I stopped by the bookstore last night, and considered picking up these charming new releases:



Happily for my bank balance, I resisted. So far, all of these Dark Horse/Harlequin manga fusions have been pretty bad. The romance novels of the sixties, seventies, and eighties were fairly condensed stories to begin with, and editing them down to a single volume manga turns their (already formulaic) plots into virtual outlines: girl meets boy, boy despises-yet-desires girl, they have The Sex, there's some angst, everything gets resolved, The End.

Still, these are books that proudly advertise that they are printed in either "beautiful deep pink ink" (which, according to the Dark Horse website, denotes "purely romantic material") or "gorgeous deep purple ink" (indicating a "sophisticated romance for readers looking for something a little sexier than the rest"). Color-coded smut levels?!? That's the kind of thing that's tough for a girl like me to resist...

For previews of these books, click here.

Labels: Harlequin, manga