Manga Review: Hikaru no Go

Status: Completed

I absolutely loved Hikaru no Go. (A little bit of trivia: For those who didn’t know this already, Hikaru no Go was drawn by the same artist who drew Death Note, Obata Takeshi-sensei.)

Actually, I’ve already heard of Hikago a long time ago. However, I felt no sense of urgency to read it. I knew it was good though since I hadn’t come across any bad reviews for it. But being primarily a shoujo fan, I lacked enough interest to actually download/buy the manga. It wasn’…t until I bought an issue of Shonen Jump which contained some chapters of Hikago that I had a reason to read the manga.

This issue contained only a few chapters but it generated enough interest for me to look for the earlier chapters. It was just that good. The story and art simply hooked me.

Manga Review: Amatsuki

Status: Read up to Chapter 7

I encountered Amatsuki as an anime first. I was curious when someone mentioned that it had a manga counterpart. I am the kind of person who would prefer reading/watching the original work before seeing the other version.

The story is not so unusual. It involves alternate worlds and realities. The mangaka chose to portray it via the VR (Virtual Reality) technology. The protagonist arrives at this other world when he encounters two unusual types of monsters, which he, at first, thin…ks of as part of the VR programming. However, he soon realizes that he is not in the VR world that he had come from. In the story, this is done quite seamlessly that you have to wonder how it could have happened. There are events that happen in the manga that make you realize that there is more to the “accidentally-being-in-an-alternate-dimension” coincidence, which we have experienced many times in a manga story. What makes this story different in my opinion is the unique way of how the mangaka portrays it.