the great MPH sale!!

i went there yesterday. it was at Expo hall 6b and its up to 80% off!!! i went crazy there! bought some really good stuff too! very, very happy with my purchases.

these are the mangas i picked up from the sale. they are american published japanese manga. would have cost me like $15.00 per copy if bought from the bookstore. on sale for $8 each, $35 for 5. managed to find only two that i fancy.

and my best investment so far, i plonked $24 for these three omnibuses from agatha christie, my most favourite author (God bless her soul, amen!) personally i prefer hercule poirot to miss marple, but since i could only find these there, i bought them.

DOLLS by Yumiko Kawahara

Different from the other series featured here of a similar name, this series is about these plant dolls sold by a collector. they are called plant dolls because they need sugar cookies and warm milk to survive and maintain its lustrous hair and glowing skin. if you feed it anything else other than the two items, the doll will grow.

this is a shonen series, meaning it is meant for older teen girls (so expect lotsa sappy stories and lovey dovey sob tales between the dolls and their owners.

this series teaches me that sometimes change is not necessarily good. but when change does happen, you have to make it work for you and not lket it run rampant! but this series is kinda hard to get in singapore...

artwork a 6/10 (its graphics are kinda 1980s-1990s. rather old style manga)

cover design a 8 out of 10. the doll pictures in front look really cute, innocent and irresistable!

and a 8/10 for the story plot.

DOLL by Mitsukazu Mihara

read another manga series!!! this time its DOLL by Mitsukazu Mihara... i bought the book because the cover is so drop dead gorgeous! her characters all feature the ghotic lolita / lolita / schoolboy look.

its about these human like robots that were designed and sold to the public and these mechas are called dolls. some use them as a personal companions, some as maids and some for sexual gratification. in other words, these dolls can do whatever a human can, only better and more efficient.

the great thing about this manga is that these dolls, no matter how cold, plastic and heartless as they were, managed to touch the lives of their human owners and changed them for the better. there are a few nice fuzzy moments in this manga too.

artwork, i'd give a 8.5 out of a 10

cover design a 10 out of a 10 (for convincing me to buy this manga, which featured FEMALE dolls on the cover!!)

and a resounding 10/10 for the excellent plot!

note to whoever who wishes to buy this series, there is a total of 6 books in the series and i managed to secure only 3 books from Kinokuniya. these, as with FAKE, are printed by TOKYOPOP, an american company. so it takes kinda looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggggggggggggggggg for them to come to Singapore.

oh, and even though the pictures above looked suggestive, there is very minimal sexual scenes in them.

FAKE by Sanami Matoh

i've just completed the whole series of FAKE. its a manga done by Sanami Matoh. really, really nice and touching stuff... my eyes were moist for nearly 2/3 the entire time that was devoted to reading the manga.

really recommend it to you, if you are into cops and action. contains yaoi in the last book (book 7) while the rest of the books contain only mild shonen-ai stuff.

artwork, i'd give it a 6.5 out of 10.

cover design a 8 out of 10.

and story plot a 10 out of 10!