manga stuffs
So, after ordering some manga from Amazon, I got a mailer from milhigh about their trade paperback sales...trades and GNs 40-50% off(a few slightly more) and manga 40% off...and I'm about a month behind in manga purchases(new releases don't show up in Amazons 4-for-3 sale until they've been out a couple months...Amazon order was Wallflower, Megatokyo, 2 Land of Silver Rain books and the first books of Dokebi Bride and Emma) I was very, very bad(3 trades-almost 4, but I had to stop somewhere so Mouse Guard got cut from the actual order, and a couple others from the "maybe" list, and then more manga than I can list off the top of the head.) Respectable batch of ebay sales proceeds=gone. Monthly spending=back where it was after recent DVD binge.
Also, I understand that the last few volumes of the main part of Basara(the last 2 volumes of the series are side stories about the characters after the story ends, before they appear in the series and when we don't see them in the series) is all one big story, so I'm trying to be strong so I can read them all at once. Vol 23 has been taunting me for a little over a week(yeah, it took me forever to get the thing...) but I am determined.
Anyway, post is mostly on the fantasy-romance manwha, Land of Silver Rain, and then vol 6 of Skip-Beat.
Land of Silver Rain Vol 1- Land of Silver Rain is a romance manwha about a human girl named Misty Rain who was raised in the land of the dokebi but cast into the world of humans when she loses the trust of her protector and has to find her way in the human world, only to have a dokebi prince who loves her follow her there. At least, that's the rough version of the cover blurb. The first volume is about Misty Rain's childhood and how she ended up in the land of the dokebi.
The dokebi are spirits of magic born when humans cast items aside. Here, they live in a fairy tale-like land (in fact, the hero, Sirius, encounters a few fairy tale characters in his travels) but from the descriptions of Dokebi Bride, another manwha, and the extremely scant info I've found, they're usually darker. There are two kinds of dokebi-the "higher" two-horned dokebi who Misty Rain grows up among, and the single horned dokebi, who are descended from unicorns. Misty Rain ends up in the land of the dokebi after being found in a cabbage patch by a dokebi witch. The witch plans to eat Misty Rain as dinner, but encounters the ruler of the two-horned dokebi, The Great Lord of Darkness (who, despite his name, seemed to be a nice guy of the noble and tragic variety.) Knowing TGLD wouldn't approve of her eating human babies, she tells him that she felt pity for the baby and means to raise it as her own, so TGLD tells her to do so and names the baby Misty Rain and casts a spell on her so that she'll look like a okebi child until she turns 13, at which time, humans and dokebi start to age differently and she'd have to return to the human world. The spell has a catch, though-it only lasts as long as Misty Rain has TGLD's trust...if she loses it, the spell will break.
Misty Rain grows up believing she really is a dokebi, but a dokebi brat named Thornpricker thinks she's weird and accuses her of being a human, and they become rivals, escalating to Thornpricker killing Misty Rain's pet birds and Misty Rain destroying Thornpricker's pepper garden in revenge. Misty Rain lies to TGLD that she didn't destroy the garden because Thornpricker won't admit to her own crime. However, Sirius, a prince of the other dokebi kingdom, saw her destroying the garden and, not knowing what's happened, identifies her as the girl he saw in the garden, and Misty Rain's lie causes TGLD's spell to break. Since it's a crime for humans to trespass in the land of the dokebi, Misty Rain is imprisoned (apparently, TGLD gets off because he once loved and lost a human and hey, he's the boss) and Sirius, feeling guilty over causing it to happen, proposes to her, only to be rejected.
The first volume is essentially setup for the series...the main story won't get started until the next volume. So far, while I'm not engrossed just yet, I like it quite a bit. Thornpricker is a little brat and I just want to boot her off the page, but for a stubborn 13 year old, Misty Rain isn't bad. She has a degree of brattiness to her, but the vast majority of it is her retorting and responding to the things Thornpricker says and does to her, and then her being mad at Sirius for exposing her lie and then hanging around and continuously proposing. Sirius is...well, think of Tamaki in Ouran High School Host Club, only a prince with magic powers who lives in a fairy tale kingdom. And is a bit younger. Very nice and energetic and open...and almost rabid in his wanting friendship and affection. Not QUITE as much of a drama queen, though. While the characters(at least Misty Rain and Thornpricker...I think Sirius is a bit older) are 12-almost-13 now, looking at the art in vol 4(the only other one I have ATM) it looks like the bulk of the story takes place a few years later.
BTW, for those on my flist who are scared of longer series, this series is only 7-8 volumes long(and completed) and the first 5 have been released, with, according to Amazon, the rest due out by the end of the year.
Skip Beat Vol 6- You know, I wonder if any, well...SANE women will ever appear in this book. If they do, they'll probably take one look at Kyoko, Moko, Erica, and Maria and flee in terror. After the beginning, we leave aside Moko and Erica's rivalry for a bit(thank goodness...I like Moko a lot but Erica is such a spoiled princess...even her being brought down every time she tries something doesn't compensate for that much of her) to have Kyoko fillin as Ren's manager(
dangermousie ,even just one volume in, you can guess how well THAT goes over...) and then take care of him when he gets a cold. Which, of course, is an enormous blast It also finally adddresses something that's been bugging me the whole series-how Kyoko feels about having dropped out of school-and more about her mother, who seems to be of the "Mother from hell" variety. Incidentally, for anyone else who's read this far, do the quasi-chibi versions of the characters look kinda like they were drawn by Yuu Watase, or the Hana-Kimi mangaka(yeah, typing this at work w/ no internet, so I can't look up the name) It's quite cute, and just something I kept thinking while reading this volume.