A small Asuka manga update:

I think Hyakumantsubu no namida has lost its magic for me. It started all too well and fresh and exciting but at the moment the whole story is developing in all too predictable ways. The art isn’t as pretty as a few issues ago, too. Kazumi-sensei seems to draw the characters’ arms longer and longer with every new chapter o_O

Yumemiru machi – Disaster City Blues is growing on me, though. It started three issues ago. The first chapter got me quite interested, the second installment was kind of weird because I couldn’t make out the connection to what happened in ch.1 but now, with chapter 3, I’m completely hooked. First I wasn’t too impressed with the mangakas artwork (I didn’t like her previous series that ran in Asuka and Shoujo Teikoku), but for this story it seems to have changed a bit and it looks really good. The story is somewhere between fantasy and cyper-punk, both bizarre and fresh (in the sense of not repeating old plot devices of ‘alternative’ shoujo manga). Very cool.

Asuka 4 is supposed to come with a school calendar including artwork from Akira Onodera… can’t wait to get it. But it’s still more than a week until it’s released in Japan ;_;