The Bibliophile's Journal II

First, a programming note - over the next couple months, I’ll be finishing up my web design certification, and I’ve just begun a Biblical studies programme, so I’ll be busier than usual. I’ll continue to blog and update every Sunday, but expect more short posts like this for a little while.

With that out of the way, I’ve gone through a few graphic novels over the past couple weeks. I talked about Gunslinger Girl volumes 11-12 in the previous post, but here are the others:

**Oh My Goddess! v. 42 - **I had several problems with v. 41, and those problems continue here. This volume includes our brave heroes stopping for a picnic in the middle of their journey through hell, as well as another poorly-executed battle, with no end in sight for this arc.

_ToraDora! _v. 5 - Another one that I’ve reviewed previously, up through the third volume; it continues to be fairly talky, but there are fewer internal monologues than before. Getting away from the school building also helps. For those who’ve seen the anime or read the novels, this is the story arc where Minori and Ryuuji have that conversation about ghosts which is an obvious metaphor for love. This came across as a little cheesy in the anime; here it seems even more so, but that may be because this is the third or fourth time I’ve seen this conversation.

So far, the comic has stuck very close to the anime adaptation (I don’t know how close either are to the novels). I hope Zekkyo begins straying from that soon; the comic is solid enough, but so far if you’ve seen the anime there’s not really any reason to read this. Since we’re already five volumes in, though, I don’t expect that, so I may end up dropping this series if I don’t start seeing something new.

_Gate 7 _v. 3 - In my impressions of the first volume, I complained that though the art here is beautiful, the story is a tangled mess and the main character is a near-clone of Watanuki from xxxHolic, another CLAMP series. The second and third volumes are much the same, so I doubt I’ll bother with any future releases unless I hear it improves significantly.

**_Yotsuba&! _v.11 - **The three comics above have been disappointing, but Yotsuba&! continues to be the pinnacle of human achievement.

Well, maybe not the pinnacle, but it’s still great and everyone should read it.  Someday, I’d like to write a full post on it because it probably is my favourite comic, but I’ve never really been able to describe what makes it so enjoyable. So, I’m left having to simply rave about it like a fanboy.