Another 'Ooooh, look at what I bought!' post

Another Wednesday, another hit to the bank account. I've been trying to limit how much I spend on anime and manga, but when your local comic bookstore has a 50% off all manga (except new releases) sale, well, it's hard to stick to a budget.

Actully, I only got two books, so I did resist temptation to splurge for the most part. I bought volume one of Antique Bakery. I'm really curious, as the art is rather plain and it's not the kind of manga that whips yaoi fan-girls into a frenzy, yet I've only heard good things about it. For a while now the high price tag has kept me from taking a chance on it. Sure, it's only $17.99 (plus the tax), but that's a relatively high price for a manga. But when it's half off...

I'll admit I have an ulterior motive for buying it besides just good buzz. I've been noticing lately that there are a couple of English yaoi publishing houses looking for writers, such as Yaoi Press and Iris Print. I love writing comics, and would love to do so for a living, so anywhere that is looking for submissions I always check out. But I've been having some trouble coming up with a yaoi or shounen-ai story. It's not that I don't dislike the genre (though I don't classify myself as a yaoi fan: I just see it as another aspect of anime), and I love writing the short kind of comics that get used in the boy's love genre so often, but for some reason I'm stuck. I'm hoping that by reading Antique Bakery, a kind of non-traditional shounen-ai book, it will help lift the block in mind and I can some up with some awesome boy lovin' manga.

The other item I bought was Vampire Hunter D: Raiser of Gales, the second novel in the Vampire hunter D series. I got the fourth book a month or so ago from Dark Horse for 'review purposes' (I guess because I'm their Animefringe contact, even though the magazines been defunct since 2005). I loved it. I'm sure the other books in the series will be good as well, with their sci-fi/horror/western trappings. One Animefringe article that I've been re-reading since reading the series is Patrick King's interview with the series' translator: http://www.animefringe.com/magazine/2005/12/feature/06.php. A very good read, even if you haven't read the books.

And last but not least, I went to HMV and was pleasantly surprised to see Munto 2 for sale. Last year at CNAnime in Toronto, I was lucky enough to meet Peter Tatara, then working in marketing at Central Park Media. He gave me a copy of Munto which is one of the prettiest OVA's out there. The character designs are sharp and the animation is beautiful (though I happen to like the solid colouring used, some people don't). The sequel expands on the universe introduced in part one and deepens the characters. I though it was interesting how the POV character changed from Yumemi to her down to Earth friend Ichigo.

In the recent round of lay-offs, Peter was one of the many employees who lost their job. I really hope CPM is able to pull themselves together. They do a good job of putting a high number of episodes onto DVDS (i.e. all six episodes of Shamanic Princess onto one disc), have dubs that I actually don't mind listening to, and have always been friendly in my dealing with them, whether I was a fan or a journalist.

I'm glad I had the day off, so I could go out and spend money and read magazines at the library (Shojo Beat, Anime Insider and Giant Robot all in one place w/air conditioning = heaven), but I do have work tomorrow so I better get to bed.