Love or Money (rank 4) (manwha)

Publisher: Tokyopop 

Volumes: 5/5 (Complete), OOP, but not hard to find

Shoujo

Genre: Romance

Summary: Yenni is a selfish, money obsessed girl who is her school’s resident loan shark, lending money to her classmates at extremely high interest. After her parents died, she was left with only her memory of her mother’s insistence that money is everything. Her wealthy grandmother, hoping to change her granddaughter’s empty, money-obsessed heart, decided to use her will to teach her daughter a lesson: Marry the nice boy who used to live next door or lose her entire $10 billion inheritance to her grandma’s lawyer’s grandson! But her former neighbor hates her? And the grandson enters the picture and declares his love for her!

Review: This was a really hard manwha to review, I kept picking it up, struggling through it, and never quite finishing the series. The main problem is Yenni. Even if you buy the premise that her mother was a horrible shallow person who raised her likewise, she’s still very selfish, petty, and quite mean and violent.

Of course the series is supposed to be about her redemption, but she pretty much fights her every chance to become a better person every step of the way. Meanwhile, the two male leads/love interests are pretty decent guys who somehow both fall in love with her despite her horrible behavior, her nasty temper, her pettiness... etc. In hindsight, I think the creator really made her too unlikable. It also really only needed to be like 4 volumes at most. And the ending was.. basically an unresolved ending.

That being said, it was a decent premise, just not done well. It had some moments I liked in it, but was also greatly outnumbered by filler and “why don’t you just talk to her/him” moments. It’s really a shame, with some streamlining of the plot, making Yenni a more sympathetic character, it could have been a solid, fun read. This was turned into a K-drama, and I think it’s not hard to imagine it having being a good show, if they had fixed up those things.

Recommended: Not really recommended unless you are a fan of the K-drama or something.

Age Rating: PG13

Kaze no Hana (rank 4)

Publisher: Yen Press

Volumes: 3/3 (Complete), OOP but not hard to find

Shounen (reads like)

Genre: Fighting, Supernatural

Summary: Four years ago, Momoka lost everything, her parents, her sister and her memories. After reuniting with her extended family, she find out she is a wielder of a powerful ancient sword passed down from her ancestors, in an ancient war that continues to the modern day. A long time ago, an evil ancient god was sealed below their city. Momoka and 7 other of her relatives who are also spiritual sword wielders, fight to keep the worshipers of the evil god from releasing it. But why can’t she draw her sword?

Review: I’ve read this entire series twice and it is so frustrating. If you have read a lot of Shounen manga before, you can probably also imagine how this story could have played out as an 15+ volume epic going into depth of the histories of both families, their ancestors, their ancient grudges, mastering the special abilities of their swords, and going into depth detailing the pasts and relationships behind the huge cast of characters. Instead what we have here is almost like a short prelude to a real story. I still enjoyed parts of it but it is honestly more of a teaser trailer to a full story that doesn’t exist.

The story is basically unfinished. The whole 3 volumes ends with the final battle just over the horizon, which never happens. On top of that, if this was a fighting anime, it would be one of those low budget ones where the fighting scenes are too short, because apparently they are too difficult to draw.

The art is frustrating as well. I picked these up because of the gorgeous cover artwork, but inside the art is much rougher and cruder. People’s heads have a weird tendency to become perfect circles, or sometimes triangular like an upside down onigiri. The story also tends to skip around without warning or transitions, and introduces many unnecessary extra elements that are confusing and add little to the plot. Perhaps they were setup story elements for the sequel that, if it ever happened, has not been published in English. We may never know.

Recommended: I would only read this if you don't mind reading what is basically an extended introduction to a complete story that doesn't exist. It doesn't really stand on it's own, unfortunately.

Age Rating: PG13

Animal Land (rank 2)

Animal Land (rank 2: if you like animals, rank 3 for everyone else)
Publisher: Kodansha
Volumes: 14 (Complete), In Print
Shounen
Adventure, Animals, Fighting

Summary: Animal Land is a whole world ruled by animals and nature, and no humans. One day a Tanuki (Japanese raccoon dog) finds an abandoned human baby floating down the river. At first it’s a story of a baby being raised by wild animals trying to keep it alive, but what’s this? The baby can understand and talk to all animals! Must animals fight and eat each other? Is it possible for a meat eater and a plant eater to get along? What happens next will change the whole animal kingdom!

Review: The first 6 volumes or so of this manga are an incredible ride. Honestly I was surprised because the art looks very childish and cartoon-y, I thought the story would be too. I was very pleasantly surprised. If you’ve ever wondered what animals might say if they could speak, or what it might be like if an elk could talk to a lion, this is the manga for you.

However, after volume 6, the story takes a weird turn into a Shounen fighting manga, involving the heirs of Quo, and later Quo himself, who is the one who brought the kid, and as it turns out, several other kids as well to this planet. And they all fight for the future of the planet. While it’s not terrible, I can’t say it’s exactly good either. Personally, I would just read the first 6 volumes and pretend that’s the ending (It's not that far off, actually). The last 6 volumes feel a bit uncomfortably to me like a bargain version of Dragon Ball Z, which would probably feel less cliched if I hadn’t read so much Shounen Jump manga already.

Recommended: First 6 volumes, for animal lovers. Last 6 volumes, for those who still haven’t read so much shounen that they might still find a poorer imitation of Dragon Ball Z to be interesting.

Other Works by this author: Zatch Bell! (Viz)

Planet Ladder (rank 3)

Publisher: Tokyopop (books), Digital Manga Publishing (digital)
Volumes: 7/7 (Complete) Books: Out of Print, but not hard to find; eBooks: Available
Shoujo
Genre: Isekai, Fantasy/Scifi, Romance

Summary: Kaguya can’t remember anything before the age of 4, when she first appeared, bloody and dazed by the side of a road. Assumed to be an abandoned orphan, she was adopted and grew up in Japan. She lives a seemingly normal life, but she keeps having dreams of a raging fire and a kind, sad boy. One day that boy appears before her again, but this time as a doll/android. She finds herself in another world, and it is revealed she is the Princess of Prophecy. It is said she will choose the fate of nine different parallel world Earths, and only one Earth can survive. What will she do? What can she do?

Review: Re-reading this again many years after it originally came out is a strange experience. Back around early 2000’s there really wasn’t much manga available in English and Planet Ladder seemed really impressive in comparison. Now reading it again, over a decade later, the art really hasn’t aged well. After having read a thousand of volumes of manga later, it’s really obvious the artwork is really simple, a bit generic and has quite a lot of empty backgrounds, and people drawn either super close up or really small.

But the story remains a pretty good page turning read. It starts off fairly simple, but gets more complex as it goes. The first volume is definitely kind of rough, and basically an introduction anyway, so definitely read at least to volume 2.

The ending IMO, is pretty good overall and was decently satisfying, so I would recommend it, but I would have preferred a more epic climax and perhaps a bit more of an epilogue that detailed what happened to the rest of the worlds and etc. for some more closure. Also kind of interesting, but the genre is technically Scifi, but feels more like fantasy. The author did say she was going for a retro-style Scifi in the author’s notes.

Recommended: Overall, a good read and recommended for Shoujo readers who want a Fantasy/Scifi story with some romance and a fairly strong heroine.

Age Rating: PG: some mild fantasy violence

Publishing comments: I never noticed before but Tokyopop has quite a bunch of spelling mistakes, and some many minor and lazy editing mistakes. That being said, it is extra aggravating that the DMP releases are even lower in quality than TP.

Ebooks review: The DMP released ebooks are scans of the TP release, with only the covers titles redone. The actual inside pages are even worse than TP’s versions with weird inconsistent page size issues and the artwork is even more over leveled and low resolution. Plus you’d have thought they’d fix all the spelling/editing mistakes that Tokyopop made, but they’re all still there. Even the obvious “Dream” being misspelled as “Drama” in the beginning pages.

I do not recommend the ebooks. It would better to hunt down some used Tokyopop copies of this.

Dragon Goes House Hunting (rank 3)

Publisher: Seven Seas
Volumes: 5+ (Ongoing) (Read: 1-3) In Print
Shounen
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy

Summary: Letty sucks at being a dragon. He’s kind and doesn’t care about gold or terrorizing humans. He just wants to live in peace. After he’s kicked out by his father for being a failure of a dragon, he needs to find a new place to live. Unfortunately for him, dragons are sought after as rare materials for armor and potions. But luckily for him, he meets a powerful, wise elf, Dearia, who decides to help him out. Together they look for a new place for Letty. Only there’s something wrong with every place!

Review: I wasn’t sure what to expect from this series, because house hunting itself sounded boring. But actually, it’s a story about an un-dragon-like dragon trying to find out where he belongs. His friend, the Dark Lord Dearia, likes to place Letty in difficult situations to tease him, but actually does care about him.

The setting is basically an RPG-ish type fantasy world, with a good serving of video game jokes that I won't spoil. In a bit of a twist, the monsters are often the good guys, and Adventurers and Heroes are murderous, greedy kleptomaniacs, who would steal anything that isn’t tied down and kill anyone they're paid to kill. I think describing this manga any more would give away some of the jokes, so I'm just gonna say, read it.

Recommended: I would definitely recommend this for Dragon fans, Videogame and RPG fans, and D&D style fantasy fans

Age Rating PG13: some very mild fantasy violence and mild horror

Harukana Receive (rank 3)

Publisher: Seven Seas
Volumes: 8+ (Ongoing) (Read: 1-2), In Print
Shounen
Genre: Sports (Volleyball)

Summary: (from the back cover) When high schooler Haruka moves to Okinawa, she finds herself enamored with the beach right outside her front door and resolves to form a volleyball team with her cousin, Kanata. However, because she’s so short, Kanata gave up on volleyball ages ago. Can Haruka get her to take up the sport again in time for the junior tournament?

Review: While I can’t quite shake the feeling this manga exists as an excuse to draw plenty of cute high school girls in bikinis, the volleyball part of it is very enthusiastic and clearly written by a fan of the sport. I can see why it was adapted to an anime.

That being said as someone who personally has marginal interest in any sport, I found the emotional side of the manga kind of lacking. Harukana, named after the two main characters Haruka and Kanata, they pretty much make up from an old fight by the end of the first volume. And unlike a lot of more typical Shounen sports manga there doesn’t seem to be much of the desperate giving-it-my-all, do or die- attitude that I often find inspirational in other sports manga. Although to be fair, I don’t think volleyball is as competitive as other sports anyway.

I’ll probably check out the later volumes at some point and see if it improves, but I suspect it doesn’t.

Recommended: So basically, if you aren’t really into volleyball, I think this probably won’t interest most readers.

Age Rating: PG13: lots of girls in bikinis

Haridama Magic Cram School (rank 3.5)

Publisher: Del Rey
Volumes: 1/1 (Complete), OOP, but not hard to find
Shounen
Genre: Fantasy, Fighting, Magic

Summary: In a world where magic users are common, Kokuyo and Harika are looked down upon for being the lowest class of magic users, called Obsidians. Normal Sorcerers possess both Yin and Yang energy and can cast all spells without assistance, but Obsidians only are born with one kind of magic energy and require the use of a substitute energy sphere to cast. They are useless without it.

Kokuyo claims he will become the strongest sorcerer ever, but he can’t even pass the lowest level magic exam, and studies under his adoptive father’s magic cram school. However the bond between him and Harika might contain a powerful secret!

Review: Overall this basically reads like a failed pilot for a Shounen serial that got cancelled.

The Good: The art-style was better than average, and parts of the fights made me want to check out this mangaka’s most well known work in English, Venus Versus Virus, which I think I will. But this story, by itself could have been much better than it was.

The Bad: personally, I find magic systems fascinating, and the more complex the better. So it’s frustrating there only really seems to be one main spell everyone uses, which is a basic slice from a distance attack. While it does seem sort of useful in that you can hit with way more power than like a sword strike, and at a distance, it’s really quite simplistic and lacking in creativity for a fighting Shounen manga.

My second main complaint was the characters. They’re both pretty generic in personality and background.There’s also a hint of romance between the main two leads, which unfortunately goes nowhere. All in all, it wasn’t a bad read, and at the ending did have at least some emotional payoff for investing in the series. And it did have its moments. 

Finally for the ending twist, if you know how a battery works then this twist you can see coming a mile away. But it was a decent ending.

Recommended: If you have some time to kill and don't mind reading a light Shounen fighting series then it's not bad, just not particularly good either.

Age Rating: PG for some mild violence

Other works by this mangaka in English: (from most to least popular)

• Tokyo Ravens (Shounen)
• Venus Versus Virus (Shounen)
• Amefurashi: The Rain Goddess (Shounen)