10, 20, and 30 2
January 1, 2008
Happy New Year! I’m back in Chicago, and my updates will probably go back down to normal levels now, because my roommate is much less cool than my parents and won’t let me read as many comics.
Things more or less maintain the status quo established in volume one. There isn’t too much of a direction in the plot, but that’s in favor of a system where events happen in response to other events, which is much more suited to this series.
Belle is more of a background character this time around, which is good because she’s kind of annoying. More of her traits come to light. She’s really self-centered and more than a bit conceited. While she does care about her aunt Krumb and does much to help her cousin Rok through some hardships, when contrasted with those two (who care so much for each other), she just seems very shallow. She also can’t seem to settle for the boyfriend who wants to be with her so badly.
In that, she’s similar to Rok. Rok can’t seem to come to terms with her feelings for Angel, and it’s giving her a lot of problems. Though she hates Belle, she gets angry when Belle disappears and waits until she gets back in order to unload her feelings. Rok’s relationship with her friend at school also seems to be unraveling, and Rok seems to be turning to food for comfort.
Krumb also has a life-altering event. Lots of terrible things happen to Krumb in this volume, and in many ways she’s the saddest of all three of the extremely depressing main characters.
And yeah, I just realized this volume was a real downer. It was still quite excellent though, and the way the characters seem to interact and help each other out, and the way one thing can lead to another is very unique. Despite it being kind of depressing, I still really liked it, and I’m hoping volume three is a little more uplifting. Here’s hoping something great happens to Krumb.
January 2, 2008 at 3:37 am
Aww, I’ll miss the flurry of updates.
In other news, your praises have convinced me to move Skip Beat! up on the to-read pile, so I should be starting that this month, along with NANA and Boys Over Flowers. I’ve hoarded the latter for 3+ years and have determined that if I now read 2 per month, I’ll juuuust be ready for volume 36 when it gets published. Assuming Viz sticks with their bi-monthly release schedule. :)
January 2, 2008 at 4:53 am
I want to read Boys Over Flowers, but it is SO LONG. It’s a clever idea you have though, timing things out to two a month until the last volume is published ^_^ I’m usually not put off by length, but I’ve been taking the length of some shoujo series under serious consideration lately. I hesitated on Skip Beat for so long only because I wasn’t sure I wanted to commit to yet another 17+ volume series, but I have a feeling I’ll still want more after 17 volumes. Nana too, that’s another one where the volumes just fly by.
January 4, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Yeah. :) Plus, after everyone was going ‘Guh’ after NANA’s 8th volume, I had a serious case of, “What? What? I wanna know!” :)
January 6, 2008 at 6:02 am
Yeah, there’s an incredibly grown-up crisis that I thought just didn’t exist in the world of manga. I was very impressed.
June 30, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Back to the subject of 10, 20, 30… you might’ve known this, but if not, it looks like this might be a web-only series for Netcomics now. All of v.3 is available there, though, and the last part of v.4 will be available this week.
July 2, 2008 at 11:21 pm
I kind of noticed that, it bums me out. I kept hoping to see another date for volume 3 after they started publishing 4 again, but the fact they’ve started a handful of web-only series lately doesn’t give me much hope ^_^; One of these days I’ll break down and read it online, along with a few of their other web-only series. There’s at least two or three I would buy in a second if they were ever released as paperbacks, but I hesitate to read them online, even if they are really cheap that way.