Title: 千夏のうた (Chinatsu's Voice) Vol. 1
Artist/Author: きたがわ翔 (Sho Kitagawa)
Book Size/Pages: B-6, 227pp., w/o furigana
Original Serialization: Weekly Young Jump Vol 10, 04 - Vol 19, 04
First Printing: 6/23/04
Rating: 4/4

Another find I did while looking at the new releases in the bookstore. This Fuyuki's flashback of the summer, 10 years ago when he met Chinatsu. It's more of a "daily life" story with a girl and her mesmerizing voice than something more supernatural. The plot's been flowing very well so far. I'm surprised something so "innocent" would end up in a Young comic.

The first few pages with the older Fuyuki are in color.

1. 蝶々 (Butterfly): A story from the summer, 10 years ago. 稲葉千夏 (Chinatsu Inaba) has just moved into this rustic town with her grandmother who tells her that this is where her mom had grew up. She explores the new town and finds (岩泉冬紀) Fuyuki Iwaizumi on the shore eating oysters. When they get caught, they both run off in the woods. At first Fuyuki wants to get rid of this incessant guest who wants to follow him, but his attempt causes Chinatsu to fall off a small cliff and sprain her ankle. As he's carrying her home, they see some butterflies and Chinatsu starts singing. Her song attracts the butterflies and Fuyuki is stunned at how powerful her voice is. They go home where Chinatsu's grandma tells her about Fuyuki and how he's younger by a year (unfortunately). In bed, Fuyuki can't stop thinking about the song he heard.

2. 秘密の庭 (Secret Garden): Fuyuki goes to school and arranges to attend school after summer vacation. Instead of going home, she wanders around school. She climbs a tree and spots Fuyuki in class and later goes into the woods in back. After class, Fuyuki comes looking for her and gets accosted by a few bullies. As they're about to pummel him, they hear Chinatsu singing and her song pacifies them.

3. ムクゲの花 (Rose of Sharon): Fuyuki and Chinatsu find a stray puppy in the woods. Fuyuki goes home to get some food for it. Chinatsu then spots another dog who she thinks may be the parent and chases after it. She comes across a patch of flowers to which she finds out belongs to the old man who lives in the bomb shelter. It marks the place where his 10 year old younger brother died in the war. Fuyuki comes back to find that the bullies have the puppy in a plastic bag and are playing with it.

4. 仔犬 (Puppy): One of them drops the bag and Chinatsu tackles the other, making him bleed from the head. After they run off, Fuyuki and Chinatsu find that the puppy has stopped breathing.

5. 小さな命 (Small Life): Chinatsu tries singing and that brings it back to life. At Fuyuki's place, the father of the injured child comes trying to place blame on Fuyuki, but Chinatsu and the old man come to his defense. Chinatsu apologizes and chases after the old man.

6. おじいさんの空 (The Old Man's Sky): They spend the day in the woods first playing around and then doing some cloud watching.

7. 嵐の予感 (Premonition of a Storm): Chinatsu helps replant some of the old man's flowers, but finds out that he has a cataract and can't see. She apologizes profusely. The old man in turn, gives her a gift, a wood-carved fish. He senses the wind picking up.

8. 贈り物作戦 (The Plan for the Gift): They go to the beach trying to find driftwood that looks like a cat so the old man can carve it as a present to Fuyuki's mom. After some searching, the old man and Fuyuki head home. Chinatsu and Mukumuku (the puppy) stay, despite the incoming storm.

9. 台風上陸 (The Storm Touches Down): Mukumuku runs to the old man's place where he realizes that Chinatsu is probably still at the beach. He goes to find that the tide has risen and Chinatsu is clinging onto a rock engulfed by water. With Chinatsu in peril, the old man remembers his brother's death and says that he's also been dead since that day. However, he can't let Chinatsu die.

Title: 彼氏彼女の事情 (His and Her Circumstances) Vol. 18
Artist/Author: 津田雅美 (Masami Tsuda)
Book Size/Pages: Small B-6, 187pp., w/furigana
Original Serialization: Monthly LALA 11/03-3/04
First Printing: 5/10/04
Rating: 3/4

I was going through Newtype August and it said this book was the top selling manga for the previous month.

I'm finally caught up with this series. There's a lot of story telling in this volume about the people in Arima's previous generation. Not as much humor, but I enjoyed the narrative. It might be because I took a week off from reading before this volume.

Bonus is a Tsuda Diary.

84. ACT84 ラ・ヴィ・アン・ローズ (La Vie En Rose (Life in Pink)): Arima is currently staying with Reiji. He attends the concert. He gets visited by his dad who checks up on him. That night, Arima asks Reiji if he's married to which he replies that he can't. He's been permanently scarred from his mother's suicide where she tried to drown with him.

85. ACT85 カデンツァ (Cadenza): On their 6th day, Arima and Reiji bump into Yukino on the streets and invite her to dinner. Reiji tells Arima that he should return home now and that he can't do anything to help him. At home, Arima asks his dad about Reiji's past. Menawhile, Arima's biological mother sees her former lover on TV.

86. ACT86 ノクターン (Nocturne): Arima's dad tells the story of his family, particular, his father. His explains the lineage of his family where they've been doctors since the Edo period. His father never appreciated his children though and despite the oldest sister studying hard to become a doctor, he brushed off her goal and told her to do something else. Eventually she did. Years later, they hear about their father's new and illegitimate child, Reiji.

87. ACT87 ゲーム (Game): After the suicide, Souji's father tells him to take care of the mischievous Reiji, especially since the result of the family simple detests him as he's gotten more attention than all of them combined. When confronted by family members who mock him for being a bastard, he pounds their faces in and takes pleasure in that.

88. The Way We Were: In middle school, Reiji graduated with top honors and is revered by everyone, making Souji feeling very isolated. Some of the feelings his older sister has about the illegitimate child getting more attention creeps in and Souji starts showing that. In retrospect, he regrets that he brushed Reiji off.

Title: 鋼鉄天使くるみ (Steel Angel Kurumi) Vol. 9
Artist/Author: 介錯 (Kaishaku)
Book Size/Pages: B-6, 180pp., w/furigana
Volume: 9/11
Original Serialization: Monthly Shonen Ace Next 3/02-5/02, Ace 7/02-11/02
First Printing: 12/25/02
Rating: 3/4

What happened here? Kurumi got moved from Ace Next (older audience) to Ace (younger audience) half way through this volume. But it's not even so clear cut as Ace Next doesn't use furigana while Ace does. One would expect that the first few chapters lack furigana, like all the previous volumes, and the later chapters containing kana. But that's not the case. The chapters that lack furigana are 50, 51, and 52, in the middle of the book. Strange.

With the transition, the character designs have changed slightly. It's not a little more cheerful and "bright" (it's still a black and white volume). I dunno about that. One thing I noticed is that there's no coherent story anymore, but rather, little episodes.

Bonus is prologue chapter (probably for the readers of Ace) and a 1 page bonus comic.

47. サキの病 (Saki's Sickness): Saki passes out from Kurumi feeling for her temperature and has a dream about her and Kurumi as kids where Kurumi was the only one who would play with her. She wakes up and get taken care of by Kurumi until Nakahito shows up.

48. カリンカの気持ち (Karinka's Feelings): Excelia comes to the restaurant to work and while she's changing, she gets involve in a conversation with Karinka about who they love the most. Karinka tells her she loves Nakahito although he's not her real master. Later, Karinka introduces a new item to the menu, but it tastes horrible as Kurumi took the liberty to add some more ingredients.

49. 仲人の不安 (Nakahito's Uneasiness): Jinkuji-sensei tells Nakahito that her family's angel is Aoi. Nakahito calls Amagi, Dr. Amagi, but Kurumi reminds him that it's store-owner Amagi. Both these bring up the fact that he's 100 years in the future and that he's in an age where most of the people he used to know have died. However, the Steel Angels remind him that he still has people to rely on.

50. そして、歯車は廻りだす (And Then, The Gear Turns): While chasing someone who stole a briefcase, the Angels bump into Aoi, who has actually passed the last 100 years in real-time. Nakahito tries to get some information as to what happened to his family, but Aoi's memory had been erased. It's a new semester at Angel school, and they anxiously await the new students.

51. 新入生の実力 (The New Person's True Strength): Three new angels arrive and they defeat the 3 Angel of Angels at school, Maki, Asuka and someone else. The next person they want is Kurumi.

52. 詩人の奏でる詩 (The Poem that Portrays the Poet): The fight gets broken up. Amato takes his Angel, Excelia to the depths of the school to the cradle of the Angels where the first 13 Angels were created, including herself. He starts telling her the story of her sisters with Kaga listening on.

53. クリスティーヌ天城の新連載 (Christine Amagi's New Story): Amagi tries writing a new manga which resembles the Kurumi story [at least the first part of it].

Like with all software, I'm late on delivery with missing features. I had originally planned for 5 days (last Monday through Friday), but it's now 1:45 on Saturday.

This is the program I've been working on for the past week, which I call "hatsubai" (meaning "on sale" in Japanese) for lack of anything more creative. Sometime late last week, I was surprised to find out that there were quite a few new releases in September that I wasn't aware of including Hanaukyo Maid Tai #10, Mahoraba #7, Fruits Basket #15, Ichigo 100% #12, and so on. I've been so engrossed in my reading that I haven't been keeping up with the list of upcoming titles. I don't think it's a serious problem as I'd much rather reading manga (and watching anime) rather than just spending all my time just talking about it and not actually enjoying the art. It's still nice to keep up with titles. What I needed was something that will scan through all releases for series I'm interested in and authors I enjoy reading, hence this program.

Hatsubai does a very simple job: it parses a long list of manga/anime/anime music/novel releases and shows me anything that matches the title or author that I specify. It also allows for some simple bookkeeping as to what I've pre-ordered, what I've purchased, and what I'm going to purchase. It can also filter out on the different types of media.

The database is pretty big and contains almost 45,000 products, ~27,000 manga titles, ~6600 anime DVDs, ~3600 anime/game CDs, and a few thousand novels and CD singles. The is downloadable as a comma separated file from Mangaoh and they track titles all the way to the beginning of 2001 to current/next month.

According to the program right now, there are 12 "must have" books for me for my next order. I didn't even know half of these were released until I ran it through the program.

If you click the image below, there's a little demo of the program. At the very least, watch the splash screen. That caused me quite a headache, but served as a good learning experience in programming in Cocoa.

The only missing feature now that I had planned is the automatic download of the product list from Mangaoh. Right now, I have to manually save the file, but eventually, the program will be smart enough to do that. It's amazing what laziness can make people do. :)

Manga reading will continue tomorrow, after a long, long slumber.