Top 10 Things I Learnt About Japan Through Manga

Sometimes I'd get into conversations with my friend and occasionally when the topic of Japan comes up for some reason or another I'd spit out information like it was nobody's business. Most of the time they're taken aback, awed by my worldly knowledge but actually it's mostly donates from sitting at home and fawning hopelessly over 2D men.

Here are 10 interesting things I learnt about Japan and it's culture that you can't necessarily read from a textbook

1. Blood Type Horoscopes
   I was always curious why some mangaka would include blood type in character profiles along with height and name amoungst other things. They even made specialised condoms for each respective blood type. It really should be taken with a grain of salt but hey no harm in reading about it. It says that I'm the type to start but not finish thing, that I can agree on.

Manga Review: Hadashi de Bara o Fume

Name: Hadashi de Bara o Fume
Author & Artist: Ueda Rinko
Chapters: 57
Genres: Drama, Historical, Romance, Shoujo
Plot: From Viz:

Poor Sumi Kitamura… Her irresponsible older brother Eisuke keeps bringing home orphans for her to take care of even though they can barely afford their own basic needs! Just when Sumi's financial problems become dire, wealthy Soichiro Ashida enters her life with a bizarre proposition: he'll provide her with the money she so desperately needs if she agrees to marry him. But can Sumi fool high society into thinking she's a proper lady? Moreover, is it worth giving up everything for this sham of a marriage?

Review:
Remember how I took a trip to the manga shop and totally spazzed out? Well I saw this amoungst the many titles that were being translated and I had to stop myself from laughing. I don't know why anyone in their right mind would consider translating this. First of all the Jerk with a Heart of Gold trope only works if he's a adorable tsundere not some rich d-bag.

I read this awhile ago and gave up halfway because it was shoujo at it's best and when I say best I mean it's really bad. Everything you can hate about shoujo is in this story. Add a psychotic third wheel and you may just have the single best badly-executed manga ever.
What I mean is it's so stupid it's funny. Reading it the second time around to kill time and also with my expectations lowered gave me some enlightenment.

I don't recommend this unless you have absolutely nothing better to do.

Spoiler alert highlight to see:
There's a really hilarious moment when the two dumb leads are making love and the crazy ass mofo third wheel pulls a "Here's Johnny" moment. Like he literally goes around the hotel with an ax and starts smashing up doors. I laughed for hours.

My Latest Fix: Ginzatoushi to Kuro no Yousei - Sugar Apple Fairytale

Name: Ginzatoushi to Kuro no Yousei - Sugar Apple Fairytale
Author & Artist: MIKAWA Miri & YUKIMURA Alto
Status: 4 chapters - Ongoing
Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy, Romance, Shoujo
Plot:From AQUA Scans:
In The Kingdom of Highland, a country where fairies are slaves of the humans, Ann Halford, a Candy Craftswoman, decides to purchase one in order to arrive the once-yearly Candy Fair to achieve the title of Silver Sugar Master.

Overview:
With the whole "fairies" premise, the expectations are a childish, magical girl story but it has a twist. All the fairies are enslaved bringing a realistic aspect to what would normally be an idealistic world.

Manga Review: Diamond Life

Name: Diamond Life
Author & Artist: FUJIWARA Akira
Chapters: 14
Genres: Drama, Josei, Romance, Slice of Life, Tragedy

Plot: Kanae dropped out of high school, because her father is a gambler while her mother ran away with her boyfriend. Kanae is twenty-two years old, and very poor working for a cleaning shop. She comes to have something to do with Haruki Oda quite by chance. Haruki is an IT millionaire and called "money-mad man," or "the god of death." Then Kanae's life makes a sudden development. Money cannot be made by love alone, though love cannot be bought with money. People of today want to have both love and money. This get-happy-story is a must read for the present-day people.

Review:
The thing I love about Josei is that it's so much more easy to read in terms of not gagging from over cheesiness. I guess if you love melodrama then this may not exactly be for you.

What I love about this series is it really addresses some pretty interesting, lesser known issues and I actually found myself learning more about. If you can take anything away from this manga, it's that you learn some important life lessons and I felt more knowledgeable about things (I can't really tell you what they are since it'd kinda spoil it).

Template Updated Once Again

I was really unsatisfied with the last template so I decided to spend some of my time updating to my liking. It's nothing flash but looks a lot better than it did before.

I also want to take the time to thank everyone for reading and commenting. I'm usually the passive reader and really get too lazy to comment on things but thanks for showing interest towards this blog.

I have no friends who read manga in real life so this is effectively my only outlet to fangurrrrllll.

The picture is from Dear by Fujiwara Cocoa. I really need to do a overview of it sometime since I love that manga to death.

Shugo Chara AMV

Random post but I was just procrastinating on youtube (since schoolwork is physically impossible to complete unless I'm at some kind of library) and I stumbled upon one of my favourite anime music videos back in 09 when I was really getting into manga.

I jumped on the bandwagon pretty late since I went to a white washed school and it was only in high school (13 - 17 yrs my country has no middle school) when I started to really get in to manga.

This AMV helped solidify my growing love for manga and Shugo Chara was the first one I really got into. I want to review it some day since I got a couple of volumes of it sitting on my bookshelf though. What's stopping me is the fact that I was a noob back then and I've taken off my rose-coloured glasses, I'm afraid that the manga I loved so much is going to effectively be a dissapointment once I review it.

Anyhow if you plan on watching the anime, I suggest you skim over the Shugo Chara Doki season and try to skip the fillers and skip most of Shugo Chara Party.

Enjoy the AMV :)

Manga Review: Mars

Name: Mars
Author & Artist: SOURYO Fuyumi
Chapters:
Genres: Drama, Mature, Psychological, Romance, School Life, Shoujo, Tragedy
Plot:
Kira believes that Rei and all other men in the world are dirty. She stays away from her classmates, hiding in her art. What happens when the delinquent motorcyclist and playboy, Rei, gets ahold of one of her drawings, and actually wants to keep it?

Review:
Now I perpetually avoid tragedy cos I'm a crybaby but seeing as I was in the mood of some psychological romance I thought, why not?

At first glance it's typical bad boy and anti-social, man-phobia girl but there seems to be such an inevitability on how it all unfolds. It's the dark side of human nature. It explores our natural instinct of violence and atrocities of man.