cyphomandra

I have been having problems with movies, in that they have all been a) not that good and b) too long and c) just not theatre, but tonight I saw I'm Not There (the Bob Dylan movie) and loved it. Even the bits with Richard Gere, who normally annoys the heck out of me - obviously what I needed to enjoy Pretty Woman was escaped zoo animals and a semi-apocalyptic Western setting (well, that and extensive feminist rewrites).

Anyway. My manga log for this year has gone over 100 volumes and, frankly, the chances of detailed updates on all of them are slim. This seemed like a reasonable compromise. I have included multiple links to Shaenon Garrity's overlooked manga festival entries, which are funny and have scans and are where I got a number of recs from anyway. I'll start with current reads, and then post finished series and those I am currently stalled on.

Currently reading:

My current favourite series are Naoki Urasawa’s Monster, The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service and After School Nightmare, only one of which (ASN) I’ve actually posted about on here, because a) I keep lending out The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, and b) to do justice to Monster I really need to re-read it, but all three of these are excellent and all strongly recommended. I skew towards shonen/seinen and have stalled on a number of shojo series, as apparently I am just not girly enough for them; I’m also not mad keen on BL stuff unless there's a really strong nonrelationship storyline, and I get very twitchy about fixed sex/gender roles.

( After School Nightmare, Mizushiro Setona, v1-6. )

( Battle Royale, Takami Koushun & Taguchi Masayuki,v1-6. )

( Black Sun, Silver Moon, Tomo Maeda, v1-3. )

( Flower of Life, Fumi Yoshinaga, v1-3. )

( Hands Off! Kasane Katsumoto, v1-4. )

( Kekkaishi, Yellow Tanabe, v1-11. )

( Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Eiji Otsuka, Housui Yamazaki, v1-6. )

( Legal Drug, CLAMP, v1-2. )

( Loveless, Yun Kouga, v1-8 (scanlation), v1-7 (Tokyopop). )

( Monster, Naoki Urasawa, v1-13. )

( Mushishi, Yuki Urushibara, v1-3. )

( Parasyte, Hitoshi Iwaaki, v1-2. )

( Pumpkin Scissors, Ryotaro Iwanga, v1. )

( X/1999, CLAMP, v1-2. )

( X-Day, Setona Mizushiro, v1. )

( Yotsuba&!, Kiyohiko Azuma, V1-4. )

( The Young Magician, Yuri Narushima, v1-2. )

After School Nightmare, Setona Mizushiro. v1-3 (scanlations), v 1-5 (Go!Comi)

Mashiro Ichijo, a student at an elite boarding school, is told he must attend a mysterious class required for graduation – a class that takes place in the shared dreamworld of those students involved. Each of the attendees appears in the dreamworld in a form that reflects their true self and wears a cord with three beads on them. Each bead can be shattered by physical or emotional violence, and when the last bead shatters they wake up; if, before that, they can find a key – usually hidden inside the altered body of one of the students – they can instead graduate, leaving the dreamworld behind them. But the classes are terrifying, bloody and cruel, and the students who graduate fade from everyone’s memories, leaving behind empty desks and nameless lockers.

Ichijo’s participation is triggered by his own carefully guarded secret – he is not entirely male (he describes his body as only male “from the waist up”), and he’s just started menstruating; when he appears in his dream form, he is (unlike the other students) identical in appearance to his everyday self, but wearing the girls’ version of the school uniform. His fellow students, however, are less recognisable, their forms often horrific reflections of their own secrets, and their motives unclear.

This is beautifully disturbing and very very good: revolving (possibly unavoidably) around issues of identity, particularly gender, it’s hard not to sympathise with almost all of the characters, and yet impossible to see how they can all get what they want. I also like the art, which is recognisably shojo without being annoyingly frilly, and the Go!Comi editions are very nice. V1-4 have the colour opening pages, as well, although they're missing from 5.

( More specific discussion, assumes knowledge of series while failing to actually usefully summarise events. )

I was hoping writing this would result in the arrival of volume 6, but although it is out the place I ordered it from ordered me volume 5 instead, thus dropping them to the bottom of my list of the three suppliers I'm currently experimenting with. The Go!Comi website has a sort of trailer thing here (for some reason, I can't link to the series page - look for the list on the right) to give an idea of the series and checking release dates with one hand over the screen to avoid accidentally reading any of the blurbs has a relatively quick schedule, with volume 8 (possibly the final? I’m pretty sure it’s finished in Japan) out in August.