Is it Thursday again already? Wow, where’d that last week go! Not too much out on the manga-front this week but I still picked up a few goodies.
Naturally my most anticipated purchase of the week was the ninth and newest volume of Yotsuba&!. It was a little disappointing to have already read all the chapters via my subscription to Yen Plus, but still kudos to the perfect timing of the book’s final chapter being released just a day before the book hit store shelves. My favourite chapter in this book is actually the one starring the least amount of Yotsuba where her Father, Jumbo and Yanda have some fun, casual talk that just felt like a refreshing, down to earth and of course amusing little break from Yotsuba being as fantastic as she is. Not that there isn’t plenty of that too – I laughed out loud hard rereading a particular scene with a teddy bear at the book’s end. Much of this book follows Yotsuba and co. as they watch hot air balloons take off which is a good excuse to get them all out of the house for a while.
After that, I bought the fourth book in the Twelve Kingdoms series. I now have 1-4 but haven’t read them yet which is something I really need to change. The anime was phenomenal and I’m really eager to relive much of its charm through the books upon which is was based. And the covers are so pretty, they’re at least great just to stare at for the time being.
Always on the look-out for something new, I picked up the first volume of Itsuwaribito at random because it looked neat and had a funny shaped raccoon thing on the cover. Apparently I was more easily enticed than usual this week? Lastly, for something sort of old, I bought for my roommate the very long-awaited continuation of UDON’s Darkstalkers comic in volume two.
How about you – anything new on your shelves this week? Any manga or comics in your bags as gifts for the holiday season?
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Two of my current 
The first book I picked up was Ayako, a new one-volume omnibus from Osamu Tezuka. It’s published by 
Manga always needs to sneak its way in somehow though and I bought two books that I absolutely adored upon reading. First was the second volume of Bunny Drop from 
It was a pretty hefty release week for Tokyopop titles so I left the store with a good armful of them. To start off, I picked up the first volume of The Stellar Six of Gingacho simply because it looked cute and I’m always up for giving a first volume a try. The interior art looks like a bit of a mess but hopefully the story proves more coherent. I love the colour scheme of the cover design though! Looking to try out another new series, and because I’m heard so many crazy things about it, I got the first volume of Demon Sacred which is by the same artist who did Jyu-Oh-Sei.
Adding to my swiftly growing stack of omnibus editions, from DelRey I bought the collected (Vol. 15,16,17) book of Air Gear -a series where the art is still fantastic even if the story keeps digging itself a deeper and deeper hole of WTF? – and (Vol. 08,09,10) of Mushishi – a series I’m collected sporadically because I liked the anime so much.
First off, I couldn’t help but pick up Dark Horse’s omnibus edition of Cardcaptor Sakura. I already own the floppies, Mixx tradebacks and Tokyopop editions of the series but this one was too shiny and high quality to ignore. If you’ve been looking to replace some old copies or haven’t had the pleasure of owning one of the most adorable and magical manga series ever made, then you owe it to yourself to pick this edition up. It’s printed on high-quality paper, has nice lettering work and a thus-smooth translation plus it’s stuffed with full colour illustration inserts. This is a beautiful book indeed!
And rounding off my purchase of new releases and a new edition of a series I already own, I bought volume of boys’ love classic, Kizuna. It’s another beautiful omnibus edition of a great series. I will be enjoying some nostalgic reading this week for sure!
