Manga Summaries:Alice 19th Volume 1 By Yu Watase

-------- Contains SPOILERS ----
Alice 19th is one of Yu Watese's work. It is 7 volumes long and was licensed under Viz Media.


Chapter Sections

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4
Volume 5
Volume 6: Blindness
Volume 7: The Lost Word


Characters

Alice Seno

Mayura Seno

Kyo Wakamiya

Nyozeka

Frey

Christopher


The Story

The Yuu Watase universe usually involves magical girls and this is no different.

Alice Seno is a 15 year old highschool girl. She is shy and quiet and thefore always overshadowed by her near perfect sister, Mayura. Mayura is 17 years old and studies in the same school as Alice. She belongs to the Archery club where she's team mates with Kyo Wakamiya, the captain of the club.
The situation at home is no different. Alice can't have any sort of pet because her sister is allergic to animals. She also thinks that her sister is spoiled by her parents. Alice is in love with Kyo Wakamiya. He's dependable, smart and responsible with good looks to boot. It seems like our heroine is doomed to a life of unrequitted love. But the following events will test the strength of Alice's heart and determination.

While crossing the street, Alice sees a white rabbit in the middle of the road. (I think this is Watase-sensei's concession to the Alice in Wonderland book). She starts to hear voices and wonders where they are coming from. The voices she hears are totally indiferent to the rabbit on the street.  They either want the rabbit to die and most of them don't want to bother. Alice seeing no other recourse, decides to save the rabbit. At the same moment a speeding car is seen to almost hit them. Luckily, Kyo was also in the area and saves the day. Alice of course is happy about the situation because she finally gets to talk to Kyo. While talking to Kyo, the rabbit wrestles from Alice's grasp and runs away.

Yingying's notes: Continuation and pictures to follow. Please standby

Manga Summaries: Punch!! Volume 1 (part 1) By Rie Takada

Total Volumes: 3

Licensed by: Viz Media, LLC through Shojo Beat

-------- Contains SPOILERS -------

 

Punch is a 3 volume series by Rie Takada. This has been translated and published in English by Viz Media through Shojo Beat Manga.

Chapter Sections:

Volume 1  Chapter 1-5
Volume 2  Chapter 6-13
Volume 3  Chapter

Characters (Main)

Elle Nagahara
The spunky girl coming from a martial arts family

Kazuki Shindo
The love interest. Former bad-boy. All bluster but definitely fluffy.

The Story

The story begins when our heroine, Elle Nagahara was dumped by her boyfriend. Apparently, this is not the first time this has happened.

Elle’s family is popular in the boxing world. Her mother is a wrestling champion, her father is a lightweight world boxing champion and her grandfather is a world champion in Muay Thai. Both her parents are deceased and she lives with her grandfather who runs a boxing gym. And that’s where Elle’s dilemma comes from. The guys who train at her grandfather’s gym always scare her boyfriends and they end up leaving her. (If you ask me, that’s a pretty good way to find out if the guy is up to snuff. )

Elle’s grandfather, (Gigi) and his bestfriend are both boxers and they talked about letting their children marry. However, since they both had sons. They decided that their grandchildren would marry. So, that’s how Ruo became Elle’s fiancée. Problem is, Elle doesn’t feel anything romantic for Ruo. More like siblings. Ruo is older than Elle and has been in love with her for the longest time.

Elle eats and breathes normal. She wants a normal life. She wants an ordinary boyfriend. Someone who will not in any way be related to boxing. Unfortunately for her, life has something in store for her.

Elle, decides to shop around and decides to go to a music store to get an MD player. While she was there, she meets a guy (yes, he’s the hero of the story) and apparently they want the same MD player. >_< since there was only one MD player, you would think that they guy would give in. But no, he hold on to that player to Elle’s consternation.

While going to the cashier, the “guy”, (let’s say his name is Kazuki Shindo.) bumped into some people. We’ll Kazuki has a certain look on him. It’s positively looks like trouble. So, those people who bumped into him want some sort of apology. Being the apathetic person that he is, Kazuki decides to ignore them. Those guys dragged Kazuki to the rest room to beat him up. Elle seeing this decides to get some help. But to her surprise, its Kazuki who beats everyone up.

Yingying's note: I will add a few pictures of the characters here next and continue on with the summary of the next chapters. I thinking of doing per chapter summaries but i think that would take too long. Also adding pictures when time permits.

Learning Japanese with mneumonics

Learning a second language has never been easy. There are however people who are an exemption to this rule. My cousin is one. She has a special knack for learning languages. But for the regular people out there, there must be an easier way to learn Japanese. You can learn Japanese by brute force or you can memorize it the easy way. Use mnemonics instead.

Mnemonics works by relating a certain word with an event or a story. It's basically about correlating things for us to remember it more easily. I have tried this and amazingly you can memorize quite a few characters in a short amount of time.

Japanese is basically made up of three alphabets-The Katakana, The Hiragana and The Kanji

The Hiragana
-This is made up of 46 charactes. This is used for japanese words and phrases.

The Katakana
-Also made up of 46 characters and complements the Hira. This is used for foreign words. Admitedly for me, it was a bit hard to find the correct Kata for a certain word. Since we are dealing with syllables here and not letters. When expressing a foreign word to japanese. You have to go by how the word sounds like. Take the word "beer" for example. The Kata for that would be "bi-ru".

The Kanji
- I don't know how many Kanji characters there are but I know that there's a lot. Harder to memorize because of the complex brush strokes.

So what do we need to learn to read manga? We should memorize the Hiragana and the Katakana first. Then we go ahead with the Kanji. Most manga geared for teens have a combination of the the three alphabets. However for those not so familiar with Kanji, the manga-ka usually includes the Furigana beside the Kanji character. Furigana is like a decomposition of the complex Kanji into several easily recognizable Hiragana characters.

In my next post I will tell you the book I use to memorize this. Perhaps I'll even post links to the flash cards that I use.

Finance: 13 Ways To Save Money on Manga (Part 2)

8. Create a list of titles 
            a. that you would like to read someday. 
             This list would help you to avoid buying titles from the bargain bins. If its not on your list don't buy it.
             b. of volumes that you already have.
             Its really hard to keep track of manga especially if your collection already exceeds 500 volumes. I've mistakenly bought doubles before because I didn't have an organized list.

9. Buy your favorite bookstore's discount card.
I have a Powercard from Powerbooks. They give me 20% off on books and I think if you went to their store and they have an ongoing sale you can get more discounts. ^_^ 


10. Do your research on the book before buying a title
This would save you from regretting  puchasing a title. I've had my share of not so good manga in the past. 


11. Know where the bargain bookstores are.
If you're going to place you haven't visited before. Google the place and see if they have a bargain bookstore nearby. If there's a possibility that it would take you a long time to visit the place or if you know you won't be going back there anytime soon. This is a perfect oppurtunity to scout out the place and get your hands on some manga. I went to Hawaii 2 years ago for work and I was able to find about 5 volumes of Yuyu Hakusho (Ghostfighter) for only $3.00 (or less) per book. I bought a total of 37 volumes of manga for only a fraction of the cost.


12. Manila International Bookfair and other events.
I always go to this event to check out if the stalls offer discounts on manga. You can also take note of other similar events that might be selling manga like anime conventions and comicons. 


13. Learn the language.
The original Japanese manga is just a quarter of the cost of the English translated one, Its really quite a bargain, Plus you can read a lot of titles that will never be translated to English. Each hiragana and katakana you memorize is a step closer towards cheaper manga. But memorizing the characters is only half the battle. You must also immerse yourself in the culture. Manga often contains references to customs that is different from ours so unless you know and understand what the stories mean, you will literallly be lost in translation.


There you have it. These are the things I do that enables me to buy cheaper manga. ^_^

Anime and Manga Magazine: Questor

Questor Magazine started about 2000. I would like to think that it took the Philippines by surprise.  The magazine provided nice articles written by people who love manga as well. If I remember it right, it sold for 100 or 120. I was in my sophomore year when I first found out about this. Unfortunately I wasn't able to buy the 1st release. 

The Questor magazine staff are

Editor-In-Chief:                                     Bambi Eloriaga

Managing Editor:                                 Johann Frederick Cabbab

Lay-out Artist                                        Rommel Ruanto

Creative Department Supervisor    Jess Matro

Visual Artists                                        Rey Limoneras

                                                                John Michael Lu

                                                                Michael Ong

                                                                Sidney Ang

Japanese Correspondednt             Takako Takimoto 

I am not sure how many Questor magazines were published in total. I have to confirm that. 

The magazine included freebies like pencils, stationery, even cds. I remember getting free cds of Greed Island (HunterXHunter).  They even had calendars there. All I can say is that I think the magazine was created ahead of their time. 

Here's a couple of magazine covers:

 

Manga Summaries: Wanted (One Shot) by Matsuri Hino

 


-------- Contains SPOILERS -------

Wanted is Matsuri Hino's onshot pirate manga. The manga itself contains 3 chapters from the series and one bonus story at the end.

I will be summarizing the Official US version released by Viz.


Chapter Sections

1st Chapter: Captain Skulls
2nd Chapter: The Enemy of Pirates
3rd Chapter: The Legend of the Devil's Musical Score
Bonus Story: Spring Cherry Blossoms

 Characters (Main)

Luce (aka Skulls) 

 Armeria (aka Arto)

Story

The story is set in the 17th century at the court of Governor Lanceman. A girl, probably about 7 years old is seen singing at court to entertain the noblemen that came for the celebration. Her name is Armeria. She met the Governor's nephew Luce (probably 15 at that time)  there who was kind to her and showed her a field of Armeria flowers.The governor is depicted to be a cruel man. Because of this pirates raided the island and kidnapped Luce hoping to ransom him off to the governor. Well, being the cruel guy that he is I'm assuming that no ransom has been paid. Armeria got away safely but vowed that she will be rescuing Luce from the pirates.


8 years later. Armeria (15) Luce (about 22) met again. The how is interesting. ^_^ Armeria tracked down the pirate who kidnapped Luce. The pirate was known as Skulls. She went undercover, pretended to be a boy (aka Arto) to join the crew. There she met the pirate Skulls who to her chagrin turned out to be Skulls. Of course she doesn't know about it yet. She was found out to be a girl in the later pages of the book. She also discovered that Skulls was Luce when Skulls shouted her name when he was trying to rescue her from an attacker who boarded the ship. 


The next few chapters shows the different adventures that these two get into.


Rating:
Definitely a keeper. I have always liked Matsuri Hino. The art is amazing, not in the same level with CLAMP but she's getting there. The story was nice enough although I hope the series was longer. It is fortunate that this series was already released in English. 


Where to buy:
This can be bought from Comic Oddysey. They have branches in Robinson's Manila and Trinoma.

Manga-ka Spotlight: CLAMP

CLAMP started as a 11-woman team, which dwindled to 7 and now to the 4 member team that we currently know.

They are over 25 years in the manga business, a testament and proof to how their works are accepted. One of their first manga to be translated into english was Cardcaptor Sakura.

What makes CLAMPs works so appealing? Everyone would have to agree that one of the reasons is the art. They pay so much attention to detail. The illustrations are really amazing. And as I understand, they have no assistants either to push some of their work to. Just in case you don't know, some manga-ka have assistants to help them with the drawings. Maybe it might just be simple toning and coloring in the dark colors. But that takes a lot of time. I'll be summarizing a lot of their works here so visit often. ^_^ another reason is that their manga spans genres. They aren't just stuck with shoujo. Oh no. They also dable in shonen. They also don't follow the usual formula of romance. You could say that their stories are unique. They have produced a lot of memorable characters that are globally recognized. We'll, recognized by fellow enthusiasts of course.

They are hard working and I believe that they truly enjoy their work. You can see it in the amount of illustrations that they have done for others. From bookcovers to book drawings.

Part of their allure comes from the mystery that they have. For the better part of the 1990s and well into 2000, they have never allowed themselves to be photographed. They might have their reasons, who knows. But it was just in the later years that they posted for a French magazine.

With all these praises that I've been singing, you might ask if there is something that I don't like about them. There is one thing.... They have a number of unfinished works. 

THE UNFINISHED WORKS

1. X-published by Viz as X/1999

2. Legend of Chun Yang (Tokyopop)

3. Clover (Tokyopop)

4. Legal Drug

FINISHED AND CONCLUDED

1. Cardcaptor Sakura (12 volumes, Tokyopop)

2. CLAMP School Detectives (3 volumes, Tokyopop)

3. CLAMP Duklyon School Defenders (2 volumes, Tokyopop)

4. RG Veda (10 volumes, Tokyopop)

5. Tokyo Babylon (7 volumes, Tokyopop)

6. Magic Knight Rayeart (6 volumes, Tokyopop)

7. Chobits (8 volumes, Tokyopop)

8. Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle (28 volumes, Del Rey)

9. Wish (4 volumes, Tokyopop)

10. Man of Many Faces (2 volumes, Tokyopop)

11. Suki (3 volumes, Tokyopop)

12. Angelic Layer (5 volumes, Tokyopop)

ONE SHOTS

1. Miyuki Chan in Wonderland

2. The One I Love

3. Shirame-Syo

ONGOING

1. Xxxholic 

I have only included those that have been licensed in the US.