One of my more recent favourite series is King of Thorn, and was very happy to see this manga in Waterstones, Cat Paradise, or Gakuen Sousei Nekoten. Both illustrated and written by Yuji Iwahara, fast becoming my favourite manga-ka, cos I think King of Thorn is absolutely brilliant, just fantastic! But this post is about Cat Paradise, so now more gushing over King of Thorn, apart from to say YAY for the movie coming out in 2010!! I CAN’T WAIT!!! I thought when I first read it that it’d make a great movie, all epic-like and whatnot. More after the cut!
Anyway, onto Cat Paradise! Since it features cats pretty damn predominantly, its a perfect series for me! Sucks that volume 1 is all thats available, and far as I can tell, theres no more available online either… Means I hafta wait till November going by the english release date.
I LOVE Iwahara's style, theres just something about it that appeals to me, and its not usually my kinda thing.
The basic idea of the series as far as I can tell is that 100 years ago, Akitaka Sandou sealed the great Nekomata, Kaen into a stone, and since then, a school has been built, and 6 ‘Paired Ones’ have been chosen by Princess Kiri with her cat Shirayuki(White Snow right? Or could it be translated as Snow White?) to protect the school against Kaen being ressurected. And in the first volume Yumi Hayakawa, a serial knitter(lol), and her cat Kansuke, become the 7th pair, which wasn’t prophecised(?) by Princess Kiri. Yumi’s power is that of knitting, creating outfits for Kansuke with a magical ball of wool, which anthropomorphize Kansuke. Oh, the cats of the ’Paired Ones’ can be understood by their owners, so YAY! Talking cats! lol Seems to be a basic story of trying to thwart the plans of the evil Kaen from coming back and wreaking havoc on the world once again, with some romance and comedy ofc, the art style makes it look more shonen than anything else, but I feel it can be enjoyed by guys and gals. I love the kind of thick black lines of the art, and the expressions, Iwahara does expressions soooo well, same for King of Thorn.
I love how the line art is chunky, but still retains the delicacy of the facial features and hair.
Anyone else a fan of Yuji Iwahara’s work? I bet theres a few, but far as I know, King of Thorn hasn’t got the recognition it deserves from most fans of manga, anime etc.
The character on the right is Kansuke in his humanoid form.
Looks to be a nice series at any rate, sweet in places too, like how Yumi found Kansuke injured in the road, put her own life in danger to save him. Am looking forward to more of this to say the least, and if anyone knows of a site where more than just volume 1 (chapters 1-5) has been translated, PLEASE let me know! Cheers!
Tags: cat paradise, cats, gakuen sousei nekoten, iwahara, king, king of thorn, thorn, yuji, yuji iwahara
August 29, 2009 at 4:10 pm |
Cats, you say? Well then, Yuki Sohma is sure to hate this.
That aside however, the artwork is excellent. Admittedly, this doesn’t look like the kind of thing I’d read, but it sure is pretty to look at.
Unless it has giant robots. I’d definitely give it a read if it had giant robots. Or lesbians.
August 31, 2009 at 5:48 pm |
“Cats, you say? Well then, Yuki Sohma is sure to hate this.”
LOL, Snark you should watch more shoujo. A single episode into your first shoujo series and you already have 2 weeks worth of humorous material!
August 31, 2009 at 12:22 am |
[...] Meimi132 no Itonami 芽美の生命そして愛 « Cat Paradise – Gakuen Sousei Nekoten [...]
August 31, 2009 at 5:50 pm |
Ok…I’ll try King of Thorn…although I still don’t trust Tokyopop!….grumble grumble…The Queen’s Knight…indefinite delay…grumble
August 31, 2009 at 6:34 pm |
Oh Tokyopop sucks for keeping up with releases… You could try reading a bit online before getting it out the library or buying it.
They seem to have done alright with releasing this though, Its all out and available me thinks… And the TP volumes I’ve read were perfectly fine, didn’t notice any censoring either after re-reading the scans.
September 1, 2009 at 1:31 pm |
Since the entire series is already completely released my greatest fear when buying series from Tokyopop (these days) has already been put to rest. I hate ending up with series that I love that are incomplete without any definite plans for the series to be finished. Plus if I remember right Tokyopop are really rough on scanlators and they put a stop to them pretty quickly on the series they license. The series isn’t too long too and the reviews I’ve seen are pretty good, I’m willing to risk buying the first volume when I get my gift card next month.
September 19, 2010 at 7:50 am |
yen press owns the rights to nekoten
September 20, 2010 at 10:19 am |
I know
I own volumes 1-3 now. Waiting on more XD