Best of 2008! In a way.

December 23, 2008 · by Melinda Beasi · 1 Comment

For the past couple of days, Comcast has been having one of its too-frequent periods in which its DNS do not know that our domains exist. It’s been difficult to develop the motivation to post, when I know that anyone using Comcast is unable to reach my blog (this includes my mother, how cruel is that?) but I hate to just ignore everyone else. So, those of you who are not Comcast subscribers (or are Comcast subscribers who use Open DNS, like we’re doing right now), this post is for you. ETA: DNS problem solved! Thanks, Comcast!

Lots of people have been posting “Best of” lists for 2008, and I’ve felt too embarrassed to participate much. Since I’m so new to everything, I spent much of 2008 playing catch-up on many great series that the rest of you have been reading all this time, and haven’t really made my way to much that was newly released in 2008. So what I thought I’d do here, is make a list of manga I loved that was new to me in 2008.

This list was interesting to assemble, as I realized that much of the manga I raved over this year, I’d actually begun reading last year (xxxHolic, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Banana Fish, for example), so with those eliminated, here are my Top Five “New to Me” Manga in 2008:

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Life on KK

November 19, 2008 · by Melinda Beasi · 3 Comments

Greetings from Salt Lake City! We’ve finished our first day of auditions here, and I’m relaxing back at the hotel while my body fights the time change. Tomorrow I’m going to head over to Night Flight Comics, just a few blocks away, as recommended by Tangognat‘s Anna. In the meantime, Lissa Pattillo got me thinking about the recent “Hey, Answerfans!” question at ANN’s Hey, Answerman! and so I’m posting my own response here!

The question was, “If you could live in the world of any anime or manga series, which would it be, and why?” My answer to this is, frighteningly, Please Save My Earth.

When I first read Please Save My Earth, I think I mentioned that it was pretty much my ideal teen/pre-teen fantasy. Seriously. A group of teenagers who share collective memory through their dreams about their former lives as alien scientists observing earth from the moon?? You could not possibly come up with something more appealing to the twelve-year-old me. Have I mentioned that they all have special powers, like ESP or the ability to fly? I mean, come on. So, if you needed proof that I’m basically still a twelve-year-old deep down, look no further, because for me this concept still holds substantial appeal. [Read more...]

History of a daydreamer

February 6, 2008 · by Melinda Beasi · Leave a Comment

In my last post, I talked about how I tend to experience fiction by total immersion. Then for two days after, I proceeded to immerse myself once more by reading all 21 volumes of Please Save My Earth. It was like a nostalgic visit to my very own young teen brain, and that’s something pretty incredible. Four volumes in, I said to friends, “It’s like they removed my teenaged brain and stuck it on paper for all of Japan to read.” This only became more true as I continued through the series.

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