For fun, we unbagged/boxed all of our stuff this time, even the wife’s piles of stickers and postcards. Click on the picture for a larger image. Let the detailed examination begin!

Up against the pillow are all the calendars I got. I have more calendars than I have room for calendars….

I jokingly refer to a certain set of magazines as “Manga Time Kirara (and all its little wizards)” around my house. When, mere hours ago, I stood in a store and faced down the many, many Manga Time magazines, I was reminded why. There are a truckload of these, ever so slightly dissimilar magazines that, when looked at as a whole are all pretty much identical.

And because Yuri is on the list of acceptable fetishes for this particular set of just-slightly-dissimilar 4-koma manga, many of the series found in the pages of these many magazines have some Yuri. For instance, Morita-san ha Mukuchi, which effectively has one joke (Mayu doesn’t talk) and two possible Yuri characters.

I picked up Warratte! Sotomura-san (笑って！外村さん) by Minamori Minamo, expecting one joke and no Yuri, and was right about one of those things.

Sotomura Natsuki is a very nice girl, who likes typical girly things but, has a very unfortunate smile. Unfortunate in the sense that when she “smiles,” she’s likely to terrify people and make them think she’s about to punch their lights out. This, combined with a natural shyness that is expressed in terse sentences…and the fact that she wears her school skirt long, makes Natsuki look like, well, a gang boss. Everyone in her class is convinced that she bosses her poor younger brother around, beats up children and animals and gets into fights before school. In reality, her brother and she get along perfectly well, she likes children and animals and is likely to ruin her uniform climbing up a tree to rescue a balloon or a kitten.

This is the one joke in the manga. Natsuki smiles like wolf grins and talks like a gang boss. That’s it.

Haruno, a girl from another class, befriends Natsuki after she realizes that that leer *is* Natsuki’s smile. So now Natsuki has a friend. This made the difference between this being a very sad manga and a totally tolerable one. Natsuki also has an admirer.

Early on in the manga Natsuki saves a girl from being bullied and later in the manga, the girl reappears, ready to become a good gang member, dedicated to protecting her boss. But, of course, Natsuki is missing this completely, as she inappropriately replies to the girl’s request to call her Onee-san, by telling her to call her Anego (gang patois for “Big Sis.”)

Her admirer takes up bokutou to better be able to protect the boss and shadows Natsuki, (much like the glasses girl stalks Mayu) and possibly admires her more. And that’s about that for that.

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6 (It skirts being too full of pathos for my taste)
Characters – 6
Yuri – 2
Service – 1

Overall – 6

As I say, there’s only one joke, so reading too much of it at once can be too much. I suggest reading manga like this in small chunks over a few days for maximum fun.

Just wanted to share this with you – it’s the Life-size Gundam from the Yurikamome train:

Comiket Day 3 was a short, to-the-point shopping day. Day 3 at Comiket is always ero-day and, as a result, the lines are longer, the crowds are bigger and more claustrophobic. I tend to think of it as a ride made out of people. ^_^ Pro tip: At winter Comiket, the smell is less AND winter coats provide padding to ward off bruising.

We headed straight for Atelier Myabi, because a year without a Fujieda Miyabi calendar is a sad year. The wife commented that the dining room just wouldn’t look right without one. We threaded our way through the East Halls until we reached our only other objective, Junk-Lab and Raku-gun. This year’s Junk Lab doujinshi is, according to the note in the back, the last. With three pro gigs, Takemiya-sensei just doesn’t have time, I bet. Good for her. And we stopped by Himekawa Akira’s table in order to meet the artists for the Arabic-language manga, Gold Ring. That was very lovely.

We lunched with Ana and Kazami Akira-san, a very nice gentleman who follows the North American anime and manga markets for Japanese readers. The conversation covered how much Comiket has changed since we first were there ten years ago. Even on Day 3, there were many women this time. And people chatted on line, which they never used to do. We saw more cosplay just walking around. And, most striking, we saw people reading doujinshi in public. When we attended in 2002, Rica and I discussed how that was not done. She asked me for a doujinshi and sat on the train reading it openly, just because she’s like that. This time, we saw people doing that.

The biggest change in ten years was this. Ten years ago, if you asked me what Comiket was, I’d have told you it was a place to be alone in a large crowd. Now, it’s much more of a social event. As you can imagine, I think that’s a wonderful thing. We even saw a couple or two there on dates to Comiket. It was very cute. He had his circles, she had hers…but they were clearly together.

New Year’s Day in Japan is a great time to visit temples and shrines. The wife and I have our particular favorites. We actually managed to hit all of them today. At the Zojoji, which is a very popular temple/shrine complex that belonged to the Tokugawa family, we traditionally eat our New Year yakisoba. After paying our respects to Buddha, I pulled a fortune and got “excellent luck”! That was cool, and we headed around the corner to visit a small Benzaiten temple I very much like. We then went to the Toyokawa Inari shrine for the wife, where I discovered I had lost a glove. On the way back to the subway, I found the glove. See, excellent luck after all! ^_^ (I really like these gloves….)

We’re back in the room eating exceedingly unhealthy snacks and planning on heading over to Fuji TV tonight, perhaps, or maybe something else.

I hope you all have excellent luck in the new year. ^_^

Postscript: We did get to Fuji TV, where we found Hello Kitty’s roger ala One Piece, Hello Kitty dressed as Chopper and funniest of all, Chopper dressed as Hello Kitty. Then we wandered over to Aqua City Odaiba for food. Without fail, it was the most depressing place I have ever been to in my life. For a fashionable hotspot, it was dreadful.

In a very sudden last-minute decision, the wife and I ran off to Tokyo to be here for Comiket and New Year’s Day. This afternoon is the first chance I’ve had to play catch up to let you know where I am or what’s happening.

I took a very few pictures already that I want to share:

In the parking lot next to our hotel is this Type-Moon itasha.

The sigil lines are painted in silver, but the flash made them pop out.

We woke up the first morning and came downstairs to see the line for Comiket running right past our hotel:

When we got in, we headed straight for the JESUS DRUG table and for the first time, I was able to meet Hayate x Blade creator, Hayashiya Shizuru-sensei. I fangirled all over her, poor thing.

We found a little Marimite section, and then just threaded our way around all the halls. The wife found some doujinshi she liked and we headed back to the hotel to crash and burn.

In a crazy coincidence, my commanding officer Ana is staying in the hotel around the corner, so we caught up, and had a visit with Dan Kanemitsu, to discuss his work opposing Bill 156.

Day 2, today, we had only a very few tables marked off to visit. First, we headed to the Yuri section, greeted circle UKOZ and then walked around. A few circles I hadn’t seen in years were there. Then we wandered through the halls, stopping at random tables. We ran into the bara section and it was wonderful! Both men and women were selling and buying, but more men, and they were all so happy. I bought a doujinshi (O-san Love, how could I pass that up?) and they guy said, “It’s a gay manga.” I said I know and I think it’s terrific! It’s smiles all around. A gay manga! How awesome is that?

We utterly flipped two circles out. I picked up a Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei/Madoka crossover and the guys just stared at me, like “WHY would you get this?!?” and two women were floored that we knew Tezuka. Oh, oh, oh! And George Washington gave us a US colonial coin, that was swell. We were in the East Halls in the “anime series that never die” section, to check out Sailor Moon stuff, when we gaped at a Violinist of Hameln doujinshi and the circle gaped at us for knowing that series. That was pretty funny.

Late lunch with the C.O. and then we dragged back to our room where we are very busy sagging into throbbing balls of pain. Cement floors are not your feet’s friend.

Tomorrow is ero-day and we have a few circles to find, and a vast crowd to navigate. Time to rest up and build up energy.

Anyway, I’ll do my best to get the Top Ten List together before end of tomorrow, but if I don’t have a Happy New Year!