manga: for your reading pleasure

synopsis: lilith archer (or however you’d like to romanize “a-ka-”), leader of a band of thieves, is captured and injured while escaping after a raid. she is taken in by jean rhode, a young noble, who nurses her back to health. once she awakens, he tells her that he wants her lips as repayment! she resists at first… but every time she is fed, every time she takes her medicine, every time he changes her bandages…. he takes a kiss. is this just a bored noble’s game? but why do his eyes look so sad?

commentary: there’s just a teensy bit of the drawing style that makes me think of morie satoshi and nishikata mai… which i’m starting to identify with the hana to yume label these days. although there’s that nagging voice inside me about how these forced kisses aren’t good… once or twice in a series i can usually pass over, but at the frequency she mentioned…? it’s also a little off-putting to have a strong female role start out in a very weak position. in any case, don’t get me wrong with the previous statements. it still turns out to be an interesting story with cute moments… and i rather enjoyed it. on the whole, it’s pretty episodic at 3 chapters/1 volume, and pretty light-hearted. it’s just a little heavy when it comes to the sacrifices he’s willing to do for her. and, yes, i agree.. he’s really rather masochistic. ;p the mini-strips that follow each chapter (mostly 4-koma) are a fun read and does add a bit to the short series.

synopsis: it’s been said that somewhere in the world there are 3 other people who look exactly like you. takatsuki minato, 20 years old, in college. one day, she decides to wear her friend’s high school uniform out in public just for the hell of it, and happens to run into somebody. that somebody happens to be her stepbrother, tooru. although he thinks that she looks like somebody he knows, she feigns ignorance and pretends not to know him. problem is, he believes her… and has apparently fallen in love with her!!?! she thinks to herself that this just can’t be… after living together for so long, he must know it’s her… right? sure, they don’t get along that well… mostly because of her distaste in his relationships with other women. but he has to know! she goes along with hanging out with him at first just to set him up for a fall, but she finds that he seems to be quite sincere about her. it seems, though, that the longer she hangs out with him, the more she sees how sincere and considerate he is towards her, and she just can’t find away to break it off with him. on the other hand, a reunion with a former classmate from elementary school, karasumi-kun, lands another love interest on her lap. he’s nice, easy to talk to, considerate, and they share the same interests. what can she do? how can she balance being mina the high school student and minato the college student, each with their own guys?

commentary: wow. i think this story may just be too much for me to process right now. it’s putting me on edge as to how she’s going to juggle her lives. i’m still really perplexed that tooru is just that dense that he hasn’t seemed to get a hint as to who she is. i still wonder how he transformed from a happy innocent little boy to a grown hunk with multiple sex friends…. and how he makes his money since he doesn’t seem to work. it’s also interesting how honest and forward he is, although he really is like a snail. in a way, i think i would be a lot like her friend, maki, with egging her on a bit… but since this is all in minato’s POV, she’s starting to stress me out. ^^; i hope this story doesn’t stretch out too long (although this mangaka’s previous series was 8 volumes long o___o), because i need some relief from all this switching. oddly, i like all the characters so far… except i think that minato really needs to simplify her life. i’m writing this synopsis after reading vol 1 in march 2011, with the next vol out in september 2011. although, i want to know how it all turns out, i’m actually really rather appreciative of getting to take a break before i go cross-eyed with her switcheroos again.

synopsis: “wake up, sensei,” itabashi kurumi says, as she tries to wake her husband up. oomiya ichigo gets up and goes to work, after some homely banter with his wife. on the way there, a couple of students makes him muse whether they were in his wife’s grade. you see, just a little over a year ago, kurumi was just a tomboyish first year high school student… who was quite indignant that oomiya-sensei barely acknowledged her good friend’s confession. ichigo had just started teaching a few years back, and was already known to be quite reliable. he knew what kind of trouble was involved with stuff like that and usually tried not to involve himself with students. nevertheless, at present, it has been a year since he had gotten fired from his job for getting kurumi pregnant… and half a year since he had married her. this a short series that shows some of the things they now have to deal with, with glimpses to the events that led up to where they are now.

commentary: although student-teacher relationships are one of my guilty pleasures for manga reading (and something that i enjoy only in manga), i mostly stick to shoujo. i’ve found before that once a story like this is aimed towards guys, it tends to be more empty-headed over-the-top fanservice. (i recognize that this also happens in some of the smuttier shoujo, and i’ll acknowledge that i am most likely biased.. but this here be my page, and i likes what i likes and vice versa. then again, i’m not much into where-did-that-come-from smut, either.) anyway. oh. right. the story. i actually really liked this. loved, even. things are rather ok with our main characters as the threesome family unit.. but in no way does it promise happily ever after. you acknowledge the hardships, but the heart brings them through. i wish there could be a bit more than just the one volume, but what we’re given is satisfying enough. and i’m going to stop here, before i spoil the entire story.

synopsis: Translated summary from the obi: “A middle school BOY and a beautiful OL, an extraordinary love story, from their meeting until goal in.” Akemi is a beautiful OL, who is rather bored by the unchanging everyday life. To make things interesting, she plays a little game. A simple game. Every day at 7:14, she gets on her usual bus, picks another rider that piques her interest, and sits next to them. If they do a double-take on her, she wins her game. It was just supposed to kill time, but it turned out to be quite entertaining. One who is sleeping suddenly wakes up, one who is reading stops in realization… a short game. Still, a fun one. Until one day, she sits next to a kid who doesn’t seem to take notice of her. Was he just pre-occupied? Maybe he’s just too young? Akemi is irked, and finds that she has to up her ante, determined to win this game.

The volume also includes 3 one-shots.

Yukai no susume
Haruna constantly finds herself kidnapped and bound captive by classmate Takase, simply because he wants to challenge – and win against – her overprotective brother in kendo.

Kedama no cake
A rough girl with a strong personality applies to work at a timid baker’s pastry shop.

Kinou kenka wo shimashita
Two girl friends, after a fight.

commentary: incidentally, btw, i just posted this same summary to myanimelist. i actually really liked game over. a lot of the story telling was sparse, but beautifully done. there were quite a lot of emotions to it.. and it somehow makes me want to read it over and over just because it seemed like it was over too fast. there was no fuss in the relationship other than what they have with each other, and involvement of other characters were minimal. the whole world in this story was mostly just them. each chapter presents a stage in a relationship, and it works out pretty well. the three shorts that were bound with the volume, i had rather different feelings about. yukai no susume was just…. “what??” in my head. so far out there. kedama no cake was pretty winning with heart. kinou kenka wo shimashita was just 4-pages of focused moments over two girls after a fight. there are no hints about what happens before or after… just the moments right after a fight. simple, cute, curious. XD

added synopses for himitsu, himitsu, zettai heiwa daisakusen, kanojo wa uso wo aishisugiteru, mikado no shihou, and mou speed de karera wa

synopsis: all through middle school, suwano komako was a track runner, putting in all of her efforts. now that she’s 17 and in second year high school, it’s time for her to concentrate more on the ideal she’s held on to for so long: be an ideal couple in a high school love. problem is, she’s not even close to being the female part of her ideal love: the stylish girl who makes bento for her boyfriend. instead, komako looks more like a middle schooler than a high schooler… the one thing is for sure, she wants a guy who is cool, stylish, maybe her age or a year older. one day, she runs into somebody who fits the bill at the bookstore. it doesn’t take her long to find out, though, that even this ideal guy, hasegawa rui, has quite a few flaws… starting with the part that he’s actually a 13-year-old first year middle schooler.

commentary: very cute, actually, and pretty well-paced. the story takes up the entire one volume, and goes through the unusual relationship between the 17-year-old heroine and the 13-year-old leading man. (and, this being a random pick at the bookstore, how am i lucking out with picking up manga where the heroine is older than she looks? this must be the third one i’ve read in the last few months. o___O)

summary: the people of the shou kingdom cannot afford to keep paying the crippling taxes imposed on them by the 2nd prince, who is currently running the government… so kouran decides to break in to the palace in an attempt to steal their treasure. it’s not quite successful as she runs afoul the guards who are hunting down a fugitive. the next day, she happens to see an injured man in the forest, and finds that it is the fugitive. using knowledge gathered from being the granddaughter of the town medicine man, she nurses him back to health, despite her misgivings about his identity. kouran and shiki become friends… touched by each other’s kindness.

commentary: is lala dx just overflowing with cute these days? if you find toraware gokko‘s shinobu adorable, you might like this one… because kouran, who looks like a little girl and is treated by most of the characters as such, is actually 18 years old… so there is always that joke at the end of every chapter about how she’s going to become a good woman when she’s grown up. the number of supporters in the story are growing and kouran is getting to know some more powerful people… and you know that shiki’s probably got a thing for her, even if he does treat her like a kid at times (which, of course, she doesn’t see). the story has an episodic feel to it, but the plot seems to be progressing in inches. definitely looking forward to more.

synopsis: “do you believe in love at first sight?”

riko is a 16-year-old high school girl, who really isn’t pretty, but is characterized by a personality that makes people love her and her mushroom haircut. she is also a huge fan of the band, crude play, most particularly their songwriter, aki. she and her friends, sou-chan (the fat one of the group) and yuu-chan (her next-door neighbor who is in love with her but can’t bring himself to say it), form a band… although it’s a band that has three guitarists, because they couldn’t decide on what each would play. everything in the world was going on normally, until a random guy asks her that question on her way home one day.

aki is a 25-year-old with issues. he has a very low opinion of his skills as a musician, although he really shouldn’t, considering he is the songwriter (and former member) of a band that makes it to the top of the music charts. his singer girlfriend (sexfriend?), mari, is beautiful, but seems to be using him for her career gain and is cheating on him at the same time. depressed, he uses one of shun’s pick-up lines on a random girl.

who would have known she would say yes? who would have known that her idol would have asked her out?

not that she knows. they both agree to start dating… to yuu’s dismay. he thought he had the time to confess his love for riko, because who would go out with such an ugly girl? and an unemployed adult picking up a teenager is pretty suspicious…

unemployed? that’s what aki tells them anyway. little did riko know that she’d started dating her idol.

commentary: is it just me, or are most shoujo manga about bands (not referring to idol singers or classical musicians here) mostly angsty? maybe even on the soap opera line? in any case, having begun the story, i’m quite hooked. the story is pretty compelling and i liked the style of multiple-side story telling. i’m not completely sold on the art for the friends or for aki all the time, but shinya continues to be gorgeous, even with his i-should-hate-him resentful boy ways. the random chibification of characters also throws me off. in any case, i never paid attention to who the author was until i was wrapping up a few volumes and wondered how it might end, based on the author’s other works.. and realized this was aoki kotomi.. author of boku wa imouto ni koi wo suru and boku no hatsukoi o kimi ni sasagu. XD;

synopsis: in order to stop the war between the countries of the North and the South, prince johanne and princess yuda declare they are in love, though, in truth, they can hardly get along. can they really make this relationship work for the sake of their people?

commentary: coming from lala dx, i expected this story to have the repetitive introduction at the beginning of each chapter followed by some stand-alone stories about how they didn’t get along. i’m glad to be wrong. the story is actually pretty good, with direction and some straight-talk on the plot. the story appears to be on the historic genre with the royalty and the swords for the army.. but there are some progressive things, like a woman heading the navy, the guns (which don’t appear to be used as often as the swords), and the tvs!? the journey to improving their relationship is also really adorable.

summary: four one-shots, focusing on secret love…

yawaraka na BORDER
told in four sections encompassing three years in high school and with views from both sides, this is the story of kunieda waka, a kind girl and decent high school student, who falls in love with the strict english teacher, tsuda-sensei.

himitsu, himitsu
it’s only the second day of kirikoshi rin’s and ogasawara taku’s relationship, the supposedly loving couple, who met at the convenience store where she was working. that day, however, he found out that she wasn’t 18 like he assumed (because you usually had to be 18 and over to work the late hours).. and she found out that he wasn’t a high school student like she assumed (because he usually wore high school jerseys)… it turns out that he’s a math teacher, and she’s a freshman in his class.

koi, meguru kisetsu
mio had a love that she let go of when she moved away at 14. at 16, she moves back to find that kiba-kun now has a new girlfriend. still regretting letting him go before, could she learn to move on and re-establish a casual friendship with him?

mada, koi wo shiranai
hasebe jun’ichi always sits in the section of the library where the light falls dramatically on him and he attracts the girls’ attention. perhaps that’s why yuuko can’t stand him. she finds that she can’t avoid him forever, however, after her best friend, himeko, confesses to him and asks him to try dating her.

commentary: i honestly love this volume of one-shots. it was a random pick at the bookstore, and i was expecting it to just be ok… but the mangaka really put a lot of warmth into the stories. everyone is so nice, and they hold back on their feelings and their secrets… but you can see that they’re doing it for some good. i know that my summaries don’t do it justice (and revealing more might spoil the already short stories), but i really recommend this for anybody who likes stories about secret relationships. the art is also rather nice, and matches up pretty well to the mood of the stories.