Review: Ouran High School Host Club

Read Ouran HSHC online here
Watch the anime here

Welcome back, my lovely readers!

I hope this Thursday finds you well, and looking forward to a fantastic weekend. With 30 days until my first semester of university is over, I'm definitely looking forward to this weekend. Well I would be, except there are still 30 days until the end of my first semester of university, and it doesn't look like my workload will let up until the last possible moment :'(
Winter is finally settling in over this metropolis, and I'm feeling a little of the November blues. So I thought, how better to fix my under-the-weather attitude than with a super-cheerful and lovely manga that is also an anime full of roses and sunshine? And there's also a cross-dressing heroine! That's right, I'm talking about the hilarious,  sympathetic, comedic, gender-bender high school romance, Ouran High School Host Club!
I've actually watched the anime, and the story matches up with the manga in most places, so I will be doing a sort of joint review of the manga and anime. Unless I specify that I'm referring to only the manga or only the anime, assume that I'm speaking about them both.

One of these things is not like the other...

Discussion: Licensing Manga in English (Pt. 1)

Hello all my wonderful followers ;)

I hope the weather isn't getting you down. Where I am it still feels like fall, but it's just as likely to be warm and sunny as it is to be cold and raining. I think there's so much rain because it's just not cold enough to snow here, but mother nature sure is trying her hardest to make it happen.
Anyway, as the title indicates, this is not a review but a discussion. On a manga-related issue! Hooray!!!
Just an explanation of how this is going to work:
The discussion will happen in 2 separate posts, published one week apart. This is so readers have time to acquaint themselves with the issue and join in the discussion as knowledgeable participants.
Part 1: The Facts
For the first part, I will present the facts of the issue as I see it. I will try my best to be impartial, but please understand that I'm only human. Please comment on the information I've presented. If any of it seems biased, or there are facts that you think I haven't included that are relevant to the topic, I will include another section on my post with these corrections/additions.
Part 2: The Verdict 
The second post will be my analysis of the facts and my final opinion on the issue. I will try to present a sound argument using mature logic, so please feel free to point out any weaknesses in my arguments. In the comments, let your own opinions loose, and don't be shy about disagreeing with me. I won't reply to every comment, but I may post my own comment to keep the discussion going.
A discussion requires participation, so I strongly encourage everyone to leave a comment. It can be as short as a few words, but this won't work unless someone than me has something to say!

Well, let's get started :)

It's Not You, It's Me...

Hey buddies

Sorry for the delay with this update. This has been a rather tiring week (first the workers strike, now the students strike... and it keeps raining) and I'm sure we're all a little fatigued. I know I am. So instead of a review, this is just a quick update.
In the last review I posted a link to read Yotsuba&!, but only 68 chapters are available on that site. I believed that it was no longer being translated online, but one of my readers corrected me (thank you for commenting!). Since manga that are licensed in English have a habit of temporarily disappearing from the internet (depending on how possessive the English publisher is), I wanted to post a more comprehensive list of resources specific to Yotsuba&!

The YotsubaScans blog has all the chapters of Yotsuba available for downloading here. I'm not sure if the person in charge of the blog is part of a scanlating group or just receives translated chapters and posts them, but they are being careful to respect publisher's rights. If you love this manga so much you want to download it, please be sure to respect the rules of the blog owner, which you can read about here.

I don't ever download manga of the internet (for multiple reasons, all of which are irrelevant to this post), and if anyone else feels the same way you can still read this manga online. YotsubaScans currently uploads its chapters on only one site, Mangareader. Scanlator's rights are a can of worms I don't feel like addressing, but let it suffice to say that if the blog owner says they'll only host their manga on one site, don't bother looking for it anywhere else on the internet. If any site is found to be hosting manga they're not supposed to have, it will get taken down p.d.q. (pretty darn quick, for all you linguistically-limited folks). Since the blog owner has promised to upload to Mangareader, the most reliable place to read Yotsuba&! and check for updates is Mangareader. You can read Yotsuba&! on Mangareader by clicking here.

Summary:
Download chapters of Yotsuba&! here
Read Yotsuba&! online here
Play the dress-up game here
(okay that last link wasn't actually mentioned in the update, but it's a cute game, and both real and imaginary 4-year-olds love it)

Review: Yotsuba&!

Read Yotsuba&! here
Play the dress-up game here :)

Hello folks

Thank you for the (single) comment on my last post. I look forward to more communication. I was actually sort of at a loss about which manga to review this time. There are a lot of manga I like to read, but I wasn't "in the mood" to go over any of them. In the end, I chose one of my all-time favourites. Note that the title is not "Yotsuba" but "Yotsuba&!" because each chapter  is named after a different topic, for example Yotsuba and Shopping! or Yotsuba and TV!. So the title reflects the enthusiasm that Yotsuba has for life and each subject.

In Japanese "yotsuba" is a 4-leaf clover. Since  she has 4 green pigtails the name is fitting

Review: Fruits Basket

Read Fruits Basket here

G'day mates! (*Please comment on this post once you've read it!*)

Fruits Basket is a very popular shoujo* manga that was even made into an anime. The anime is only 26 episodes while the manga is 23 volumes, so some of the characters that appear in the manga don't appear in the anime and it has a different ending from the manga. I rarely watch anime, so this review is about the manga.

Summary:
Fruits Basket is the story of a ridiculously cheerful and good-natured girl named Tohru Honda. After the death of her mother and some other circumstances, she is living alone in a tent and ends up taking shelter in the house of Shigure and Yuki Sohma. Yuki is the famous "prince" of her high school and she is excited yet shy to be living with him, but she doesn't expect to uncover a major secret -- the Sohma family is under a curse! Some members are possessed with the spirit of zodiac animals, and turn into those animals when physically weakened or when hugged by a member of the opposite sex! The story documents Tohru's encounters with the members of the zodiac and other characters, as she learns of the terrible implications of the curse and works to break it (falling in love along the way, of course!).

Yuki the rat and Kyo the cat. Our 2 possible love interests ;)