TITLE: Over the Rainbow
AUTHOR/MANGAKA: Keiko Honda
PUBLISHER: Central Park Media
RATING: Teen (13+)
CATEGORY: Josei
NUMBER OF VOLUMES: 1
SCORE: 4 (Bad)
RECOMMENDED FOR FANS OF: Keiko Honda, All My Darling Daughters, romance

( "Over The Rainbow" Review )

Before I commence with today's review, yay for the Winter Olympics! They're finally here! Anybody else watch the Opening Ceremony last night? Some of those special effects were amazing, weren't they? So pretty! I don't know how they can hold the Olympics in Canada, though, and not have Celine Dion sing during the Opening Ceremony. :( I mean, the fiddlers were a lot of fun, but I would have loved to see Celine singing one of her French songs during the section honoring Quebec. Oh, well. Minor complaint. And too bad about the malfunction during the lighting of the cauldron inside. It was still pretty cool, but you can just imagine the director banging his head against the wall when the fourth pillar didn't come up like it should have.

You know, I think this is probably the first Opening Ceremony I got the chance to watch. Of course, I wasn't able to watch the 2002 and 2006 Olympics because of not being able to get NBC over analog (same with the Summer Olympics, although I'm not really interested in them), and I missed the 1998 ceremony because of a choir trip. (I did set things up to record it, but my mother stupidly unplugged the VCR while I was gone. Grr. Still a little annoyed about that, twelve years later.) Can't remember if I watched the 1994 ceremony, but I doubt I did. That year it was all about watching the ladies' figure skating competition and the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding showdown. I don't think I watched anything else.

Well, anyway, looking forward to tomorrow when the pairs competition gets underway with the short program. Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait!

Now, onto the review!

TITLE: The One I Love
AUTHOR/MANGAKA: CLAMP
PUBLISHER: Tokyopop
RATING: Teen (13+)
CATEGORY: Josei
NUMBER OF VOLUMES: 1
SCORE: 7 (Good)
RECOMMENDED FOR FANS OF: CLAMP (mangaka of Card Captor Sakura, Wish, xxxHolic, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, Magic Knight Rayearth...well, a lot of titles!), romance, slice of life

( "The One I Love" Review )

With the Olympics starting in little over a week (yay!), I figured it was a good time to review some figure skating manga. First up is The Cherry Project, and I hope to finish a review for Sugar Princess: Skating to Win sometime next week.

TITLE: The Cherry Project
AUTHOR/MANGAKA: Naoko Takeuchi
PUBLISHER: Kodansha (currently unlicensed in English)
RATING: I would say it's suitable for all ages, but YMMV.
CATEGORY: Shoujo
NUMBER OF VOLUMES: 3
SCORE: 9 (Great)
RECOMMENDED FOR FANS OF: Naoko Takeuchi (mangaka of Sailor Moon and Codename: Sailor V), Sugar Princess: Skating to Win, Ginban Kaleidoscope, Kaleido Star, Princess Nine, sports manga/anime, romance

( "The Cherry Project" Review )

TITLE: Tsubasa: Those With Wings
AUTHOR/MANGAKA: Natsuki Takaya
PUBLISHER: Tokyopop
RATING: Older Teen (16+)
CATEGORY: Shoujo
NUMBER OF VOLUMES: 3
SCORE: 9 (Great)
RECOMMENDED FOR FANS OF: Natsuki Takaya (mangaka of Fruits Basket and Phantom Dream), Chobits, science fiction, fantasy, philosophy, romance, action, adventure, humor

( Tsubasa: Those With Wings )

Some of you might remember me making a post a few months ago about the possibility of me starting a review blog for anime/manga. I originally decided against it when only two people showed interest in it, but the desire to write reviews never really fully disappeared. So, as one of my New Year's resolutions, I've decided that whenever I read through a complete manga series (new or old), I'll write a review about it. (Thanks to Netflix, I watch too many series for this to be a realistic goal for anime, but who knows? I may write a few anime reviews here and there as well.) It's possible I'll eventually branch these off into a separate journal, but for now, I'll just post them here (and maybe my website).

First up is Night of the Beasts. 

(Note: Possible spoilers, although I tried not to spoil anything major beyond the second volume (unless you consider some characters' names to be spoilers). Also, the "score" uses the MyAnimeList.net 1-10 rating system.)

TITLE: Night of the Beasts
AUTHOR/MANGAKA: Chika Shiomi
PUBLISHER: Go!Comi
RATING: Older Teen (16+)
DEMOGRAPHIC: Shoujo
NUMBER OF VOLUMES: 6
SCORE: 8 (Very Good)
RECOMMENDED FOR FANS OF: Ayashi no Ceres (Ceres, Celestial Legend), Chika Shiomi (mangaka of Yurara, Rasetsu, and Canon), supernatural creatures, horror, violence

( "Night of the Beasts" Review )