pira

90% of doujinshi are boxed up and moved to the attic.

I have re-arranged the raw manga/dj shelves keeping only my collection of K2, CJ Michalski, Sadahiro Mika and Maikata Mira and a few odds n sods ~ the rest are in storage.

Three shelves freed up for dolls.

Next job is to take all the Shonen Jump to the basement for my son. If he wants to read them they are on a shelf. If not they will eventually get pitched.

I'm SO glad I got over that insane phase of my life and have found something MUCH more grounded in reality to do with my spare time....

....

HEY.... at LEAST dolls are INTERACTIVE!!

Totally obsessing with this cover art on Volume 10 of Kizuna ~ in other words someone put the hose down the rabbit hole and it's a bloody mudslide down here!!

Have decided on a head and body for Ranmaru (far right) and will paint the face and crop the rooted hair to suit.

I have spent WAY TOO MUCH time agonizing over 1/6 scale watches for Masanori (2nd from left) too....but I found his suit.

*did I mention that before??*

AND in other news volume 2 & 3 of Kizuna LUX arrived today along with volume 1 of Borders (her new series) and I got caught up with the story (as much as I can make out from the piccies ) and OMG the smexing!!! The additional story in the LUX additions has Ranmaru & Kei going crazy against a hotel window (ala Viewfinder) AND I am now convinced she is restarting (or rewriting) K2's stalled/mothballed Guns & Roses series into a more updated men & guns/ spring & autumn tale here! HOLY NOSEBLEED!

*snaps fingers together loudly in the direction of the scanilators*...come ON girls ~ faster faster!! >D

....dolls aside...Howthef**k am I going to create those four chairs?

*wanders off to the gym pondering papermache and things*

While I was eating the breakfast bowl of rice, I was bopping about online and in the way things usually happen for me, I stumbled onto the fact that Kodaka Kizuma's re-issue of Kizuna, vol. 2 (actually volume 3&4) is out, as is volume one of Borders AND Kizuna 3 (5&6) is available from Japanese booksellers for pre-order.

*falls to floor and wallows in imaginary goodness like a dog*

I hadn't mentioned here that I stumbled across the freshly released Lux version of Kizuna 1 (1&2) while in Kyoto, sheerly by chance when in a regular book store hunting down PBB 3 for tameiki...and it's a nice, fat, sexy volume I might add.

I'm such a K2 whore....I WILL have one copy of everything she puts out and *gurgles*...she's redrawn the covers AND an entire chapter. I can HARDLY wait to see what she does with Masa in volume 3 *reaches for drool towel*.

...and since I'm helpless in resisting the need to make BK1 purchase I picked up a hat making book too, in order to take advantage of the shipping.

....another example of a manga to Anime being much easier on the eye and hence for myself MUCH more enjoyable is Junjou Romantica.

Honestly, although I have been choking down that BL manga I can't say that I have enjoyed it much. I find that the boys all look the same....and while Love Mode, by Shimizu Yuki suffers from the identity-muddle too, I find myself more involved with her characters and their troubles and triumphs more so than those of Nakamura Shungiku....whom I simply can't warm up to at all.

Having said that ~ the anime for Junjou Romantica cleans up the artwork and more importantly, cuts to the chase of the storyline. Where I will usually complain about anime omitting much of the fine details of their source manga, in THIS case it serves to benefit the end product and actually makes me a fan (omg I cried...3 x for gods sake) ~ since I can follow the story without all the frenetic comedy/action splattering the pages and confusing the issue(s).

Maybe I'm just impatient or dumb as a rock ~ but I prefer my stories to be a little less like a bunch of bishies in a blender and more like a nice bottle of red wine enjoyed slowly, sip by sip.

ANYway....another nod to tameiki.

Currently the *kachunk-kachunk-thump* of carpet being laid is echoing through this old house.

Cat-pissed carpet was ripped out Wednesday (after we hauled a lot of heavy furniture out of the way) and then I applied B.I.N over the areas of wood that had been nuked.

The air was nicely clear of the eau-du-chat-toilette and filled instead with the heady aroma of varnish. It was a great improvement ....although that could have just been the high I was on.

Thursday found a lovely package from the Kimono Tour operator in my mailbox. A package filled with little goodies to get us in the mood; tea, chopsticks ...for practice I assume....Kyoto made crackers and sweets as well as all kinds of touristy pamphlets to consider. The timing couldn't have been more perfect ~ 50 days till I board a jet plane outta here on my adventure. :)

Today while I have been waiting on the carpet persons to arrive and do their thing ~ the new copy of Shojo Beat arrived, alongside Youka Nitta's The Prime Minister's Secret Diplomacy ~ and while I am looking forward to reading the *official* translation of this volume, let me take this moment to stand up and clap in appreciation of 801's production values.

Not one...but TWO, folded, 2-page, full-colour plates of the bishies in question...and a brilliant overlapping of the images onto the inside of the dust cover.

If BeBeautiful embarrassed the entire Western Publishing industry (and the Western readership) with their craptastic work on Haru ~ let me tell you that 801 has stepped up to the plate and done us proud. THIS is one FREAKING BEAUTIFUL MANGA!

*CLAPS LOUDLY*

WELL DONE 801! WELL DONE!!!!

I look forward to reading it (purrrrs) ~ but only after I get the furniture back in place, and the dvds re-organizined in the cabinets, hook up the Idiot-Box and assorted devices so March Madness is again available for the twitchy U-crew.

I was just casting about the internet book shops searching up something about Bionicles for The Sprog. As I was trying to find something to fill in a little bit of the order to gain *free shipping* I discovered that someone (since it says only that its published by Diamond Comic Distributors but I nominate 801) has licenced an early Youka Nitta book , White Brand....

Me thinks someone let the uke out of the closet before Ycon....not even Amazon has it listed yet.... Go-Go Canadian blabbermouths. >D

The Juné site has been down for maintenance the past few days and I just figured out why....

Trolling Amazon.ca's future yaoi releases this morning I discovered their list of pre-order titles jumped from August to December 2008 with 801 & Juné leading the leap forward. Doubtless other publishers will be handing over their line-up for the rest of the year and that Amazon list will get longer and fatter.

(.___(.

Ignoring for the moment why I should KNOW that the list jumped forward last night...it means that Juné is updating their site with a cartload of bishie-books. Speaking of BL sites....BB is broken again and DQ contintues to maintain an air of a tomb, while Deux is quietly clickly along and BLU is holding steady with it's future releases only showing till the summer...I expect them to kick things into motion over there soon.

I am wondering whatever happened to Hyouta Fujiyama's Sweet Whisper from Juné, since Amazon.ca finally just cancelled it from my order and Indigo says it's not available? There's a story behind that one because her stuff is hot right now...hmmm. Me wants. This particular Fujoshi is not happy being denied Hyouta-sama's goodness.

Gah...it's closing in on the end of the month and I've fallen off the reading-wagon! Possibly because my *quiet time* for reading on the couch has be interupted by eldest spawnling and boyfriend have taken to sitting in my corner to snuggle while watching t.v. ~ which means I retire to bed early and have a bit of time to gnaw on a manga before passing out.

And there has been a good deal of manga flowing through my hands....I'm sure there are a few I've forgotten but here are a few thought bubbles on those which I've grazed upon;

( manga blah blah blah )

tameiki I have a question for you.

Last night I was in a *weather frump*....my head thick due to the rainy, cold, overcast conditions ~ and I was cuddling re-reading Deux's imprint of Shuiko Uido/Kano's Hanagumi Ninkyouden, volume one.

I'm loving everything about it (as I knew I would from the raws)... except the English title: Yakuza in Love.

*0__o....

I keep forgetting to ask you what the direct translation of the Japanese title is, but my instincts are screaming that there is no way a Japanese editor would slap that kind of title a series....at least not unless it was a comedy ~ and unlike Kizuna, this crime/romance story takes itself a bit more seriously ~ even if it does depict the Japanese underworld oddly gay.

Inquiring minds need to know if the translators really think their English readers are idiots or are they too dumb to come up with something more smexy without the cheese? I mean...ick.

Every morning I go through a mindless internet routine with my coffee ~ checking emails, journal(s) and various online sites ~ one being DramaQueen....just to see if there is any life over there (in particular if any new volumes are being made available in the near future...or this decade).

The only thing that changes is weekly *het porn spam* that is dropped into the forum.

I know there is life at the other end of DQ because...it gets removed.

The thing that is rather amusing about all this...is the fact that it's a yaoi forum. You'd think some enterprising spammer would clue into the fact that yaoi readers don't want to see naked girls....and they'd get more hits if they put in ads for gay porn.

Just saying.....

As much as I find them irritating as heck, Yaoisuki is persistent when it comes to nagging and managed to get some info on BeBeautiful and reported it: Here


I only spent a few minutes at the CPM booth, and I asked about Kizuna 9. MacDonald said he had no idea when it would be out at the moment. After a bit more chatting he talked about the Libre issue....it was a sort of impromptu interview, so I'm sorry I don't have stuff word for word! But here's the general idea.

He says that when he paid Biblos up-front for the rights to the various yaoi titles they put out, he acquired the rights for the duration of the contract and that Libre's acquisition of those rights after the demise of Biblos did not cancel that out.

Since putting up their notice, MacDonald says Libre has not taken any action to settle the matter, and even refuses to sit down with MacDonald or any other CPM representatives to try and work it out. Libre has not filed a lawsuit. He hopes that Libre will bring their lawyers to the U.S. so that the matter can be settled, but thinks that they are trying to deliberately harm the sales of the books until CPM's license expires so that they can license the series to another company.

As for Yaoi-Con '07, he says that probably due to the Libre issue, they were never approached to get a booth or sponsor the con, so they decided not to invest the money in a con that didn't seem to want them. He also noted that the reason why CPM has been so quiet on the matter up to now is because typically in Japan you don't take these arguments to the public-- but now he seems pretty fed up with the entire matter.