Halloween
Spectacular continues with four one shot manga all at once! All by the same
author, even. Enjoy, the four of them make up enough pages to be a full size
manga.
Sabaki no Mon
by Sakura Tsukuba
Genre: Shojo
Length: One
Chapter - 49 Pages
The art is
really good, I liked all of it: hair, faces, and eyes. The eyes in fact are
really expressive even though they are not super detailed. The clothes are
pretty plain, and there aren’t a lot of body shots but what you see isn't
exactly marvelous. The color page/title page is really amazing to look at,
though, as you can see for yourself. --->
Lance is a
devil cursed to help guard the gates of heaven and hell, unable to tell the
truth or he will be merged with the gate itself for all eternity. His only
means of escape is to send a million people to hell with his lies. After too
many years to count he only has one person left to condemn before he gains his
freedom, so when he ventures to earth to see the next person to die he gets a
kick out of telling the naive girl a horrible sob story just to mess with her.
Leo, the next for the gates, believes every one and Lance feels assured of his
freedom.
Lance and Leo
make a really cute couple even though this story is so short you only get a
glimpse I still loved them. It wasn't as clichéd as I had expected, and I want
more dag-gummit!
5/5
Recommended!
Past Day
Present by Sakura Tsukuba
Genre: Shojo
Length: One
Chapter - 41 Pages
This chapter
is a bit older that the previous, so the art is slightly lower quality, but not
much, it mainly just looks older. The main girl has droopy eyes, which makes
her look a lot different than the last girl even though their personalities are
practically the same. The physiques of the people are a little thinner in the
arms and the torsos.
While doing
her part-time job, Kotoko finds a boy lying in the street unconscious. Unable to leave him there, she takes him home
before going back to finish her paper delivery. Shin, the mysterious boy,
awakes in a strange place and finds himself soon getting pulled along at
Kotoko's pace after he agrees to eat a meal with her. He wants to leave but
Kotoko tells him to let her treat him as a present to herself on her 16th
birthday. Despite his pursuers, Shin decides it can't hurt to get a free meal
and a place to sleep for the night and reluctantly follows.
Even though
Shin has a complicated back story it is still given to you within the small
page limit in a way that you can easily understand. That’s a feat considering
his tragic being. Putting dimension into a one shot like that, especially when
most of the story is just two people out shopping for thirty pages, is
impressive. It pulls you right along, for sure.
4.5/5
Recommended!
Akai Ito by
Sakura Tsukuba
Genre: Shojo
Length: One
Chapter - 53 Pages
Akai Ito is
more similar in style with Sabaki no Mon than Past Day Present, but it has more
polish than Sabaki no Mon. There are a lot of body shots in this one and they
all look good. There are also some fuzzy cats, and this author has an
interesting style for them that really makes you want to squeeze their fat
fuzzy bellies.
Hana is a high
school girl often thought of as stand offish because she never goes out with
her classmates and, while that makes her feel lonely, she can't help it because
she is just too busy taking care of her three younger siblings. Otherwise, Hana
is a normal girl who even holds a bitter sweet memory of a first love. A sad
man who she met over ten years ago that she cheered up by telling him he still
had ties to this world by the red string of fate. Reminded of this man while
finding a 'Queen of the Night' flower that only blooms for one night before
shriveling, Hana meets her new neighbor and he looks exactly like the man from
so long ago, he hasn't even aged a day!
This story was
eeehhhh.... for me, it was a fun read and Momo, the mysterious man, is cute but
it was still ehhhh.... I think it has to do with Momo's personality, you expect
more of a tragic character from the beginning intro but even then he's kind of
flat. The red string of fate concept is relied on pretty heavily in this story (if
you haven't heard of that particular East Asian myth here's some information: Red String of Fate)
and that can be a little over done since you see it around a a lot but I think
this manga falls on the good side of the line.
3.5/5
Reccomended for its amazing art, mostly.
Hitomi Kara
Destiny by Sakura Tsukuba
Genre: Shojo
Length: One
Chapter - 48 Pages
The art is the
same as Akai Ito; this mangaka is nice at giving you, though all her characters
are similar, people that change enough in story to story to tell every one apart.
That could just be the case in these four chapters I happened to pick out but
it's still nice. The male clothes in this one shot are particularly nice to
look at.
Umi was very
sick when she was a child, once she got a fever that nearly killed her but when
everything looked its worst she got better miraculously and has never been sick
again. The only memento she has from that hazy time is a blue mark on her
forehead. Since then she has lived her normal life, but suddenly a man who
claims to be a demon Prince appears and tells her that that mark is a mark of
his power and he wants to fulfill her dying wish so he can have that power
back. Umi must now confess to her first love and die or die with out ever
knowing love at all.
This is the
least Halloween-y one, really, and it’s only okay. It was just as cute as the
others but it feels more like a set up than a stand alone, even though it has a
fairly decent ending. I think perhaps I should have read these manga in reverse
order because I read the best one first.
4/5
Recommended.
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