Jul 08 2009
Ai Hime vol 1-3 [End] - Groan, forbidden love shoujo again?
Waha, one-month hiatus. XD I’ve been lazy…not just lazy but uber-lazy. I -have- been reading a lot of manga, though — the review for the three volumes below is just a small drop in the bucket. Anime..not so much, though niisama says the current season has been disappointing so far. :( (Then again that was when only three eps were out, so. :P)
I’m waiting for results before I open Photoshop CS again. :S (I.e. I’m getting to that banner, Jay-san and Materix!) It’s been getting colder here, but I really need to get a laptop cooler since my comp’s started to die upon overheating. T_T So even though it’s cold, I sometimes run a fan beside it to cool it down…poor fingers! Days like these, scarves as well as gloves are nice.
A rather-innocent picture by happoubi jin via danbooru. (Of a character from an -ahem- game..)
People who’re interested in shoujo may have a look at the manga below. Rather conventional, I must say.
![あい・ひめ 1 [Ai Hime - Ai to Himegoto] (フラワーコミックス)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/315QM9WY8SL._SX106_.jpg)
あい・ひめ 1 [Ai Hime - Ai to Himegoto] by みつき かこ
rating: 4 of 5 stars
It started off alright. The artwork is nice, and the main character quite pretty too. But this tale of a forbidden love isn’t all that forbidden after all…can’t you see the ending coming a mile off? :P
In any case, this is the first of three volumes detailing a sweet and rather-predictable shoujo story, without much angst. Mao meets a hot guy under the sakura, they kiss (somehow-randomly), she finds out he’s her uncle. But they live together for a bit because Mao’s parents are traveling overseas..
![あい・ひめ 2 [Ai Hime - Ai to Himegoto] (フラワーコミックス)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31nmN%2B6QWFL._SX106_.jpg)
あい・ひめ 2 [Ai Hime - Ai to Himegoto] by みつき かこ
rating: 2 of 5 stars
You’d generally think the angst would be set up in the second volume (the middle one), but it somehow..never quite seems to happen. Nonetheless, Mao is eminently-likeable.
![あい・ひめ 3 [Ai Hime - Ai to Himegoto] (フラワーコミックス)](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/31-B-HAey1L._SX106_.jpg)
あい・ひめ 3 [Ai Hime - Ai to Himegoto] by みつき かこ
rating: 3 of 5 stars
Very, very predictable. Being the last volume, you’d expect some resolution to the story, which does occur, without much fanfare. All in all, the characters were nicely-portrayed but utterly-predictable, and I’d have given this two stars without the pretty art. -wry-
Ai Hime was scanlated by Serenus Dreamers, if you’d like to pop over to their site to have a look at it.
@materix: I was from SG, anything under 20 deg is cold. XD Though I’ve kinda become acclimatised to it — at least I don’t wear long johns and stuff. -wry- Had to for Shanghai, heh..
Is it?! I don’t know..last weekend, when I was working, people were wearing scarves in, and there was a definite bite to the air. -nods sagely-
That’s good! I use it to keep up to date with manga. Should use it to keep up with blogs too..XD And I didn’t forget! I’m just putting it off…:P
@materix: Lol yup. In my case, I subscribe to Crazy’s and Mangatrader because it’s easy to download from them, as well as Mangahelpers and, of course, Mangaupdates. :) I do recommend putting them in a separate folder though, because they WILL go up into the hundreds after a while. -wry-
Yeah, niisama does that too. I -tried- to get him into feeds with netvibes (displays, not aggregates, feeds) but nope. :P Then I told him if he’d like me to be his personal feed reader but he said nahh he prefers checking. Haha. =)
@Jay-san: Haha! Actually, come to think of it, it does look good. I just thought I should have put more effort into it or something, it’s like you did it free for me~~ XD
Ah, generally I wouldn’t even rate it at all. But it’s a Goodreads thing. XD And yup, you got it. Last volume gets the overall rating. :)