The Legend of Chun Hyang by Clamp (amazon)

I tend to enjoy most Clamp manga, but one thing that’s frustrating is the amount of unfinished series that they’ve put out. This book was so fun to read, I wish that the series had continued for more than one volume. The Legend of Chun Hyang is Clamp’s take on a traditional Korean folk tale about a common girl who becomes engaged to a nobleman and preserves her chastity. The Clamp version of the story features a spritely Chun Hyang who is the daughter of the village medicine woman. She fights against injustice in her town while also taking on the role of protector for her mother since her father is absent. The Yang Ban, the local government official, is throughly corrupt and the Yang Ban’s son trades on his father’s position to abuse any of the village women who happen to be attractive. Fortunately, Chun Hyang has some kick-ass martial arts skills.
Chun Hyang’s Mom has just made some tasty treats for dinner, when a man sitting in a tree outside their door invites himself to dinner. He’s Mong Rong, a handsome traveler. Mong Rong is the type of hero that Clamp excels at - he seems feckless and irresponsible but he has hidden depths. He’s often found sitting on the sidelines, clapping and saying things like “Such a brave maiden you are!” after Chun Hyang has administered a beatdown to someone.
After some horrible events in her village, Chun Hyang joins Mong Rong on his journey. He’s actually traveling around the country in order to stamp out government corruption. The dynamic between the two is cute, as Chun Hyang is quick to charge ahead and get into fights while Mong Rong appears to be mainly concerned with filling his belly. He obviously finds Chun Hyang attractive, but she’s rather clueless about noticing any romantic attentions on his part. It is a shame that there is only one volume of this series, because it would have been nice to see the relationship between Chun Hyang and Mong Rong develop.

Foxy Lady Volume 1 by Ayun Tachibana (amazon)

With a title like “Foxy Lady”, I was halfway expecting this manga to be about the misadventures of an attractive woman in the 1970s. Since this is manga, the book is an example of the mystical girlfriend subgenre of shonen manga, where an ordinary schmo suddenly finds himself with an incredibly hot alien/goddess/demon/magical girl who demands to marry and/or have sex with him. The shining example of this genre would be the sadly out of print Urusei Yatsura.

Jin is the heir to his parents’ shrine. He lives in the deserted dorms attached to the shrine with his friend Sogo, a nearsighted cigarette fiend with a severe pornography habit. Jin is about to defile sacred ground by reading a manual on picking up girls in the shrine when he has has second thoughts. He heads back to the dorms and finds a girl sprawled out over Sogo. She’s Kogane, a half-human, half-demon who announces that she’s come to the human world “to beget” with Jin. After Kogane realizes that Sogo isn’t Jin she quickly switches her affections. She wants to become human, and the only way to do that is to get it on with a mortal boy. If she kisses Jin her ears, tail, and mystical powers disappear for a brief period of time.

The art is slick and attractive, with plenty of shots of Kogane in miniskirts and skimpy outfits. The reader learns disturbing things about Jin’s Dad, as he seems to have a closet full of naughty Santa-girl and nurse outfits. Some of the panels seem overcrowded and cluttered, with too much explanatory text and multiple shots of the characters from different angels. Sogo seems to exist as lecherous comic relief, as he often tries to get together with Kogane or any other female that happens to be in his vicinity only to become violently injured in the process. Jin decides that he has to protect Kogane as part of his shrine heir duties. When the kids go to school, all the sports clubs start fighting over Kogane due to her demon physical prowess. There were a couple amusing details like the portal to the demon road being placed in a linen closet and Kogane’s reaction to fried tofu, but the title didn’t capture my interest. I’m not really a member of the intended audience for this title. There’s plenty of madcap action and jokes about people being perverts, but this is a manga that doesn’t transcend the limitations of its genre to have much appeal for people that aren’t already seeking out titles about girls with animal ears.

Review copy provided by Tokyopop

Hellgate: London Volume 1 by Arvid Nelson and J. M. (amazon)

This is a prequel to a videogame where I guess people fight a lot of demons. In the near future John Fowler wakes up from a terrible dream where he’s menaced by a dark figure in a bird-like plague mask. He’s a scholarship rugby student at Temple Unversity. When he digs up a skeleton as part of an impromptu outdoor archeology class he finds himself with a splitting headache and a mysterious pendant. He and his sister soon find out that their family has a secret - they’re part of an ancient line of Knights Templar that are supposed to protect London from demons. He finds his father’s sword in the attic; it looks like a giant Exacto knife. I assume that’s a detail from the video game.
The art was effective, making the demons and John’s ancient relative look suitably creepy. I appreciated many of the details like John’s brother Tyler and his tendency to make experimental sandwiches, and Lindsey’s prowess using a cricket bat. It was nice that Lindsey was an equal partner in demon ass-kicking.
While there isn’t anything terribly original about a story centering around demons taking over London, Hellgate was much better than I expected a video game spin-off property to be. I suspect if fans of the game are looking for a comic adaptation they’ll find this book entertaining.

Heavenshield Volume 1 by Ryu Blackman (amazon)

This volume introduced so many different characters in the first half of the book that I had a really hard time following what was going on. There’s a guy with a beard who seems to be having flashbacks and doesn’t treat his hookers very nicely. There’s an evil guy named Oz. A government official who seems to treat his hookers somewhat nicely. A crazy girl with a sword. Other government officials. A hooker named Chocolate. The bounty hunter heroine of the book seems to talk normally in the first half of the book and then communicates drunkenly in cockney rhyming slang in the latter half.
There’s plenty of action and women running around in costumes that look like wedgie inducing torture devices, but I had a hard time finding any semblance of a plot, it seemed like there was just too much stuff crammed into too few pages. There’s something off with the flow of action and the paneling in the art for the book that makes it confusing to follow. The book is set in a futuristic world, there’s a wacky religion and some lizard people!? The dialog doesn’t really help to explicate anything. With characters saying things like “Gonna rape you good”, “Mi nah fear di renk beast wen a come fi tess I?”, and “So I gotta ace this gig or my rep on the network is in the gary for good!” there’s not much there to motivate or help the reader make sense of what’s going on. Relying on dialect and rape threats to establish character is poor storytelling and ultimately boring.

Review copies provided by Tokyopop

White Night Melody Volume 1 by Selina Lin (amazon)

I have to confess, I found the first few pages of this manhua confusing. What I thought were elaborately dressed toddlers fight over some tiny glass slipper charms, the charms fall into a fish bowl, and suddenly the kids are teenagers, saying that they’re happy to be human again. It turns out that Colleen and Jing Ping are dolls, hosting the bodies and personalties of a princess and her protector from the past. Colleen and Jing Ping’s human family don’t seem to remark on the fact that they have fighting, talking dolls so this required a bit of an adjustment to my usual healthy suspension of disbelief. I’m not sure if something about the translation could have made the introduction to the story more clear, or if it was just the way the manhua was written originally.
Once I got over the sentient doll thing, I followed the adventures of Colleen and Jing Ping as they adjust to teenage life in modern life. They go outside to explore, and Colleen is dismayed to see that her elaborate dress and ringlets are attracting the wrong type of attention. Jing Ping is quick to act as her protector, since he’s been trained in martial arts. As they begin to meet new friends when they start school, some of them seem to recognize them from the past, and a shadowy figure menaces Colleen.
Lim’s art occasionally looks a little stiff, but it has an extremely high cuteness factor in an old fashioned shojo style. The costumes of the characters, especially Colleen, are intricately detailed. The breezy style of the narrative reminded me a little bit of the works of Arina Tanemura. This was the first manhua I’ve read, and I was hoping for a few more Chinese-specific details shown in the plot or characters.White Night Melody is rated for ages 13+, but I can see it appealing mostly to younger teens and pre-teens who like their shoujo manga extra girly.

Review copy provided by Tokyopop.

Your and My Secret Volume 1 by Ai Morinaga (amazon)

Your & My Secret is the craziest gender-bending manga I have ever read. Granted, I have not investigated the genre throughly, but it seems like it would be very hard to top this book. I can see now why people were so excited when Tokyopop picked up the license for this manga after ADV dropped it!
Akira is a cute guy, but he has an extremely dull personality. He’s very shy and passive, so people generally tend to walk all over him, or ignore him as a non-entity. Akira has a crush on Nanako, who is a cute girl, but she’s extremely abrasive and aggressive, to the point where most of her classmates are afraid of her. Thanks to a scientific experiment gone awry, Nanako and Akira switch bodies.
Nanako delights in her new male body, seizing the opportunity to slam dunk and sign up for karate. When Nanako’s best friend Shiina is sick during P.E., she picks her up and carries her to the nurse’s office. The result of the personality switch is that everyone is impressed with the new and improved Akira, and Shiina quickly develops a crush on him, not knowing that her female friend Nanako is inhabiting his body.
In the meantime, Akira struggles with inhabiting the body of the girl he has a crush on, dealing with changing in locker rooms, and cleaning up her pigsty of a room. Akira’s best friend Senbongi starts to notice the new, shyer Nanako and wonders why she suddenly seems more cute. Akira thinks that he’s turning more girly the longer he stays in Nanako’s body. Soon, Nanako decides to start dating Shina while Senbongi is making passes at Akira.
Most of the humor in the book is found in Nanako’s matter-of-fact acceptance of the shift, combined with Akira’s dismay at the female-centric situations he finds himself in. He thinks that Nanako is a better man than he is, as she quickly ingratiates herself with his family and turns into a very popular boy at school. Your & My Secret effectively satirizes the traditional gender roles found in shoujo manga.
Morninga’s art is attractive, and she easily captures the shift in body language and facial expressions that occurs when Akira and Nanako switch bodies. My only quibble with this manga is that since it is told mainly from Akira’s point of view, we don’t really see any of Nanako’s thoughts and it would have been interesting to see more of her internal emotions as she adjusts to a boy’s body. But then, Akira’s reactions to her probably wouldn’t be quite as funny.

Yet another young adult novel is going to be turned into manga, as seen in this cover image:

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Pearl Pink by by Tanaka Meca (amazon)

Kanji’s father runs a successful talent agency called Dog Run. Their cash cow is the actress Shinju Momono who stars in the TV show Idol P.I. Momoko. Shinju has a daughter named Tamako. 10 years ago, Kanji promised Tamako that he’d marry her if she stopped being a cry baby. In the present day, Kanji is returning home after being sent on an errand to pick up some magazines of a questionable nature for his father. He sees some junior high kids picking on a younger kid and is about to step in when the kid shifts into ninja mode and beats the bullies up. The kid recognizes Kanji, calling him Kan-San. Tamako is 13 years old now, and she’s turned herself into a self-reliant tomboy because she expects that is the way she’ll win Kanji’s love. Kanji barely remembers Tamako or his promise, but he humors the “monkey girl”. Tamako moves in with Kanji and his father, because they can’t allow the press to find out that Shinju had a daughter when she was a teenager.
Tamako is dismayed to find out that Kanji’s “wifely” skills are better than her own, as he excels at making box lunches and serves as a fashion consultant to his father, who seems to enjoy dressing up in potential outfits for his female idol in order to get Kanji’s expert reaction.
Although there’s a 3 year difference in age between Kanji and Tamako, she’s drawn to look much younger than 13. This has the potential for ickiness, but it is mostly sidestepped by Kanji’s continued insistence that Tamako’s goal of becoming his wife is ridiculous because she doesn’t really know who he is or what love is.
The art is clean and attractive, easily rendering moments of emotion as well as Tamako’s monkey-like physicality. There are some cute side stories that detail the plot of the Idol P.I. TV series. While I have to say that if you only read one manga of the idol factory genre, Skip Beat is probably the best option, Pearl Pink does have plenty of cute moments.

Manga Xanadu points out a massive Tokyopop sale on BookCloseouts.com.
Some discounted series you might want to check out - books from CLAMP, including Wish, Angelic Layer, Magic Knight Rayearth, Tokyo Babylon and RG Veda.
The comedic vampire fantasy saga Vampire Game. If you’ve been enjoying Eternal Sabbath, you might want to check out Fuyumi Soryo’s good girl meets bad boy biker shojo series Mars. I also like the manhwa fantasy series Queen’s Knight.

Aria by Kozue Amano (amazon)

I pre-ordered Aria because there seemed to be a certain amount of excitement when Tokyopop picked up the series - it had previously been licensed by ADV. In 2301 Mars has been transformed into Neo-Venezia. Young women called Undines take on the role of gondoliers, showing tourists around the watery city. Akari is a journeyman, training to become an Undine. while she works for the Aria company. Akari looks up to her senior at Aria, an Undine named Alicia. Aika is a fellow journeyman and Akari’s best friend. The girls meander around the canals of Neo-Venezia, showing tourists around, taking part in a gondola race, and visiting an island.
Plot and character development aren’t really the main focus of this manga. The art is full of painstakingly detailed backgrounds and the costumes of the gondola girls seem designed to inspire plenty of cosplay. For all of the focus on the sights of a recreated future Venice, the most visually arresting sequence of Aria occurs when Akari and Alicia visit an island that recreates a Japanese village and encounter a traditional fox spirit.
Aria is pretty, but it isn’t very substantial. It is the manga equivalent of cotton candy; colorful, sweet, and insubstantial. It does let you drop in on another world and admire the scenery, so if attractive art is a major consideration for you when you purchase manga, you might want to give it a try.

I thought I’d take some time to sit down and make a list of which manga series I’m actively following:

Viz

Nana - Consistently awesome.
Boys Over Flowers - One of the nice things about following a long-running series is being able to see the art evolve. The later volumes of this series are so much better than the first few volumes.
Hana Kimi - My favorite girl disguising herself as a boy with wacky hijinks + romance ensuing series.
Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden - I’m a sucker for Yuu Watase, and in many ways I’m enjoying this prequel series to Fushigi Yugi more than the original. It is a more mature work, with better characterization and a more complicated plot.
Skip Beat - I can see why the main character might be annoying to some people, but I like Kyoko’s relentless desire for revenge combined with her gradual awareness of her love for acting.
Fullmetal Alchemist -Sometimes I tend to let my volumes of Fullmetal Alchemist pile up, and then I’ll read them in one big chunk and wonder why I’m waiting to read each volume. One of the most intelligent action series out.

Tokyopop

Queen’s Knight - I like fantasy series, this one is pretty decent. From the author of INVU.
Suppli - I’m so happy there’s a new josei series to read.
Fruits Basket - Naturally.

GoComi

Cantarella - Borgia + Manga is a potent combination.
Her Majesty’s Dog - Consistently good series about a girl and her spirit animal companion.

Del Rey
xxxHolic - Gorgeous CLAMP art.
ES (Eternal Sabbath) - Great blend of suspense and sci-fi.

ADV

Yotsuba&!

CMX

Canon - Vampires!
Penguin Revolution - This series about a girl manager and her aspiring actor client/roommate is a little more consistent than the author’s other work Land of the Blindfolded.
Emma - Maids and thwarted love.
Venus In Love - I really liked the first volume of this series set in college.

Any other new manga coming out that I should be trying? Or are there any older titles I need to check out?