manga blog – Lace and Dagger Books

Do I Still Like This Manga? Miracle Girls by Nami Akimoto

March 30, 2023March 29, 2023by Rosina @ Lace and Dagger BooksLeave a Comment

Welcome to the next instalment in my Do I Still Like This Manga series! This time we’re throwing it all the way back to the first manga series I bought where I hadn’t already watched some of the anime. Yep, back when I was 8/9, I bought a few volumes of Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura, and then I started to collect Miracle Girls!

This is a shoujo manga series that not many people will have heard of. Originally published in Japan in the ’90s, Tokyopop bought it to an English-speaking audience in the early 2000s. This was back before Tokyopop started releasing manga published the original way around. So these were shorter volumes, printed the western way around and released with anglicised names for most characters – names I will use in this post.

Ahh, the old days.

Miracle Girls is technically a magical girl series, but not in the way you’d expect. In it, we follow identical twins, Mika and Toni, as they attend school, fall in love and learn more about their psychic powers. The girls go to different schools, and when Mika asks Toni to switch with her to compete in the sports festival, someone seems to catch on to their powers. Putting them at risk as they try to deal with their personal relationships.

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do i still like this manga, Manga

Do I Still Like This Manga? Marmalade Boy by Wataru Yoshizumi

March 16, 2023March 4, 2023by Rosina @ Lace and Dagger BooksLeave a Comment

If you’re into shoujo manga, 90’s shoujo anime and/or Japanese dramas, you’ve probably heard of Marmalade Boy. It’s an incredibly popular shoujo manga series from the early 90s. It was one of the earlier titles that Tokyopop released in English back in the day. It was a series I picked a few volumes up back when I was 12/13, and it was a series that I always meant to finish. But one that, due to it going out of print and me being a kid who didn’t think to hunt it down online…I never did.

So I’m so glad that Seven Seas have bought the rights and are now rereleasing this series in some stunning collectors’ editions. I obviously preordered volume 1 and read it super quickly after getting it.

But it’s also a very dated series with some content I was leery of even reading it as a kid. So I was curious about how I’d feel about this series now. I wasn’t put off knowing some of the content in this book. However, some newer readers might wind up DNFing due to the issues. Still, the 90s/00s style drama isn’t usually something I enjoy anymore. And this series is packed full of that.

Marmalade Boy follows 16-year-old Miki, whose life was turned upside down when her parents return from a holiday only to tell her they’re getting divorced. On the trip, they met another couple, and now they’ve decided to switch partners! They move in together to keep the family units together, including Miki’s new step-brother, Yuu.

Just a quick warning that this post will contain spoilers for this and later volumes, so read on if you’re okay with that.

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Manga

Manga I’d Love To See Translated Into English

January 21, 2023January 15, 2023by Rosina @ Lace and Dagger BooksLeave a Comment

The problem with being into manga is you’ll always stumble upon series that look good but need English translations. Fortunately, publishers sometimes hold surveys asking what titles they should pick up, so you can always shout about them. But until then, if you want a copy? You’ll have to grab it in Japanese or another language if it’s been translated elsewhere.

Since I’ve started collecting more series in Japanese, I’ve got a growing list of series that I really want English publishers to pick up. So today, I wanted to share my excitement for some of these series with you all! You may wind up wanting them translated too.

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books, Manga, tbr

Light Novels I Have To Read

October 22, 2022October 20, 2022by Rosina @ Lace and Dagger Books1 Comment

I’ve spoken about light novels a fair bit on here and on my social media. They’re something I really enjoy reading and will continue to do so. So I’ve decided to put together a little post about a few of the books I’ve got to read!

Most of these are isekai series. For those who don’t know, isekai are series where a character is transported or reborn in another world or time. Usually, the characters are transported into some sort of series they like, but apparently, even a series where a character dies and goes back to repeat their time can be considered isekai. I don’t have anything against the idea of isekai series, but the market is a little oversaturated with them. I’d like to pick up more light novels that don’t fall under this genre but alas…it’s most of what we get.

That said, all the series on this list are ones targeted at girls or women. I don’t have much interest in checking out any of the shonen or seinen light novels I’ve seen. But if you have more shoujo or josei recs? Shoot them my way!

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do i still like this manga, Manga

Do I Still Like This Manga? Legal Drug 1-3 by CLAMP

July 26, 2022July 24, 2022by Rosina @ Lace and Dagger BooksLeave a Comment

Back when I was a teenager I started the CLAMP series Legal Drug. I read volumes 1 and 2…then never got around to reading volume 3. The series wasn’t officially finished. The magazine the manga was in closed, and it took years for it to get picked up by a different magazine. But I’ll get more into that later as it’s kind of interesting.

I recently saw the continuation of the series available in English. It’s called Drug and Drop, and I was so excited to get to it. With so many years of difference, I was curious to finish this first set off and move on. Unfortunately, I won’t be continuing on to it now as I DNFed volume 3.
It’s safe to say that I’m very disappointed.

Legal Drug follows two 17-year-old boys who work at the Green Pharmacy. They spend their days working as shop assistants, but every now and then, their boss, Kakei offers them a different job that only someone with psychic powers can complete. Kazahaya can touch things and see memories, and Rikuo can destroy things with a thought. You don’t really see much of Rikuo’s power, but it’s still there. Using these abilities, they’re trying to solve some mysteries connected to their own pasts whilst trying to earn extra money.

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Manga, video games

Anime, Manga and the Female Gaze

April 2, 2022March 28, 2022by Rosina @ Lace and Dagger BooksLeave a Comment

I love anime, manga and video games. I talk about them on my blog and all my social media. I’m majorly into a mobile game right now, one that has an anime series, including an upcoming film, and I’m even writing fanfiction for it. Some of the series I love are the popular ones you see a lot of people talking about, and you can easily get merch for in the west. But those series tend to be shonen or seinen series. That’s not to say I don’t love any series where the target audiences are girls and women. My current obsession is definitely aimed at girls, and it definitely has a fairly large fanbase but is it promoted as much in the West? No.

In fact, very few female-targeted series get promoted as hard in the West.

I did a poll on Twitter recently asking people whether they thought female-targeted series are promoted as much in the West, and 5 out of the 6 people who answered agreed that they aren’t. There is something incredibly sad about this, and I want to talk about it.

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Manga

Josei Manga Recommendations

February 3, 2022February 1, 2022by Rosina @ Lace and Dagger BooksLeave a Comment

I’ve been wanting to do another manga recommendations list for a bit. And I decided that this time, I just have to go for josei manga. Josei manga is manga series aimed at women 16+, and is, therefore, a little more mature than shoujo. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re smutty, and there are actually quite a few series that are fantasies focused on male protagonists, but they still have pretty art styles.

As someone who loves fantasy with pretty boy characters, and doesn’t mind a bit of fujobait as unpopular as that can be (I understand queerbaiting is wrong, but it’s still fun to see these pretty boys have fun interactions), that kind of josei is definitely for me.

Most of the series on this list will be fantasy josei, as that’s the kind I tend to read. So if you’ve wandered over here from my BL list, there will be stuff you will enjoy too. I do have to say that one of these series is a little older and maybe a bit more difficult to get, but I had to include it.

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Manga

BL Manga Recommendations

December 16, 2021August 7, 2022by Rosina @ Lace and Dagger Books4 Comments

It’s time for a manga recommendation post. And not just any genre of manga but BL. For those of you who didn’t read the I Read A Yaoi Audiobook post, BL stands for Boys Love. It’s a genre that, in the past, was split into shonen-ai and yaoi. Shonen-ai translates as Boys Love, but this is more commonly used now.

If you’re already immersed in the manga scene and like picking up BL manga, this post won’t be for you. I’ve only recently started reading the genre again, and my recommendations here are well-known series. Some of them are difficult to get your hands on at the moment, but volumes are still being published. There is one exception which I’ll list at the bottom, but I can’t talk about BL and not mention this one-volume manga and light novel series.

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Manga

The Wonders of Doujinshi

November 25, 2021November 24, 2021by Rosina @ Lace and Dagger BooksLeave a Comment

Zines are something that is slowly getting more popular. Whether you’re looking for fandom zines advertising on Twitter or Tumblr or the more traditional zines with unusual poetry and pictures, you can always find something for you. Zines themselves aren’t new, they’ve been around for many years, but in Japan, there’s been a particular form of manga that are essentially zines.

Doujinshi.

So today, I want to talk a little about doujinshi. I’m going to explain what it is for those who don’t know and just say why you should all think about getting some. Or, y’know, try drawing some if you’re into that.

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Manga, Review

I Read A Yaoi Audiobook

November 18, 2021November 17, 2021by Rosina @ Lace and Dagger Books1 Comment

If you haven’t noticed now, I’m a massive anime/manga/game nerd. I’ve posted about josei manga, light novels, and I’ve even reviewed a few volumes. Over the last few months, I’ve gotten back into manga and games in a way that I haven’t been for years. I’ve never stopped enjoying it, but I did sort of fall out of it for a while. Even if my last few obsessions have been anime and games, my focus was only on the individual series. Not manga and games as a whole.

Once again, I’m desperate to visit Japan. It’s not something that I will be able to afford any time soon, so I’ve been watching videos of people living in Japan on YouTube instead. It has been a lot of fun, and one that I stumbled upon last night was a British voice actor living in Japan…producing an audiobook of a yaoi manga in a month. The manga was called You Are My Princess, and the project was pulled together by CDawgVA, which you can check out here.

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Tag: manga blog

Do I Still Like This Manga? Miracle Girls by Nami Akimoto

Do I Still Like This Manga? Marmalade Boy by Wataru Yoshizumi

Manga I’d Love To See Translated Into English

Light Novels I Have To Read

Do I Still Like This Manga? Legal Drug 1-3 by CLAMP

Anime, Manga and the Female Gaze

Josei Manga Recommendations

BL Manga Recommendations

The Wonders of Doujinshi

I Read A Yaoi Audiobook

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