It’s going to take me a while to sort through all my manga swag from New York Anime Fest this past weekend, and who knows how long for a proper installment of Swag Bag – but before I traveled down to the US for some con adventures, I hit my usual Wednesday haunt at Strange Adventures to pick up some new and old titles.
My most anticipated, and thus quickly picked up, titles were the newest volumes of two of my favourites – Pet Shop of Horrors (Vol. 07) and Shinobi Life (Vol. 06). It was another long wait for Pet Shop of Horrors, and to my dismay, I found this particular volume a bit of letdown comparatively. I mean, it was still great because it’s Matsuri Akino but definitely not the series’ best. Shinobi Life proved as satisfying as ever though. I love how carefully it’s crafting a plot that could easily become confusing in another’s hands. Will the schoolgirl and ninja ever find their happy ending?
To my luck that day, a box of used manga had just been deposited in the store with a whole bunch of well-kept books looking for a new home. While the individual who owned the books prior seemed to have very similar tastes to myself (ie: very little there I didn’t already own unfortunately), there were still a few goodies to pick up:
Looking for some new series to start, I picked up the first volumes of The Chronicles of the Grim Peddler (which was fantastic fairy-tale manhwa) and Monochrome Factor (which I haven’t read yet). I also bought the first two volumes of Mushishi after having read them at the library and enjoyed them, plus the anime was really good. Lastly I got volume three of 07-Ghost, firmly establishing to me that this series still doesn’t make any sense. Ah well, I gave it three volumes – character designs are still pretty though!
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Mushishi is so good, you made a good choice with that. I nabbed vol.1-4 used of Pumpkin Scissors, which looks a little simpler than the anime visually, but should be fun [and was quite cheap].
Also got 7 Billion Needles Vol.1 and Demon Sacred Vol.1 for new manga, and some clearanced stuff [more The Young Magician from CMX :)]
Strange Adventures has always been good for cheap manga but the clearance choices lately have been especially awesome! I read the first couple of volumes of Pumpkin Scissors but found I liked the anime version better; it was still an okay read though.
And I look forward to what you think of 7 Billion Needles – I just finished it and it was really good! Been meaning to pick up Demon Sacred too, heard it was cracktastic shoujo-fun. Sounds like my kind of story ^^
Pet Shop of Horrors is one of those series that I have thought of reading for sometime mostly because I really liked the old OVAs. I got the first omnibus of Venus V.S. Virus and the two ominbus of Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl
Pet Shop of Horrors is one of my favourite manga series, I hope you'll give it a try and enjoy it :) If I recall the OVA was a little darker but the manga definitely still achieves the creepy factor.
I've been meaning to pick up those omnibus editions. I haven't read either of the series before and the omnibus look like a great way to go. I'd love to know what you think once you've read them!
I'm playing the waiting game as I wait for some orders to come in (Peepo Choo, Cross Game)but I did pick up some stuff like Octopus Girl vol.1 and House of Five Leaves. Octopus Girl came out way back 2006, but I still plan to review it since it's such a…visceral…manga.
[…] which was one of the highlights of the show Melinda Beasi on manhwa at NYCC Lissa Pattillo shows off her swag Deb Aoki on the special superhero doujinshi created for the […]
Flipping throught vol.1, there's an deageing virus that's affecting one twin but not the other for the apparent leads. And a raging horde of Unicorns. Looks crazytastic :) Jyu-Oh-Sei was pretty crazy, so I'm expecting a good read.
@Lissa
Just finished the second omnibus of Kashimashi and it's really good the first couple chapters humour is hit or miss but ultimately it's pretty effecting and meaningful with some well developed characters and overall I'm happy I read it
Thanks for following up ^^ I'll look into adding it to my upcoming RightStuf order. I just picked up the Strawberry Panic omnibus so I'm curious about this one before I jump into Kashimashi.