Skip to main content

MANGA MOMENT | LOVE LETTERS 1 & 2 BY GEORGE ASAKURA


LOVE LETTERS 


** Female manga artist George Asakura uses this format to present short-story style romances, depicting couples who 
come together under unique / unusual circumstances.


Love Letters #1

Stories 1-5


#1 "Love Letters in the Library" -- Ririko Takase is a Liza Minelli-looking librarian who finds a love letter from a secret admirer left for her at the library's return desk. 



#2 "To One Who Doesn't Know Me" -- Bad boy Mosumura Yasushi writes a letter to classmate Katase Rino confessing is admiration / attraction for her. But the letter is actually found by another girl, Ayako, who is moved by his sentiments.

#3 "Flowers Blooming in the Snow" -- Lonely girl Miyashita Chiyuki, struggling with depression, finds friendship through letters exchanged with Kumashiro. 



#4 "Love Letter Panic" -- Tomboy Hayakawa gets a letter from a secret admirer telling her she's cute, which inspires her to embrace her girly-girl side and start "living for love". 

#5 "The Mailman's Love" -- Sawako is a blind cellist who receives a letter from her boyfriend. She asks the mailman to read the letter to her. When he sees it's a breakup letter, he doesn't want to hurt the woman he's secretly attracted to, so he makes up what the letter says, reciting a love note the likes of which Sawako has never heard before, telling her all the things he wants to confess to her.




I enjoy Asakura's art style and the fun, unique storylines here. There are cute moments within these romances but overall I noticed a sad undertone, and the stories for the most part seem to have a sharp, abrupt end.

Red Background clipart - Envelope, Paper, Mail, transparent clip art

Love Letters #2

Stories 5-10 + bonus short story (not letter related) "Summer Foam"


*This volume is a direct continuation of Love Letters 1, in that the stories start at #6, since Volume 1's stories stopped at #5, but the characters are all different so it can be read as a standalone as well. 

#6 "Midnight Fax Letters" -- Araki sends Wada a letter through a fax machine. This is followed up by late-night exchanges of games and jokey sketches between the two, humor that disguises a secret growing romance. 





#7 "Ko-chan's Email" -- Natsume, the mayor's daughter, emails friend Ko (Minamida Koichiro, who she hasn't heard from in quite awhile, not since he said he was headed to America to pursue a music career.



#8 "Lovers on Planet Icarus" -- After the death of his brother Koichi, Kenji finds his brother's digital camera and a note asking Kenji to deliver a video message to Koichi's secret lover, Yuin. Her version of their relationship actually ends up being pretty disturbing. 



#9 "Secret Exchange Notebook" -- NoBuo Tsutsui catches the eye of Tachibana Kaede. They exchange messages in a notebook passed back and forth.

#10 "Metal Moon" --- Kaneko's requests for a date with Meike keep getting shot down. To his surprise, he receives a confessional letter of attraction from friend ZeZe. 





** Bonus story: "Summer Foam" --- no exchange of letters involved here, but still a light romance about Tsurukawa, a swim team star, and Katagiri, the girl who joins swim club for the opportunity to be near him.




Reading this second volume, I was left with pretty much the same feelings as what I had with the first --- still very much enjoy the artwork style, and the interesting relationship setups, but ultimately most of these stories fall a little on the flat and somewhat depressing side of things. I think I did like this collection just a little bit better than Volume 1. 





Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A DRAM OF DRAMA | FUN HOME: A FAMILY TRAGICOMIC BY ALISON BECHDEL

FUN HOME   CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED, NATIONAL BESTSELLER  Time Magazine #1 Book of the Year  •  National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist  •  Winner of the Stonewall Book Award  •    Double finalist for the Lambda Book Award  • Nominated for the  GLAAD Media Award Alison Bechdel’s groundbreaking, bestselling graphic memoir that charts her fraught relationship with her late father.  Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the "Fun Home." It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.   In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and...
Post a Comment
Read more

HISTORY IMAGINED | A HEART ADRIFT by Laura Frantz

  It is 1755, and the threat of war with France looms over colonial York, Virginia. Chocolatier Esmée Shaw is fighting her own battle of the heart. Having reached her twenty-eighth birthday, she is reconciled to life alone after a decade-old failed love affair from which she's never quite recovered. But she longs to find something worthwhile to do with her life.  Captain Henri Lennox has returned to port after a lengthy absence, intent on completing the lighthouse in the dangerous Chesapeake Bay, a dream he once shared with Esmée. But when the colonial government asks him to lead a secret naval expedition against the French, his future is plunged into uncertainty.  Will a war and a cache of regrets keep them apart, or can their shared vision and dedication to the colonial cause heal the wounds of the past? ★ ★ ★1/2 1755 in Virginia --- As the Revolutionary War revs up, twenty-eight year old chocolatier Esmee Shaw is in her hometown of York, settling into assumed spinsterh...
Post a Comment
Read more

MUSIC | NOTHING BUT A GOOD TIME: UNCENSORED HISTORY OF 80s HARD ROCK EXPLOSION BY TOM BEAJOUR & RICHARD BIENSTOCK

NOTHING BUT A GOOD TIME Nothin' But a Good Time is the definitive, no-holds-barred oral history of 1980s hard rock and hair metal, told by the musicians and industry insiders who lived it.  Hard rock in the 1980s was a hedonistic and often intensely creative wellspring of escapism that perfectly encapsulated―and maybe even helped to define―a spectacularly over-the-top decade. Indeed, fist-pumping hits like Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” Mötley Crüe’s “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” are as inextricably linked to the era as Reaganomics, Pac-Man, and  E.T .  From the do-or-die early days of self-financed recordings and D.I.Y. concert productions that were as flashy as they were foolhardy, to the multi-Platinum, MTV-powered glory years of stadium-shaking anthems and chart-topping power ballads, to the ultimate crash when grunge bands like Nirvana forever altered the entire climate of the business, Tom Beaujour and Richard Bi...
Post a Comment
Read more