chomiji | Reading Wednesday (Reply)

My, it's been a while since I've done this.

Last week and the first of this were spent having the flu, followed by bronchitis. This would have seemed a great opportunity to read, but I was too miserable. I read fanfiction and magazines and that's about it. The new manga series I meant to start (bought the first few volumes of each at Katsucon) remain untouched.

I did do a bit of manga series catchup:

Natsume's Book of Friends vol. 21 remains Natsume-ish: poignant little stories with gentle humor. There is one chapter with a young Natori/young Matoba flashback that is likely responsible for the lashings of Matobe/Natori slash and pre-slash fanfic I've been seeing. Matoba is the kind of dark, perhaps evil character that many fangirls love to love (like Ukoku in Saiyuki, yuck), but I'm not one of them, so the mangaka is going to need to give me more reason to like Matoba.

Behind the Scenes!! Vol. 5 explores high school crushes with a keen eye and much tenderness. We usually see Goda through Ranmaru's eyes as a charismatic and even brilliant leader, but at the end of the day, he's just as much of a geek perfectionist as rest of the Art Squad. It's unsurprising that he's not terrible perceptive about the nature of Ruka's reactions to him lately, nor that he's awkward in responding to her when he finally gets a clue. Mangaka Bisco Hatori (Ouran High School Host Club) is so sensitive in portraying these situations that I really wish se would cover even more groups of geeky teens. Still, I guess one series at a time, done well, is all I can reasonably demand.

Also, Goda's superpowered multifunction watch invention is all kinds of hilarious, especially to a former theater crew geek like me.

BTW, does anyone know the proper genre category for this manga? I would guess shoujo, like its elder sibling Ouran HSHC, but I can't find any such info.

And I remembered that my bro-in-law gave me (at my request) for Xmas the first of the "Rivers of London" comics volumes, Rivers of London: Body Work. The depictions of the characters aren't bad (although Nightingale really doesn't look like my idea of him), and the main story (about a strange sort of haunting involving an automobile junk yard and chop shop) was decent. Not enough Beverly, IMO (but Sahra Guleed does play a large role). But I really enjoyed the little one-shot side scenes at the end, There's one involving Molly, Toby, and an old car that never would have worked from Peter's POV, but as a comic, it's just delightful.