Kare First Love, Higurashi

Finished up to vol 7 of Kare First Love. Very enjoyable. It's my first shojo really, I mean, I've read various first volumes of different shojos but this is the first one I've actually pursued and it was a good choice imo. Great characters, you become really attached to Karin and you can really feel like you're there with her as she goes through the relationship. It's fun to read something that takes relationships more seriously over stuff like Love Hina or Strawberry 100% where yeah, there's relationships but they aren't built the same way they are here and they feel significantly weaker. Final three vols in the mail, dunno if they'll be here by Friday but something next week for sure at the latest. Looking forward to the ending of it.

Higurashi vol 4 also finally came out. I remember some guy said that for this arc, the anime was actually a bit better than the manga. I disagree, as with the first arc the manga was definitely the superior format. The anime did a few scenes better but overall the manga definitely had more of the right cards. In particular the ending, was way more effective than the anime's lolwut sort of sudden, very random ending. The manga made it much creepier. Enjoyed this arc, now another couple months before the next vol ugh.

Up to vol 5 on Love Hina because vol 6 is apparently impossible to get. It's been frustrating accumulating all of Love Hina, JustManga didn't have all the volumes so I've had to hunt around and somehow, most places I bought from wound up realizing after my purchase that they were actually out of stock so it's taken a while but I've *finally* accumulated all but vol 6, which I have purchased (third place I've tried) but that was a couple days ago and they still haven't confirmed that it's shipped so I'm wondering if they were maybe out of stock of it too. Ugh I dunno when this one will get done.

In any case I'm taking some liberties with my next set of manga to look into to make way for a lot of Tokyopop titles under the Kodansha license, figure I should get 'em now while I can buy several volumes at once from a single outlet rather than individual volumes from a mass of different eBayers, which I fear will be the reality once Tokyopop's remaining stock finally dwindles. So I'm not pursuing Eureka Seven after Kare First Love, instead I'm hitting up Dragon Head, which is a horror manga that looked really good. After that I'll be finishing up my GTO collection (which right now stands at a grand total of one volume) and then I'll be picking up what they published of Love Attack.

Anime-wise, I've been on and off with AzuDai. Just haven't been in the mood for anime lately. I did buy vol 2 of Paranoia Agent though, I plan to eventually get 3 and 4 as well, I really want to see that one through sometime soon.