Spoilers abound!

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Cover goes to Berry Berry, which is now a regular series. It's by Banri Hidaka, who I may have mentioned occasionally before. :)

Color pages for Berry Berry (2), Akatsuki no Yona, Oresama Teacher, and Shiawase Kissa Sanchoume.

Shiawase Kissa Sanchoume ends this issue. It will be 15 volumes total.

Breakdown:
Berry Berry 6
Seiyuu Kaa! 5
Skip Beat! 145
Akatsuki no Yona 2
Monochrome Kids 11
Kamisama Hajimemashita 29
Oresama Teacher 37
Hana to Akuma 36
Hoshi Wa Utau 40
Shiawase Kissa Sanchoume 82 (final)
Kyou Mo Ashita Mo 27
Lovesick 15

Gakuen Alice, Issho Ni Neyou Yo, Jiu Jiu and Love So Life are on break.

Tokyopop's twitter feed just announced that Banri Hidaka's VB Rose is NOT cancelled, and that Vol. 6 will be out 10/09.

Holy crap, so much happened in this volume!

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I love this series. Yay to CMX for putting it out!

The latest HtY has the final chapter of Banri's VB Rose, currently in 'cancelled or not, we may never know' status from Tokyopop. Here's a rundown:

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The end!

You recall in Vol. 4 I chided Hidaka-san for having Kazuha talk about having had a child a month back and still looking rail-thin.

Here, we have the new girl marvel at Ageha as a 'Big Breasted Beauty!', which may come as a surprise to readers, who had no idea, since she's drawn the same way all Hidaka-san's girls are drawn - thin and flat-ish.

This is the danger of having a very shoujo art style. Shoujo does not, in general, lend itself well to busty.

Looking through it closer now... most of it, as you can imagine, is the art that went with the manga from Hana to Yume, i.e. the color pages. There's also a few pics from CD giveaways, etc.

There are 4 pics that are done exclusively for the artbook:

1) (ToaL) Kei and Kyosuke's graduation, with them smiling and holding diplomas.
2) (ToaL and IHYMTA) The main cast of both series, in a field. This is also used as the front/back cover. Left to right: Kazuha, Kei, Kyosuke, Sugimoto (these 4 on the front), Honjo, Senko, Suwa (with cuddly lambs) (these 3 on the back).
3) (IHYMTA) Honjo and Senko's wedding picture, to go with the Kazuha/Sugimoto wedding pic used as the cover of IHYMTA 13. Yes, he's smoking.
4) The Akiyoshi family + Sugimoto, at the ages they are for their own romance series (i.e. they're teens and adults). L-R: Chizuru (with glasses, 24), Momoka (with long hair, 22), Tonami (looking much the same, 17), Rei (looking the same, 13), Ichihisa (more evil and less idiotic, 15), Sugimoto (32), and Kazuha (25). So about 3 years before VB Rose. The left half of this picture was used for Volume 1 of the Akiyoshi Series wideban reprint.

There's also some color pics from the Akiyoshi serialization in HtY (2 with Chizuru, one with Ichihisa (looking particularly evil), and 1 with Momoka), a collage of B&W title pages from IHYMTA and ToaL, some design notes (mostly for ToaL), and Banri chatting at us for a couple of pages.

Holy crap, I imported the Banri Hidaka artbook, and it is everything I hoped for. It came out right as Tears of a Lamb was wrapping up, and the first third or so is Tears pics. Then the next 30 pages is I Hate You More Than Anyone art, and it ends with a few pics from the other Akiyoshi series and some misc stuff. It also comes with a cute storybook starring a crying lamb, which is adorable and cute.

There are so many bishies in this thing I swear I almost turned yaoi fan (though her art is aggressively het, so not too much). The clothing is fantastic, as always. And the wedding! The weddings! Honjo and Senko wedding AAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Yes, I know, I am a girl. Oh well.

ARTBOOK! KITTY! NO, WAIT, ARTBOOK!

Some thoughts on both volumes, with spoiler cuts. First the Banri:

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And Furuba:

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Two more volumes till Furuba finishes and Tokyopop compresses into a black hole. :)

(Note: I still don't read Japanese at all well. A lot of these descriptions are taken from just looking at pretty art, be warned.)

I recently got from Amazon.jp copies of the 2 widebans collecting the one-shots and short series Banri Hidaka did of the Akiyoshi family prior to I Hate You More Than Anyone. They're quite interesting. The early material is far more traditional shoujo, with none of the quirks in character that, say, Senko has.

There's a neat little timeline at the end of Volume 2 showing when these all take place. What's most important to note is that I Hate You More Than Anyone takes place, timeline-wise, before all of these - but was written after them.

In order of how they came out in Hana to Yume (so not in timeline order):

1) An October 1995 short story (which Google Translates as You Are Put, not helpful), this features an unrelated couple as the leads, but has as the 'rival' guy Ichihisa, the blond-haired middle Akiyoshi male. In IHYMTA, he's mostly a brat, but he seems to have grown up to be a bit of a bishie in high school.

2) 365 Days Lover, February 1996. This stars Tonami, the youngest female in the Akiyoshis. She makes an agreement to be this guy's boyfriend for one year, then they break up, no strings attached. This goes about as well as you'd expect. Like Ichihisa, Tonami seems far more serious here than we're used to.

3) We then get a trilogy of stories, written in Mar-Apr-May 1996, dealing with Rei, the youngest Akiyoshi, in middle school. They are Lesson, Slow Step, and Love Letter. Since he's in IHYMTA as a pre-schooler, and in VB Rose as a high schooler, we've seen more of Rei than any of the others. Here he's your typical nice, awkward guy, who's best friends with a girl who's really good at sports. They grow closer despite mishandled conversations and jealous rivals.

This is where I learned that short, bobbed hair on a girl means EVIL. (Straight bobs, curly-haired bobs are fine, apparently). Since Rei's in middle school, grinning sheepishly at each other is the furthest this goes. No idea if we'll see Minatsu in VB Rose. Also, notably, here is where we meet the rest of the family bar Kazuha (who has gotten married and moved away by the time Rei's in middle school).

4) We then get another story with Ichihisa, which ran for 4 issues in July and August 1996. Called A Love That Doesn't End, it's very melodramatic, and once again, Ichihisa is not lucky in love (though the girl, Sachiko, is the focus). Oh title, you are so ironic. Again I note how serious and standoffish Ichihisa is in these stories.

5) In September-November 1996, over a 5-week series, Ichihisa finally gets lucky (in the shoujo sense, none of these stories even has a whiff of sex) with a girl called Megumi. The story's called something that Translation seems to say is 'You are the truth that exists' or somesuch. Still mostly melodramatic, it even has that dreaded 'rival slaps heroine down a flight of stairs' shoujo cliche.

6) We then get a one-shot in December 1996 dealing with Momoka, the 2nd Akiyoshi sister. In I Hate You More Than Anyone, she's merely grumpy and sarcastic. In this, called 'The Shape Of Love Shakes The Cosmos' (great title), she's a full-blown Ice Queen. Like many Ice Queens, she's tormented by her emotions, easily angered, and swept off her feet by a sincere blond guy. Most notably, at one point she goes to get her hair cut, and we meet her older sister, Kazuha, future star of IHYMTA. Kazuha looks even more 'boyish' than she usually does in her own series here.

7) We then get a big ol' 6-part series, from February-April 1997, featuring Chizuru, the eldest Akiyoshi male. In IHYMTA, he's currently going through a rebellious punk phase, and we see a bit of that here too, as he deals with Yoriko, who is a DESPERATELY EARNEST girl. The other non-Kazuha family members also get a look-in here, and since most of this takes place while he's in school, they're all about the age we English-speakers know them. (Oh yes, adult Chizuru wears glasses, which explains the "Which one? Four-eyes? Idiot? Clone?" question Kazuha asks Ageha in VB Rose 4.)

8) Finally, in September 1997, I Hate You More Than Anyone began.