Looking for a last-minute gift for that special someone before the holidays? Why not get them some brand-new manga? There’s a number of titles out this coming week for any type of fan.
Remember Del Rey? When Kodansha split off, for contractual reasons the xxxHOLIC books stayed with the parent. And now we get the penultimate volume in the series, which… well, honestly, it’s lost me by this point. But I’m sure other Watanuki fans ill love it to bits!
As for Kodansha itself, there’s always the third volume of Mardock Scramble. Which is unusually resistant to my glib jokemaking, but possibly I’ll think of something by the time the fourth volume comes around.
Midtown Comics is apparently running late on its wine manga, as they not only have the second volume of international sensation The Drops of God, but also the first volume as well. Sounds like a gift set to me!
Yes, I want to have this be the image for Dorohedoro 5, which is awesome and highly underrated (stop looking for the plot – just let it wash over you), and you should all be buying that. But I just have to give prime position to the 27th and FINAL volume of Fullmetal Alchemist. The whole series has been building to this volume, an it absolutely does not disappoint – one of the best endings to any shonen series in North America. And if you’ve somehow missed the previous 26 volumes, Viz is kindly selling all 27 in a giant box. In fact, the box came out before this individual volume. Lastly, there’s the 7th and 8th volume (or 4th omnibus) of boobs and fights manga Tenjo Tenge, which if nothing else reminds me I still need to read the 3rd.
So what’s in your stocking?
The deck consists of 50 cards in five colors (red, orange, blue, black and green). Each color consists of the following cards: 1,1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5. At the beginning of the game, the cards are shuffled together and a hand of either 4 (4 or 5 players) or 5 (2 or 3 players) is dealt to everyone. The cards are picked up by each player with the backs facing them so that they cannot see their own hands but may see everyone else’s. The game also includes colored tokens. 8 blue tokens are placed on the table in the box cover and three red tokens are placed next to the box cover on the table.
When discarding a card, you will simply declare that you are discarding a card and then place that card in the discard area. This card is out of play permanently, but it will now be visible to everyone including yourself. You then draw a card from the deck so that you have the same number of cards that you started with. But more importantly, you may return one of the blue tokens to the box cover. This is how you “recycle” the blue tokens so that more clues can be given. Remember, you only start with 8 blue tokens and no one knows anything about his own hand!
Play continues until either the third red token has been used, all 5 fireworks have been completed, or the draw deck runs out. If the draw deck runs out, players continue with the cards remaining in their hands until the person who drew the last card gets one additional turn.
Memory is very important since each player will be getting information about her hand that may or may not be immediately useful. I often find myself thinking things, “Okay, this is a 3, these two cards are blue, and this card is black. Do I know anything about the other cards? Well I guess I know they aren’t 3s, blue, or black, since I haven’t played any of these cards yet” Yes, it’s deliciously tricky!
Conclusion:
One minute Whit Allgood is falling asleep in front of the TV, the next an army is breaking down his door, brandishing guns and dragging his sister Wisty out of her bed. But the biggest shock for Whit and Wisty comes when they’re accused of being a wizard and a witch by the New Order—the all new government that’s taken over the whole country—and are sentenced to death. As they struggle to survive in their jail cell, the siblings discover that they do have special powers, from telekinesis to bursting into flames. Even after they manage to break out, thanks to the help of a ghostly friend, Whit and Wisty still have to find their parents, and they might have to break back into jail to do it.
Now we come to Yen Press’s manga adaptation by Svetlana Chmakova. The visual aspect of the comic actually helps with the clunky-ness in the book. New character appearances are less sudden, and we see the transition from one place to another, so there’s no flipping back a page to see how Whit and Wisty suddenly got from point A to point B. Chmakova’s art also helps to brighten up some of the less-than-stellar character personalities. Sure, the villains are just as one-dimensional as in the novel, with their little dark beetle eyes, but other characters seem more human in her hands. Whit wears a blank look of shock when he discovers that Celia is a ghost, and Wisty’s range of expressions, from cartoonish excitement at living in a fancy department store to the dark, narrow-eyed look when she casts her angry spells, make this witch even more fun and exciting than her novel version.
MJ: Hmph. Fine. Well, I finally got a chance to read the latest from CLAMP, volume one of 
First up is the debut volume of 
MJ: My second read this week was volume one of Rei Toma’s 
MICHELLE: An odd yet interesting one shot from One Peace Books! 
