Sakura no Himegoto (Manga) Review

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Sakura no Himegoto is a one-shot shoujo manga by Hagio Akira where Narinomiya Aoi, the daughter of a distinguished family, has ended up becoming the ‘pet’ of Katsuragi Kei, a rebellious new student at their academy, thanks to her grandfathers debts. “How will she escape the burden of said debts and what is Kei after?” is what it asks. I will admit that I am not really a fan of one shots. It is part of MangaRock’s “Poor Girl In a Prestigious Academy” daily collection.

As I expected a one shot to feel like it almost seems like an introduction to a bigger story but also something I wouldn’t be bothered to read. It was just weird most of the time making comparisons between Kei and Aoi with Aoi and her dog Sakura. Essentially she wasn’t just being treated as a pet by name but was oddly pampered too like getting her hair done by him for example. You can’t help but wonder if its an accidental example of stockholm syndrome too with how weird it is. They even try to have a little comedy near the end with a reveal about the grandfather but honestly it fell flat before the story just stopped. And thats why I’ll probably never recommend One Shots, you can barely even remember them.

P.s. I’m not trying to be super inactive but family reasons and generally being poor is both stressful and distracting.

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Tsujiura-san to Chupacabra (Manga) Review

You are Here: Home>Book Reviews>Manga/Manhwa>Tsujiura-san to Chupacabra (Manga) Review

Tsujiura-san to Chupacabra is a comedy romance manga where “an ordinary, bored and bullied high school boy (Yuu) meets a mysterious, frail and cute transfer student (the titular Tsujiura) who just happens to be a feared delinquent and studies the Chupacabra. They decide to start going out together” Very simple premise although its odd about Tsujiura from the description alone. Note this is the 3rd manga I am reviewing from MangaRock’s ‘Delinquent Girls Magnet’ Collection.

It was honestly suprisingly how fast the two characters ended up going out with each other. At the end of the first chapter (around 44 pages long) she had already been long revealed to be a delinquent to the main character, sort of gone out a few times, beaten some other delinquent and decided to go out with eachother. Artstyle wasn’t bad, definitely some nice expressions although for some reason the main characters one very horn looking hair spike they have was super distracting.

Tsujiura was an interesting character, while there didn’t seem to be much explained about the main character (well at least not as obvious) you do learn about her quite often. There was also characters introduced slowly (all interesting in their own way) although you’d be surprised at how small the cast is being the kind where parents seem nonexistent (theres a reason stories do this).

In fact it was much better than I expected, the interactions between the characters was well done and they way it progressed and slowly got better for the main character was nice too. There might be some people that don’t like how it ended though I think it ended quite well. Amusingly Tsujiura isn’t just addicted to Chupacabra but basically any unknown monster thing so you do learn of a few throughout the manga.

Overall it was a pleasant surprise, it was much better than I expected it to be (not an achievement after reading 2 cancelled manga to be honest lol) but I can personally recommend binge reading it if romance/comedy manga are your thing.

Remember if you liked this post you can see the ways to support me in the post here (I’m trying to replace my 10+ years old laptop).

Mission! School (Manga) Review

You are Here: Home>Book Reviews>Manga/Manhwa>Mission! School (Manga) Review

Mission School is the 2nd manga in MangaRocks “Delinquent Girl Magnet” collection that I am reviewing. The plot follows Ishikawa Takuya, a normal high school student like most ecchi protagonists who is told he needs to take care of 30 transfer students from a boarding school that burnt down. The gimmick in this manga being that they all carry weapons for some reasons and are not normal people.

It was hard to take the first two pages as seriously as the author may of wanted you too because the 2nd page had a huge upskirt shot of one of the characters as they delivered their quote. It also breaks the 4th wall with the main characters introduction though so I assume its not meant to be taken seriously at all. Things like the Principal (Hiroshi Kuriyama) being a weird pervert and the females previous school being Saint Arsenal Academy of all things.

However the things it planned on showing like the references and the odd stuff about S&M were doubled down on throughout the story so while I wouldn’t call it great it was at least worth noting. It was also pretty decent at slowly introducing new characters and there was plenty of things I found amusing. Especially noticing the references that weren’t specifically pointed out by the manga author or translator.

The awkward thing though was the 4th volume which broke the 4th wall in an over the top way, essentially it was about the manga being cancelled and since it was in fact the last volume you had to wonder if it was a joke or legitimately true making it one of the weirdest things I’ve read. At least it got to a point where it didn’t seem like half the plot was missing before it ended.

However overall it makes it harder to recommend than it already was, I mean it does get a few things right but the fact it was almost pointlessly made an ecchi and then was ended after an odd 4th wall breaking volume seemed to downgrade it to ‘meh’. Nothing stopping you reading it if you are bored though.

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Dengeki Daisy (Manga) Impressions

You are Here: Home>Book Reviews>Manga/Manhwa>Dengeki Daisy (Manga) Impressions

Just a heads up, ‘Reviews’ are for completed series while impressions are for uncompleted ones or the occasional long running series.  Also while Dengeki Daisy has 44 chapters at the time of writing/recording I’ve only read 11. Reading more than that for impressions would be overkill considering I’m also planning to review manga that aren’t even 10 chapters long.

Getting into the review though Dengeki Daisy is what you could call a romance with comedy on top and a little bit of mystery. The main plot revolves around Teru (who is very poor) and a phone she got from her deceased brother with the contact DAISY who supports her.  Then after she accidentally breaks a window she ends up becoming a ‘servant’ of the school janitor Kurosaki who as it turns out is Daisy.

Wait a sec, before you’re like “omg you spoiled me” the fact is thrown in your face quite a few times even showing conversations between him and other characters that know him. In fact the interactions between characters are rather nice as well and the mystery behind what kind of softward Teru’s brother used to make is interesting as well.

The only thing I wasn’t that much of a fan of was the artstyle, the expressions can be quite funny and it does look alright most of the time but whenever Teru gets completely round eyes she looks slightly like an alien (I’m sure I’ll get used to it).

Overall I think its worth checking out. Also hooray for being motivated enough to do a written version.

 

Buying stuff from these sites helps me improve:

Amazon UK seems to have them around £5 per volume.

Amazon US is around $10 per volume.

Ebay UK has some volumes new for about £6.50 but with free postage (cheaper?).

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (Movie) Review

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (more like Shocking and Terrible) is a 2010 ‘horror’ film by James Nguyen where eagles and vultures attack for seemingly no reason. Its currently in 8th place in IMDB’s Bottom 100 movies of all time.

Considering it starts immediately with a long pointless car journey filmed with horrible camera work and looping music i knew it was going to be worthy of its ranking. I legitly thought I’d lose my sanity before the movie even started.
The camera looks like the characters are being stalked by a teleporting idiot most of the time and scenes are literally patched together out of random clips as you can see things in the background either disappearing or changing on multiple occasions. I couldn’t help but imagine that even the Philips CDI had better video. Not to mention the characters feel like robots with the main character being the most dead out of them all.

In fact for a large portion of the movie you just follow said main character as he does some of the most boring things you can possibly think of like working at his sales job and going on a date where he talks about his sales job. At this point i felt you could point a camera at anyone and it’d be better than this movie. In fact it takes well over 20 minutes for the first sign of the birds (aka worst CGI ever) and then another 10 minutes of incredibly boring stuff until the second one, ignoring the fact its just dead.

However around 47 minutes you’re suddenly hit by a flood of terrible CGI and ear piercing screeches (I was wearing earphones…) as the attack thats supposed to be the main plot point of the movie finally starts. I can not explain just how bad it was, and the exploded for some reason too…

It somehow got worse and worse though and i legitly started to feel sorry for the actors that were in this (one scene has 3 of them swatting the air with hangers). In fact there are so many plot holes and questionable stuff in this movie thats way too easy to notice (especially a certain goof concerning a tank of petrol). The birds even managed to do some sort of acid attack in one scene which was both confusing and stupid.

I did somehow survive until the end though and even picked up the moral of the story too: We need to stop Global Warming or birds will become deadly acid spitting exploding things and bark beetles will eat the trees.

Overall this easily counts as self torture, its terrible in every possible aspect a movie can be it (Plot, Characters, Sound, CGI etc). DO NOT WATCH!