“Wish has a completely different vibe than what I expected” ←person who read the synopsis for “Clover” a while ago and read the wrong manga(aka me). In my defense, CLAMP manga, angel girl, one-word title…it's an easy mistake to make! Probably! Anyway, let's talk about the manga itself before I get even more sidetracked(⁠ー⁠_⁠ー⁠゛⁠)
An angel comes down to Earth under god's orders to look for her mentor, and ends up being saved by a taciturn-looking man who is actually very kind, and offers to repay him with a wish—he says he doesn't have any wishes that she can grant, though! She ends up moving in with him while she's looking for her lost mentor, and they grow closer together…it's not really a spoiler to say that this is a story about giving up on things for the sake of love. It's kind of short and a bit silly, and I don't know if the romance really drew me in—well, it did make me cry, so maybe I was more into it than I thought—but it's a cute manga! I feel sorry for that demon guy though, losing his fwb like that…

“In those dreams, I am always on the moon”— maybe writing a review for such a large-scale as Please Save My Earth is a bit above the formatting limits of this page(not to say my own capabilities(⁠´⁠-⁠﹏⁠-⁠`⁠；⁠)...), but let's give it a try, anyhow. The story initially follows Alice, a shy girl who can talk to plants and is having a hard time fitting in after moving to Tokyo. At school, she meets two boys that share a secret—at night, they see the same dreams about a group of seven people living in a base on the moon, looking down on Earth—and after a while, Alice also has that same dream. If I try to describe it, it might sound like a bit of a crazy story, what with ESP-ers and aliens from a distant galaxy, but it's actually very character-driven. It has an atmosphere that just draws you in, and the characters’ varied personalities and motivations, both on the Moon and on the Earth, make them very interesting to read about. Somehow, it's both very different from what I expect, and also exactly what I expected…I'm not making any sense, am I? Anyhow, it's an incredible, beautiful work—some rough edges here and there, but I'm glad I got to experience it.
Also, the OVAs have some really interesting names in the staff, so I'm planning to check that out in the future—(it’s how I found out about the manga, after all!)

When I recently picked up Last Summer Vacation, I realized I had already read it, probably about a year ago, and just forgot to log it on MAL. Not a good sign! I didn’t remember how it ended, and it’s only 8 chapters long, so I decided there was no harm in reading it again, which I guess is true—reading a really bad manga won’t kill you, even if you do it twice. The drama feels almost nonsensical, the plot feels rushed…I had seen it on some reclists and was expecting something really good, so it felt like a huge disappointment.

When she calmly hands herself in as the one who murdered and dismembered her best friend, Mizuki seems like nothing but a cold-blooded killer, but is that really the case? Somehow I often find myself reading a bunch of “psychological”/mystery manga and never enjoying them very much, and Adabana is no exception. The art is beautiful, especially the characters’ facial expressions, but the story doesn't really live up to it. Too many of the plot twists just end up feeling cheap, and some of the characters feel like cardboard cutouts. It's kind of annoying…I did like the revenge aspect, though, and the ending was satisfying enough.

An all-boys school with a mandatory cross-dressing club…I saw this manga on a stack on MAL with the description “this awakened something in me” and proceeded to read the whole thing in a day without even knowing what it was about, but I have to admit I'm not sure what I found so fun about Princess Princess. Is it the gags and fourth-wall breaks? The character relationships? Is it whatever else is going on there? I honestly don't know, but I liked it quite a bit. The old-school lolita clothes were super pretty, and the main characters’ dynamics were all really good. The mangaka’s notes at the end of the volumes were just as fun as the manga itself. It's also apparently a spin-off featuring characters from two other manga she wrote, so I'm planning to check them out one of these days…

Not much actual “detective” work is done by the three most accomplished elementary schoolers in the world, but that doesn't make Clamp School Detectives any less fun. It's over the top in a funny way, and there's quite a bit of that old-school charm to it. Sure, it's not a life-changing work or anything, but it's super cute!

Matoi, an asexual girl about to graduate high school, falls in love for the first time with Yuriko, an aroace girl⁠ a few years her senior—Yuri to Koe to Kaze Matoi(Lilies and Voices Born Upon the Wind) isn’t quite what you could call a romance, but it’s definitely yuri. (in other news, I finally found this review I wrote in like, January, oops)The introspections about the nature of love and romantic feelings does feel like what I've seen as a theme in other manga(and they're really stellar here), but never with aro/ace characters—it’s quite unique in that. The challenges the characters face—from understanding and dealing with their own feelings, to building a relationship that fits both of their needs and doesn't have any predetermined framework in society—were really interesting to read about, and a few of them hit kind of close to home sometimes. Either way, it's definitely going to become a staple in my reclists from now on. Really captures what I love about yuri.

An uncommonly hot summer, and a water shortage to go with it—a very nostalgic setting for a very nostalgic manga. Can you miss a place you've never actually seen in person? Can you miss a relative that died before you were born? Suiiki depicts grief—for people, and for places, too—through the story of a girl visiting a mysterious village in her dreams. The lush scenery is drawn beautifully, and the manga as a whole has such a calming atmosphere —it’s a bit like being underwater.

It's a sweltering summer, and high-schooler Ryoichi has been having the same nightmare for the past 10 days. As bugs start to attack people's pets and strange corpses pop up all over, the girl from his nightmares transfers into his school. The new girl, Ikuko Munakata, is a bug-woman that preys on people like a parasite in order to live, and she's taken quite a liking to him… Mushihime is a pretty solid horror manga. The art is gorgeous, even a bit gross and unsettling(the thought of those swarms of insects makes my skin crawl, but that's the fun of it). The story varies between a twisted romance and a sci-fi flick, but it's never boring…and Kikuko is really cute, so I kinda liked the ending.

My Summer of You is a romance about two boys that unite over their love of movies. It's pretty straightforward and short, but also very sweet. I really enjoyed how the sequel (My Summer with You) developed their relationship as they started dating and became closer to each other… it's very fluffly. They're cute together. At this point it feels like I've read a ton of manga very similar to this one, but I can't resist covers with summers and blue skies on them, so that might be why...

On the fifth anniversary of her death, Haruki’s partner, Sakura, comes back as a ghost. Or does she? The version of a person in your memories is always different from the memories other people have of them, and even more different than the real person themselves. In Haru Tsuzuru, Sakura Saku Kono Heya de(Composing Spring in This Room Where Cherry Blossoms Bloom), Haruki and Sakura’s so-called ghost revisit their memories, trying to fill the last pages of her unfinished diary and attempting to piece the puzzle of who Sakura truly was. Being a story that deals with grief,it's obviously very sad, but it's also very beautiful.

I'd heard about Marmalade Boy for years, but I don't read het romance very often, so I only got around to it recently. The art is very cute, (and the color pages and furoku in the collector’s edition are to die for!), the characters are lively and charming, their dynamics are equal parts funny and sweet.
It's kind of rare for me to get invested in romance plots, but when I do, I always end up going a little insane…well, all was fine in the end, so being driven up the wall by the drama will become a memory I can smile at in the future. Some plotlines probably scan as kind of dated nowadays, but now I truly get why it's such a beloved manga. Really makes me want to read more shoujo…

Lots of pantyshots, lots of tentacles, lots of blood, lots of…well, you get the picture. Set before the main events of the VN, Full Metal Daemon Muramasa:Minagoroshi tells the story of a (very unlucky) girl whose peaceful life in a small island is destroyed when she rescues a group of castaways who turn out to be criminal musha—one of them an infected running away from none other than Minato Kageaki. It’s got the hopelessness and violence you’d expect from a situation where he is involved.
He saves the heroine and gets his ass kicked right off the bat and spends a lot of time trying not to die from poisoning…the usual, really. Meanwhile, we see the main heroine going through all circles of hell and becoming a murderer…also the usual, really. The whole thing is only 6 chapters long, and I don’t have much to say about it other than like, “that time when he armored up with Muramasa was cool” and “the story was ultimately kinda mid”, though it's not like I expected much out of it. It was nice seeing Kageaki and Muramasa again, if anything.

A Drifting Life is an autobiographical manga by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. I know next to nothing about manga from that time period, but it was a very interesting read, even if I didn't recognize the names and works being thrown around (with the exception of, like, Tezuka).
Besides providing a picture of the manga industry and general life in postwar Japan, it's also a very compelling story in general— watching his personal struggles, as well as his doubts and growth as an artist, along people that were evolving and straining against a new storytelling medium, was an amazing experience. I feel like it really changed the way I look at manga.

I often just jump into manga without reading the synopsis, so it was kind of surprising to discover Konya mo Nemurenai involved a young boy accidentally summoning a demon! That said, it's definitely a romcom first and a story about demons second. It's very short at just about 19 chapters, but I loved the main couple's relationship, seeing them grow into each other was very cute. It's such a fun read overall!

What if Rika was older than Mion? And what if they were gay for each other? Hinamizawa Bus Stop, based on the stage play that would eventually become the Higurashi sound novels we all know and love, is quite...insane, to say the least. It's interesting seeing the general concepts in that earlier stage—how strange to think the Satoko we know started out as Mion! As a standalone work, it's kind of meh, but you're probably not reading this manga unless you're already a Higurashi fan, so.

The stories in PTSD Radio can be kind of hit-and-miss. Honestly, the best ones are the so-called real stories, that supposedly happened to the mangaka and his assistants...well, things like that happen sometimes, I guess. If I had to say, the one thing this manga does best is capture the sense of isolation that comes from supernatural happenings. Even being in the middle of a city, having a cellphone that can call anyone anytime, there's not anything you can do if a cursed spirit decides to go after you, is there?

I have never seen the falling snow, but I imagine it feels just like this manga. Toumei na Ai no Utsuwa(The Transparent Vessel of Love, according to mangadex) centers around a terminally-unlucky man who meets a supernatural creature that feeds on negative emotions. It's very melancholic and romantic, I really loved it! It also made me cry a lot, but I am famously a crybaby...

Have you ever loved a painting so much you wished you could live inside it? This manga made me feel that same pull. Cats of the Louvre is a magical, whimsical manga, following a group of humans that work at the Louvre and the human-like stray cats that secretly live in the museum's attic and come out at night. There's just something about being in a normally-crowded place after closing hours...a feeling like there's more to this world than meets the eye—as the characters very soon find out! The presentation feels lavish, storybook-like, and at just two volumes, it's short like a dream.

I'm pretty sure Amuro and Me is the first Gundam manga I've ever read, which is kind of funny. Anyway. The story, set in 1981 and based on the author's life, follows an elementary schooler who loves Gundam, and occasionally talks to an imaginary Amuro who helps him out.
The art and story are both super cute, and very relatable (as a kid, I used to imagine that characters from TV shows and such were my friends and "hang out" with them, ;p). It's such a heartwarming little manga, I really loved it.

While looking for more manga about visual novels a la 16-bit sensation, I came across Eroge no Taiyou. The titular character, Kanda Taiyou, is a young hard-line businessman who loses everything after getting framed and fired from his job and gets picked up by the owner of a rag-tag eroge company.
The writer previously worked as an eroge developer, so there's many bits of insight about the process here and there, as well as the story of how his company went under. RIP.
It's obviously quite racy, sometimes hilarious, and sometimes genuinely heartwarming—which, to be honest, is also how I would describe a lot of eroge.

A boy who's surrounded by the paranormal starts being followed around by the silent ghost of his recently-deceased childhood friend—the premise of Shibito no Koe wo Kiku ga Yoi is pretty straightforward. The manga is very episodic, with each chapter telling a little horror story centered on the main cast. Some of them are a bit iffy, some are so bizarre they end up being funny, and some are genuinely good concepts that stayed with me. The art style has kind of a cute, retro feeling, and it reminded me of Kazuo Umezu at times.

Drawn in the art style that I've come to associate with strange,dreamy, saccharine 90s romances, Himitsu no Hanazono(The Secret Garden) reads like a classic, run-of-the-mill shoujo—but the love interest turns out to be a girl! It's only one volume, so it's a short read. It's quite a bit dramatic, but also very romantic and sweet—and a neat little piece of yuri history.

In a strange city, there lies a doll shop, selling "plant dolls" that live off of love and warm milk—Dolls is an episodic manga, with each chapter telling the story of a doll and her owner. I always seek out media about dolls, and this manga is one of my favorites in that "genre". The art is beautiful, almost dream-like, and the stories vary from tragic to creepy,from funny to sweet. It really "gets" what I like about dolls, as a concept, and that's the highest praise I can give.

Sea You There and Us was quite a surprise for me. The art was beautiful, with some truly breathtaking moments. The story reminded me a lot of my own childhood, so even the simplest, least dramatic parts ended up being very emotional for me. The tragedy hit hard, even if I could see it coming. Even if I think the end wasn't as strong compared to the rest of the chapters, it's still a beautiful, heartfelt manga about childhood,grief, and moving on.

Focusing on the so-called weird children that stand out in the small world of an elementary school, GOGO Monster is a beautiful, surreal manga that also feels very sincere. It reminded me a bit of Nijigahara Holograph(though it's definitely not as violent).

The first chapter of An Easy Introduction to Love Triangles (To Pass the Exam!) didn't hook me when I first tired reading it a few months ago, but I'm glad I gave it a second chance. Polyamory is a very uncommon theme in Yuri, so this was quite refreshing, besides being a genuinely sweet little romance. I didn't expect it to like it as much as I did,so it was a nice surprise.

Two people who couldn't stay together, but also couldn't stay apart—The Ends of a Dream is a beautiful and heart-wrenching love story about two women meeting and leaving each other across their lives. Definitely one of my favorite yuri manga.

How do We Relationship was very different from what I expected (in a good way). The characters and their relationships are messy, and there's some truly heart-wrenching moments. I don't think I've ever been this invested in a relationship drama. Brb I'm gonna go gnaw on my arm in a corner until the next volume is out

It took me a while to jump on the Yuri Espoir train, but boy, I'm glad I did. The art is absolutely gorgeous (those sparkly eyes!), and the one-off character stories interspersed with the more dramatic main plot make for a really nice combination.

I've recently revisited one of my favorite manga, Aoi Uroko to Suna no Machi. The simpler,delicate art is very charming. The mistery in the quiet seaside town gives the story a hint of magic that wasn't lost in my second read.

I loved Shimeji Simulation a lot, so I knew I had to check out Girl's Last Tour(well, there's also the fact that my friend rec'd it to me back when the anime adaptation came out, and I said I'd get to it eventually. It took a few years but I did!) The backgrounds gave the manga a very nice, lonely atmosphere. I kept hoping for a different ending until the very last second, but that would've been cheap imo, so I'm glad we got the ending we did.