Manga Book Reviews

Vol 1 - This was pretty good, I think the best thing about it was learning more of the back story behind WarCraft. I wonder if it's even more interesting if you've played WarCraft games other than WoW!

Volumes 1-7 - This is another realy funny manga as usual its rather girlie but with a tomboyish twist. it's about ryang jengal who ends up lookind after two farie's called medea and fanta after accidentley tearing there heavenly robes. (come to think of it it's rather like cere?! but this ones less violent.) because of this ryang is cursed with 108 evil affinaties and if he looks a girl in the eyes when the have someone that loves them they'll fall in love with him and chase him everywhere only to be attacked byryangs previouse girlfreind or ryang by the sencond person in the evil affinatie. so far he's just passed halfway. \{(^_)\}

Vol 1 - I didn't think this would be my kind of thing, and I was right. It's not terrible, I can see why people like it. It's a gentle romantic comedy about a girl meeting some guys who turn into the animals of the zodiac if they're hugged by a girl. A cute, character based story. I'm not really a big fan of cute.

Vol 1 - It was pretty good but I kept getting confused about which character was which! Considering I'm not a big fan of romance type stuff it was fairly intriguing. Might read some of the others.

- Matt

Being a 19 year old guy and picking up the first volume of Fruits Basket, I was very apprehensive, thinking "How an I possibly going to be able to enjoy this sort of "cutesy" rubbish". The very notion of a story about a girl and her relationship with twelve boys who turn into the animals of the zodiac when she hugs them made me cringe. The artwork and literary styles, although good, were clearly aimed at a younger (undoubtedly female) audience, so if truth be told I didn't really enjoy it. Yeah it was "nice", but I couldn't help feeling that it was somehow too cliché and predictable. Unsatisfied with what I'd read I put the manga down and went to read "Bleach" instead, with the hope of retaining some of my masculinity.
Now this is where I have to make my confession, because around two weeks or so later I heard a niggling voice in the back of my mind, condemning me for not having given it enough time. So rather reluctantly I went and looked for volume 2, but alas!, volume 2 was nowhere to be found. I eventually resorted to borrowing the majority of the series off one of my younger sisters friends, denying they were for me, before proceeding to hide in my room and read them all back to back.
I was pleasantly surprised. As the series carries on into volumes 3-4 and beyond, the storyline begins to progress much faster, becoming deeper and far less "cutesy". As the relationship between the zodiac characters is revealed it become a far more gripping and involving read, you really do start to feel for the characters, in fact so much so that I went and bought the last volumes myself so I wasn't left hanging wanting more.
So to summarise; although Fruits Basket gets off to a slow start, it is a rewarding read if you give it time. It taught me the valuable lesson that giving up on a manga after 1 volume is usually a bad thing. I don't think I'd recommend this manga to any other guys, but it is still good and I'd recommend it to girls around my sisters age, 14 or so. As for a rating I think I'm going to go with 4 stars, not the best but it does deserve credit for being a truly unique story. I've certainly never read anything remotely like it.

- Maddy

Vol 1-18. When i first read fruits basket i knew what was going to happen because i had watched the anime, i knew the basic plot of each and every book up until volume twelve anyway, but what i found intuiging was the fact that it got darker and more sincere towards the end, i havent read them all although i know what happens, its a great book to start off with, it was my 1st manga. although the 19th volume isnt released in the uk for another 8 months it is a great way to get into manga, it is very femenin, but i find that anyone can like it if they give it a chance, when i began taking manga to school and talking about anime there, people tride to hide the fact they thought i was a strange person and took the mickey out of me constantly, but then i showed it to my freind, she read it and was indeed ashamed of what she had said, she rather enjoyed it, and to my suprise, the next week i found one of the boys in my class trying to read it over my shoulder, i had made my point, they rather enjoyed it but said that they would have rather read something a bit different. altogether its a good book, its a shame it didn't get put in sub zero on the cool wall, but i do think it is better to just be in cool, the reason for that is it isn't everyones cup of tea. but its still one of my ultimate all time reads.

I enjoyed this, I think partly because I play MMOs a lot so it reminded me of things I've actually had happen, and partly just because it was well written and funny. Would definitely like to read other .hack books.

Whole series - Princess AI turns up on earth with no memories of who she is or where she comes from, the only thing she has on her is a heart shaped box that somehow sucks the life out of anyone else who holds it, after meeting a boy who offers her a place to stay she starts to sing on the street and it makes everyone happy. She gets a job in a night club as a singer, where she always wears very gothic type clothes, then after a fight with a demon who has come over from her homeworld to kill her, she takes up the offer a talent agency gives her in order to protect herself and the others around her. Doing this she discovers that she can send her feelings out in her songs whether they be happy or angry.

It's been a long time since I watched 'Labyrinth', but I remember it was good. It was mainly good because of the dark, eerie land Jim Henson had created and the fact it was ruled by David Bowie. Sadly, this book doesn't have the magic that the film had. It's alright, but nothing special.

Volume 1. Comedy manga in which a cute frog alien intent on world domination ends up living with the Hinata family, doing chores in between thinking of strategies to rule the world. I liked it a lot to begin with, but got a bit tired of it towards the end. However, I do think it was a funny premise and carried out very well.

- Clare

Volume 2 Basically the main character, Pamela, is a clairvoyant (can read people's future) who also runs a cafe. After midnight creatures of any variety come to have their fortunes told. In this book a boy turns into a werewolf and comes to the cafe for help. You also learn more about Pamela and her past. It has really good artwork and a simple plot but its very good and easy to keep up with. I would recommend it to anyone who likes mystery and magic!

- Maddy

Volumes 1-10 - a twist of comedy, romance and war, Ichigo Kurosaki's life is taken over when he meets Rukia kuchiki. when i first got into this, it was because of the anime, i'm further in the anime than books, my first thoughts were, oh, its a brilliant horror comedy type book/anime, but as i got into i found the spiritual meaning to be more than that, its taking into account the unknown and un-answerable, it has deep meaning mixed with muchh more, the writer/artist has put their feelings into the book, that is one very rare thing to find in a manga, the sketchy art is one form of grabbiung your attention, i read the first book, and i just couldn't be bothered after that, i told myself over and over not to get hooked, but then i retraced it, the meaning was claer, comical and a mioxture of emotions, i gave up trying to stop myself from getting hooked onto it, as i read on, the meaning became confusing and sad, but being me i was intruiged, i couldn't stop myself, i had to read on, and i still do.

- Maddy

Volumes 1-2 (out of 5)

a short series with a lot of feeling put into it, it's about a young girl who has a great gift placed upon her, she is named as the pretear but can she live a normal, happy life when her stepmother andstep sisters hate her and she has to run around protecting the world's leafe from the princess of dark? himeno is a young girl trying to fit in with her new family, she's having problems with lots of things, many people hate her at her new school. her life is full of adventure, but can she stay being the pretear when her life turns upside down?

Volumes 1-7. - there are 14 books to this series and they are rated @ ot- older teenager, its about aya mikage who awakens celestial powers and is out to destroy the mikages yet again verry girlie!  \{(^_)\}

Vol 1-11 - I wrote a reveiw earlier last year, as i've read on i've become more intuiged, there's a mystery behind the amazing aya's true love, yuhi has lost aya to toya, but she is soon in for a shock. when i first read the book i thought it was rather boring, but then i also had brought the second volume..... well, i have never found a manga boring or annoying after the second volume, as i read that i found it was way more interesting, i looked at the first and started again, i realised that i had simply not been concentrating, i found things i hadn't noticed before, my mind was soon full of questions, who's this? what does she mean by this? why does ceres come forth? its a great book for people that have read manga's before.

Whole Series: - A very clever story and very enjoyable up to about volume 8, I got completely hooked very quickly and had to keep buying more books, the only series I've actually bought all of. It's an excellent one for discussion with the morality issues raised in this series. Great art, great characters and very original plot which keeps twisting and changing, it's very cleverly done. I was very keen to get to the end, but at the same time didn't want it to finish. However at around volume 9 that changed, it went downhill and I felt it was carrying on for the sake of milking a successful series when really it would have been better coming to a halt. Volumes 9-12 have brought down my rating from 5 stars. The ending was good when we eventually got to it, though there was some stuff tacked on after the real ending, I'm not sure what the point of that was, it was a real shame that it didn't stay at the high calibre of the first volumes.

Volume 1 - magical x miracle is about a girl that has been asked to be an imposter posing as the master wizard slthfarin its a verry girlie book but it's rather interesting as she posses all the qualities of sylth. i realy enjoyed the 1st in the series i'll be searching for the rest! \{(^_)\}

Up to Volume 3 - Excellent series, I was hooked by the first volume and the next couple just made me even more involved. Though I found volume 3 to have stronger content than was necessary, so did not like it as much. The graphics and story are excellent.

Read to Vol 2 - After the first volume this seemed high on graphics and low on words. Which can be good, but I was left without feeling I'd been told much of the story. It only took 10 minutes to read and seemed like a basic intro more than anything else. After the second one I just decided this was nasty and don't want to read anymore.