Working!! - Episode 13

Takanashi and Inami go on their date. Poplar and company trick Takanashi into cross-dressing, though. He does get to obsess over cute things without looking so creepy, though. Inami manages to make it through the date without hitting him and he starts thinking good things about her and even calls her cute. Of course, he calls her a dog too .... Ah well. Inami doesn't get incredibly upset about it anyway.

Well, apparently this is the end of the season. It would be great if there is a second season, but I'm not counting on it. I hope that more scanlations of the manga are released. It's funny and the characters are great! This is one I'd buy.

Neo Angelique Abyss Second Age

Angelique goes with everyone to Erbos, they defeat evil, and save their friend. Then she gets to go to the Holy Grounds by herself to become Queen and pray for Arcadia for countless years. By herself. -_- But everyone's happy and all the boys know that they'll be able to see her again someday, somehow.

Ugh. I'm disappointed enough where I don't feel like taking the time to find an image for this post.

You're so ....

Neo Angelique Abyss

The world is plagued by Thanatos, huge monsters that appear out of nowhere and attack people to feed on their life force. The only people who can defeat them are Purifiers. Angelique is living as a normal school girl, until she is approached by a Purifier named Nyx. He claims that she is a Purifiers as well, the only female Purifier, known as the Queen's Egg. A Thanatos attacks the school and Angelique uses her unique purifying power to extinguish the Thanatos and heal her friends. She starts living as a full-time Purifier and is trying to somehow become the full-fledged Queen.

Bishie wonderland. Angelique lives in the Sunlit Mansion with four purifiers: Nyx, Lein, Jade, and Hyuuga. Hyuuga has a topless workout scene complete with glittering sweat, not once, but twice. Lein is walking around in his half-shirt all the time. Then there's the Silver Tree Knights, the two reporters, and the priest guy.

Good show. Some deus ex machina going on, but I still liked it.

Hakuouki - Season 1

Yukimura Chizuru has come from Edo to look for her father in Kyoto. She ends up being chased by a couple of rounin, who are cut down by some evil looking Shinsengumi, who are then killed by some regular Shinsengumi. Hijikata Toshiro is there, and decides to take Yukimura with them instead of killing her on the spot. She ends up living with them, disguised as a boy, and helping them in anything she can.

Gotta throw a wrench in there, though. Turns out that Yakimua's actually an oni. Yukimura's father, who is a doctor, helped create a medicine which turns humans into a Rasetsu, or pseudo-oni. The Shinsengumi are using the Rasetsu as their trump card. All this goes on during the actual historical events, modifying things here and there. Very cool.

The current season is over, but a second season will be airing in the fall. Yay!

Recent Purchases

If I like a manga, I am going to buy it. I believe that it is only right to give my money to the manga artists who entertain me. The art and stories are amazing. It's going to take me a while, but I'm gradually starting up a collection. I've had Trigun for a while. I buy Yotsuba&! as it is released. I bought 20 volumes of Skip Beat! at once and I will be adding volumes as they are released. The boxed set of Death Note is on it's way from Amazon.com right now.

Yesterday was my birthday, so I thought I'd treat myself to some manga. ^_^ I had a $30 gift certificate from my sister to Barnes & Noble, so I bought the Azumanga Daioh Omnibus and the first fvei volumes of Hana Kimi. I had such a hard time deciding what to buy!! I wish they had Ouran High School Host Club, but Hana Kimi was a good second option. I was seriously like a kid in a candy shop. I was debating which series to buy up until the last minute that the store was open.

It'll take a while, but I'm going to have an impressive manga collection.

Working!! - Episode 12

This one was absolutely hilarious!! First, Poplar finds out who Takanashi's sisters are and is depressed that he hid that information from her. In order to make up for it, Poplar wants Takanashi to go out with Inami on a date.

Inami is adamantly opposed to the idea, but it ends up being arranged anyway. Takanashi agrees, knowing that he'll probably be beat to hell during the date.

They try to do some emergency desensitizing by tying Inami up, but the cooks will only get close enough to poke her with chopsticks. That part had me laughing so hard I was snorting up a storm!!! When Takanashi tries to touch her, she kicks him. However, they still keep the plans to go on a date. The date will be the next episode!

Gakuen Alice - Chapter 133

Well, I didn't expect this chapter to come out so quickly, but it seems that they were a month behind.

In this one, everyone ends up splitting up to get Mikan to the portal in the high school. It looks like Hotaru was able to save her brother too, if I understand the chapter correctly. There really are too many things going on at once and it's too hard to tell the difference between the characters some time. Next chapter is on July 20th. I'm hoping that they'll finally get to the portal during that chapter. This whole "race to the portal" part is taking forever.

Gakuen Alice - Chapter 132

Um. WHAT?!?! That was weird. Hotaru "loves" Mikan? That was out of left field. I wonder what the original Japanese was. Is this a romantic love kinda thing? I'm a bit confused. Shocked. Wow.

The rest of the chapter was so choppy because the manga-ka is trying to follow so many different storylines at once that I get confused. Definitely a weird chapter with not really all that much progress, except for the girl-girl love going on.

Oishii Kankei - Chapter 36

I can't say that I'm particularly happy about this chapter. I wanted Momoe to strike out on her own somehow, not rely on other people again. Now we're back to where we started quite a while ago, with very few changes. Ugh.

Honorifics

If there's anything that chaps my hide about manga and anime translations, it's honorifics. Either they are left out completely or they are changed into some weird hybrid like Naruto-boy instead of Naruto-chan. If someone is going to take the time and effort to watch anime / read manga, they should know what the heck honorifics are and what they mean. If they don't, then leave a translators note. Honorifics, in one or two syllables, show the relationships between the characters.

For example, when Pain says Jiraya's name with the honorific -sensei, Naruto immediately knows that Pain was Jiraiya's student and thus intimately familiar with him. Tsuruga-san in Skip Beat is translated to Mr. Tsuruga, which is totally awkward. Don't get me started on familial honorifics.

Working!! - Episode 11

Poplar was so enthralled by Takanashi's cross-dressing during the last episode that she begs him to do it again. He refuses, of course. I love the faces they make, though.

Yamada tells some ghost stories, but ends up scaring herself and Inami to the point where they can't stand being alone. Takanashi invites them to stay at his house with the ulterior motive of keeping his older sister busy. The older sister finds out that Inami likes Takanashi and pushes her in his room to try to move things along in the relationship. When she thinks some hanky-panky is going on, she opens the door to find them playing a card game. Tee hee! ^_^

Oishii Kankei - Chapter 35

Momoe gets her groove back. Then both Takahashi and Oda ask her to work at their restaurants. That's pretty much it. 50 pages. For that. *sigh* This manga is getting too slow for me.

Tokyo Crazy Paradise

This series is always cited in the mini-bio of Nakamura Yoshiki in the Skip Beat volumes. Kozuki Tsukasa is a girl, living as a boy, in Toyko in the year 2020. The city is so dangerous for women that pretending to be a boy is much safer for her. Tsukasa's parents were killed when investigating an incident involving the yakuza, leaving her and her 3 brothers to fend for themselves. Tsukasa is tricked into debt by her classmate and yakuza boss Shirogami Ryuji, who is one of the few people who know that Tsukasa is actually a female. Ryuji allows her to work off the debt as his bodyguard, but it is just an excuse for Ryuji to keep Tsukasa by his side. The story revolves around yakuza conflicts, Tsukasa's true identity, and the deepening relationship between Ryuji and Tsukasa.

I thought it was pretty good. I did finish all 111 chapters in 24 hours. (I didn't sleep last night.) The art is definitely recognizable as Nakamura's. There are a couple of panels that could have appeared in either manga. It is quite different from Skip Beat, though. The romance moved along much faster and there is a lot of action, which is virtually nonexistent in Skip Beat. It's quite a bit more graphic. Lots of blood, limbs being severed, and Tsukasa's breasts are shown about a half dozen times throughout the series. The boob shots aren't just random fanservice, though. They actually serve the plot.

The scanlations that I read often had missing pages, untranslated pages, or pages with blank speech bubbles. I don't think I missed anything major, but it was rather irritating. Maybe I'm just too spoiled by all the high-quality stuff I get. Since TCP is listed in all of the Skip Beat volumes, you'd think that it would be licensed in the US, right? Wrong. There is no English release for TCP. Why cite it as a major work in an English volume if it's not available in English? I don't understand. Ah well.

My verdict: Definitely worth the time, but I probably wouldn't buy it unless it was on sale (in English).

Faster Than A Kiss

I looked up LaLa magazine in Wikipedia to see what titles they are serializing since they publish Kaichou wa Maid-sama. Faster Than a Kiss is one of the titles that I thought looked interesting.

It's about a 16-year old girl, Kaji Fumino, who is taking care of her 4-year old brother after their parents died. None of their relatives are willing to take them in, so she is going to quit school to get a job. Her 24-year-old English teacher, Oijiro Kazuma, finds out and tries to convince not to. She basically says, "So what are you going to do about it? Marry me and support us?". He says "Fine! I will!" and so they get married. So the whole thing is about how a student and teacher who married on a whim can keep their relationship a secret and how they gradually become closer to one another.

It's rather predictable, but I find it cute and amusing. I'll continue to follow this one. (^_^)

Working!! - Episode 10

There were two story lines going on in this episode. The main story line is about Iname's realization that she likes Takanashi. She gets embarassed, punches him, gets upset, punches him, fears that he will leave, punches him ... you get the idea. Takanashi's little sister makes an excuse to visit the restaurant to see what the deal is with them. She asks Iname if Takanashi likes getting punched. Flustered, Iname hears the questions as whether she likes Takanashi. She answers yes, but now Takanashi's sister thinks that he's a masochist. Hehehe.

The other, rather amusing, story line is about Yachiyo and Satou. The manager goes on a business trip, so Yachiyo is rather depressed. Souma suggests that Yachiyo should serve Satou in place of the manager. This leads to her asking him to call her by her first name and visa versa. Satou is somehow able to hold it all in. When the manager returns, although she doesn't know anything, she feels a killing aura coming from him. Poor Satou!

Working!! - Manga

After watching some episodes of the anime, I decided to read the manga. It's the first four-panel format manga that I've read. It has a unique structure which breaks the plot up into very small pieces. The scans I found on mangafox.com were from the tankobon, so they included the extras. That was cool. There are 7 volumes, but I was only able to find volumes 1 and 2. I'll have to keep looking. I'm intrigued.

The anime is following the manga veeerry closely as far as I can tell.

Tono to Issho OVA

I watched this OVA before knowing anything about the manga. It's somewhat amusing. I'm sure I missed some of the jokes, but I think it might have some promise. I don't know if I'll be able to find anyone who'll fansub it, though. I'd like to read the manga, but I couldn't find any scanlations.

Summary: "4-panel gag manga ... follows the humorous exploits of generals during Japan's tumultuous sengoku (Era of the Warring States) period." Source: ANN

Oishii Kankei - Chapter 34

Still have no idea who the old guy is. Well, whatever. I'm just going to assume that it's someone who knew her father. Let's go with that. Momoe is starting to get back on track after disappearing for 2 weeks. Maybe the spoiled brat will be an oddly good influence on her. Maybe she'll realize that she's the same way, somewhat.

Princess Tutu - Anime

I thought this one looked cute, so I put it in my NetFlix queue a looooong time ago. It's about a duck who falls in love with a prince, but the prince has lost his heart. She becomes a girl, and then Princess Tutu, to find the pieces of his heart. The problem is that once he has his heart back, he is destined to fight the Raven and lose it once more. But the characters in this story are determined to change their fate.

I finally got around to finishing it, and I'm kinda pissed off at the ending. It's only a half-happy ending. Why not just take it the rest of the way? The prince ends up with his princess, although not the princess you expected, but the main character who makes the story possible doesn't really progress?! Fakir and Ahiru obviously end up loving each other, but they don't verbalize it. Ahiru just turns back into a duck even though she would rather be a girl. It seems like everyone just forgets about her except for Fakir, who writes by the pond while she swims. You could assume that he's writing a story to get Ahiru to turn back into a girl, but I'd rather see it happen. Pfft.

This won't make sense unless you've seen the series, but here's how I think the ending should have gone: Ahiru spreads hope through her dancing as a duck, returning the townspeople to normal and helping the prince destroy the raven. Ahiru is relieved, then collapses. Fakir rushes to her side, tells her thank you and that her hope helped him keep writing. He tells her he loves her and will love her no matter what. She opens her eyes and thinks "I love you too, Fakir. I wish I could be with you always." The same light of hope engulfs her and she turns into a girl.

See. That wasn't so hard, was it? Geez. Very cheesy, but it's shojo, so who cares? There's a manga, but it apparently doesn't add any more to the plot, so I'm not going to bother reading it.