it can’t all be about manga…

Before Mio dies, she promises her husband Takkun and son Yuji that she will come back to visit them when the rainy season arrives. She tells her son of a planet named Archive where the dead people go and live while their loved ones on Earth still remember them. That’s where she’ll be waiting.

Takkun and Yuji are barely coping after Mio’s death - a process complicated by Takkun’s health problems (he has some sort of chemical imbalance that causes seizures and poor health as well as some mental issues) and by the fact that neither of them really know how to get through the day to day stuff without her around.

One day at the beginning of the rainy season the two are walking through the woods and at the ruins of an old building they come across Mio, standing in the rain and with no memory of her life on Earth. Deciding not to tell her that’s she’s been dead, they take her home and start to try to rebuild some of their old life together.

As the days go by, Takkun tells Mio the story of how they met in high school (they always sat near each other in class) and how they got together in their twenties, slowly building a relationship together that nearly crumbles when Takkun is overwhelmed by the sudden arrival of his health breakdown and pushes Mio away so that she can have a happy life without him. Their love story is intertwined with Mio learning to be a mother to Yuji and falling in love with Takkun again.

Be With You is a Japanese novel by Takuji Ichikawa that was adapted into a single volume manga. I read the manga a couple of weeks back and fell in love with it. The story was both uplifting and heartbreaking (little Yuji is thrilled to have his mother back and seems okay with her eventually going back for most of the story, but Takkun knows from the start just how hard it’s going to be to lose the love of his life for the second time) and when I finished it I started recommending it to my friends. It’s hard to describe a lot of what I loved about it without giving away the ending, though. That was such a large part of the wonderful surprise for me. I liked that they managed to convey a message of love, acceptance and sacrifice in such a non-cheesy way. And yes, I cried a bit while reading the manga.

The novel I read after the manga (I finished it today while on the train here in Japan, which seems appropriate). There are some slight differences in the story - Takkun works for a lawyer instead of a library, but he still needs to ride his bike everywhere because he has a problem with confined spaces. There is the addition of an old man they meet in the park, while the manga has Mio’s mother showing up out of concern for whether or not Takkun is a good father and husband. I think there are differences in how Archive is introduced to Yuji, but I admit my memory isn’t clear on that right now and I don’t have the manga with me. I was pleasantly surprised by liking the translation though. I have a history of not liking how stilted Japanese novelizations can be when translated into English.

All in all, I recommend both. I think I liked the manga a bit more, but that’s because I read it first and I rather like the images. It also does well in presenting the entire story in one volume without feeling rushed. The novel has a bit more depth and thought in it, mostly because it’s easier to describe the situation a little more, as well as having the time to expand on characterizations.

(I’m having trouble with the copy and paste on this computer so I’ll add links to the books later. Both are from Viz. Go look them up on Amazon or something.) :)

I was trolling for Battlestar Galactica previews on the Sci Fi Channel’s website this morning and came across the Dresden Files!  I couldn’t get the preview to work, but I found it on YouTube so got to watch.  I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the clips (and I tried to ignore the cheesey voice over) but I’m more than willing to give it a fair shot.  And it’s starting in Canada on Space in January as well, so I get to watch it during its first run! 

(Totally off-topic, but the other thing I’m really looking forward to in January is Heroes restarting.  Tonight’s episode was amazing!  The end sequence completely blew me away.)

BTW, the pilot of the Dresden Files was filmed here in Toronto, so we’ll also get to play “spot the landmark” while watching.  That’s always fun. 

If you’ve never heard of Harry Dresden, you’ll want to check out the books by Jim Butcher.  (Storm Front is #1 in the series.)  The basic premise is that Harry is a wizard who works as a PI and on retainer for the city police.  Whenever they have an odd, unexplainable case Murphy (the head of the special department) will call in Harry to help.  The books bring in magic, vampires, werewolves, talking skulls, angels, holy knights etc etc.  A very entertaining series, and it’s a bonus for me that while Harry has a hero complex and will take an unbelievable amount of damage during the course of the story, he also doesn’t have completely unrealistic power-ups every book that will eventually give him god-like powers.  *cough*Anita Blake*cough*  If you watch the preview for the series, it’s actually a pretty good representation of the character, though it’s hard to tell if they get his coat right.  Harry’s leather coat is practically a separate character in the books… Also they did something to change little blonde Murphy….

In lieu of posting, I have been reading Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett and The Pinhoe Egg by Diana Wynne Jones.  Neither one was a disappointment.  Wintersmith is the third Tiffany Aching book and seems a wee bit more mature than the first two, mostly because of a touch of romance.  Tiffany is brought along to see the Black Morris dance (which begins Winter) and breaks all sorts of rules by jumping into the dance herself.  This manages to not only bring her to the attention of the Wintersmith, who begins to fall in love with her as only an elemental spirit can, but also puts the coming of Summer in jeopardy.  A very good read for the beginning of Winter!

On Sunday I also bought Television Without Pity: 752 Things We Love to Hate (and Hate to Love) About TV and have been amusing myself reading it in bits and pieces.  Do yourself a favour and check out the sample entries in the book link.  I did the silent giggle thing on the subway for about three stops while reading (and not so silent when I read the entry for the A-Team) and when I got up to leave saw that some dude had been staring at me.  How embarrassing!  That didn’t stop me from continuing to read it on the bus afterwards, though.  Fun book.  I was sad to see that although Captain Kangaroo and Mister Rogers both made the children’s tv host entry, Mr. Dress-Up didn’t rate.  Or did they even air that show in the States?  Whatever.  I adored Finnegan growing up (the silent little puppet dog) but Casey freaked me out a little.  He was too much like the creepy puppets from Mister Rogers for me… and the puppets on that show were the reason I never watched it.

I was looking up the correct title for Summers at Castle Auburn for Melrose earlier and saw that Sharon Shinn has two books that I missed: Dark Moon Defender (the third Twelve Houses book featuring the King’s Rider Justin) and Dream-Maker’s Magic which has been out for months.  I somehow never remember to check Sharon Shinn for new books… and she seems to put them out faster than I expect.   It feels like I just read The Thirteenth House!

I’ve also been updating my new manga list from a few days back with very mini-reviews and I put the new manga from the TPL October release lists on my manga-at-the-library post.   I don’t think I ever mentioned it, but one of the behind the scenes things I did in August was run another set of publisher searches and pick out a batch of new titles that were in the catalogue.  As always, the list is not complete, only what I’ve found, blah blah.  Although I discovered (to my vague annoyance) that this is how they list the Fushigi Yugi manga if you do a title search:  Fushigi yugi (Television program).  I thought it was the anime series, but no.  It’s manga.

I’ve been meaning to write about some of my new yaoi books for about two weeks now and haven’t gotten around to it.  One of those situations where I know writing the post is going to take forever so I keep putting it off.   Soon… I will do it soon.

So what have I been doing instead?

Tonight I watched some of the xxxHolic anime.  Episodes 22 and 23 (SPOILERS AHEAD!) were from volume 6 of the manga, which has been my favorite story so far.  It’s the chapter about the lonely woman in the park that Watanuki meets and forms a bond with… and he keeps going to see her even though he knows it’s killing him.  sniff!  Yes, I shed a single tear tonight, which surprised me because I did like the manga version better.  The anime still touched me, though.  It looks like the next episode will be a flashback to one of Watanuki’s first ghost friends, but hopefully the spider vengeance story will be coming soon.  If there’s only three episodes left, though, they don’t have much time.

Yesterday I read Skybreaker by Kenneth Oppel, which is the sequel to Airborn.   I got caught up in the adventure and romance and didn’t stop to play on the computer.  Young Matt Cruse is back with his plucky friend Kate and this time they’re off to find a “ghost” ship that disappeared 40 years ago and has been drifting through the skies ever since.  There was a lot of tension in the book - were they going to find the lost ship?  would Matt and Kate stay together despite their attractive new treasure hunting partners?  would they get caught by pirates before finding the treasure?  will Matt ever get over being a poor boy dating a rich girl?  A very fun read!  I gave Airborn to my nephew for his birthday - I think I’m going to give him the sequel for Christmas.

18 episodes of House!  Yes, I’ve been making my way through season 1.  All of my friends seem to watch it and while I liked it too, it was never enough to remember when it was on or watch instead of Supernatural.   I was home sick from work for a couple of days and thought it would be appropriate to watch a medical drama.  It’s amusing to watch.  There are very definite patterns to the treatment of patients that they rarely deviate from (they like to half kill patients with the wrong treatments before figuring out what they actually have), but I get a kick out of watching Wilson.  He’s the head of Oncology but all he ever does is hang out with House and his lackeys.  Sometimes he’ll look into a microscope and say “It’s not cancer!” but you don’t see him doing actual work very often.  I think he’s secretly jealous of House’s lackeys and the fact that Wilson’s office isn’t as big or cool looking.

Hmm, not blog-related, but I did blow off processing new dvd’s for a while at work on Saturday to work on another DMP manga list for the bookstore.  For the FIFTH time!  If my supreme overlord manager had been there I would have called it “Cathy’s last DMP list EVER” which might have helped with finally getting any of these books into the store.  Hey, it worked with the anime!  I made one massive, 5 page list of anime I wanted for my section, called it “Cathy’s final anime order list” and handed it over with the declaration that if we didn’t finally start getting some of this stuff in I was never making another one again.  We eventually got most of it, so I continue to nag when cool new stuff is coming out that I want us to get.  (The first volume of Bleach is being released at the end of November, btw!)

I keep missing the new tv shows I meant to watch but I did catch the first episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.  I liked it, but was disoriented by the fact that it’s a drama.  I thought it was going to be a comedy (like 30 Rock) but it’s a drama about making a comedy show…. slight difference.  I was also getting distracted by how many people I kept recognizing.  But they’d only rush by, or were someone’s assistant and only had a minute of airtime.  I guess as the show goes on these background people will get more attention, it was just weird how I’d only have time to think “Hey! Isn’t that….” and then they’d be gone.  :)

This week is Supernatural, which I’ve really been looking forward to.  And Entertainment Weekly had Battlestar Galactica (my other “I CAN’T WAIT” premiere) on the cover this week, which was awesome.  Not too many spoilers in the accompanying article… they were all in the pictures that went with it.  arg!  Be warned if you don’t like spoilers!

I’m off to watch another episode of House now before turning in.  I’m going to start working on my yaoi reviews tomorrow night and as soon as I see the next and last episode of Ouran (I’m assuming #26 is the final one of the season and I hope I hope it’ll be back for a second year!) I’m going to get back into writing about the anime episodes, which August-the-hell-month killed, among other things.

Tonight I sat down with my manga list and Amazon.ca to copy and paste all of the release dates they had for the titles I collect.  The new and improved list is on my Not Yet Published page.  If I see any mistakes in the future I’ll correct them (I’m not sure how accurate the Go Comi dates are since they have two release dates for their manga, for example).  I still have to input some DMP books, but I think I got pretty much everything for the next few months.

There are a few things that I found that looked interesting.  There’s a Naruto novel coming out soon, and I found a volume of Oh My Goddess that’s in colour and collects some classic stories.  THAT went on my wish list!  Also, if you’re looking on Amazon.ca for Zombie Powder, you need to leave the “d” out of Powder.  Oi.

I also found out that there are a few Diana Wynne Jones books coming out in October/November.  Yay!  Pinhoe Egg is part of the Chrestomanci series and is coming out on September 28.  Or October 1, although that may just be an alternate cover.  The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is also being rereleased in October (my favorite definitions were always “stew” and “neverending quest”  heh) as well as The Skiver’s Guide.  Enna Hittims is coming out November 1 and looks like it’s for younger readers.  (I chose links based on which records had book descriptions, btw, which is why they’re from all over the place.)

Howl’s Moving Castle will always be my favorite Diana Wynne Jones book, though.

 

Ha, I’ve been slacking off again.  I was going to write about some bookstore stuff on Saturday after work, but came home to a sad little “please chat online with me” message from my nephew.  How could I resist?  And yesterday I had to finish reading Will of the Empress so I could bring it back to the library… such a hard life.  Actually, I was pleasantly surprised when I picked it up in the morning and (finally!) read the cover blurb.  I had thought it was another Trickster’s Choice book but it’s part of the Winding Circle series, which are some of my favorite Tamora Pierce books.    (BTW, Tamora Pierce has a new series starting next month.  The first book is called Terrier.  It sounds interesting.)

One of the fiction people told me on Saturday that she had a customer in who was asking about the Harlequin manga, which I had seen before and almost bought because I liked the concept and the crazy pink and purple paper.  I was very happy to hear that someone had heard of them!  Romance readers, now wanting manga?  There truly is something for everyone…. I popped over to the Dark Horse site to look up titles and ISBNs for her so she could try to get them into the store.  (If you follow the link, ignore Harlequin Valentine.  It’s not part of the manga series.  :)  Click on the covers and it will bring you to a page where you can check out four page previews.)  The colour coding is important, btw - the purple books are the “sensual” ones, pink are more innocent. 

Today I decided to go to my comic store to pick up my comics before the new ones hit the shelves tomorrow.  I wanted to get 52 off of my pull list (I’m still not caring about any of the characters or the plot, so I’m giving up on it) and I keep forgetting to mention it when I go.  I figured I’d remember if the store wasn’t so busy when I went in.  When I started talking to the comic store woman, I found out that she was the one who had been asking for the Harlequin manga.  Aww!  I wanted it to be a “regular” person!  Still, I found out that what she was looking for was a newer set, which I hadn’t found at Dark Horse.  There are four more coming out this month that you can see at the Harlequin web site.  (Click on the cover and then scroll down to “more about this book” for a preview.)  These ones are all pink.  I printed out the list for my fiction buddy so she can add them to what she already has.  I think the theory will be to put a couple in the manga section and some in the romance section.  I hope the manga love spreads after all!

And, uh… I forgot to get 52 taken off of my pull list again.  Sadly, it’s that easy to distract me.

I was just browsing over at Meg Cabot’s Diary and saw that Tokyopop is putting out a sequel to her Avalon High book as an OEL manga.  There are some character designs and cover art here.  Avalon High was… not my favorite Meg Cabot book ever (her teen books have been feeling rushed and vaguely incomplete lately - like everything is constantly being set up for a sequel), but I also admit to some Arthurian legend bias.  I’ve never really liked the story of King Arthur, which tends to spill over onto works based on it.  (Before you ask, no I haven’t read Mists of Avalon.  I’ve tried.  Three times.  Still haven’t made it all the way through….)

So, uh…. way to go Tokyopop.  Try to get these ones into the stores, huh?  :P

Ah, I almost blew off blogging tonight. (Again!)  I was finishing up Moon Called, which is (much to my happy surprise) a fairly decent werewolf book.  I’m not entirely sure why I bought it, since the blurb is kind of weird and disjointed and the cover isn’t great, but I’ve liked other books by that author so I gave it a shot.  Mercy is a skinwalker who shifts into coyote form.  She was raised by werewolves but never quite fit in, since she wasn’t able to join the pack and was then forced to leave her childhood home.  Now she’s in another pack’s territory, living on the edges and trying to get along with the werewolves, vampires and fae that live in the area.  I’ve not had great luck with a lot of werewolf books so I was glad this turned out well.  :)  I liked the characterizations of the wolves, the urban fantasy element was done very well (see Kitty Does the Midnight Hour for a bad example…) and the heroine was brave and plucky without being stupid about it and putting everyone else in jeopardy.  There’s nothing worse than a heroine who keeps getting into trouble because she’s too stupid to back down and find another plan…

More AMV torture

Well, not exactly music videos… I’ve already sent these to most of my friends, but what the heck.  Two I really liked with Azumanga Daioh characters - The Wizard of Ozaka and Lord of the Yen which are more movie trailer spoofs than anything… and Quid Pro Quo which has the characters from Descendants of Darkness debating what they would trade for a flying car (which is originally a skit from two of the guys from Clerks).  These are the things that made me laugh last week…

And in honour of my nephew, who has developed an Ichigo Mashimaro obsession to be proud of (I suppose it’s a good thing he can’t get any IM merchandise) here is a little promo episode of the show.  I guess it’s not really supposed to be on You Tube since the show has been licensed and is available for purchase.  Maybe you’ll want to go out and buy the dvd after watching…. :)  Also, I’m not sure why they’re in space.  It’s an imagination thing and no, they’re not in space in the regular series, though they do like a good game of pretend.

Snakes on a Plane

What to say that hasn’t been said already?  I had a great time at this one, though I couldn’t watch a lot of it (I spent a great deal of time cringing from the snake bites) and I left the theatre with a giggle headache, which is always a good sign.  I probably won’t be buying the dvd, though.  Like I could go through that again…  One thing I was surprised by and really liked was the sub plot with the FBI agent on the ground who was investigating the snakes and trying to find anti-venoms before the plane landed.  I just thought it added a nice relief from the SNAKES!!  Also, there were some characters who refused to learn and were entirely too casual about 1) being left alone in areas where snakes were known to get in and 2) sticking their hands into piles of stuff where snakes could be concealed.  There was a guy sitting a few seats down from me who really should have gone opening night.  He was by himself and kept shouting things at the screen, which got old really quickly. 

Vanished

My first new tv show of the season, and a disappointment.  I didn’t like it.  By the end of the episode I was so bored I didn’t care about the last twist and I was tired of the actors’ overacting and trying to be really really INTENSE (especially Rebecca Gayheart, who couldn’t quite pull it off).  The lead FBI guy should have just gotten a badge that said “I don’t take crap from anyone” and spared me the angst.  And poor Ming-Na.  She was reduced to running in to report things to the lead FBI guy (INTENSELY) and then looking serious while he did all the work.  It was like she was his secretary who got to pack heat.  Also, SIX subplots in one episode?  Geez!  Save something for episode two…  I have a friend who loved it though (probably because she likes the guy from Queer as Folk who played the INTENSE!! FBI guy) and one who merely liked it.  If I was really really bored I might consider watching this one, but quite frankly, I’d rather spend the hour doing something else.

Random Manga Observation

I was rereading Land of the Blindfolded the other night (such a good series, and I’m missing volumes 3 and 4 for some reason.  I think I lent them out and never got them back….) and was struck by the difference in the art for the first story in the series.  Even later chapters in the same book are much smoother.  Also, this series is really all about Arou for me, and he seemed so different when he first appeared in the story.  Much more mischievous and darker than after he falls for Kanade, and once Namiki shows up he kind of usurps the role of the rebel in the book.  In an angst competition between the two boys though, Arou wins hands down, which is probably why I love his character so much….

That’s about it for today, I think, though there were probably other things I felt like babbling about.  Hmm.  I guess I’d also like to mention that Tanya Huff (my favorite author and goddess of urban fantasy) will be at the World’s Biggest Bookstore on September 9.  My inner fangirl is squealing as I type….