High School Debut Volume 3

High School Debut by Kazune Kawahara keeps growing on me. (I’ve previously recommended volume 1 and volume 2.) I like that the twists move quickly, but not too much so. Concepts are explored thoroughly, but nothing is left to run so long it gets stale, and changes make sense based on what the cast is learning about themselves and each other. As a result, each book feels new and fresh while bringing back characters I’m growing to care about. In […]

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Beauty Pop Volume 8

After my mixed reaction to the previous volume, I’d put off reading this next book for a bit. I hoped that a fresher start would keep me interested, but my approach was fresher than the storylines here. The last chapter of volume 7 sets up Stage 2 of the series, where a teenage Hollywood hair and makeup artist challenges the Scissors Project makeover group. That story gets into full swing here in volume 8. Billy, the young professional from America, […]

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Papillon Volume 1

Hana was raised in the city, and she’s pretty, popular, and outgoing. Her twin sister Ageha lived with their grandmother in the country, and she’s shy and plain … although, obviously, that’s more in her head, since they’re twins. She blames her upbringing and outside circumstances for her situation, dreaming of becoming a beautiful butterfly (thus the title) but either not knowing what to do or not sure she’s willing to take the steps to get there. Ageha has a […]

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Yotsuba&!

Yotsuba&! has an odd title that’s easily explained: each chapter features strange little girl Yotsuba getting excited about something that’s new to her. So we see Yotsuba & shopping! Yotsuba & rain! And so on. Her appearance and behavior are so unusual, at times, that I’m tempted to speculate that she’s an alien, especially when I remember her green hair. (Translation notes explain that, in Japanese, “yotsuba” means “four-leaf”, and her hair color and style, four pigtails, make her resemble […]

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Apothecarius Argentum Volume 1

A princess needs a healer, who turns out to be a childhood friend become an apothecary, in Apothecarius Argentum by Tomomi Yamashita. She’s a headstrong tomboy, but Argent is the man who knew her when. He’s also a living toxin, immune to poison but with a killing touch. That kind of irony — the master healer brings life although he’s walking death — underlies the book’s plots, providing multiple layers. The princess loves food, to the point of overeating, but […]

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Antique Bakery

I tried one of the Antique Bakery volumes two years ago, when it came out. I don’t think I gave it a fair shake, because I recently read all four books in the series, and I enjoyed them a lot. The first volume opens as though this is a yaoi series, which it isn’t (although later, in volume 2, there are overtones and insinuations). A high school boy is confessing his love to a (male) classmate, who rejects him brutally. […]

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Flock of Angels Volume 3

The series by Shoko Hamada concludes in this volume. I haven’t read book two, so I’m not sure how Shea wound up living in the mountains with a mysterious black-winged girl. Her people can fully retract their wings, unlike him. So even where he might fit in, he doesn’t, although most are nice enough to him. Still, there are a bunch of weird things about their society, things Shea finds wrong and disturbing. However, they risk dying out, unless something […]

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Love for Dessert

Aurora’s Luv Luv line of explicit manga for women continues, and the quality is still disappointing. Like the other books, Love for Dessert contains a set of short stories by the same author, Hana Aoi. You can see the pasted-together nature of the stories — pick a quirk, bolt it onto a character, shove in requisite sex scene whether it fits or not — from the cover, where the tongue and the spoon seem like afterthoughts, edited into a generic […]

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