it can’t all be about manga…

This was one of my favorite stories in the manga, so I'm happy that this episode of the anime turned out to be so gorgeous.  It's also gone through the most changes of the episodes I've seen so far - in the original the Host Club goes to Nekozawa's private beach and stays at his mansion (with horrifying results, of course) but they've switched it to Kyoya's house for the anime which is much more mundane.  I had a very hard time not going overboard with too many screencaps for this one (I managed to stick to 25) but there were so many beautiful shots.  The colours were amazing! 

Episode 8

The Host Club moves its operation to the beach so that Haruhi can enjoy the ocean.  Things take a nasty turn as some punks show up and throw Haruhi off of a cliff during a scuffle!  Tamaki is furious with her for trying to handle too much on her own and it leads to their first real fight.  He soon discovers that her independent streak runs deep and isn't so easily overcome.

I've done caps for all through the episode, so there are spoilers, but I eased up toward the end and tried not to give everything away.  I think I concentrated on the pretty moments and not so much on the plot.  :)  And I finally took five whole minutes to figure out the pixel thing when sizing my caps so I had a lot less fiddling this time and the images are a lot smoother.  Hey, I'm slow, but I eventually care enough to learn.  :P

The screencaps!

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I felt like doing more screencaps for this episode for some reason.  It's not one of my favorites (though still very good), so I'm not sure why I have so many (and so big!), but I went all the way to the end of the episode for this one instead of stopping part way through like I normally do.  Maybe it's because the stupid TTC decided on an impromptu strike today leaving me unable to go to work and I had some extra time on my hands.  Thanks TTC!  I *so* wanted to waste a vacation day on your labour issues!  [/sarcasm] 

Episode 7

The Host Club sets off for a day of relaxation at one of Kyoya's family run resorts.  A tidal wave is triggered while Tamaki and the twins are playing and Hunny is swept away by the flood.  The gang sets off to find him, braving the perils of the tropical resort.

There are a lot of Mori pics today.  He rarely gets to do anything so I couldn't resist.  :)

The screencaps, with some spoilers.  I didn't give away everything, but it's close:

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Have the sound effects in your manga been translated?  If not, you might find this site useful.

(via Boing Boing)

Not watching, of course.  I've been doing that faithfully.  I just haven't been blogging about it lately.  :)

Episode 5

The episode where the Host Club finds out how terrifying the twins can be when they're bored.  An idle comment of Haruhi's sets off the Hitachiin brothers' first fight and chaos reigns.  The terrifying Nekozawa is also introduced in this episode!

 
Hey - this episode is all about the twins.  I get to put in the gratuitous pretty boy pic if I want to!  We also got a rare glimpse of Kaoru and Hikaru as boys.  So cute!

     
Hunny tries to solve the twins argument with cake, but as they prove at lunch, food is more of a weapon in this fight.

 
Nekozawa - he curses people from the shadows!  And of course, the club reacts to the finale of the fight.

Episode 6

Young Shiro seeks out the Host Club to ask King Tamaki for guidance in pleasing women.  Unfortunately, the kid is pretty bad at it (picture Hiro from Fruits Basket trying to flirt) and wreaks havoc in the club before running away, crushed by the knowledge that the King is a phoney.  The group then decides to infiltrate the elementary side of the school to figure out what Shiro was really looking for at the Host Club.  And if you're interested, the voice actress for Shiro also played Naruto. 

  
King Tamaki welcomes the new kid to the Club.

  
Hunny has the introductory pose down pat, but Haruhi needs a little more work…

 
Shiro has what should be the normal reaction to the Host Clubs overly dramatic posing.

  
The elementary school kids are not fooled by the imposters in their midst and Haruhi has an impossibly cute moment.  The costumes weren't neccessary of course.  The guys just like getting Haruhi in a dress whenever possible. 

Episodes 7 and 8 tomorrow!  Well, probably tomorrow.  :)

I'm not sure how I feel about this.  It might be funny?  I used to read Ghost Rider comics when I first started collecting…. though I admit to making some pretty bad choices back then.  (But I'll never regret New Warriors! Never!)  So far this looks like a renter.

Part 1 of this post talked about why I bothered to spend so many hours on this little pet project of mine (and why I decided to go ahead publish it) but the overwhelming reason was curiosity.  What could I borrow from the Toronto Public Library, how could I find it and where were they deciding to put different series within their collections?  It's a bit embarrassing to think about how much time I spent doing this, but what the heck.  It was sort of fun in a making-a-list kind of way.  :)  Here is what I did and what I found.

The Searches:

No searches were done from the front search box.  This is a general keyword type search, and pretty useless if you're looking for something specific.  All searches were done by clicking the "Search" tab and using the drop down menu on the "Basic" screen or were done from the "Advanced Search" screen.  The abbreviations in brackets are how each search is listed in the title list.

Graphic novels - advanced search - subject keywords - 1750 results - limited to remove Merrill Collection results - 882 results - 279 of these were manga titles (gn) 

Tokyopop - basic search - publisher keyword - 158 results (tpop)

Viz - basic search - publisher keyword - 254 results - included books and dvd's in results (viz)

Graphic Novels — Japan - basic search - subject begins with - 111 results - these also seemed to be included in the broader graphic novels search (gn-jp)

Dark Horse - basic search - publisher keyword - 349 results - 97 of these were manga titles (dh)

ADV - basic search - publisher keyword - 25 results - 4 were manga titles, most were dvds (adv)

Manga  - basic search - any keyword - 125 results - 32 of these were manga - picked up Dark Horse Manga as well (manga)

Other searchs:

Viz graphic novel - 103 results - series term clicked through from manga record - not saved or added to list because I generously assumed they would be included in the Viz as publisher search.
Graphic Novels — Korea - zero results - I found this subject in the catalogue in my home town.  I thought it would be worth a try but Toronto doesn't seem to distinguish between manwha and manga.  I didn't check all of them, but I don't remember there being any Korean graphic novels included in the Graphic Novels — Japan search.

The Oddities:

Examples of manga with no subjects:
Hellsing
Alice 19th (for volumes 4 and 6 only)
Ultra Maniac
Castle in the Sky
Tsubasa
xxxHolic

Most were found by publisher searches.  The Del Rey titles were completely missed (and found either by an author or title search) as I am unwilling to browse through results for a search on Del Rey as publisher.
Imadoki has no volume numbers, only names.
Alice 19th - there are two author entries for Yu Watase within the Alice 19th records.

Ultra Maniac -  two entries (vol. 1 and volume 1 as "other title"), only one for the author.  Also listed as (television program) despite being a manga.  Probably because the note says that it inspired the anime.

Tsubasa and xxxHolic - not found by searching Del Rey - one is listed with Clamp (artistic group) as author, the other Clamp.  One xxxHolic record lists Tsubasa as the translated title of the book (I emailed the library about this).  Othello and Wallflower were found as title searches.  These all listed Kodansha within their records so I tried it as a keyword search, but there were 1300 results - too many to sift through.

Some titles are listed more than once in the catalogue because of spelling variations within the records.  "Title volume xx" is given as a variant/alternate title while "Title vol. X" might be the main entry.

Removed from the List:

Any Pokemon titles - I didn't want to try to separate the manga from the chapter books and videos/dvds
NO Holdings - some of these were from the Merril collection, some were lost
Two art books kept on list on a whim

Reading the list:

Dragon Ball Z. Vol. 1-13
Toriyama, Akira, 1955-
Viz Communications, c1984.
Teen Graphic Books FICTION TOR
Graphic Books FICTION TOR
Children's Graphic Books FICTION TOR
(gn 1,12-13 ) (viz 1-13) (gn-jp vol 13)

The library holds volumes 1-13.
They are held in three different collections - Graphic Books, Teen Graphic Books and Children's Graphic Books
Volumes 1, 12 and 13 were in the "graphic novel" search results - volumes 1-13 were in the "viz" search results - volume 13 was in the "graphic novels - japan" search results.

V. Vol. Volume 1 One etc - records were emailed from the catalogue so abbreviations, numbers have not been changed.

Disclaimers: 

The searches were run on May 2nd, May 17th and May 22nd.  Records may have changed since then (ie manga on order will be catalogued and may then show up in different searches).  This isn't a list of all the manga in the TPL system, just the ones I could find.  WordPress also saw fit to remove much of the formatting from the list.  Apologies if any bunching of titles was missed/is unfixable.
 
 
The List: 

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One of the reasons I've been so sporadic with my posting lately is that I've been working on a very big list.  I indulged my tendency to occasionally get obsessive and decided to try to find most of the manga in the Toronto Public Library.  This involved running various searches and compiling the results to see which search worked best for finding manga at the library. 

After doing all of this work, I debated whether or not to actually make it a post and eventually decided to go ahead and publish what I had done.  Why not share all that work?  :)  I wasn't sure if I wanted to publish one big list, make it a separate page, confound people searching for titles who might get this entry in their results even if it was completely useless to them, did I want to maintain or update the list (NO!), etc.  I was also a little worried that it might seem that I was picking on the library here since what I was doing was finding inconsistencies in cataloguing and so on, but really that wasn't my purpose.  It was curiosity to see what they had and how they were classifying it all. 

It was interesting to see the differences in how they catalogued the earlier manga and what they're doing for the newer titles.  That's another reason I don't want it to seem like I'm only criticizing what they've done - practices change over the years, and Toronto is a huge city with multiple branches that amalgamated into one big system back when we became the GTA.  No one is going to go back and recatalogue things just because manga's popular now.  Heck, I was having trouble being consistent in the list I was building (and in my manga library list) and I'm only one person using my own methods. 

One thing the TPL definitely should work on?  Consistency in the records for manga in the same series (for instance, use the same subjects for each book, same author entry, etc) and USE SUBJECTS!  I had run about eight different searches, sifted through hundreds and hundreds of records and only found out yesterday that they had Tsubasa and xxxHolic in their catalogue when I clicked on Clamp's author entry to confirm their Cardcaptor Sakura holdings.  arg!    I also found an error in one of their xxxHolic records - they listed Tsubasa as the uniform title and also as the original translation.  I sent them a note through their feedback to let them know that it was two different series and got a response back saying the cataloguing department would look into it.  We'll see if they fix it or not.  

The moral of that little story is keep clicking when you're searching, I guess.  You never know what else is going to turn up.  :)

I'll post my search strategy and the results later today or tomorrow.  I'm still doing a bit of tweaking and I didn't want to make one incredibly huge entry.  It seemed logical to separate my motives from my results.  :)  I'm also not planning on maintaining the list.  This took hours and hours to do and is NOT something I'm going to repeat any time soon!  From now on I find out about manga additions from their new book list, and I'll hope that they make an effort to include it all. 

Updated to add here since I'm afraid of messing up the formatting in the big post again:  If you're looking for Viz and/or Tokopop titles the most efficient way of searching seems to be by publisher keyword.  It picks up all the titles lacking subjects as well as the one that use graphic novel as a subject. 

Edited again because Toronto is the GTA, not GTO.  Too much manga!

That was me today when I went to the comic store at lunch for my new manga and saw… empty shelves!  Gasp!  Yes, the shipment was late this week so I had to troll around for something else to read while I ate lunch since I am biologically incapable of eating without a book in my hand.  I ended up getting Ghost Hunt 2 since I had first passed over it when it came out and then decided to collect the series after all with volume 3.  I went back after work and was BAD!

Since I've been lazy the past few weeks and haven't posted my new manga at all, I had to really stretch to remember what I've bought lately.  Sadly, my memory really is that bad.  Anyway, my new manga for the last three weeks are:

W Juliet 10 - I think there may only be thirteen volumes in this series, so it's almost over.  That's the only reason I'm going to keep going with this one - it's kind of annoying me, but not enough to drop, if that makes sense.  This volume featured a boy from Ito's past showing up with a crush on her (again) and Makoto gets jealous (again).  They need to come up with something new for these two other than jealousy and Makoto almost gets discovered.  I know it's not every book, but it feels like it.  It also introduced a love interest for another of Ito's brothers which was kind of nice, even if I found her a bit annoying.  I was in a bad mood when I read this book, though.  That may have made a difference.  :)

Decendants of Darkness 11  - I'm still a bit confused by all of the new characters (two crow characters show up in the beginning to help Hisoka, and while I'm sure they've made an appearance before I have no memory of them), and now there's some sort of conspiracy or secret plot and a whole new thing with a magic dragon…  I think I'm going to have to go back and reread the last three (?) books to get it all straight in my head.  Or better yet, wait until the next book comes out and do it then.  I think part of the problem is that I'm still not enjoying the new storyline as much so I'm reading it too quickly for everything to sink in properly.  We did get to see more of Tatsumi and Watari investigating Hiroka's family though, which was a nice change of pace.  This series only has another volume or two to go as well, but I'm not as happy about this one ending.  Until the last few books, I've really liked Decendents of Darkness.

Me and Harujion
Little Butterfly 1
Gals! 6
Fullmetal Alchemist 7
Nana 2 - I'm glad I bought this!  I didn't fall in love with the first volume and was kind of wondering why it's so popular.  I'm not sure why I liked the second book more… perhaps because it focused more on the developing friendship between the two Nanas more than their men issues.
Not So Bad 1 - my comic store friend recommended this to me.  She described it as Tramps Like Us, but with two men and it's Korean.  Yep, that about sums it up!  A moody actor comes across a young homeless man and invites him to stay at his place despite being a cold loner.  The boy slowly warms the actor up but may be more of a stray than he seems and jealousy begins to affect their budding relationship.  (And I would be clearer if I could actually find the book.  It's disappeared for the moment)  I initially passed on this book because I found the cover art creepy, which oddly enough is why I didn't pick up Tramps Like Us at first as well.  I still don't like the Not So Bad cover, though.

Brother
Lies and Kisses 
I ordered these two off of Amazon since DramaQueen books are kind of underrepresented at the comic store (I think?  I don't remember seeing any) and I was wondering what they were like.  I chose these two almost at random and ended up with a pair of books with a…. theme.  That would be an incest theme, darnit!  I knew about Brothers (obviously you can tell from the title) but they're STEP-brothers, so that's okay…. Lies and Kisses, though.  Nope.  Not step-brothers at all.  Both were pretty good, and Brother was more explicit than the other.  It actually has full-frontal male nudity, with no body blocking, suggestive shading, artfully arranged clothing, etc etc.  The bookstore friend I lend yaoi books to (who writes slash fanfiction) called me naughty when she returned them.  But I didn't know when I bought them!  Mental note: pay more attention to book blurbs…  :)

Ghost Hunt 2
Scott Pilgrim 3 - this one wasn't quite as good as the first two, I thought.  It was a little harder to track the story (there were a *lot* of flashbacks).  That said, it was still fabulous!  I had to stop reading it on the way home because I burst out laughing on the bus and got stared at.  I hate it when that happens.  Scott must fight another one of Ramona's evil ex-boyfriends, who has special vegan psychic powers!  oooooh!  Also, there's a lot of ex-boyfriend/girlfriend angst, but in a good way.
Kamichama Karin 4
Tramps Like Us 9 - the penultimate volume!  (I know what penultimate means now due to Harry Potter overexposure)  I take it back!  There are 14 volumes listed on the Tokyopop website.  That's what I get for only trusting one source.  That means there are five more to go!
Cromartie High School 6
Boogiepop Returns: VS Imaginator Part 1 (2nd novel)
GTO: The Early Years 1  - yes, really.  I had no idea this was coming out.  I haven't cracked this one open yet, but it's BIG.  Like, twice the size of a normal manga big.  Also more expensive than a normal manga, grumble grumble.

And as a special good night treat, here's a video for the opening theme song to the second season of Ah! My Goddess.  It's a pretty pretty song and I've been listening to it non-stop.  I haven't seen any of the episodes yet, but it's nice to see more of the series characters in the credits.