Random pre-swag note: Swag Bag is a semi-weekly article I’d always wanted to do, mostly because I love reading similar posts (be it blog or forum) from others. Too long has the voice and excitement of those who actually buy been left to the shadows while scanlation readers and fansub watchers make up huge amounts of most online locales of discussion. Web stuff breeds web talk after all, I suppose. This isn’t intended to be another repetitive us-versus-them debacle, simply an observation I wanted to act upon – those who buy should be proud to share, recommend, and perhaps most helpfully, inspire. No more shadows, okay?

That said, this article (Daily Video: Fans Launch ‘Sustain the Industry’ Movement) posted on AnimeNewsNetwork made me happy. Great job to them doing it! It’s a fun idea and looks like they have fun doing it. It was a nice bright spot in the day, excluding the expected sigh-factor to see another handful arguing that buying instead of watching for free is more hurt than  help to the industry. Blech. But, onto the swag!

A pretty light week for new manga releases but still some goodies to pick up. Along with a handful of new books, I also treated myself to some bargain bin finds as well.

Despite being a bit underwhelmed by the first, I couldn’t help but pick up the second volume of Chi’s Sweet Home. I’m not a cat person and it’s a story about a cat… just being a cat. But the adorable full colour art and great production values caught my eye again all the same. We’ll see if Chi can win me over in this one.

Speaking of catching my eye, the fourth volume of Karakuri Odette came out this week and I love the cover! Odette looks so silly and the outfits she and the presumably new character are wearing are really snazzy (makes the yuri fan in me squee just a tad, I’ll admit). I’ve no doubt the story inside shall prove just as fun. Super advanced robot tries to fit in at school and be like a real human girl – it’s continually proved itself 5x more charming than it initially sounds.

A new series I’ve been waiting for a while is finally out – NGE: Campus Apocalypse (Vol. 01). I was never huge into Evangelion but I’d consider myself a fan. Previous alternate-universe-esque takes on the original left me wanting anything but another, yet the artwork and plot of this one piqued my interest easy enough. Just flipping through after purchase, I know it was a good buy for the eye-candy alone. Really nice art, and past some similar character designs and names, it looks like a story that those not familiar with the franchise may be able to pick up and enjoy as well. We’ll see how this supernatural take pans out.

Thanks to a couple random items to round out a friend’s free-shipping with RightStuf purchase, I got the first two volumes of the Gravitation manga (old-school boys’ love!) and the one-shot novel. It’s really nostalgic reading them now, one of my first boys’ love stories from many a year ago! Forgot how sort of hideous the art is, though I still find the story charming in its own way – especially when Suiuchi outright proclaims his sexuality and affection for Eri. So refreshingly forthright, even today!

Also in my little RightStuf order, I got The 12 Kingdoms Novel (Vol. 03). I don’t own volumes one and two, but I will! The anime was amazing and I really look forward to reading the original books it was based off of.

And lastly, thanks to my local comic store Strange Adventures (which is where all my new purchases came from as well), I picked up volumes 1-6 of Trinity Blood. Admittedly I read the first volume a while back and wasn’t overly impressed. However, since then I’ve fallen head over heals for the out-there-oddity that is Zone-00 which has the same artist – so I’m giving Trinity Blood another go.

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About the Author: Lissa Pattillo

Lissa Pattillo is the owner and editor of Kuriousity.ca. Residing in Halifax, Nova Scotia she takes great joy in collecting all manners of manga genres, regretting that there's never enough time in the day to review or share them all. Along with reviews, Lissa is responsible for all the news postings to the website and works full time as a web and graphic designer.