Posts in Manga Category

Now that I was finally able to get to the scanner (nobody here but me.. nice and quiet), a sampling of Koharu Sakuraba's Kyou no 5 no 2 as was promised (a while ago). The manga was serialized in Young Magazine, and there's only one volume of it.

Here's the roster of students in class 2 of grade 5 that we meet. Ryouta (right page, top right) is the main character, and quite the lucky guy as you'll see ;) Chika (right page, top left) is Ryouta's osananajimi (childhood friend) and probably closest to him. Yuuki (right page, bottom right) is pretty talkative, but also a bit naive. Kazumi (right page, bottom left) is your cool and quiet type that never smiles. Natsumi (left page, top right) is the bokukko (girls that use "boku" to refer to themselves), quite good at sports of course. Megumi (left page, top left) would be your traditional meganekko. Tsubasa and Kouji (left page, bottom) are Ryouta's friends.

The Yumetsukai anime starts in the spring, so after looking at the story explanation and art on the official site I thought I'd check out the manga by Riichi Ueshiba. You know, stuff involving dreams sounds neat and all and the character design looks kinda cute... well, it wasn't quite what I expected to say the least. Hmmm, what to say... it's an odd mix of occult and eroi and guro, a good bit of which can't be shown on TV (^^;;) I don't believe I can explain what happens in the manga well at all so I'll just introduce the three Yumetsukai (there are 9 in all) we meet in volume one here. As the name implies, the Yumetsukai are people that solve various incidents involving people's dreams in some way or another, and they've got special powers that help them do that, of course.

 
The first Yumetsukai we meet is Rinko-chan (CV: Kei Shindou. Rumi-chan in Tetsunoshin), 9 years old, a "super shougakusei" (what she calls herself). Pretty smart kid, and quite kawaii :) You can see her using her Yumetsukai powers there on the right.

Rinko-chan's older sister, Touko (CV: Ayako Kawasumi), is also a Yumetsukai. She's a bit weird...

 

But the weirdest of them all is definitely Tachibana (CV: Tomokazu Seki)... besides having weird fashion sense, he's a lolicon. 12 and under for him as that last panel says (^^;;)

...quite an interesting bunch, yeah? (^^;;) Anyways, it would seem that the anime's going to be one of those "use the basic setting and characters from the manga to make an original story for the anime" things due to the nature of the manga. The manga story itself (broken into 2 different sections.. volumes 1-3 are one story, and 4-6 are one) wasn't exactly interesting to me, being rather confusing among other things... but I think the anime staff certainly could make something interesting with these characters and that idea of dreams and such, so I'll be checking this one out come April.

Chitose Get You! was one of my "I don't really know a lot about it, but it looks cute and other people said it's funny so I'll try it" purchases this time. The simplest way to explain it would be to say that it's kinda like Kodomo no Jikan minus the ecchi, plus a ton of slapstick comedy in 4-koma format ;)

 
Chitose (right page, right) is a chou-genki (plus some) 11 year old girl. She's madly in love with the onii-chan that works at the town hall right next to the school, Hiroshi (left page, bottom right), and spends her days relentlessly pursuing him. Shige-san (left page, top right) is Hiroshi's superior at the town hall... sometimes he helps Hiroshi deal with Chitose-chan, but sometimes he kinda pushes things on ;) Chitose's teacher at school is Asako (left page, bottom left) -- she also has a thing for Hiroshi, so her and Chitose fight quite a bit as you could imagine. Chitose's friends are Misaki (right page, middle).... her dream is to marry her father..... and Hinako (right page, left), your cool and quiet type that's a bit out there (^^;;)

Translated the last one for y'all there. This is pretty much how it goes. Chitose-chan always thinks of onii-chan ;) Chitose's antics are pretty funny, and she's darn cute as well so it's quite a fun read. I was right on to get it ;)