"I said half of my dreams came true / and the other half are up to you ..."

[larryhammer]

... and you said that's a little peculiar

A post for personalized manga recommendations.

I've been thinking of doing this for a while. Comment with what you're looking for, be it a genre or description or the names of a few More Like This Please series, plus whether you prefer licensed volumes or scanlations, and any other parameters (long/short, completed/ongoing, et cet.). I'll suggest two titles to try, based on my sense of your tastes. If you've already read those two, I'll attempt one more title before giving up in despair.*

Because if I'm going to spend five years reading gods know how much of the stuff, the least I can do is make myself useful.

Blind spot: I haven't read very many yaoi series and so am completely unqualified to recommend them (indeed, I'm looking for recs for series that discard the seme/uke dynamic). Weak spot: I have idiosyncratic tastes when it comes to shounen,** especially shounen adventure, which means that while it steers me to non-obvious titles, I often overlook the obvious ones. I'm also weak with manwha and manhua, partly from availability and partly taste. Strengths: shoujo romances and adventures, and yuri fluff.


* Symbolized by cherry petals swirling about me as I weep manly tears.

** I find most shounen rom-com not very com. Nor all that rom, for that matter.

---L.

Comments

[pseudo_tsuga.livejournal.com]

I really want happy heart-warming feminist shoujo BUT where the main plot isn't only romance. If possible I'd also like under 10 volumes for length.

[larryhammer]

Would you prefer paper or electronic format?

---L.

[pseudo_tsuga.livejournal.com]

Electronic would be better.

[larryhammer]

My first thought is Pearl Pink by Meca Tanaka, which I read in paper but it looks like scans are available, though I'm not sure whether of the licensed volumes or original scanlations. To go with that, how about Obaachan wa Idol ("Grandmother is an Idol" as in actress/singer, yes) by Kimiko Kikuchi, which is also 4 volumes long but is only in scanlations. That both of these are show-biz stories is not so much a reflection of taste as that the setting seems to be the easiest way to get both fluffy and relatively low romance. (The various alternates I thought of (Cat Street, Kodomo no Omocha, Skip Beat!, Ichigo Channel, Penguin Revolution, et cet, many of them either less fluffy or less feminist) are also show-biz stories.)

---L.

[pseudo_tsuga.livejournal.com]

Yay, thank you! I've never heard of Obaachan wa Idol before.

[larryhammer]

It's not Kikuchi's best series ever, but it has a certain kind of strong woman + retro feel charm.

Come to think of it, her Complex is also a show-biz story that's also happy and not romance-obsessed and IIRC reasonably feminist. Her other series I've read is more solidly romances, though, if a slow-paced one.

---L.