I started re-reading Penguin Revolution today since it’s been a while since I last read it. And I never finished it. The story is cute so far and the artwork is pleasant. I really like her style and admire her line art. She strikes a good balance between it and the screen tones. She also did Yoroshiku Master and Land of the Blindfold, both of which I really enjoy. Her stories are light romantic comedies. Haven’t encountered any angst or dark themes in them so far.
Somehow, shoujo manga tends to have a dark-haired guy and a light-haired guy for the two main romantic interests. I suppose this visual distinction is need to show how radically different the female’s possible choices are. I tend to like the studious, more serious, and quiet one :)
One of the splash pages for chapter 1 of PR was comparing the height of Yukari and an emperor penguin. And according to the manga-ka, the penguin is almost as tall as Yukari. So I checked with Wikipedia and compared:
- Emperor penguin: 120 cm -> 48 in.
- Me: 60 in.
!!! The penguin is really almost as tall as me! O_O Haha. Now that I think about it, I never got to see March of the Penguins. A couple of years ago for some reason it seemed that a lot of penguin-related movies came out around the same time.
Hm it’s 3pm and I’ve been up since 11am doing nothing but read manga. Stumbled across three chapters of Deadman Wonderland earlier and it’s pretty promising. Typical shounen with the gore and accentuated physical features of the female characters (one of the main characters is a G cup, which would be an F in American size?), but really interesting premise. A teenage boy, Ganta, is sentenced to death row for a mass murder he didn’t commit. The prison he is sent to is an amusement park in post-earthquake Tokyo operated by the inmates. Of course there’s lot of secrets behind the theme park, the mass murder, Ganta’s old friend Shiro, and Ganta’s supernatural powers. Trust me, it’s more interesting than what my summary makes it out to be.
Edit: I love reading the small talk (side columns with the manga-ka’s ramblings) in mangas. In chapter 5 of PR, the manga-ka goes realizes that there’s a “high nude rate!!” lmao xD It’s typical of gender-bender mangas because:
- You are guaranteed that the character’s gender will be found out through being walked in on whilst changing
- They have to transform between genders, otherwise you won’t have masculine-looking male characters that female readers can salivate over
- It brings in the dough
Ah, I need to stop reading manga and go do something with my life O:)
