Gin's manga / #Mystery(52)

Are mushi insects, parasites, plants, viruses, or nature spirits? Described as "neither good nor evil, they are life in its purest form. An unseen river shaping the path of man, through their presence our life is changed." No one seems to know much about their origins, except that they've been around since the beginning of time. Possibly set in Meiji/late 19th century Japan, Mushishi is a series of related, yet separate short stories featuring Ginko, a mushishi. A mushishi or "mushi master" is a cross between a researcher/scholar/doctor/shaman who travels across the countryside searching for mushi in their many forms. Ginko wanders from town to town to find people, young and old who are affected by the mushi. He offers explanations, sometimes medication or direct intervention to try to cure the afflicted of their mushi-related problems.

A young girl's nightmare becomes the search for the truth, a search that leads her to the secret and extremely dangerous world of Contractors and the Hells Gate. Hei and Mao try to protect Kana from the Contractors who are trying to silence her forever, while Kana clings to the hope of finding her father and piecing her life together again.

From Garo 1992-01.

The brand new sequel of Toukyou Kushu resumes after a time skip and new characters make their appearance.

Nature made Ash Lynx beautiful; nurture made him a cold ruthless killer. A runaway brought up as the adopted heir and sex toy of "Papa" Dino Golzine, Ash, now at the rebellious age of seventeen, forsakes the kingdom held out by the devil who raised him. But the hideous secret that drove Ash's older brother mad in Vietnam has suddenly fallen into Papa's insatiably ambitious hands--and it's exactly the wrong time for Eiji Okamura, a pure-hearted young photographer from Japan, to make Ash Lynx's acquaintance...

Banana Fish has 19 Volumes (tankoubon), 11 Volumes (bunkou) and 1 special volume, Artbook Angel Eyes.

The elite Cosmo Academy attracts applicants from every stellar nation in the galaxy. One young hopeful is Tadatos Lane, an orphan esper from Terra. The final stage of the academy's entrance exam is a perilous mission simulation aboard an actual derelict starship. The applicants depart for the ships in groups of ten, but when Tada's crew arrives on the Esperanza, they are horrified to discover that they now number eleven. As the test progresses, things go awry and the atmosphere grows increasingly tense. The crew members begin to suspect sabotage, and Tada appears to be the likely culprit.

Sayoko is a newly transferred student: gifted with rare beauty and mysterious and magnetic charm, she captures every student's attention. Among them, the introverted Yuiko and the grumpy Mari become friends with Sayoko, while Ryou, a known womanizer, wastes no time and tries to hit on her, unleashing his girlfriend's rage. But this story has countless plot twists, characters and secrets. From Banana Fish and Yasha's author, a manga that won a Shogakukan Award and defined as "a must" by Matt Thorn, one of the greatest shoujo manga experts. Recently Kisshou Tennyo became popular again thanks to the TV drama and the movie adaptation!

The story happens in a circus in Paris in the 1970's. (...) Much is made of the romance of the circus atmosphere, of flying through the air on a trapeze, etc etc. Think cirque here, not circus. We're doing Old World riffs on the romance and tawdriness of the ring. There are no elephants in tutus walking on their hind legs; it's slit-eyed jugglers and daring death-loving trapeze artists and sad Pierrot clowns, even if the Pierrot clown - our hero, Torinosu, 'Bird's Nest' - has a false red nose. The tawdriness comes from the circus master pimping out his performers to anyone willing to pay. (...) And there's tanbi decadence - ghosts who wander into the action looking like teenaged girls even if they're the hero's brother, and abandoned neurotic women with a thing for inflicting pain, and buracon and possible murder and unspoken pining and a hero who looks about to perish at any moment from terminal angst.