Manga Monday 35

This week, I read a lot of Hana-Kimi. I love buying a lot of a manga series and reading it in quick succession. I did the same thing with Death Note. The stories just seem to flow better, and Hana-Kimi is a series with several volumes already out, so I have a lot of catching up to do...

Hana-Kimi (Volumes 2 - 4)
Hisaya Nakajo

This is a really fun shojo series to follow. Like I said before, this series follows a young girl named Mizuki who has left her family in America to go to an all boys' school in Japan in secret, to be close to Izumi Sano, her inspiration. She quickly makes friends and happens to be the roommate of her heart's desire... Each subsequent volume of the series is just as fun as the first. Silly, dramatic, funny and lovely. I really enjoy the supporting character in the series named Nakatsu, who has a crush on Mizuki without knowing she's a girl, but unable to help himself and his "gay" feelings. He's always funny and I keep help rooting for the guy, even if Izumi is who she's ultimately meant to be with. But anyway, another thing I like about this series is how each volume is kind of like a storyarc, moreso than most manga that I read. Volume two was about Mizuki's half-brother visiting her from America, volume three followed her and a few of her friends as they worked at a beach chalet over break, and volume four begins the annual war of the dorms. Even the opening of each volume is like opening up the trade collection of a superhero book, with a brief recap of the situation thus far before the characters continue their story. I found it a little odd to be structured this way, even though it makes perfect sense for collections (which is why superhero books do it), but like with Absolute Boyfriend, which also has storyarcs, there's never really a recap like this; It just continues, assuming you've read what's come so far or that you won't get lost if you pick up where the current chapter begins. It was just interesting to see. In the end, it doesn't really matter. It's all good and that's what's important. A-