xparrot | on manga

So I am definitely back on an anime & manga kick. Have watched or rewatched a few awesome anime (am inflicting Princess Tutu on the bro now; it remains one of my favorite series of all time. Also the bro keeps calling Drosselmeyer "Dross Whedon" which if you know Tutu and you know Whedon is...way, way too appropriate XDXDXD;;;;;) and I've also been reading manga (my Kindle is great for that, I've found, as long as it's not a series like GetBackers with tons of little tiny illegible text everywhere.)

So, for anyone looking for recs, three entirely different series I've recently devoured. (Mostly spoiler-free reviews/squee - the plot points I mention are mostly from the first volume or so.)

First up, Urasawa Naoki's Monster (there's an anime, too, but I've only read the manga). It's a seinen (adult male-aimed comics) but rather than going for the sex or hyperviolence, Monster is suspense/drama. A brilliant young brain surgeon saves the life of a boy in West Germany in the mid-80s; ten years later the Berlin Wall has fallen, the doctor is a successful head surgeon at a top hospital, and then the boy returns as a serial killer obsessed with his one-time savior.

It's a dark story as you might expect, but it's not pitch-black; there's as much hope as tragedy, with themes of redemption running parallel with the horror. (Not supernatural; minus a bit of behind the iron curtain alt-history stuff it's played straight.) The characters are well-drawn (characterization-wise as well as visually; the art's very solid and fitting to the story) and when the plot gets into gear it's hard to put down.

I also cop to being amused that while most of the cast is German or Czech (...and no, I have no idea how accurate the languages used are, though given most manga's track-record with English I wouldn't get my hopes up) the noble, heroic, idealistic and idealized doctor protagonist is Japanese. (Don't get me wrong, I love Tenma; I'm a sucker for those doctor chars who consistently put saving others' lives over their own. But it's nice to know American authors aren't the only ones guilty of such nationalistic tropes...)

Then there's Katsumoto Kasane's Sono Te wo Dokero (aka Hands Off!), an 8-volume shoujo manga about three psychically gifted high school boys. I'd read this a few years ago when it was coming out in English; reread it now and aww, I love this series so dang much. It's absolutely ridiculous angst-fluff, with more brooding boys and friendship and hurt/comfort than you can shake a stick at. The ridiculousness is less in the psychic element (I really like how all their powers are handled; they're atypical and original) and more in the plots - one soon starts to wonder about the crime-rate in Japan; how many times can one boy possibly get kidnapped in a month? But who cares when it's this cute.

I'm not always big into the bishounen shoujo (it's really hit-or-miss for me; I love shoujo HS romance but the borderline-not-quite BL stuff like Yami no Matsuei sometimes leaves me cold) but Sono Te hits me right in my squishy fangirl id. The series is super-slashy without quite being slash - Katsumoto's done some BL, but the lead boy of Sono Te, while physically tiny and often mistaken for a girl - much to his dismay - has a girlfriend (who I rather love - she's a grade older and taller than him, and they start dating because she asks him out, as she notices he's absolutely adorable. I like a girl who knows what she likes and goes for it!) His cousin's feelings, now, are rather more ambiguous; but Tatsuki's got enough other issues, what with being tortured by a power he never wanted. And then there's Yuuto, who I have to adore, as Yuuto is basically Sha Gojyo if Gojyo were an aura-reading high school student (down to the long red hair); he's a flippant playboy and a terrible tease who absolutely loves his friends and will do anything for them.

So, yeah, the story's basically fanfic-level hardcore emo-porn, and I love it. I also love Katsumoto's art; she's got this sketchy loose fluid style that's really dynamic and emotional - the action can be hard to follow at times, but it's got so much feeling. And by feeling I mean AWWWWW:

Last is the BL classic Love Mode, which is...well, if you like Boys Love you probably know it already, and if BL's not your genre then I don't think this one would change your mind. Most of the relationships are questionable at best (two of the main couples are an adult seme with a teenage boy uke) and there's dubcon elements to a lot of the sex (the outright rape is generally perpetrated by the bad guys, but there's accidental - or "accidental" - dosing with aphrodisiacs - more than once - not to mention the stories concern the trials and tribulations of the owners and employees of an exclusive male-to-male escort service, so...) And its mood swings wildly between comedic raburabu and outrageous tragic angst.

That being said, I love it, partly because when in the right mood I'm a sucker for unabashed BL (I can't explain why; it's a cross between the entertainment I get from crazily OTT OOC badfic and an appeal to my highly questionable romantic sensibilities) and partly because it's got Haruomi x Kiichi, which hits all my crazy messed-up codependent OTP buttons. In BL I nearly always prefer the seme chars (the uber-seme especially; I do gravitate to the badasses) but there's a particular dominating, manipulative, just-this-side-of-a-complete-emotional-basket-case uke type that often gets me (see my own boy Quest, down to the long hair and glasses) and Kiichi's an archetypal example.

And now, speaking of Quest, gotta get back to that writing; I've got a quota to fill...!