Book Review – The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

English Title: The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Original Title: Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu
Author: Nagaru Tanigawa
Artist: ???
Publisher: Yen Press/Little Brown
Age Rating: 15 & Up
Price: $8.99
Summary: (From the back of the book) “Meet Haruhi – a cute, determined girl, starting high school in a city where nothing exciting happens and absolutely no one understands her.

Meet Kyon – a sarcastic guy who sits behind Haruhi in homeroom and the only boy Haruhi has ever opened up to. His fate is now tied to hers.

Meet the S.O.S. Brigade – an after-school club organized by Haruhi and Kyon with a mission to seek out the extraordinary. Oh, and their second mission? Keeping Haruhi happy…because even though she doesn’t know it, Haruhi has the power to destroy the universe.”

Review: I’m pretty sure every anime fan out there or anyone who hangs out with anime fans has heard of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It became quite popular among anime fans about two or three years ago. Not quite sure how it happened, but it did. It also spread around the “Hare Hare Yukai” ending dance as well, which got anime fans all over the world to get together and dance the ending theme…that wasn’t really originally intended for people to dance.

Book Review: Maid Machinegun – A Novel

English Title: Maid Machinegun – A Novel
Original Title: Maid Machinegun
Author: Aaliyah
Artist: Suzuhito Yasuda
Publisher: Del Rey
Age Rating: N/A
Price: $9.95
Summary: Aaliyah is an over-enthusiastic girl who works at a maid café. She works hard trying to do her best and be the best maid ever! When the café hires a waiter, things end up becoming strange.

Review: Back when I was an otaku (which ended about a year ago), I had read the summary of this book and was quickly intrigued by the idea of a hardwork waitress at a maid café. I always had wanted to visit a maid café and had a bit of an obsession with them, so when I saw this book, I wanted to read it. The exceprt on Amazon.com helped me a great deal when deciding to get this book, as I could easily connect with Aaliyah’s enthusiam. And right before I go deeper into this review, I must say my summary of the story sucks. And this contains a bit dab of spoilers.

Book Review: Body Language

BODY LANGUAGE front cover

English Title: Body Language
Original Title: Karada de Wakaru Koigokoro
Author: Aki Morimoto
Artist: Tsubaki Enomoto
Publisher: DMP (Digital Manga Publishing) – Juné Manga Line
Age Rating: 18+
Price: $8.95
Summary: Kanae Hayakawa attends a college in Tokyo and had somehow gotten the nickname of “Cool Beauty”. Rumor has it that he’s huge playboy and is willing to sleep with anyone, be it a man or a woman. Thing is…Kanae is still a virgin. On the other side of things, there’s Yuichi Nagao. He’s known for his womanizing ways, having a few girlfriends on the side, and his rather rude (i.e. straightforward) personality. The two of them become friends after the “Cool Beauty” overshadowed the womanizer’s fame and Yuichi stood up for Kanae. Now, a growing close friendship later and Yuichi’s constant complaining of the lack of a girlfriend for two months, Kanae half-jokingly offers himself to Yuichi…only to have the usual womanizer accept his offering! Kanae tries his hardest to suppress his feelings for Yuichi and only think of the new edition to their relationship as just sex.

WARNING: Following review possibly contains mature content!

NOTE: I, personally, use the term “yaoi” as a generic term for the Boys’ Love/Shonen-ai/Yaoi genre. I am not up for arguing/debating about the usage of the terms. I do ask please avoid using the term “shonen-ai” in any comments on this review, as the use of that term is a huge pet peeve of mine. =] Thank you!

Super Eurobeat 193 Review

SUPER EUROBEAT 193 Review
Opening – Super Eurobeat 193 ~Revival Hits~ is the most recent release in the Super Eurobeat series. It was released on January 7th, 2009 and is the first Super Eurobeat release of 2009. For those who are unfamiliar with the Super Eurobeat series, it’s simply a compliation series much like the NOW! That’s What I Call Music series, that showcases selected Eurobeat songs from various different labels. Since hitting the 190s, every album (except for 190 itself) has had some sort of theme to it. SEB (Super Eurobeat) 191 was ~ENJOY YOUR DRIVE~, while SEB 192 was ~LET’S PARTY~. Many Eurobeat fans were disappointed on how little the song choices on the CDs followed the themes.

There was a lot of anticipation for this album for a few different reasons. One reason was because the tracklisting seemed to be released much later than usually. When a tracklisting was released and seemed to be official, it was canceled out by another tracklisting. I believe that there were three or four rumoured tracklistings before the official one appeared. There was also the label switch up of Gogo’s Music and SCP, where Go2 of SCP covered the Go Go Girls’s hit song of “HOT VAMPIRE” and the Go Go Girls’s covered Go2’s forgettable “LOOKA BOMBA”. Another factor into the anticipation for this album was the fact that there are so many remakes of classic Eurobeat songs – people wanted to see how well they were pulled off or how badly they were butchered. This CD contains a total of 14 tracks. Tracks 2 through 4 are covers of some mainstream songs and tracks 6 through 14 are remakes (except to tracks 10 & 11, as that’s the label switch up).