrow my collection.
I put up a bookshelf to house my manga collection. It’s 31″ x 80″ x 15″ and it’s already full. Plus, I’m not even done buying manga. O well, I probably need another bookshelf. Or better yet, I should sell off some of the manga I don’t need.
Towards the end of stocking up this bookshelf, I got lazy and stacked ten or so volumes randomly. These are the candidates for the trash bin. But I can’t. There’s some Tezuka there such as Dororo in a beautiful rendition. I liked the story, but don’t want t hold onto it for now.
I’m becoming one of those hoarders. What happens if I have to move? Who will pack this up?
The Yankees are in town hopefully getting a beatdown. Last week, I spent the weekend with a yankee, Shinagawa-kun, the eponymous antagonist in Yankee-kun To Megane-chan. I watched all ten episodes of last year’s j-drama. My MacBook Pro was hot with all the torrenting and watching of mkv files on VLC. I had a blast.
Yankee-kun To Megane-chan actually was one of the first manga I read in scanlation. It was around the time I learned to love School Rumble. It too has a yankee, the lovelorn Harima Kenji, and I thought he was hilarious, so I went looking for other manga of that ilk. It needs a delinquent and a silly love interest when you plug those into a reference you get Shinagawa Daichi in Yankee-kun To Megane Chan. It also had the funniest girl in manga, Adachi Hana, the megane. I only read a few chapters before I got sick of the scanlation so I never finished it, but it premised has me hooked. I keep hoping for the manga to be brought to the US, but I doubt it. Twenty-three chapter manga about school days don’t stand a chance of being accepted in the US. Just ask School Rumble (O, Kodansha, will you give us the final 4 chapters!)
I really like to know what happens because what I read had me hooked. The premise of the manga is that the delinquent, Shinagawa-kun, the yankee, is dragged into a happy school life by Adachi Hana, the class representative, the worst student, and eventual the student council president. She drags him kicking and screaming into school life. The kicker here is that she too was a yankee the most toughest one in junior high, Hurricane Ada! She’s hellbent on changing her past and she sees Shinagawa as a project to mold into a passable member of school society. The manga was filled with hilarity as she forced him to do good. I wish I could complete it as the story, from reading wikipedia, sounds even more fun. With a cover like this, I couldn’t pass up this manga.
So last week, I found out that they did a J-Drama of the manga last year. I don’t think they did an anime, but a live action show would be the next best thing to getting close to completing the story. I’ll tell you right now that I am a sucker for girls in glasses. That’s why I found Riisa Naka as Adachi Hana so adorable. She nails the part and I was hooked. I immediately started downloading all ten episodes and watched them back-to-back-to-back over several nights. I had fun.
So expect me to rehash this short series here on this blog. I know no one reads anything I recommend, but you have got to watch this show.
It’s come to this. With the closing of Borders, it’s become hard to find manga. You can still use Amazon or you can go digital.
Try today’s link. Is it worth it?
Maybe, I’ll just read the fansubs.
Manga is dying in America.TokyoPop is defunct. Del Manga is defunct. CMX is defunct. The biggest purveyor of manga and the original pusher, Borders, is hanging by a thread. Manga is withering away. It makes my weekly stops at the local big chain bookstores rather depressing. I can't rely on them having any good manga in.It's very sad.
