One-Shot for the Weekend – Joyful Days?

Manga-ka: Fujito Yoko

Genre: Romance, School Life, Shoujo, Slice of Life

Keigo Satou has a crush on his classmate/friend, Arai, who is always cheerful. He tries to make her fall in love with him even though she doesn’t notice him.

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When I looked at the art, I immediately thought to myself – this must be from the Margaret magazine family, and I was right. Sorry, I get thrills from simple things. Anyway, this week, the first piece of work I read was Joyful Days? and boy was I lucky.

The highlight of Joyful Days is that it’s told in the eyes and soul of a male hero. It’s rather refreshing after being on the side of a heroine constantly, where we witness her chasing some guy and when she has internal conflicts with herself. Since the story is told by the hero, it was nice to know what goes on in the head of a guy(even if it was written by a lady). The hero was caring, slightly clumsy, but genuine and to be told from his point of view made it seem ever so much more personal. It’s like he’s a puppy! In some ways it reminds me of Haruhi Suzumiya, narrated by a dude and the heroine is a bit whacked. But of course, no story can be as extreme and Joyful Days offers a more relatable and much more ‘realistic’ & ‘normal’ portrayal of a relationship. Joyful Days does focuses on romance though and what makes it relatable is that it involves the experiences that people in love go through. Lots of plus points.

It seems although the manga-ka was aiming for some ambiguity in the end but it didn’t come through so well. I thought the heroine could have used a much more character development, there was a charm about her but she sort of declined in the end. Overall, it really was a very good read. It’s so nice and fuzzy that it makes you want to marry the hero and go have babies or something. Okay, I don’t think that line made it sound very appealing but do give it a read!

Have a lovely fuzzy & cozy weekend, even when it feels like summer(on my side that is). I’ll be putting this manga-ka on my radar.

Rating: 4.4/5

Starry Sky – Sound Track (Japan Version) *UPDATED*

UPDATE: Several individuals have expressed interest in the Starry Sky Sound Track CD and since honeybee does not currently provide any track samples at the moment, I’ve decided to upload 3 songs’ samples and hopefully it’ll give you a taste of what to expect! Let’s all support Honeybee! Browse further in this post for the 3 song samples. I have uploaded them using SoudCloud and I’ve disabled the download option since this is copyrighted material.

Also, I’ve scanned the CD’s front & back cover as well as four pages for a little bit more quality. 

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“All the time I would I think of those precious days when the seasons came around.

All of us laughed,

with lots of love for you.”*

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Hey ho! I’m so happy that my YesAsia order has finally arrived after 2 whole weeks as promised!

I tweeted this one on M.W's Twitter!

I bought two items in this order which is Starry Sky’s BGM Sound Track & the Gakuen Alice Illustration Fan-book. Of course, as the post title suggests, I will be posting a few snapshots of my Starry Sky lovely in this post & I’ll cover the Gakuen Alice book in a separate post since I often confuse myself in extremely long posts(plus I get to increase M.W’s post count by cheating like this). I won’t go into a large amount of detail, just a couple of bits and pieces that I think is worth sharing.

Oh yes, forgive me for some blurry photos, photography isn’t exactly my forte and I was quite excited!

Here are some general info:

Seiza Kareshi Series : Starry Sky Sound Track – Hoshiiro Ongaku Shu – (Japan Version)

High Resolution

Release date: 2009-09-25

Company: HoneyBee

Language: Japanese

Publisher Product Code: HO-91

Package Weight: 100g

-via YesAsia.com

Description:

Original BGM soundtrack release from game & drama CD series “Starry ☆ Sky” featuring 35 tracks total.

Sweet memories, warm memories, the album delivers a melody for a number of  precious time spent with a particular character, including painful memories!

Note: This CD only contains the BGMs, the theme songs are NOT included. This is not the Anime’s OST CD.

The M. Weekend Shopper: Soho, London – Adanami Shobo

30 Brewer Street,

London W1F 0SS

020 7437 5238 ‎

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Situated in Brewer Street, Soho, Adanami Shobo is a shop with it’s window display pasted with various manga & anime posters which have yellowed and which quality has been degraded through either sun exposure and simply time. At first glance, the shop’s sign is absolutely misleading, it is in fact still the sign of the ex-tenants or owners of the shop who were apparently dry-cleaners; the sign has been there well over many years. 

Spring Anime 2011 – Ranks, Rants & Ratings

OOOOOKAYYYYY!!! So I’ve been through most of the Spring 2011 Anime, and here are my rankings (in the order in which they appear), my rants (what I pretty much thought about them) and my ratings. The first 2 are pretty subjective to me, but I tried my best to keep the ratings more unbiased; so basically I could think an anime was good, therefore giving it a high rating, but personally preferred another one over it hence giving it a better rank and rant.

Ratings might still be quite biased since I pretty much dashed through everything (there’s about 26 anime here people!) but I tried my best – in fact I think this is the longest post I’ve ever written… Anyway I might give them proper reviews later on in the season, but if you have any favourites you particularly want us to review or whatever, feel free to drop us a message! =D

*WARNING: LOOOOOOONG POST*

This is a pretty huge step up from my previous spring anime post since there are so much more episodes and series’ this time round @_@ Sorry if it’s all a bit too much spammed into a single post – I just really wanted to clear it all up in one go… so let’s start!

Ao no Exorcist

Hopeless dude who can hardly get anything right and keeps getting into fights. Was brought up in an orphanage with twin bro, when suddenly – well, waddya know? – an extremely shounen twist of fate happens.

Okay this rant is going to be super biased since I’m already a fan of the manga. Seriously though, out of the long list of anime I’ve watched so far this spring I still think this is the one I’ve enjoyed the most. Even if you’ve read the manga and know everything that’s about to go down, Ao no Exorcist is definitely still a must-watch. It’s not just the animation, it’s the structure of the story and everything that just makes it completely worthwhile. Also – besides the fact that for some reason I can’t get enough of Rin’s face – story-wise and overall, this is already my favourite so far… and I’ve only watched one episode of it XD

Rating: 5.0/5.0

Since this is No.1 I’ll put in a special mention for their ED – I seriously like it! It’s by that 2PM korean boy band or something =P

One-Shot for the Weekend – Apple

Apple

Manga-ka: Komi Naoshi

Genre: Shounen, Comedy, Sci-fi, Supernatural

Besides having plants growing out of him at times, Aramiya Satoshi has the special ability to shape-shift into animals . He’s a pretty easygoing guy who just wants to be left alone to enjoy his solitary life in the middle of a junkyard, but the army is constantly after him because of his ability.

Published as a one-shot in Weekly Shounen Jump 2008.

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Ahhh!!! I really won’t have time to write that many posts the next few weeks since I have to prepare for my examinations already… Anyway, due to that constraint I couldn’t go looking around for any new one-shots, so I decided to dig up one I read quite some time back by Komi Naoshi – Apple.

So, it’s about a guy who’s super laid back despite the fact that the balance of the world would pretty much rest on his shoulders and a genius kid who tries to help him out. Yep, the typical shounen plot (In fact, it really reminds me of Nobuhiro Watsuki’s one-shot, Meteor Strike). There’s this simplicity about it being the usual shounen that makes it a nice ‘nothing new’ read if you’d like.

Truth is I couldn’t think of any other one-shot for the weekend and this was what I could come up with in short notice when I remembered it was my turn. I wish I could be like the protagonist right now – all relaxed, all powerful, all in no need for education…. Oh well. That’s why it’s all reserved to stay in manga.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

Extra: Music for the Weekend!

When I was taking the bus back from London, I ended up listening to a single song from my playlist 1/3 throughout the journey. Always loved it – so here’s some nice relaxing music for the weekend! XD

-arawr >=3

Mushroom Manga – Gin no Saji & Ao Haru Ride

A couple of days back I woefully bade goodbye to Kekkaishi as I read its final chapter. It had a surprisingly quite sad ending in certain aspects, but like many other shounen manga it closed with the promise of future – not just for the characters in the manga, but the manga-ka his/herself as well. So as I read the usual final little side note that went something along the lines of ‘thank you for supporting so-and-so… look forward to next work…’ I thought… A-HAH!

Therefore today I mushroom manga from  two pretty-much super popular manga-ka who have recently started on their new piece of work!

Gin no Saji (銀の匙) / Silver Spoon

Manga-ka: Arakawa Hiromu

Genre: Comedy, School Life, Slice of Life, Shounen

Yugo Hachiken aspires to live separated from his family, so he took the chance by enrolling to an agriculture boarding school. He thinks that the path would be easy for him regardless due to his talent for studying – but he’s proven wrong. Brought up as an all-easy-to-get city boy, he is forced to discover the inconvenient truth about agricultural life. Enjoy Hachiken’s story as he tries to keep up with his friends (mostly farmers’ heirs) who are already accustomed to hardworking farm life.

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I didn’t even bother reading the summary before I started going through this. Gin no Saji, or Silver Spoon, is by Arakawa Hiromu – and being an avid fan of FMA, this was a definite must-read.

Lala DX 05/2011~

Hello Dearies! I’ve decided to add some(I said some but it’s really only gonna be about 1-3?) scans in my magazine posts to heighten your viewing pleasure. Also, I understand that some of you out there would like to use the illustrations or what not since that’s what I love to do. Anyway, here is Lala DX 05/2011 with Haruka 5 by Tohko Mizuno gracing the cover. I scanned the cover myself so you get a high resolution picture.

Freebie time! I still have my Ouran Bookmarks from Lala Special which I haven’t used yet, such nice collectibles!

Haruka 3D Book-Marks! Click for a larger picture:

I didn’t scan or take any photos of the colour pages at the beginning since they were nearly identical to the ones in Monthly Lala 05/2011. I just took photos of each featured story again^_^.

One-Shot for the Weekend – Natsu no Kakera

Natsu no Kakera (夏のかけら) / Fragments of Summer

Manga-ka: Amano Shinobu

Genre: Romance, Shoujo, Slice of Life

“When Miyuki goes off to the countryside to visit her grandfather in the hospital, she accidentally enters Madoka’s room instead. Although she finds him rude at first, they end up seeing each other every day and get closer. But Miyuki only has a limited amount of time in the countryside. As the summer passes, how will things turn out for them?”

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Hohoho. Just when you guys thought that we’ve gotten lazy or forgotten all about our frequent one-shot recommendation you thought Wrong (with a capital W). I’ve postponed our one-shot feature until today because this weekend is extra special(plus we were trying to fix a lot of things). For the remainder of this weekend, we recommend a one-shot by Amano Shinobu that is released by our Weekend Betsuender project. (Well a part of the world has already entered Monday so make Monday part of your weekend ^_^;)

We hope you enjoy this one-shot as much as the team has(I’m speaking for them here but if they tell you other-wise don’t listen to them). I suppose this post counts as some sort of shameless promotion but oh well.

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There were two short stories by Amano Shinobu in this year’s issues of Monthly Lala and Lala DX and when I went through them, I fell in love with the cute artwork and rather adorable story-lines. I went to find out more about Amano Shinobu’s work and I stumbled upon her latest tankoubon release(2010) which is a collection of five short stories that were published throughout Amano Shinobu’s career in Lala Special magazine. There weren’t any English reviews which is totally understandable so I had to re-enter my search in Japanese and the blogs that I visited gave favourable comment. So, I took the plunge and bought my copy online and I wasn’t disappointed.

Natsu no Kakera is the first one-shot in the collected tankoubon and it’s the type of story you might end up reading unintentionally since it’s a bittersweet story. The story follows the relationship between two people and the limited time they have.  While the initial stages is cute and simple, sometimes things do not always happen the way we want it to be and the contrast between the plotline and it’s simple nature remind us that we should appreciate the things that we often take for granted.

I suppose in many ways the story can be a blessing for the characters. To enter one’s life and grant them some happiness, even though you’ll leave their life one time or another, I think that’s beautiful. I hope you’ll enjoy this one-shot and I hope that we were able to convey that message that Amano Shinobu-sensei has illustrated.

Much Love to everyone. Thank you for supporting us.

We won’t include a rating for this one-shot.

Click here to by re-directed to the Natsu no Kakera one-shot on the Betsuender site.

Manga-Talk: Hana to Akuma vs. Twilight

So I found out some time back that Hana to Akuma has actually been completed. There I was wondering why it never got updated, and guess what genius? The whole ‘I-won’t-read-this-chapter-I’ll-wait-for-the-next-so-I-can-read-it-in-one-go’ strategy has quite obviously backfired.

Just to sum up Hana to Akuma, it’s about this 14-year-old girl who lives with a demon. He’s been taking care of her ever since she was in diapers coz she was abandoned in front of his huchamungous mansion, and guess what happens?

Moving on.

I never quite got why I enjoy reading it; I started following it quite early, and I would read it whenever a new chapter came out, but I never cemented an attachment to it. It was like a good passing acquaintance rather a friend, I would say. But I think that might have changed with the last chapter.

I was actually really curious about how Oto Hisamu would end the whole story. Hana to Akuma carries the whole ‘happy ending’ atmosphere from the 1^st chapter all the way to its penultimate 57^th one, so I seriously wondering how it would finish – she was a human with a limited lifespan, and he was a demon who would continue living for countless millennia after her.

So anyway, the spoilers (and comparison) start here so if you don’t want to read either one, you can stop reading now.

But, I mean, I would appreciate it if you didn’t. That’s why I wrote this post.

Toradora Vol 1

Toradora!

Author: Yuyuko Takemiya

Artist: Zekkyo

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance, School Life, Shounen

Status: Ongoing

Ryuji Takasu has learned the hard way that appearances can be deceiving. Despite his inwardly sweet personality, his unintentionally sharp gaze and aggressive features give him the air of a delinquent thug, putting his chances at making friends, let alone a girlfriend, next to zero.

It’s Ryuji’s first day in junior high school and it seems as if things are looking up. He gets to sit in between his only friend, Yusaku, and, more importantly, the girl he’s secretly crushing on, Minori Kushieda. But just when he thinks the stars are aligned in his favor, he unwittingly crosses the most feared girl in school, Taiga Aisaku, making her onto his arch enemy. To top it off, Taiga has moved in right next door to Ryuji and happens to be Minori’s best friend! Can this school year possibly get any worse?!

–Seven Seas

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I watched Toradora! a few days back and it seems inevitable for me to compare both form’s versions. In fact, I could basically call my little review here a comparison between both! Anyways, Toradora –  it’s about time I read a shounen manga which has love as it’s main theme. Either there aren’t that many or I just didn’t try looking for one, the latter being the more accurate. Well, I’ve never read that much shounen manga to begin with anyway.

The story follows two very misunderstood characters with very self-contradicting names and how they try win their crushes’ hearts. We also see them trying to battle their community imposed social positions within the school-o-sphere which is really quite entertaining! The overall plot-line follows a rather predictable(or if you’d like to use a fancier word, ‘classic’) plot-line and is what I call ‘the shounen way of getting couples together.’ By leading the winning pair into the unoptional hilarious scenarios which undoubtably, always work.