This entire volume is a flashback. We get to find out what happened right after Kubota picked up his "stray cat" at the end of volume 1 and learn how they became the odd but close couple we saw in volume 2 and thereafter. The story is told mostly in first person, from the viewpoint of young Iizuka Shouta, Kubota's next door neighbor. I don't recall seeing this viewpoint used much at all in the manga I've read thus far - it's rather interesting.

Shouta is a solitary child who doesn't get along with his classmates, doesn't play sports, and doesn't belong to any clubs. Both parents work, and his afternoons are usually spent alone in the family apartment, playing videogames and writing and drawing manga- and anime-influenced adventure stories . When his neighbor Kubota shows up one afternoon with another young man slung over his shoulder, unconscious, Shouta's life gets a lot more interesting. For one thing, the comatose guy has a hand that looks like an animal's paw, furred and clawed. For another, Kubota needs Shouta's help when the new arrival wakes up: he doesn't trust Kubota, but he's much less on the defensive with a child.

Minekura is good at portraying kids, and when Shouta's going off into his fantasies about what's really going on with his next-door neighbor, the story has a rather Neil Gaiman-esque feel to it. And although Shouta certainly learns a lot from this strange interlude in his life, Kubota and Tokito get a few lessons as well.

Question for the manga experts: I've been tagging my manga reviews with categories such as shoujo or seinen. But where on that spectrum does Wild Adapter fit in?

• Oyceter's write-up on this (with spoilers)

Calif. Supreme Court Overturns Ban on Gay Marriage

(Honestly, folks ... a couple of my friends, both female, married each other in Toronto several years ago, and Canada is still chugging along. No apocalypse, no firestorm from heaven. How can people still be thinking there's a problem here?)

For the librarians and paper-writing students of all stages: Jocelyn from neilgaimanboard reports that on Worldcat, if you 'look something up, and click on the "Cite This Item" link, it formats the citation for you in all sorts of different styles, including APA!'

Check it out!

(A note on the example: "cheese" is a neilgaimanboard leitmotif, like "Sanzo" elsewhere, but not nearly as sexy ... .)

Step right this way for stuff the likes of which one formerly had to attend a con to get ... T shirts, key chains, necklaces, and wristbands, now coming to your favorite shopping mall courtesy of Hot Topic, the boutique beloved by wannabe Goth guys and gals.

To give Hot Topic credit, I do have to say that they were also the only place where you could get T shirts for Neil Gaiman's MirrorMask.

(What I can't figure out is the situation with the Death Note live-action movie itself, for which this Hot Topic deal is a tie-in/promo. There are special showings May 20-21, for which you have (had?) to enter and win a little contest, and the DVD is coming in September, but will the movie ever go into regular release? It sounds like it's going direct to DVD.)

(Well, in less than half an hour, anyway!!)

These writeups have been sitting for a couple of months ... kispexi2 and smillaraaq were talking about their favorite BPAL scents and reminded me! Sadly, still no huge winners (and in fact, one huge disappointment).

( Seven scents this time ... )

In all the business of yesterday, I forgot to say that I also had a nice, productive stop at a bookstore between appointments. I'd been thinking that all the bustling business district of Friendship Heights needed was a bookstore, and there it was, a shiny new Borders. And I found:

• Samurai Deeper Kyo, vol. 28
• Wild Adapter, vol. 5
• Hikaru no Go, vol. 12
• Hoshin Engi, vol. 6

I've already finished the SDK and WA ... . (And yes, I should blog Hikaru no Go, considering that I've been reading it for a couple of months now ... .)

On a holy mountain in the center of the Twelve Kingdoms, a fantastical creature - a chimera by definition, but called a lamia in the story - is born for the express purpose of nurturing the next-born kirin, one of the sacred beings who are the only ones who can make a king. She is given the name Sansi and settles down to wait for the lodestar of her life - whom she already calls by his formal name, Taiki - to finish gestation and be born. But a magical storm of great force blows across the mountain, and the embryonic kirin ends up in our world, in the womb of a normal human woman. Sansi is left bereft for 10 years.

Taiki is born a human child, into a troubled family that doesn't understand him. As we meet him, he's undergoing a punishment of being forced to stand outside without a coat, in the falling snow. It's not too surprising that when he suddenly sees something strange in the narrow space between the house and the shed - a human arm and hand, protruding from a space too small for such a limb to fit - he goes to investigate. And finds himself pulled into another world.

This story is a journey mainly of the mind and the heart - although we also learn a great deal of the mythology and ways of the Twelve Kingdoms. Taiki, raised to think of himself as human being who seemed to lack most of the attributes his family desired, is suddenly pampered and cherished - and charged with the destiny of entire kingdom. Will he ever be able to tap into the powers that a kirin rightfully born into its animal form knows how to use instinctively? And how can he possibly make a wise choice among the supplicants who seek the throne of the Kingdom of Tai? Sansi, born to essentially serve as his mother, is similarly left adrift by the arrival of her 10-year-old charge, whom she never got to nurse as a infant kirin (are they called fawns? - or kids, maybe?) and whom she cannot teach what he needs to know.

Despite the weirdness of the Twelve Kingdoms cosmology and biology - the way that both children and young animals are born still flips me out - I was touched by both Sansi's and Taiki's situations. When Taiki makes his choice - and nearly drives himself mad with doubts over it - it was all too easy to identify with his pain and bewilderment. The resolution of the situation is emotionally satisfying and involves some of my favorite characters from volume 1.

Woes. The Young Lady needs to get her wisdom teeth removed.

This isn't a big surprise (my husband and his sister, and I and my sister, all had to have that done), but it was already looking like a busy summer. And she's never had a serious medical procedure - not even a single stitch or an ilness worse than the flu in 16 years. So she's not feeling very brave about it.

I hope you're having a wonderful birthday. kispexi-san!

Shaman warriors have the ability to transform their bodies in various ways, making them formidable war machines. As this series opens, a legendary shaman, Yarong, meets his death under circumstances that seem highly suspicious to his servant, the massive fighter Batu. Batu swears to defend his master's child, Yaki, but he soon finds this far more difficult than he expected: shaman warriors are being hunted down and killed, with the circumstances of Yarong's death being twisted to provide an excuse. Batu at last decides he must take desperate measures to ensure that little Yaki survives and becomes able to defend herself.

Thus far, this is playing out like an almost gender-blind shounen/seinen adventure. There are more male characters than female characters (especially in the first volume), but the female characters we've encountered thus far are fighting, doing magic, and adventuring along with the men. These female characters are also generally drawn with reasonable bustlines and amazingly modest clothing. The story includes betrayal, loyalty beyond the grave, a variety of non-romantic attachments (siblings, master-servant, parent-child, team mates, etc.), and complex politics. The artwork is gorgeous, illustration rather than cartoon, along the lines of Inoue's work on Vagabond and Samura's work on Blade of the Immortal (and when we do encounter grotesques, they're all the more unnerving because they're so well-drawn).

Oh, and telophase? Batu the Destroyer traveling with little Yaki is just your kind of thing!

Ganked from cheydancer and kispexi2:

What type of Fae are you?

She's nice and green, isn't she ? Very spring-like ... .

XD

I was looking for some examples of Hiroaki Samura's art work for the discussion of manga in the comments of my previous post, and I came across this picture (set up to pop in a separate window or tab), which is frickin' adorable! The only thing is, I don't recognize all the female characters who are shown in school costumes. From the left, I see Hyakurin as the teacher, then Rin, Makie, and Doa, but who are the other three?

A few weeks back, I bought Ouran High School Host Club vol. 10 and the first few volumes of The Wallflower. As usual, Ouran filled me with glee and warm fuzzies, but Wallflower soon left me cold (I tried - I read through vol. 5). And I began to wonder why. They're both screwball high school romantic comedies, involving an odd girl (boyish, downright Haruhi in Ouran, über-goth Sunako in Wallflower) who ends up interacting with a group of guys (the manga male harem trope) because she has to: Haruhi has to pay the Host Club back for the pricey antique vase she broke; Sunako's aunt is letting the guys stay rent-free at her house if they make Sunako into a "lady."

I think I've decided that the key is the way each girl interacts with her harem, and the way the boys interact with each other. ( read more about Ouran vs. Wallflower )

So - close camaraderie between the principals is very important to my enjoyment of a story. And I began to wonder what other aspects of a story are really important to me. I think I've come up with four really important areas: camaraderie, emotional engagement, ideas, and humor. Not every story needs to have all four, but the more bases are covered, the better. And humor by itself is just not enough.

So ... talk to me about this. Are these big factors for you, too? If you've been reading my reviews, do you think I've left anything out? Do you have different factors that are important for you?

From the Washington Post:

"Larger and more boisterous groups have picketed Montgomery County government, but surely never one with a higher average SAT score.

"Students from the science, mathematics and computer science magnet at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring [MD] marched through downtown Rockville yesterday to defend their program, one of the top math-science operations in the nation, from the budgetary ax.

"'Fund us, Weast,' the crowd chanted, beckoning to Superintendent Jerry D. Weast as about 100 protesters -- a few were from schools other than Blair -- approached the doors of the school system's headquarters shortly after 5 p.m. One student beat a bass drum. Another carried a sign that read, 'We can do the math' ... "(click for original article)

The Young Lady is in Blair's other special program, which is smaller, but my friend Kat's eldest daughter is a "Magnet" (which is what they call themselves). The program isn't being completely cut or anything - but the funding cuts will adversely affect both the number of teachers in it and the amount of time the remaining teachers have to concentrate on Magnet projects and curriculum.

Wishing you all the best, piles of felicitations, and many, many more!

With huge   >HUGS!<!!!

(Yay! I has Intarwebs again!)

Teenaged Yoko Nakajima seems to have a pretty normal life. She does well but not outstandingly at her all-girls' school, allows her friends to copy her homework when they need it, and lives a comfortable life with her parents. However, "seems" is the operative word. She's smart enough that she should be attending a better school - but her father forbids it. Her "friends" only like her because she's biddable and helps them. Her father only wants to make sure that she never shames him or draws attention to herself. Her mother loves her but won't buck her father's wishes. And her teachers are convinced that she's a troublemaker - despite her immaculate behavior and good grades - because of her flaming red hair, which they're convinced she dyes.

Recently Yoko's sleep has been haunted by terrifying nightmares in which she's being stalked by horrible monsters. Every night, they get closer. She's losing sleep, her grades are suffering, and her teachers decide she's been staying out late clubbing. After she's humiliated for falling asleep in class and has to stay after school to talk with her teachers, Yoko's convinced that life can't get much worse.

Then a golden-haired man interrupts her student-teacher conference, warning of impending doom and demanding a pledge from her. Almost immediately thereafter, all the windows in the room blow out, and the monsters from Yoko's nightmares show up on the roof of the school. In short order, Yoko finds herself in another world - the Twelve Kingdoms - where her home is only a myth, and she is pursued across days and nights by more monsters and demons. Her only salvation is the sword the golden-haired man has given her and the creature that he causes to possess her body so that she can use the weapon. She faces betrayal after betrayal, escape after narrow escape, all sorts of physical and emotional privation, and finally comes face to face with the destiny for which she was born.

I found this a hard book to like, but it's grown on me after a second reading. The lands of the Twelve Kingdoms are governed by a set of fascinating rules, some of which make mythological sense and some of which are utter crack (wait until you find out where babies come from!), but it's all handled with a passionate sincerity that carries you along - if you let it.

I'm on my blippin' dial-up for the first time in months ... I guess I'll kick back and write a review or something to post later. I'd forgotten how long everything takes with this connection.

Because that's when Tokyopop is releasing both vol. 5 of Wild Adapter and vol. 28 of Samurai Deeper Kyo!

Anticipation!
Anticipa-a-ation
Is making me late -
It's keeping me waiting ... .

So if I can get my passport renewed in time, we're going to Stockholm for a week and then Copenhagen for a week in June!

We have airline reservations and a place to stay in Stockholm (well, just outside of it, actually, but less than a 15-min. subway ride to the old section of the town). But I still need to find someplace for us and our friends to stay in Copenhagen. It gets complicated because we'll be staying for a full week, but Kat and her family will only be staying for 3 days, and then they're going hiking in Norway with her in-laws.

It's exciting! I've traveled out of the U.S. a few times, but never to a non-English-speaking oountry (although I realize that many, many people in Scandanavia speak English too).