Manga Heaven. I am in Manga Heaven. I went shopping today to pick up my monthly comics and to look around mediaplay since I'd accumulated about $20 in replay giftcertificates. To my joy I discovered that they had in stock Paradise Kiss vol. 1, Peach Girl 4, and finally got a restock on Sorcerer Hunters 6 (the next volume I needed). So I happily snapped them up, then wandered over to Waldenbooks and in a haze of manga euphoria ordered the rest of Tokyopop's "right-to-left" manga line. Since I'd bought most of them already the only volumes I'm waiting on are Kare Kano 1, Kodocha 1, Love Hina 1, and GTO 2. So I thought I'd give you all a run down on the various Tokyopop "right-to-left" manga titles. Those are the titles that have unflipped artwork, orginal sound effects, and in other words presented in an extremely similar way to the way they were presented originally in Japan. Very cool, yes? Even cooler, there are a lot of titles, so I'm going to try to restrict myself to just a couple of lines about each. 01. Chobits One of manga-supergroup CLAMP's most recent works. It's so cute, but chased with just enough ecchi-ness to prevent sugar shock. It's a story about a boy and his human-shaped personal computer (persocom) that he retrieved from the garbage. Named Chi, since thats all she says at first, Hideki slowly adapts to teaching her the ins and outs of daily life while he tries both to find out about where she came from AND get into college. 02.Cowboy Bebop Mmph. The manga based on the hit anime series. Like most anime-to-manga adaptions it just lacks the oomph of the original media. The artwork is decent, but the stories are a bit bland and currently episodic. There doesn't seem to be plot that connects them so far. I'll be picking up the next volume to see if something develops but right now it's pretty blah. 03. Dragon Knights Gahhh! I'm so confused. What the heck is going on? I actually double checked the front cover to make sure I had the first volume and hadn't picked up the second by mistake. From what I can tell there are three guys (dragon knights) who are traveling somewhere (to where the dragon king is) carrying some evil guys head with them. Why they have the head, I don't know. Who the guy is or why he had to be decapitated, I don't know. Why the heck other people want the head, or want to kill/attack them, I don't know. All I know is they get into a lot of trouble, one guy likes to fight demons, one likes treasure and the other wants to get home as quick as possible. I might actually enjoy this if I could figure out WHAT the heck was going on. 04. GTO GTO stands for "Great Teacher Onizuka". Onizuka is a former gang-kid who decides on a whim to become a high school teacher, all the better to be around pretty young high school girls. He suprises everyone, including himself, by actually getting into the role. Utilizing the skills he learned on the street he whips is class of deliquents and bullies into shape one at a time. It's a really fun manga, and one of my current favorites of the line. I can't wait for GTO 2! 05. Initial D I watched the anime, but couldn't get past the ugly cg cars. I'd be watching the show and going..."ooh this is getting exciting--er...damn those cars are ugly. I hate cell-shading. If they're going to do CG cars they could at least put a better imagemap on them. I could do better and I SUCK at modleing...oh wait..what happened?" I found the manga a bit more engaging, but I'm still not sure of the art style. It also has something of a slow start, a lot of guys gabbing about cars but very little actual racing. It was just starting to pick up as the volume ended. I'll pick up the next one, I think it's a title that could grow on me. 06. Marmalade Boy Gawd, I hated the anime. I've said it before and I'll say it again, watching Marmalade Boy just makes me watch to Bitch-slap the entire cast. They're all so whiney and self-involved. I almost didn't pick up the manga because my distaste was so strong. But I took a peek at the manga in the store and the artwork was so cute and lively (so much better than the anime) that I couldn't resist. I seem to be taking the waffling of the main character a bit better in manga form. Perhaps I'll give the next volume a shot too, if for no other reason than because the artwork is so cute. 07. MARS Angst. Angst....and more angst. Yum. The main character is the kind that I usually hate, Kira's painfully shy and won't speak up on her own behalf. She does practically nothing to protect herself. She doesn't even talk to other people at the start of the manga! All she does is draw and paint. Enter in the male lead, Rei, a rougish motorcycle punk who lives on his own. He races his so close to the edge he scares everyone but himself. He doesn't seem to care if he lives or dies. After a chance meeting the two slowly come together learning about themselves and each other. Kira surprises herself and Rei with her own quiet strength. I really liked this manga. But if it starts off this angsty, I'm afraid of how much worse it's going to get. There is such a thing as too much angst. 08. Paradise Kiss This manga looks soooo cooooool. Most of the characters live on the bleeding edge of fashion design. It's by the creator of "Neighborhood Story" and is actually a spin off of sorts to that story. (One of the side characters is the little sister of Minako the main character of that story) Its about a girl who struggling to get past her exams when she's pulled into modeling for the offbeat "Paradise Kiss" student fashion label from the local art school. The main character is a bit of a quiet spaz who often thinks about things too much. Throw her in with a blue-eyed, blue haired charismatic bi fashion honors student named George, a 6 foot tall Transvestive named Isabella (I agree, she gets entirely too little airtime), Miwako the uber cute girl who likes to give people strange nicknames like "Caroline", and her punk boyfriend Arashi. Besides looking entirely too cool for words, the story is actually engaging too. All the characters are one of a kind and I want to see more of them all. 09. Planet Ladder Whoah. Mind Trip. And btw, the summary they give on the back...they don't even GET to that part in the first volume. Kaguya has her world turned on it's ear when her father (not her real father actually, she was adopted as a child) is arrested for embezzling and having connections to the mob. Then her world, the only world she's known since she was found wandering in burned tattered clothes as a child, is wrenched away from her in a battle where she and a corner of her room are transported to another world. Stuck with only a silent automaton copy of a boy she's dreamed about for years she's forced to try to just get by. This manga is so weird, but it's peaked my interest enough to want to read more. 10. Real Bout High School Eh...I was so not impressed. The artwork seems really rough to me, and the story is boring. Apparently they didn't feel they required a plot. They kept introducing characters and not taking them anywhere. I could have stood it if there where at least some super cool fight scenes...but they really weren't well drawn enough to get my attention. I'll probably peek at the next volume in the store, since the anime storyline seems radically different from the manga and I'm curious to see if it's going to make an appearence. 11. Skull Man "I am...Skull Man." *snerk*giggle* I'm SURE that wasn't the reaction they were going for. This manga was first conceived around the time Batman was (back in the 30's) and some of it's old-schoolness definetly shines through. It reminded me of old golden age Batman in a lot of ways. It's uber violent without getting gruesome about it, and its got some really neat monster designs. The creator of this manga was also the creator of "Masked Rider" (which later became a live action series of the same name). In fact, this was actually meant to *be* that series, but the editors required so many changes that he just made a new series instead. I wouldn't recommend this to most people but I'll be checking out the next volume just for its sheer old-schoolness. Mmm...this was fun. Maybe I'll talk about the non-right to left tokyopop titles next time...