#1

Welcome to my first recommendation post! In this section, I will do 3 recommendations at a post, without going into the story or detail too much and there will be no spoilers. Form of the headers are as follows : [Mangaka, Name of the magazine manga serialised in] Name of the manga. Hope you’ll like them!

What these 3 manga that I will write about in this post have in common is their genre: Shonen-ai; meaning it depicts a romantic story between two men. I have a plan on writing a more detailed post on the difference of terminology between yaoi and shonen-ai later on, however I would like to state that I grouped them with commonly-used-context (as in shonen-ai : focuses on the romanticism, yaoi : involves sexual intercourse). Thus, if you are new to the genre,  and say “I may have a problem with the gay sex, I don’t know…” then shonen-ai may be a smooth transition for you. Nevertheless, I think beyond the romanticism and gender, they are all lovely stories; they totally deserve a shot!

[ZAKK, Opera] Canis

Manga tells the story of a hat designer Kutsuna Satoru (29), owner of the shop Dante and while he was heading back home from work one night he stumbles upon Kashiba Ryou (19), lying beside the narrow street. Bunny’s Scanlation group took up this manga as a project and until now they have scanlated the first volume completely, five chapters are done in the second volume. I wouldn’t want to speak more about it because I, myself cannot wait for the next chapter because of the excitement, wouldn’t want to spoil it for you. Another attraction of the manga for me is the ZAKK sensei’s artistic style. It is so beautiful that I have the first volume and I frequently open it up, awe at the characters and background, later on feel like I may be a little stalker… T A T

Enough with the confessions, moving on…

[Fumino Yuki, Canna] Hidamari ga Kikoeru

Taiichi is a university student, comes from a poor family and because of his ‘lively’ personality he easily is involved fights and has to change jobs frequently. One day by sheer luck he meets another student in the same university, Kouhei. Kouhei’s hearing is impaired and has trouble taking notes during class so the two make a deal, Taiichi decides to help Kouhei in return for food. First volume is fully, second volume has only one chapter scanlated and the project is in Hosikuzuu Scanlations’ hands. The story is cute and fuzzy, makes you think how would it be being someone with bad hearing. The style is also very nice.

[Ichikawa Kei, Marble] Blue Sky Complex

Narasaki Motochika lives in a crowded houseold, since the house is always noisy he looks for a place to quietly read his books. One day, one of his teachers at school requests for Narasaki to watch over the library for a couple of days (it would be better to say he black-mailed though, oh our teacers who take up the sacred duty to enlighten the future generations…). When he arrives at the library, he meets Terashima Natsuki. Terashima is a person who regularly gets into fights and he has to be in the library for detention. Narasaki learns that his side quest is to keep an eye on Terashima and the story continues… Blue Sky Complex has two volumes so far, since I do not have the second volume and it is not fully scanlated, I don’t know if the story ends in second volume. Scanlation is done by Moe-xRyu Scanlation group. I somehow like analytic characters like Narasaki; doesn’t mean that he is not emotional but he is always calm and logical. I’ve read all of Ichikawa sensei’s works (at least the ones I could find), I really like her stories and style. I hope it has the same effect as it did on me.

Also there is a scene which always cracks me up xD:

Personal note : The visual in header is taken from ZAKK sensei’s twitter account @ZAKK_ccc, others are taken from the manga scanlations. I have their original volumes, though it wouldn’t be logical to take pictures from them since they are in Japanese.

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