It’s ironic that I dislike sci-fi when two of my all time favorite series are sci-fi. Cardcaptor Sakura won a the Seiun Award, which is sci-fi exclusive (CCS is science ficiton how?). And Please Save My Earth (potentially my favorite manga series of all time anywhere) is technically science fiction. Thank god that Viz had the guts to publish it in English.

Still, it’s practically a sin that the famous Candy Candy or iconic Glass Mask hasn’t been put out especially when they have such a strong fanbase in the US. And I’m surprised that they keep publishing Kaori Yuki’s lesser manga when her strong point is obviously her one volumes series and oneshots. No one can make insanity as gorgeous as she can, especially when she applies it to gothic shounen-ai stories, like Kaine (not to be confused with Count Cain) and Boys Next Door, which I consider some of her best. Well, Camelot Garden was also pretty good, but that’s fake shounen-ai, and probably needed to be a few pages longer in handle the humongous amount of information overload.

I’m a little sad that the Year 24 work that Vertical dabbled in was To Terra, though I’m happy I got to read at least some Keiko Takemiya in English. Science fiction isn’t my preferred genre (though it certainly works for Hagio), and I think I would enjoy any of those other series a lot more than I did To Terra.

At least they finally got Black Jack published.

I agree that They Were 11 should have been the last story in the collection, though. I think all the stories in the volume were good, but you’re right that the last two were completely underwhelming after finishing that one.

I have to try and dig the book out and take a look at the other stories in order to remember them now, though. I think that two of them were by Keiko Nishi, and I think I preferred them to any of the stories in her book Love Songs, but you are right in that they were completely blown out of the water by They Were 11.

I really liked the first story, especially since it didn’t try to sugarcoat anything by having everything being just some weird misunderstanding between the mother and daughter. And I really liked the girl’s last words to the boy. They really struck me more than if she had lied about life being some beautiful dream come true or some other out of place sentimentality.

The last two stories were good enough, but they REALLY shouldn’t have been placed after They Were 11. It’s just not fair to put them in a order where they don’t have a fair fighting chance. The only trouble I had with them was the end of last story. I didn’t like what happened to the wife. It seemed a bit too cruel to me.