Romance Otaku's Blog
A Teen Author's Home
Chibi Vampire / Karin Anime and Manga and Novel Review
Mar 30th
Karin (as it is known in Japan through out all media, as well as the English dub of the anime), also known as Chibi Vampire (as it is known as in the American version of the manga and novels), is a series of mangas, anime, and novels, all based off of the manga by Yuna Kagesaki. It is the story of Karin, an odd vampire who can live in the day and doesn’t suck blood, who lives with her normal-vampire family. The only issue is that she has an… issue… with like… a nose perioid… I’m not kidding. Every month a ton of blood comes out of her nose. If she tried to stop it, she will faint. The best way for her to expels the blood into someone. But, of course Karin is also a klutz, and always messes up.
I should mention that in this story good things happen to the people vampires take (or in Karin’s case, give) blood to, providing they don’t kill the human they are feeding from. Karin, for example, makes unfortunate people happy. Every vampire has a different affect of their victim of that sorts.
One day her blood gushes out in front of a new classmate named Kenta. To her surprise, he actually helps her clean up the blood. This triggers a myriad of events, all funny and romantic, like a good romantic-comedy should. Each chapter ends with you begging for more from the well-written characters (each of which have a past that you will learn about in the manga, and a few in the anime), the cute love scenes, and the piss-your-pants funny comedy.
The manga and the anime are different. Though they begin the same, about halfway through they start to differ. Their endings are totally differnt, and though I liked the manga better, both were very good. As for the novels, they are adventures that happen in-between the events in the manga. Though they hold no value plot-wise, they are very good and I am hoping all of them get translated to English by Tokyopop (I know there is another one coming out soon).
In summary, Karin/Chibi Vampire is an otaku’s Twilight done right. As my favorite anime and manga, I would recommended them to everyone, especially shojo lovers. Hey, even if you don’t like shojo you are sure to laugh and enjoy the read.
Pretty Face Manga Review
Mar 29th
Pretty Face is a series of six mangas that tells the story of Rando, a short tough guy with a crush on a sweet girl named Rina. One day his school bus falls of a cliff, leaving him unidentifiable, burns covering his skin. A crazy perverted doctor takes a picture out of Rando’s wallet and reconstructs his face perfectly identical to the picture. Now, the only problem is that the picture the doctor found in Rando’s wallet was of the girl Rando liked, not Rando himself! As he runs around, panicking, Rina finds him and mistakes him for her long lost sister. Unable to tell Rena the truth, Rando takes the life of Rina’s sister while attempting to locate the real one.
This ecchi-romantic-comedy is full of great adventures, and has a perfectly written ending to top it off. I laughed my ass off at some parts. At others I felt the intensity and seriousness of the moment. The events in the story can be related to by teens on a universal level, unlike some ecchi comedies that rely on pure perverted humor that a fairly large percentage would think are disgusting.
The real reason I love the manga is because it is quality-over-quantity. The author even tells you (in some inserts in the manga) of some not-so-good stories that just didn’t make the cut, especially ending wise. Many mangas of this quality go on for twenty or more volumes, and every volume has a part where you just wonder why you paid for this. Pretty Face, on the other hand, is short and sweet, and only one or two chapters made me feel like I was being cheated out of a good read. The rest were all amazingly hilarious and totally worth paying for to read again and again.
In conclusion, this is the best comedy series I ever read, and I am proud to say I own them all (unlike those other people that have other ecchi comedy books). If you have a few extra bucks on one of your manga-buying expeditions, pick up the first book. I am sure you will be hooked. (I just rhymed XD).
Wednesday Status Report 2/24/2010
Mar 24th
I Plan on finishing editing chapter 8 today on paper, and typing out chapters 6, 7, and 8 in the next two days. Then I will start working on a new project as the chapters of WtSB come out. I will go back to making new chapters of WtSB when we get to chapter 8.
Chapter 5 of When the Sky Bleeds Released!
Mar 22nd
I just posted a new chapter of When the Sky Bleeds ^-^. Check it out on the WtSB page!
