A collection of gritty and edgy short stories, far from the usual shoujo fare. Be prepared for small doses of heartbreak and large doses of realism. Yum.


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Nakamura Sano naturally feels stressed out when his girlfriend asks him to meet her father. When he gets the courage to come visit, he discovers that her father is actually a first class DJ who doesn't want his daughter to date Sano. As a result, Sano throws himself into the DJ world and enters the DJ prelimary match ( Read more... )

A collection of bittersweet tales of all the different shapes an unrequited love can come in. Why is it so difficult to confess your love? Why is it that another person can affect someone else so strongly? When a powerful man is fickle, he is allowed to be. But if a woman is unfaithful, she is called a tramp. Koi tells the realistic stories of six ( Read more... )

Spine-tingling, thought-provoking and bizarre. This is the first time I've seen a female character "deconstructed" to this degree in a manga -- and I do mean deconstructed both mentally and physically ( Read more... )

This is one of the zaniest, most kick-ass josei stories you're likely to come across. ShoujoMagic aptly describes it as "Charlie's Angels meets Ogawa Yayoi" -- yes, there's a mysterious man who commands the unwavering loyalty of two (not three) beautiful young women, and uses them to fight dirt of all kinds, from the messy household variety to the ( Read more... )

Published by Kodansha in 2002 and awarded the prestigious Tezuka Cultural Prize, Fumiko Takano's The Yellow Book is one of those rare works which you enjoy reading in order to feel the tender familiarity that arises between the protagonists and yourself. This collected volume was named after the longest of the four stories that it contains: a drama ( Read more... )

A collection of short stories by the fabulous Matsumoto Jiro. Expect the usual perversity and graphic sex scenes, although the way Matsumoto renders sex makes it far from your standard hentai porn. You'll see what I mean when you read the story -- Matsumoto-sensei is, after all, a master at employing shock tactics.


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Ichiko Izumiya is a young student of English who would like to walk in the footsteps of her father, a translator of trendy American novels. She finally decides to confess to him that she is in love with Eriko, a law student. Ichiko will attempt to live out her homosexuality in peace and will be brought to wonder about the nature of her relationship ( Read more... )

Itsuki Kamiyama and his classmate Yoru Morino have a common hobby: they're both interested in murders that happen around them and are themselves drawn into them... Goth, Ooiwa Kenji's extraordinary manga debut, is based on a novel by the critically acclaimed author Otsuichi.


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Based on Yoshii's hit novel series, Deep Love depicts the struggling life of Ayu, a 17-year-old high school girl who believes neither in a future nor the happiness it could bring to her. By selling her body as a teenage prostitute, she's trying to justify her existence, which is as bleak as her heart. It's not until her encounter with a kind- ( Read more... )