Happy Halloween! Er, a belated happy Halloween anyway. Hope those who celebrated it had a good time and didn’t get too stuffed on candy! While not treats of the sugary kind, I picked up a bunch of fun looking books last week.
It was a pretty hefty release week for Tokyopop titles so I left the store with a good armful of them. To start off, I picked up the first volume of The Stellar Six of Gingacho simply because it looked cute and I’m always up for giving a first volume a try. The interior art looks like a bit of a mess but hopefully the story proves more coherent. I love the colour scheme of the cover design though! Looking to try out another new series, and because I’m heard so many crazy things about it, I got the first volume of Demon Sacred which is by the same artist who did Jyu-Oh-Sei.
Next up I couldn’t resist their new How to Draw Shoujo Manga which shares how-to-dos and helpful tips for manga artists from a very Japanese-manga oriented perspective. This includes example material from a bunch of well-known manga artists including Fumi Yoshinaga. I’ll admit seeing her art on the back was the clincher to purchase this. Here’s hoping I learn something useful as I stare at the pretty artwork.
Continuing on with series I’m already collecting, into my basket went Mad Love Chase (Vol. 04) and Silver Diamond (Vol. 07). Both these series have admittedly begun to lose their luster for me but I’m stubborn with series I like (or have liked…)! Lastly for Tokyopop titles, I bought the second volume of Togainu no Chi because, well, it was on sale. I was pretty disappointed in the first volume but have been repeatedly told “It gets better!” so we shall see.
Adding to my swiftly growing stack of omnibus editions, from DelRey I bought the collected (Vol. 15,16,17) book of Air Gear -a series where the art is still fantastic even if the story keeps digging itself a deeper and deeper hole of WTF? – and (Vol. 08,09,10) of Mushishi – a series I’m collected sporadically because I liked the anime so much.
And to round out my shopping trips with a scattering from other companies, I got Twin Spica (Vol. 04) from Vertical, Dengeki Daisy (Vol. 02) from Viz Media – will it live up to my love of the first?! – and Himeyuka & Rozoine’s Story from Yen Press, which looks like a quaint little one-shot collection from a creator I’ve enjoyed works from in the past.
Anything exceptionally fantastic that came out recently that I’ve missed? Picked up something extra snazzy yourself? Let me know!
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You're going to love Demon Sacred. It's full of shojo manga nuttiness, and was apparently originally concieved for a seinen mag, so you have that brand of nuttiness mixed in too. Mushishi's quite fun too.
I nabbed the big Warcraft Sunwell Trilogy Omnibus today :) None of my manga preorders decided to show up though….
From all I've heard about it, I'm definitely looking forward to Demon Sacred – some shoujo manga nuttiness sounds fantastic ^^
I may have to borrow that Warcraft omnibus from you sometime – I've been wanting to check out one of the Warcraft books and an omnibus sounds like a nice, hefty place to start.
it's that WTFedness that makes me want to read Air Gear but as far as what I got so far I just got volume 8 of Yotsuba & ! wich was far better then volume 7. Also volume one of Rosario + Vampire wich I absoultelly loved for the curb stomp battles and gag manga art style in some parts.
I also got the first volume of OMAMORI HIMARI the anime was bad this is far worse from awfull screen tone background to an overall soulless CGI looking art style this is one of those what was I thinking purchases
Yotsuba&! (Vol. 08) was pretty funny, though (Vol. 07) is my favourite of the series to date I think. I laughed so hard reading that one!
Too bad to hear you were disappointed in Omahori Himari, never fun regretting a purchase. It's really not my thing so I didn't pick it up and I guess that's good. Guess the anime was a prelude to the quality of the manga after all?
Yeah I'm just thankful I avoided the Shizuku (the token Loli) "Intimate Healing" scene seeing it in the anime was bad enough at least that was censored I live the rest of my life without seeing that.
[…] a disappointing follow-up to my last Swag Bag, the DelRey omnibus edition I bought of Mushishi fell apart into a pile of loose out-of-order pages […]