Car iced-in, couldn't go anywhere this morning ORZ

Please, sun, come out and melt my iced car. Scraping got me nowhere aside from frozen fingers.

Aside from that, I am now gnawing on a pork bone, the very last hint of food in my fridge.

... let me out for groceries... please?

Manga: Zearth (Earth Protection Youth) by Kitoh Mohiro

ORZ ...... Such a huge tragedy. And I couldn't stop reading it, knowing from the beginning that every one of these 15 people was going to die after just one single battle in this Earth Protection Game. T_______T

If you were told that:
1. The game you have just entered, you cannot get out unless you die
2. If you do not play this game, Earth and its billions of people will die
3. After one single battle of this game with you as the pilot, you will die
4. Your enemies --- are you in a parallel world, with the very same family, friends, and loved ones. Everytime you win --- You have killed 100 billion people. If you lose --- your earth will be gone with the blink of an eye.

What would you do?

You don't have much of a choice, do you?

What is the right or the wrong thing to do?

You are only a normal 14-year-old.

... .... .... WHY THE HECK DO I HAVE TO BE HOOKED ONTO SUCH A BIG TRAGEDY ON CHRISTMAS DAY~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Q___________Q

It's such a page turner T___T
Zearth, with every few chapters dedicated to each Player of the game, delved into each of these youth's lives --- the very best and the very worst of their core. From the usual (?) teenage bully issues, life goal understanding, to being sold, commiting murder with the last few days of their life, or to cooly plan how their organ must be sent to a specific person for heart surgery. In a couple of days, you are going to die. What will you do, given all these various backgrounds?

"When I accepted my own [destined] death, the whole world looked different....My eyes have seen nothing; my ears have heard nothing. What have I been doing to this day? This feeling....this is the first time I'm feeling it. .... Till this day, I have only been willing to chase after it vaguely, this world that has surrounded me. I now try to implicitly recapture it. The things I have seen, heard, touched, and smelled from a distance to this day, are now all speaking to me. I am connected to this world. And what an adorable world it is! What a beautiful world. What a beautiful world. Probably, even if I harm it, it will not change." [rough translation] Zearth, vol. 6,

Volume 6 first came out Sept. 2007. The online source has only posted up till Volume 6, which means ... ... .... THE ENDING GAH I SORTA WANNA KNOW BUT SORTA NOT T_________T

Torture ORZ

...

Merry Christmas ... ? *bawls in a corner*

Vassalord 血咒圣痕
By: Nanae Chrono
Who also published: Peacemaker (1&2)probably most known, Momotama (newest)

Chrono is extremely skillful at making a completely nonsexual action into what looks like sexual invasion by mind alone. Pretty wicked stuff. In Peacemaker I was pleasantly surprised by the eyecandy quality of the imagery of the fight between Okita and the rebel leader. Also how Tei-chan *could've* had a crush on Okita, *could've* not. Everything Chrono does is an implication, while at the same time the author also uses bluntly sexual characters to contrast with the non-obvious ones with lots of sexual tension. While there are scenes that really get down to the zippers and the lacy underwears, those had their focus on other issues instead.

Perfect example - Vassalord. Charles must remain celibate out of priestly duty as well as the principle of things, while Charles' master vampire simply -loves- to tempt virgins and youngsters. Chrono manages to make the master vampire Lavlo (sp?) at the same time an ojisan as well as an extremely tempting (though not girly) uke-ish man BUT NOT. It's complicated. I love complicated.

Chrono also plays with a lot of unpleasant gore/violence, while managing to make it 'beautiful' in a story-like quality. Peacemaker was built on a little bit of historical myth (Hijikata & Okita the legendary figures, just like what Gintama's Hijikata and Sougo were based on)For gore/violence in Peacemaker you get the ninja girl beaten/raped to death, and in Vassalord, Lavlo is stripped, his intestines get pulled out, and his spinal column gets picked out one by one, and since he's a vampire he's alive and conscious during every second of it.

Lovely (?)

By: Katsu Aki, 2008

Wow. Some stuff in this story could be considered implied guru (if you don't know what that is, do not read this.) -- despite having such a juvenile art style D; There's something rather perverse about this manga content even though it never outright makes references to any sort of sexual nature. The implications are sort of just thrown in your face without warning sometimes. The characters are pre-teens, and the gods that attack them do use some very, erm, wrong methods XD"

(Well, okay, my first impression in the beginning was that this was a manga containing men with odd beards, but later that didn't matter so much anymore so I continued reading.)

God Sweepers is a manga about - well, god sweepers. Ever-so-slightly implying shounen-ai and shoujo-ai (yaoi & yuri) of sorts, this Japanese original fantasy is rather dramatic, a bit fast-paced in depicting each turn of events, and has a few surprises every other page.

The style of this author is something comparable to a...maybe, junior high level, not-too-well-proportioned manga art styles. Surprisingly though (and I was honestly surprised) the story is a page-turner. The story is innovative in some of its details, and some characters in here are somewhat likeable (...) The way the characters in relation to the setting is one of the things I like about this manga. What I personally believe could be done better is the pace of plot development - too fast, omits details even though every turn is very dramatic. And the juvenile art style doesn't help. ...I admit I became curious in the beginning due to its very WTF beginning ---------- basically all the gods in Japan are trying to get the main character to take off his clothes.



Alright, fine. Not just any clothes - but a special temple garment that hides boy A from the gods' eyes. Inside the boy's heart, there lives a spirit that's basically The Spirit in this story. If a god eats The Spirit, that god becomes all-powerful and can then rule over the whole world, so to say. The boy A is - if you want to give him a stereotype - an Oh-no-don't-hurt-me-but-I-believe-in-you-anyway uke-looking young teen. I love how in the appendix of the first (?) manga there's a small parody interlude:
The gods: "Take it off! Take it off!"
boy A: (blushes) "Y-you guys... Aw! Alright, but just a little bit <3"
His knights in shiney armor: "No! Don't do it! (peeks from between fingers)"

There's an immortal tentacle girl in it --- D She spends 1/3 of the time naked DD
That's where I thought it got a bit guru-ish. One of the gods was trying to kill the god inside tentacle girl, and apparently the god inside the girl lives in her (of course, where else) uterus. So in order to kill the god in the uterus (...) the attacker summoned a what looked like two stories high hot, lava rock to drill into tentacle girl from the bottom up. Ouchiez.
But, you know, she doesn't die, ever, so ...

Her brother is a little-sister-complex 妹控 sadist that fantasizes about hacking his sister into little pieces with a blush and grin on his face. A rather initiative pervert, too, since he was the one who planted that god in C's uterus.

There's a little-brother-complex 弟控 in it. He's the sterotypical gentle-long-hair-protective-guard-dog-with-a-tragic-past.

Ginkun is a lolicon. He blushes when hugging 12-year-olds. What was he blushing over?! XDD

Everyone's at least a bit perverse in this story. How glorious. ... Or it could just be me.

The manga gets slightly philosophical - though at the pace it was going, this could be easily missed. It's the question of the possibility of the coexistence of gods in people's hearts and people facing a whole world full of gods. A had a conversation with the god of land about how human beings should live while opposing the existence of the gods (why he thinks such subject matter would be understood by a 12-year-old is beyond me) A and B are predicted by the dead gods in 'hell' that they'll never be able to have happy-ever-after. Also, in the end of volume 3, C says: "I don't think I can kill the gods forever. 'Cause...I saw...they're everywhere."

Now, did the whole story end at volume 3? Er, I'm a little confused. Either it has ended on a note that these god sweepers will continue to sweep out the 8 billion (or million?) gods in Japan and thus --- an open ending, or that "End" at the bottom right corner of the page is just the end of a volume (though this does not occur in the previous two). Could be that famous budget problem. They just killed Akahoshi Shua-Hu manga as well, so I wouldn't be surprised. D'aw. D;

-----'cause, y'know, I have so much time [NOT]

Manga: 漂泊者 Rover (rough translation)

Action/Adventure Japanese history, western myth Elves, Roman history, and pseudo-Nazi military ------ big crazy Crossover story.
If you are a fan of Hellsing - this is the same artist Kouta Hirano.
Mainly for me this artist's 'signiture' is 耍狠, ruthlessness.

You basically see the main character waltz into a sea of enemies, be it monsters, other vampires, or the army, and then kill everyone with a vicious grin on his face. Now, I wasn't a die-hard fan for Hellsing (I was in love with the anime's music, and the interactions between the vampire and the owner, but that was it.) 'Rover', on the other hand, shows potential. It makes uses of different historical figures in the Japanese wars (and later I suspect a Roman historical figure or two, 'cause two have popped up without identifying themselves), which provides a certain level of relativity for those who love wild history stories. It provides the readers a very out-of-this-world spin-off on the question of "What would these famous people do if they were in blah blah blah blah blah...." An example from the beginning would be when the main character was thrown into a place suddenly where two young elves (odd ears, as he called them) looking down at him fearfully in the middle of a forest.

The main character Shimazu Toyohisa (1570~1600) was basically famous for his loyal commitment to his uncle (who became his adoptive father after his own died) and had died in the battle field voluntaring himself as bait for the enemy to allow his adoptive father to escape.

Oda Nobunaga（1534~1582) was the first of the three most important leaders in the feudal war time. His name is pretty much a must-know for Japanese feudal war history. He called himself 'The Sixth Maoh' because he taunted Takeda Shingen, which implied that he was at odds with Buddhism at the time. His leadership unfortunately broke down after the famous betrayal of Akechi Mitsuhide (under Oda's leadership until his betrayal, later became the emperor.)

Nasu no Yoichi (1169~1232）on the other hand was mythicized for his skills in archery. It was rumored that the enemy head had placed a fan at the head of a ship, taunting Yoichi's army about how no one would ever be able to shoot that, and right away, Yoichi shot it with a single arrow. In Rover however, Yoichi is depicted very differently from the historical one (manly, with a wife, and died at the age of 63) as a 19 years old pretty face who the main character mistook as either a girl or a male 'serve' in the beginning. [I'm not sure of the terminology's translation in English, but a male 'serve' was basically a male child that was responsible for a military head's everyday life needs - including food, clothing, bathing, and sex.] My first thought was --- BUT AREN'T THOSE BOOBS? (it turns out it's just a very misleading fold of fabric ... )

You'd think these people would be boring, or serious. Cause, y'know, they're war myths.

But of course not. It's a crazy crossover story. Hilarious conversations ensue, like:

"W-wait a minute!! H-h-h-how did that hairy monkey become an emperor?!"
and
"Isn't Toyohisa a little countryside village with nice, honest farmers in it?" (400 years ago)
"DIE!!!"
and
"How old are you?"
Oda: 50-ish
Shimazu: 30
Yoichi: "HAHAHAHAHA. (I WIN)" <--- 19
Oda: ....This guy is NOTHING like what the historical records described...

Imagine how three historical figures, 18 and 400 years apart could discuss Japanese history.

These three people in Rover were being observed secretly by the thus-far-unidentified pseudo-Nazi group (dubbed this solely because of their uniforms - who knows, later maybe they're some heroic world-saving scientists...) as people with 'invasive' characteristics, even in this bizarre, strange place. They were seen as dangerous factors, threatening to take over this land even though Shimazu had just landed here. (He barges into the elf-bullying army man and demands that he leave his head with him.) He was right, too, these are people that thrived in war. They never stopped fighting. Thus the great, complicated big historical-fantasy world crossover begins.

I like this beginning, having read only the 7 chapters posted online thus far. I hope the thrills, humor, and wtf-ness keep up D