Manga I've read, and didn't have enough thoughts on to form a proper review:

Death Note vol 1 - Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata Interesting, but not enough to persuade me to get the next one. I've got so many series on the go at the moment, I can't afford to pick up another and I probably shouldn't have bought this. I'm intrigued enough to watch ( Read more... )

Karin has not returned to her glasses. This sums up the aspect of this manga that I don't really like. In one scene, a friend makes her over and lends her some trendy clothes, and the boys who usually refer to her as Four Eyes are so dazzled by her beauty that they fail to even recognise her. Geeky girls can be beautiful without having to resort to ( Read more... )

The stories included in Confidential Confessions vary in subject matter, but they usually have one thing in common: a teenage girl will live through some dark and troubling experiences and come to an important realisation about her life -- a lesson not without its cost. The first story of Volume 4, however, doesn't reach these depths. After ( Read more... )

Brash and boyish with uncontrollable hair, Hanabi is not your typical shojo heroine. Yasuki, the cool and handsome love interest, conforms a little more to his stereotype, but his awkward avoidance and mistrust of girls makes an interesting contrast to Hanabi's dedication to standing up to the boys on behalf of her female classmates. Despite this ( Read more... )

I'd heard plenty of good things about Kare First Love but somehow had been put off buying it. Shojo manga is abundant with stories of push-over protagonists being manipulated by the bully best friend. It's a plot device that usually irritates me at the best of times, and so I decided that Kare First Love wasn't something I'd enjoy. Faced with no ( Read more... )

The One I Love is a collection of twelve short stories all about love -- ranging from such topics such as marriage, long-distance relationships, age-differences, honesty and insecurity.

At only half the thickness of a typical manga tankoubon, The One I Love may not seem like good value for money, but if you enjoy romantic feel-good shojo, you can ( Read more... )

Yesterday I went to Borders to get Chobits 5 and once again was drawn to Kashimashi, which I looked at last time but wasn't sure about. The basic plot is this: a boy called Hasumu is rejected by his crush, goes up to the mountains to brood over it, only to have a spaceship crash into him. The alien manages to revive him, but somehow turns him into ( Read more... )

What took me so long to get into Chobits? It'd been recommended to me several times, is exactly the kind of manga I've been looking for, and yet I've only just got hold of it (thanks to BookMooch again ( Read more... )

A friend recommended this manga to me, so I bought the first volume and was disappointed by it. The male characters didn't seem to have any depth, and Hatsumi irritated me by not standing up for herself. I didn't want to spend any money on the second volume, but when I saw it on BookMooch I thought I might as well give it a chance, seeing as it's a ( Read more... )

Initially I was drawn to this manga because of its subject matter of real life issues, such as self-harm, rape, blackmail etc, but after reading the first two volumes, I'm disappointed. The story is simply one depressing thing after another, and the main character has little depth to her. I find it hard to sympathise with her because I just keep ( Read more... )