telophase | (no subject)

More autoshoujo, as I contemplate NOT breaking things because of CSS issues in Wordpress themes (creating themes for the various blogs at work. It isn't the smoothest of processes...)

We've also got the third entry in the AutoShoujo Cover Contest up. :D

December Prince
Hell Bandit Gourmet
Midnight Moonlit Meadows
True Coconuts?
Divine Demon Calypso

California Pirate California <-- Department of Redundancy Department!

Fun Secret Piano
Starry Legendary Legend
Shinigami Sparkling Wars
Glass Alchemical Skies
Nobody Knows My Velvet Charm

Bright Galactic Destiny <-- YAGRS (Yet Another Giant Robot Series)

Midnight in the Sky
My Friend, Boyfriend Ocean
Please Save My Fairy Carnival
Indigo Shrine Tournament
Chocolate Memories
Harajuku Celestial Maid

Half Scrapped Airship <-- Set in a sepia-tinted, vaguely 1930-1950s era. A group of boys (plus a Token Girl) find a prototype airship scrapped in an old barn/warehouse and work on it in secret, getting it to flyable condition. And then they have Adventures!

Genius Battle Girl <-- Standard tournament series about fighting girls with lots of fanservice. It's set in a slightly futuristic world and takes the form of a reality show wherein girls fight in various arenas (on the ground, in the sky, under water, etc.). The winner receives a scholarship to an exclusive academy. If she survives.

Ocean Heavenly Sonata
Sayonara Night Nights
Nobody Knows My Handsome Restaurant

City of Night <-- A couple of normal kids somehow step through a portal into a world where the sun never rises, and the city is a weird inversion of theirs, populated by demons. Normal humans are illegal, and are taken away, never to be seen again. They must disguise themselves as inhabitants of that world, attending school with the demon kids and so on, while attempting to not raise anyone's suspicions and to find the portal back to their world. (It appears in a different place for 1 minute every 24 hours ... can they find it in time?)

It's Time For Firefly Roses
True Love's Fruit Candy

Academy of Student Twins <-- A special school ... for twins! In this world, twins have special magical talents when exercised in tandem, and are sent here to nurture and develop them. Our main character was separated at birth from her twin and they had very different upbringings. One of them was raised in a rich family in the city, and the other by her grandmother in a rural town on the edge of the ocean. Both were ripped from their familiar surroundings and sent to the Academy, neither wants to be there, and neither of them like each other. Can they learn to get along before their out-of-control magical talents hurt or kill them?

Eerie Sweet Cantabile
Apprentice This Sword
Green Tea Sword
Love's Spring Vampires
Gangster Green Tea Girlfriend

There Can Be Only One Royal Singer <-- Series based on a reality show.

Imperial Bakery
Airship Ultra Power <-- Fighting series, with airships instead of giant robots.

Spirit Shadow Chronicles

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Shinigami Sparkling Wars left me speechless. I literally do not know how to describe it except to note that the titular shinigami are sparkling while in combat, as opposed to competing at sparkling. The initial premise has the shinigami divided into two factions (red and white, natch), and the white side recruits the heroine, a lonely teenage yukionna, as a ringer -- to sparkle her snow for them -- but the plot goes Kaori Yuki even before the end of the first chapter.

---L.

I think we've found

rachelmanija's new favorite manga!

Midnight in the Sky is a shoujo mecha story, about a girl attending a pilot academy somewhere outside the orbit of Jupiter -- exactly where outside is never made clear -- only not exactly. Where there are some lovely shots of mechas in flight, they're not at all the point; if you took a two-volume shoujo sports series and made mecha piloting the sport, you'd get something very like this -- complete with a career-changing injury, systemic loss of confidence, friendship-shading-to-romance with a boy, and triumph in the new field. If you like that sort of series, you will like this, which the best one I've read since Aoi Kiseki; if you don't, you will at least like the pretty art. Fair warning: this is the sort of SF in which zero gravity is applied inconsistently.

In Gangster Green Tea Girlfriend, a former yankii tries to reform her image by joining her school's tea ceremony club. Unfortunately, the habits of brawling stay with her. Gradually, though, she learns how to control her temper, while at the same time the club president learns how to stand up to his childhood-friend-turned-rival Student Council President and not be pushed around. In later volumes, several alternate potential love interests show up, but there's never any real doubt who the heroine will go with. Lasted eight volumes, which was about three volumes too long.

---L.

Apprentice This Sword is about the (female) heir to a family of swordsmiths dating back to the Sengoku Era, who is being trained by her grandfather over her father's objections because he recognizes her talent: she can see -- and talk with -- the spirits of swords. The stories are episodic, as she slowly gathers a collection of spirit friends, mainly from unscrupulous and/or venial collectors. The refreshing part is there pretty much is no romance, just a friendship with a classmate, who doesn't find out about the spirits.

---L.

Only the cover of "Bitter Angel Hearts" is oriented correctly for a manga. Or does that count?

I don't give a damn. :)

I'd totally read Half Scrapped Airship if Naoki Urusawa wrote it. Airship Ultra Power should be the sequel!

I would totally read Half-Scrapped Airship. Also, Academy of Student Twins. Somehow, I imagine that one would involve the sets of twins battling each other, Loveless-style. How will the twins survive the battles if they can't get along and work together? DRAMA.

Oh, and City of Night sounds ridiculously awesome.

I can see the school scenes in City of Night already: it's almost just like regular school, with students who may have red glowing eyes, tiny horns, batwings, etc. And they're just like schoolkids the world 'round: some bored, some smart, some dumb, etc. Only they occasionally eat human flesh. :D

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Fun with Airships

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