Now, what’s behind door number 3? Tune in Thursday, same bat-time, same bat-channel! Or, you can have a sneak peek at the answer if you vote on TWC all weekend. 😉
I’ve been reading the manga “Library Wars” to break up my shounen manga overload. I love the concept; Libraries battling censorship in an effort to allow citizens the right to access all kinds of materials. My cousin is a librarian and has alerted me to the fact that publishers, especially e-publishers, are trying to restrict library access to e-books so they can force people to buy books, which is terrible in my opinion. Libraries exist to allow people of all walks of life access to great literature and information, not just those who can afford to get an e-reader. The story itself is standard shoujou manga fare, with a romantic entanglement the core of the work rather than the concept, but I like it. The art is also pretty amazing, and I was highly amused when the manga-ka wrote that she loved muscles but couldn’t make her characters too muscled because it’s a shoujou manga and that would be off-putting to readers. Superhero comic artists who believe that more muscle makes men more attractive to women should probably take note.
I think the manga-ka is a Takahashi fan. There are two scenes that are very reminiscent; one of them really, really strongly so. It made me laugh out loud a) because it was funny and b) because I didn’t expect to see that kind of humor in a shoujo love story.
The manga is based on a trilogy of books. The books might have more detail. I think the manga is a deliberately shoujo-focused version of the original story. Not substantially different, but aimed differently.