The only thing better than Manga for a dollar was the Mandarake closing sale *dreamy sigh* XD I'm sorry they don't have one in your area. I used to wish for a Book Off, too. They used to only have one in Manhattan? Boston? Somewhere back East and this person would by the dollar ones from Book Off there and sell them on eBay.
I decided to read Love Song and I really liked it
Thank you for posting about it. I now know I like Nishi, Keiko's manga
What did you like about it? I liked how her stories focus on people's...feelings? mental states? It's not just the usual "I like him, but I think he likes someone else and not my best friend's my rival for his affections" type of shoujo manga. The stories aren't so fairy-tale. They're filled with "raw humanity" or something
The endings are a bit different, too. Included in the volume were some that were a bit comical and some that were a bit macabre. They were very angsty, but in a way where you know that whoever realizes that too much angst is a bit comical? Do I make any sense? Probably not.
So I, like you, wanted more and then I picked up the one closest in number
(PFC-25, whereas Love Song is PFC-26 in the versions I have...which are really old, btw. The pages are yellowed and that's probably why they were in th dollar section) because I thought it'd be the most similar, but it was and wasn't. This one's called, "
Mouhitotsu no Umi" or "The Other Ocean" or "One More Sea" or...? but anyway, I loved the first story in this one
It's really pretty and warm and fuzzy. I guess it's about emotions and feelings, too...and maybe this one was more cliched? Love at first sight, a little drama, hardship, etc. I guess it gave me the warm and fuzzy "shoujo manga" feeling, which was quite a different feeling from the "Love Story" manga.
(Oh, which reminds me. It's kind of wierd. The cover they show for the English language version looks like Takeno-kun, the main character from Mouhitotsu no Umi, and doesn't really look like any of the characters in any of the stories in Love Song, really?) I know some people have a problem with BL and this would be BL, so if it's not your thing then *shrug* but otherwise I'd recommend this one over the other one because of the "warm fuzzy feeling"
BTW, Here's
all her books on Amazon.co.jpMost of them are OOP. Their Marketplace doesn't ship overseas...so you'd have to use a shopping service
I use Crescent - http://crescent-shop.com/ - and have for years, so they're trustworthy) . If you're going to use a shopping service anyway, you might want to try to get the manga on Yahoo Japan Auctions because sometimes it's cheaper
the Marketplace ones are at least 351 each because of the shipping, even though it says 1 yen. They make their money off the shipping or something, I hear...there's no combined shipping :P) Here's a
Yahoo Japan Search for Nishi KeikoHmm...that "Sanbancho no..." looks pretty good *squee* I love long multi volume manga...oh, now I want it...>
I'm supposed to be paying off student loans...
IMHO, I thought Yoshida, Akimi's Lover's Kiss was more like Love Song than Mohitotsu no Umi was. Lover's Kiss is a story about a few months or so...told from 3? different angles. It's neat to see how some of the lines/scenes intersect. For example, in the story that's mostly about the younger sister, you see a line/scene from the older sister's story. It's all in the same time frame but all the people don't know all the pieces to each other's lives and have to make their assumptions accordingly, so it's kind of interesting that way. It's how life really is. No one knows the whole story about anything so it's really interesting to see so many different sides. It starts out similar to Love Song...here's a girl who can't admit her real feelings and a guy...and they start off really cold and nonchalant, like they don't really care and they're just going through the motions but...
Here is a
link to Lover's Kiss.
I hadn't read it in a long time, but I think
Kisshotennyowas kind of creepy but neat like Love Song...I don't really remember what it's about *I should read it again* but I have a vague recollection about a creepy girl who was misunderstood by her peers... it's also by Yoshida, Akimi.
If you liked "Signal Chika Chika" about the ugly duckling who grew into a swan, Morinaga, Ai wrote a slightly more comical version that's a bit less cerebral, but still really fun. It's called "Ahiru no Oujisama" and here's the
English VersionI think I better stop here...anyway, sorry I kind of wrote a novelette or something, but I don't usually get to talk manga with anyone so...
EDIT: It was too hard to read, so I had to format it... :P
