Anime Reviews!

To others, Miyazawa Yukino appears like the perfect student, with an immaculate appearance and great grades. This, however, turns out to be a facUade which she puts on due to her love of praise and vanity. When she is knocked from the top spot by Arima Soichiro, she vows to destroy him. Arima confesses his feelings to Miyazawa, who rejects him. Arima then discovers Miyazawa's secret and uses this to blackmail her into doing work for him. She does so, but after a while confronts him about it and he admits that he just wanted to spend time with her. They then become a couple and decide that they will drop their facades and stay true to themselves.

Upon their first meeting, Aisaka Taiga takes an instant disliking to Takasu Ryuuji. However, after learning that Taiga likes Kitamura (Ryuuji's friend) and Ryuuji likes Minori (Taiga's friend), they agree to work together to get the person they love. They also try to help each other improve how others view them. Other people at their school become curious about their relationship and as the series progresses, they become closer to each other.

My friend said that after seeing this, you feel like you know the characters. I think she may be right.

Yamada is a 15 year old high school student whose aim is to sleep with 100 guys. However, because she's insecure about her virginity, she ends up rejecting any guy who makes a move on her. She decides to pick one guy to be her first and this guy is Kosuda whom she accidentally bumps into one day. The series follows Yamada's (rather funny) attempts to seduce Kosuda.

This series parodies fairytales such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Ant And The Grasshopper. Ryōko Ōkami is a member of the Otogi High School Bank. She and the other members help other students ("clients") solve problems in exchange for receiving help from said student later.

Unlike the usual manga I read, this one grabbed my attention via one of the topic I lurk around over at gamefaqs' Anime & Manga. It has some good recommendations by some of the users so it piqued my curiosity.

Onani Master Kurosawa, translated into English, literally means Masturbation Master Kurosawa but don't let the word "masturbation" turn you off from the manga. Yes, there will be "white cream" in some chapters and that's far as you'll probably get but that's not the main point.

The story revolves around Kurosawa. Every day, he sneaks into the unused girl's bathroom on the 3rd floor and well "masturbates" until one day when he gets caught. From there on, things gets a little "dark".

The main point about this doujinshi manga is that it deals with themes that would probably occur in our previous school lives or in today's school life such as making mistakes, redemption, bullying and making ethical choices. It contains the best and the very worst of the human conditions. And hey, this manga really did speak out to me!

The doujinshi has some suspense and some twists there, I assure you and it only has 31 chapters. A good light reading manga right there for those who can get pass the masturbation (I'm sure we're all adults here!). I'm glad that the people over at gamefaqs got me into it and I urge anyone who wants something short to read, to read this manga.

If I had to think of any manga that would influence me with creating my own manga series (which I'm having trouble at the moment due to procrastination and other external attitudes), I'd say Black Cat... that is until I came upon this little treat. Sure, Black Cat had almost everything: Action, drama, somewhat badass protagonist, some light dosage of supernatural elements and lastly, some form of tactical planning. But the manga "Until Death Do Us Part" changed everything I viewed from Black Cat. It kinda made Black Cat looks like a light and kiddy option for a manga that deals with the criminal underworld (don't get me wrong, Black Cat is still one of my favorites and I wholeheartedly am proud that I read it).

I came upon this manga through my little trip down at tvtropes.com. Exploring around and laughing my ass off at common themes that would appear in several anime & manga, video games and films. While exploring, I came across a trope called Badass and Child duo and it made me think of my own manga for some reason. Yeah, the badass and child duo theme has been done but it's not overdone to the point where it's cliched. For more information, please visit this link.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BadassAndChildDuo

Anyways, Until Death Do Us Part is everything that Black Cat but the main difference is that it's labeled as Seinen. That's right, it's target for an older audience. It's guaranteed to have bucket full of violence, long yet plausible explanations about advanced technology or supernatural abilities, a really badass protagonist etc.

Until Death Do Us Part starts off with Haruka Toyama, a 12-year old precognitive child who is under the care of a certain company. Did I mention her ability is to see the future? Oh right, that's what precognitive means. Anyways, this company wants to make millions using her gift but she wants to escape them. Making use of her ability, she bails out of the car that's transporting her to the company, in mid-traffic, finds and recruits the help of a blind person named Mamoru Hijikata. At first, he dismisses her request only to realize what shady business has begun to unfold when people, willing to do anything, are desperately searching for the girl. With experience with shady business himself, he takes it upon himself to protect Haruka with his sword cane.

That's right, our main protagonist is blind badass swordsman! How awesome is that! The story is all about fighting for Haruka's happy ending but it doesn't seem likely when during a certain incident, Mamoru racks up a huge bounty on his head that has all the world's professional terrorists and hitmen going after him.

First all, the art style wowed me over. It's cross between realism and manga really intrigued me, almost as much as Air Gear did. The background, the people, the guns- everything is done so well that's it almost looks exactly like real-life Japan. Second, the story has a lot of twists and turns enough to keep you hooked. Similar to the novels that Matthew Reilly create such as Ice Station, Scarecrow etc. And lastly- well what can I say lastly other than the two points I just listed above.

117 chapters of action-packed thrillers and still on-going. Until Death Do Us Part should keep you entertained for those who want thirsting for some good action manga. Thank you tvtropes.com for offering this wonderful manga to me.

Normally I'm not one for horror mangas - I tried reading Uzumaki (by the same mangaka) and it scared the crap out of me.

However, I found Hellstar Remina to be different. Besides the obvious creepy horror, it deals with other issues such as the whole "follow the crowd mentality" and the basic human instinct to survive.

At the beginning Remina is a star. She is famous because the newly discovered planet/star has been named after her. However, after it is revealed that said planet/star is headed towards Earth, devouring all the other planets in its path, people's opinions on her quickly change. They blame her for what's happening just because the planet/star was named after her. What follows is essentially a witchhunt - the persecution of a single person by a crowd influenced by one another. One person said that it must be her fault, that she must have summoned the planet/star and soon it became the general consensus.

We also have some people who initially stay with Remina. But throughout the manga, some of them defect to the other side. This depicts the basic human instinct to survive no matter what the cost - because, even if a person says that they would die to save/protect someone - could they really do it?

-Einstein is a pervy but cute meganedanshi (he gropes Shiro ><)
-Napoleon is tall -_-
-Mozart is a jerk then just crazy
-Freud is...well, Freud.
-Etc...

And then they have their dark counterparts. The guys are hot and the girls look like they could kick ass.

It's been a while since I've done a review such as this. And with good reason too. From my last review till now haven't read any manga that amazed me or "wowed" me like the manga.

Area no Kishi (or translated in English, The Knight in the Area) mainly focuses around soccer. Our main protagist is Aizawa Kakeru, a soccer manager for his school's team, who believes that his skills in soccer is inferior to that of his older brother Suguru, the ace and a representative of the Nationals in Japan. However, his brother knows that Kakeru is harbouring some hidden talent within himself and wants him to play (though not directly). Because of this, they get into agruments about Kakeru's hidden talent and denial. It gets even more complicated when a old childhood friend which Kakeru has a crush on appears. Join them as the brother go down the path towards the nationals and possibly the internationals.

And that's the gist of the summary of the story. How did I come across this sort of manga you say? Well, during one of our meetings, I think Russ (or someone else) picked this anime to be viewed via crunchyroll. Intrigued by the artstyle, I decided to look it up and found the manga version over at mangahere.

After marathoning the manga all in one day, I find myself reminising the time when I first read Eyeshield 21. The story made me crave for more, the artwork amazed me and the characters grew on me. But what this manga did better than Eyeshield 21 was that in the empathy department. I could relate to the struggles and stresses that the characters were pit against during the manga whether it was proving to someone by showing your talent or the sweat and tears that made the person who they are right now. It may also because most of my life, I've been playing soccer than any other sport.

The manga has a large cast of characters but they are reasonably memorable (though you may not remember their names half the time). The artstyle is amazing and somewhat reminds me of Yusuke Murata's style a certain points especially with the protaganist looking almost similar to Kobayakawa Sena. As for the story, well what can I say, it got me hooked onto it for the whole day not to mention they were some twists and turns there.

With at least 87 chapters, ongoing monthly, and an anime out over at crunchyroll. I would definitely recommend it to those who like the shonuen, sport genre. Thanks Russ (or whoever) for letting see a single clip of the anime cause without that, I would have never encountered a thrilling anime/manga like Area no Kishi.

Cheers.

Story: 8 - 8.5/10
Artstyle: 9/10
Characters: 8/10