Tuesday, June 22, 2004

Kaori Yuki - Mangaka Goddess

Recent discovery, manga artist Kaori Yuki. Unbelievably talented! Her first U.S. licensed manga which is also her most famous is "Angel Sanctuary." Before it was licensed by Viz, I had seen the fan scanlations circulating in various IRC channels but was never that interested in reading it even though a lot of readers raved about it. However, I did rent the anime and thought it was interesting but it seemed the project never became a full blown series. Like most anime, the original manga is usually 10x better. Not only is her artwork beautiful, she is a great story teller as well. Her storylines are definitely more mature themed, not your average shoujo stuff. I have found a website, Sakura Crisis, that has a lot of her work scanlated in English and available for http download. The best one I have read on that site is "Boys Next Door" which is about a serial killer and his relationship with a young male prostitute. Although the manga genre is mild yaoi = boy/boy (mind you it's not my usual genre of choice), the story was really good, disturbing and very sad. Another good one I am currently reading is "Count Cain" also available on Sakura Crisis. It's a horror-themed, Sherlock Holmes-type manga. Thanks to these scanlations, I have just put my order in for Angel Sanctuary Volume 1. :^_^:

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