Funny!

마멀레이드 보이 1
요시즈미 와타루 지음 / 서울미디어코믹스(서울문화사) / 2000년 10월

Koishikawa Miki is a perfectly normal high school girl. One day, her parents tell her they've decided to swap spouses with another couple they've recently met. The idea horrifies Miki, but she discovers that the other family has a boy her age named Yuu, and she falls for him. She relents, and the families move in together. Suddenly, Yuu's old girlfriend Suzuki Arimi shows up. Then Miki discovers that the boy she had a crush on in junior high, Suou Ginta, is in love with her! Ginta starts hanging out with Arimi, and it gets even more complicated from there.

This is a touching and funny show about Miki's day-to-day life, and her attempt to figure out which boy she's actually in love with.

Great!

도쿄 크레이지 파라다이스 13
나카무라 요시키 지음 / 대원씨아이(만화) / 2000년 8월

Tokyo Crazy Paradise is a comic that appears in Hakusensha's Hana to Yume, a bimonthly collection of comics released on the 5th and 20th of every month. It's written by Nakamura Yoshiki, who's also known for his/her series on Ichido and Yoshiyuki, a couple whose lives revolve around basketball. Before you ask, let me say this officially: Tokyo Crazy Paradise is still running now and is not yet finished!!

Well, anyways, the year is 2006 and life in Tokyo is not easy for women where they are constantly under the fear of violence. A daughter and 3 sons are raised by the Kozukis, who are both police officers. Not wanting their daughter subject to the violence of Tokyo, they raise her as a boy...

The year is now 2021 and Tsukasa Kozuki is still keeping her promise not to be taken advantage of by men. Skilled in fighting, naive and honest, she's left with her three brothers when their parents die suddenly in the line of duty. Their enemy? The yakuza, a Japanese gang (mafia). The main kumi in the area was Kuryugumi, headed by a 14-year-old boy named Ryuji Shirogami whose father had just been killed.

Tokyo Crazy Paradise begins with a short story where Tsukasa tries to take advantage of her enemy, the yakuza, (specifically Ryuji), a classmate who she's known since grade school. He hires her as a bodyguard to find the killer of his father. It turns out that his killer was also responsible for the deaths of her parents.

Since that episode, Tsukasa, unable to pay back for the amount of food her brothers had consumed while she was putting her life in danger, she's forced to work as his bodyguard, and the story continues... and her debt increases...

Excellent!

여기는 그린우드 1
나스 유키에 지음, 장혜영 옮김 / 대원씨아이(만화) / 2000년 11월

Koko wa Greenwood is one of those anime and manga you wish had more made for it. It manages to mix a unique witty, offbeat brand of humor with touching, serious situations of loss and love. Basically, it narrates the tale of a certain hard-lucked student name Hasegawa and his travails at a certain high school named Ryokurin Ryou or Greenwood for short.

The domitory can be best described as an 'asylum' run by the heads, Mitsuru and Shinobu whose crazy antics and pranks torment our protangonist, Hasegawa. And who can resist his roommate Shun who looks like a girl! Mix these elements together and you get one of the looniest comedies around!

But this is not just a comedy about dormitory life. We get to meet the looney families behind these characters! Take it from me, Greenwood is one of those rare Anime comedy gems you seldom find now in the often staid, crank-em-out, copycat anime machine out there. And how can you not like an anime where all the main characters have such cool looking shades of colored hair :)

Best sports manga ever!

슬램덩크 1
이노우에 다케히코 지음 / 대원씨아이(만화) / 1999년 12월

Yep. I like basketball. This manga influenced alot on that as well. It has dynamic characters, story line, and also some interesting characters. I can't stress how cool Kaede Rukawa is, but let's not stray off too much on that. (Ahem.) -_-;; The drawing becomes pretty impressive as the volumes progress. Some illustrations of basketball play scenes, however, are direct copy from the Sports Illustrated.... and that bothered me for a while. Now I don't really care about it, because I understand how hard it is to get all those dynamic poses while playing basketball.

This manga branched out to some other genres of media, such as anime (of course), video games, and TV commercials. I'm glad they didn't do some wacky musical like Sailor Moon ... I mean, the game was OK. I played SNES and Sega Saturn versions, and ... it was mediocre but OK. The anime version was really horrible. It is almost as equally bad as Dragonball Z series. All those filler episodes ... urgh. This manga should have just stick to its true medium: manga.

If you can get this manga by any chance, I highly recommend it. It has good plot (sometimes a bit forced, but it is still fun enough for us to forgive), and good character development. Drawing is also good too, especially when Takehiko Inoue san reaches his peak (from later volume 20's to end of the series). It is rather sad to see an artist being stopped by his own type cast, and Takehiko Inoue san was like that for a while -i.e. Buzzer Beater. Now he has found his own color -i.e. Vagabond, and I am happy for him.

Amusing!

러프 rough 10
아다치 미츠루 지음 / 대원씨아이(만화) / 1998년 4월

Yamato Keisuke's a swimming hopeful who repeatedly comes in third. Ninomiya Ami's an aspiring diver in the same senior high school. When the two of them end up in a blind date, they find that they've got more in common than their respective sports. Born into families that would've made put a smile on the Bard's face, both their familes -- which run their own confectionery shops -- have been bitter-rivals for generations. In fact, Ninomiya grandfather died worrying over his business after being beaten to an idea by the Yamatos (and he blamed the Yamatos for his death). Unknown to both families, both Keisuke and Ami had actually met before as kids, when they used to sneak away to a caretaker's home without their families' knowledge.

But vying for Ami's heart is also Nakanishi Hiroki, the national swimming champion and the person Ami calls her 'brother', who quickly becomes Keisuke's competition both in and out of the pool. But eventually, she'll have to make the decision...

Rough (other than the sports) is about the relationships between Keisuke, Ami and Hiroki. It's also about the camaradarie between Keisuke's other four room-mates.

The greatest appeal of Rough is in its characters (IMO his best to date) and the way they interact. The fact that they're more vulnerable in Rough than most of Mitsuru Adachi's other manga make them highly relatable too. A wonderful look at relationships behind the usual touch of humour and sports.