Manga Review Labels!

Alright! I've finally added in the labels for the genres for the manga in my reviews. Please note that the numbers next to the labels do not actually reflect the number of manga I've reviewed, just the number of posts on manga reviews. For nearly two months I made reviews in threes and then started making individual posts.

Thanks to my reviews I'm glad to say that I actually have a following because I found out from my Google Analytics service account that I have visitors that do visit more than once as shown by this graph:



It's interesting to note that my hit counter kept on rising at the usual rate even though I missed 3 days of reviews thanks to my involvement in my school's funfair. Hopefully my schedule won't ever have to be that packed for a while. Anyways, to check out the manga reviews directory page, just go click the word "manga review" under my banner. Speaking of which, I'll be working on new designs for my menubar and banner over the next few days but I'll probably stick to my current background image.

Manga Review: Working Girl

Title: Working Girl
Author: Mizukami Wataru
Release: Monthly
Status: Finished
Genre: Shoujo, Comedy
Art: B
Originality: B
Story: B
Characters: B
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This story is about a money-loving girl who missed out on a chance to skip town with her family and because of that she now has to pay back the debt that her father has racked up to a yakuza guy who took care of the debts for her. She now has to take on various jobs to pay back the guy which often leads to her learning a lesson or two regarding money. This really is an old school manga complete with old school drawings and clichés. While I do say it’s an old school, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’s actually nice for a light read with the main character being a bit of an idiot who's a glutton for punishment. It's quite refreshing to have girl like that as the lead though that's probably I would be categorized as a sadist who enjoys watching people struggle. I actually would like to read more if it keeps on being scanlated. It'd be great if the scanlators would do a ninja on this and release it in huge batches since this really isn't the kind of manga that people would wait chapter by chapter for.

Manga Review: Sekai no Owari to Yoakemae

Title: Sekai no Owari to Yoakemae

Author: Asano Inio
Release: Oneshots
Status: Finished
Genre: Seinen
Art: A
Originality: A
Story: S
Characters: S
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is a compilation of a series of oneshots featuring different people dealing with problems they face in their lives and their views on the current society of the world and how things seem to be nearing the end. I like how the author contrasts his characters’ hopes with the despair of their reality and how he always uses it to express messages of hope, endurance and morality. Many of the moments in this manga are quite endearing and heartwarming that I think the author created these stories with the intention of telling people not to give up no matter what. It could also be interpreted in an entirely different way if you’re capable of thinking in such a way but I suggest keep the between-the-lines reading limited to the more pleasant message. I think of myself a highly pragmatic person who accepts all of the good with all of the bad but I can’t help but appreciate it when humans express their desire to keep going on.

Manga Review: Idol no Akahon

Title: Idol no Akahon
Author: Ujiie Tozen
Release: Weekly
Status: Finished
Genre: Comedy
Art: B
Originality: A
Story: B
Characters: A
Humor: A
Action: B

Impression: This is the story of three girls of various ages who are in high, middle and elementary school who sign up to be idols at some agency that's out looking for young girls. These three form a group under that agency and begin their work as idols. This series is unfortunately one volume long despite the fact that jokes are pretty damn funny. I can't really recall that many manga series where an innocent young girl who's still in elementary school inadvertently causes so many misunderstandings that almost lands her manager in jail. It's all to blame on the middle school girl who's always shooting off innuendos. Plenty of lols to be had here so it's good for a quick read

I'm back from the funfair!

First of all I’d like to apologize to anyone expecting them for the last few days of no reviews as I was busy with the funfair I was organizing at school. I lost weight, slept 6 hours of sleep over three days, barely broke even and worked myself so hard that my balance and walking ability was shot the day after the funfair. On the upside I had a lot of fun doing it, scared and creeped the fuck out of plenty of people with my costume, ended the last day of my school life with a legendary bang and all the weight I lost came from my thighs meaning that I’ll be back to my pre-A’level physique as soon as I’m done recuperating. That basically means my legs will be strong enough to restart my parkour training again which I have plenty of time for now that I’m officially a NEET.

Now that I have free time, I think I’ll get to work on that facebook account that everyone’s been bugging me to make and also get back to writing for my other blog which has been in hibernation since I started it. I only started taking pictures of the funfair after rush hour ended so I don’t have any pictures since I was running around for 4 hours making sure everything was starting up right so I’ll post up my take on the funfair after I find enough pictures from everyone for all the events. Here's the very first picture I took for that day.

Me, just after putting on my costume

Manga Review: GA – Geijutsuka Art Design

Title: GA – Geijutsuka Art Design Class
Author: Kiyusuzuki Satoko
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Slice of Life, Comedy
Art: B
Originality: A
Story: B
Characters: S
Humor: S
Action: A

Impression: This manga features five high school girls enrolled a class that teaches Art and Design techniques and the hijinks they get up to. It is highly informative when it comes to art design and is absolutely hilarious. The characters are incredibly memorable with their great personalities and their explosive chemistry with each other. My favourite character is obviously Noda Miki, the cause of many of the group's troubles who is also the one that comes up with the most amusing things you can do with art materials. I actually watched the anime first and got into the manga because of it and find that both forms have pitch perfect delivery since the anime adapted most of it quite faithfully and even expanding upon the source material. I've read through the RAWs of the first two volumes and found that they haven't animated a few scenes that really would have been outrageously funny like Kisaragi's amazing pencil throwing skills and Namiko's and Kisaragi's speculation about why Noda has very pictures of herself as a child. Hopefully they're saving them for the OVA and that we get a second season soon since there seems to be plenty of material left over for a second season with there being a third volume out in Japan and the author still working on this series. Trust me, this is a great series that's worth checking out but you'll have to resort to the anime if you can't read Japanese.

Manga Review: Yandere Kanojo

Title: Yandere Kanojo
Author: Shinobi
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Romance, Comedy
Art: B
Originality: B
Story: B
Characters: A
Humor: A
Action: B

Impression: The title doesn’t actually refer to the vengeful psycho lover character type but actually refers to the fact the girl is a Yankee(Japanese terms for delinquents) and that she goes Dere Dere(Shy and embarrassed) around her boyfriend although the gags do tend mislead readers that it refers to the former. It’s quite a bit like Onidere but the jokes hit their marks much better and the characters are actually quite likable and not as predictable. It’s a pretty good 4Koma manga that seems to come in a printed and online variety. I recommend you check out both as the author has a great sense of humor.

Manga Review: Ability Shop

Title: Ability Shop
Author: Tashiro Tetsuya
Release: Oneshot
Status: Finished
Genre: Shonen
Art: B
Originality: A
Story: B
Characters: B
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is a oneshot about a guy who is basically a loser archetype character who has no real talent or defining qualities who one day walks into this shop where he meets a strange girl who offers him any ability he wants in exchange for some of his lifespan. He takes up the girl’s offer and buys many abilities in exchange for years off life in order to impress his schoolmates and the girl he likes. It amounts to nothing in his goal to get her to like him as irony hits him in a devastating blow making his efforts pointless. In the end the guy learns an Aesop after overdoing things and a reset button gets pressed. While I would have loved to have a story like this serialized, I can’t help but dislike the fact that the author chose to end it in such a clichéd manner. If it does get serialized I will look forward to it since it seemed like the author could have worked in some more seinen elements into the story like he did with the issue of effort and talent.

Manga Review: Ikigami

Title: Ikigami
Author: Mase Motoro
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Seinen, Psychological
Art: B
Originality: A
Story: A
Characters: A
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is about an alternate world where Japan has implemented a system in which 1 random person out of every 1000 people are injected with a lethal injection while they’re in primary school. Years later, whoever was injected with the lethal batch will die at an exact moment specified by that dose of basically a heart attack. These people who were designated to die simply by chance will be issued a declaration of death 24 hours before their appointed death. This system is meant to improve productivity of the population but to be honest even if the deaths could be justified, there’s no way to actually prove it works. Scare people into leading productive lives with Russian roulette? Anyone who actually thinks that’s a good idea should just go and play Russian roulette with an automatic. Other than me finding it seriously fucked for there to even consider that a system like that would be helpful, this manga is a pretty good read. We get to see how exactly such a system would work and how it affects the people affected by it. Basically it’s a manga about people dealing with their last moments of life while the author has come up with an interesting concept he hasn’t really shown anything me anything particularly brilliant or original but that’s got more to do with my genre savvyness. It’s an interesting read but there’s more that can be done since this concept really has the potential to become a cult classic if done right.

Manga Review: Kedamono Damono

Title: Kedamono Damono
Author: Fukushima Haruka
Release: Monthly
Status: Hiatus
Genre: Gender Bender, Romance, Shoujo
Art: C
Originality: B
Story: C
Characters: B
Humor: B
Action: C

Impression: This about a normal girl who meets a guy who transforms into a perverted girl at night who has taken a liking to her. The story is focused on the regular girl meets boy storyline with the twist of the guy being both genders depending on the time of the day. Unfortunately the twist doesn’t really make the story anymore original or interesting than any other story of this species sine it’s very predictable. There a few ideas that do make it a bit more worthwhile as a story but almost all of them get solved too easily in a highly predictable manner. Maybe people who like seeing ‘love conquer all’ plots which in this case ‘all’ is the gender bending guy’s situation might come to love it but my advice is this. It sounds like it’ll be an interesting story but it’s just one of many other shoujo and romance manga out there.

Manga Review: Darker Than Black

Title: Darker Than Black
Author: Bones, Okumura Tensai, Noki Ya
Release: Monthly
Status: Finished
Genre: Sci-Fi
Art: B
Originality: B
Story: B
Characters: B
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is a manga adaptation of the first season of darker than black that’s based around a girl who has conflicting memories about the death of her father. This is basically one of their usual 2-episode story arcs that’s done as a manga so it really doesn’t have that much relevant to original anime. It might clear up a few things that you probably missed if you watched the series. The most jarring thing for most fans is the shoujo-esque art style but I didn’t particularly mind. I did take note of the few times where the style made Hei look like Lelouch but I just found that amusing. Basically if you’re a fan of the anime and can stomach the art style, this should be a decent read. The omakes certainly raised a few funny points that were never touched upon in the anime.

Manga Review: Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou

Title: Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou
Author: Mizuki Shoutarou, Itou Shouichi
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Shonen, Fantasy
Art: B
Originality: B
Story: B
Characters: B
Humor: B
Action: B

Impression: This is about a guy who goes to a school where they train students to achieve their goals in life and this guy wants to create world of peace and love and all that idealistic nonsense as a great priest. The twist is that upon being tested with this manga’s career equivalent of a sorting hat, he is marked forever as the first person ever to be prophesized as the next Demon King. Hilarity ensues as he starts a series of misunderstandings with his words and his natural talent for violence and destruction. I say hilarity but it’s not really all that funny if you ask me. The way that the story unfolds is a bit underwhelming given its main concept the interactions between the characters aren’t all that interesting to watch. It felt like I was reading a sub-par adaptation of an eroge since the harem members showed up every chapter one by one along with a scrappy in a chapter with severely clichéd way of getting the scrappy to stand up for himself. The idea behind the story actually has a lot potential if it were to explore the darker themes that comes with it but seeing clichés being thrown in as chapters plots, it’s really not as good as it could be.

Review: Hiiragi Kagami Summer Uniform Version Figma

Originally,I ordered this Kagami figma with a Shirou figma but he got delayed to this month. To my surprise they managed to release it a few days but I still have to wait until the rest of the stuff me and my friends ordered this month. Among them are two PVC statues of Kagami and Konata in cosplay that measure at 14cm each so hopefully they'll arrive before the funfair on the 25th so I can add them to the exhibition. It's an exhibition exclusive to my school so there's very little chance of outsiders getting a look into the exhibition our anime club is setting up unless you're invited.

It cost me 2261 yen from Hobbysearch which was about B$35 this time around due to recently fluctuating currency exchange and it cost me about B$6 in shipping since it was shipped with Khai’s and Zaki’s stuff, 1 MG Strike Freedom Full Burst and 2 MG Astray Blue Frame L. It was originally going to cost me more since it was originally a separate pre-order from the gundams but they shipped them together since Kagami came out at the same time the gundams were about to get shipped. Strangely enough, the original shipping for the gundams alone was 5500 yen but it went down to 5000 yen after adding my figma. It was a really big box too so I have to wonder how much packaging material cost them. Additionally it was delivered in a Bandai brand cardboard box so it really was interesting to pick this shipment up at the post office. Incidentally, I was typing this entire paragraph while watching GA – Geijutsuka Art Design (IMHO Best Comedy of the Summer Anime Season) on TV the entire time without looking at the computer screen or keyboard and came out with only 6 typos – Multi-tasking skill UP! LOL.

Front View

Top View

Side View

The Other Side View

Back View

Just realized that was here - Basically "Age 15 and Above"

This figma comes with:

• 1 Smiling Face
• 1 Annoyed face
• 1 Blank Face
• 1 Misao Head + Face
• 1 Sheet of Face Stickers
• 1 Figma Stand
• 10 pairs of hands – (Thumbs up, Holding, Pointing, Closed Fist & Open Palm Types)
• 1 Sky Background

Kagami's sticker sheet

Konata's sticker sheet

My new Kagami

Heads rolling once more

Misao as well but I'm not a fan of hers

Kagami - Tako mode

Angry Tako mode

It sort of reminds me of those fights with the droids in Portal

Tako Attack!

Never steal bodies without permission!

Most fitting expressions for them

While I am glad I finally have a normal Kagami and Konata figma, I am a little doubtful of the design quality for this version of Kagami. All my complaints towards this one are all new ones I didn’t encounter in my 0other Lucky star figmas. The most problematic one is the fact that Kagami’s head doesn’t fit Kagamiku’s faces very well. The new faces fit well enough into Kagamiku’s head though. Even when I manage to squeeze them in, they end up looking awkward if you just slot them in without finding the right position. In fact the faces it came with leave a slight gap right under the fringe portion when you put them in. It could be factory defect since I don’t see the point of them redesigning the head but chances are that they did since I can’t find any obvious signs of it being a defect other than when you put faces in.

Have not decided on how to decorate the blank face

Most definitely the best face for Kagami yet

Misao's face on Kagami just pisses me off for some reason


Good Job!

The next thing I noticed was that the hip joint was a lot looser than my other figmas. All I have to is hold it by the legs and the torso slides in the direction I move my hand in. It really made posing a lot harder without using the figma stand. Finally I noticed that for some reason the left leg is longer than the right leg. Not enough for it to look obvious just by seeing but when you’re trying to get it to pose it’s hard not to notice that the left leg is longer.

Indulging in sweets...

And paying for it

Old faces don't seem to fit on the new head though. A little modding might help though

Left - Winter Kagami's Smiling Face, Right - Kagamiku's shy face

Both new faces are pretty well designed

It even works on Konata quite splendidly

I wonder why I didn't try this before?

Like a whole new character

If the hair were brown I'd think it was Shirai Kuroko of Railgun instead

Funnily enough, the mangaka CONFIRMS that there is a one-sided crush between Kagami and Konata. She didn't reveal which one though. My bets are on Kagami.

Tried it with the lopped off ahoge konata head

Perspective is very important in making pics like this

Konata's has no ribbons on her shoes

Tako smile

Aside from all that, the rest of the joints work exceedingly well. The hands slide into their slots very easily and stay in place very nicely and Kagami’s faces were very well made this time around so it was worth getting it as they made for some very nice pictures. The twintails do feel like they might snap off if I’m not careful but otherwise they work just fine in terms of posing. Also, it’s nice of Max Factory to add in that “ticked off” sticker in there but I haven’t figured out the right face to put on the blank face it came with.

The many faces of Kagami

Both version side by side

All four of my lucky star figmas. I have six figmas in total

Overall it was worth the buy and it does make me want to get the other two summer version figmas I haven’t gotten yet but I also want to get some new gunplay from this new site Khai found with great discounts on Reborns and Masurao kits. It’s still going to depend on how much money I’ll be able to muster up to buy them though but with the total price for both at just a bit higher than a figma, I am quite eager to get them. Particularly since I’ll have to part with my MG Endless Waltz Wing Zero Custom as part of this plan I have to gather funds. Students at my school better fall for my schemes otherwise I’d be giving up my first MG just like that. Oh well, please look forward to my review on Fate Stay/Night’s Emiya Shirou figma next time.

ORZ!

ORZ before Konata!

Decided it was best to put them here. The other table is messy... very messy.