From DrMaster: Goths Cage is an enchanting manga-esque picture book series of three short stories with a malicious twist of love and romance. It is based on Yasushi Suzuki's art series that was previously released online in Japan under the name Phantoms KADAN. Suzuki-san re-adapts his art series and transforms it into a bewitching picture book with entrancing grace and charm. Each of his gothic tales is exquisitely crafted with elegant detailed illustrations that transport readers into an enchanted world of gothic glory. In his first story, Glass Magic, Suzuki-san does a twisted take on the classic Cinderella tale. An ugly corpse-like servant girl wishes to fall in love with a prince and become a beautiful princess. Then a sinister old witch offers her a magic potion that can grant her heart's desires, but in order for the magic to work, she must abandon her soul. She gets rid of her memories, her face, and her master to become a cruelly beautiful glass princess. In another of Suzuki's splendidly dark tales, the shop keeper of an enchanted barbershop attends to his beautiful victim under the moonlight. He snips away at her thoughts and memories, mystically cutting away all her painful memories that scar her heart. However, because she is sapped of her thoughts and memories, all that is left is her pitiful vacuous body. Prepare to be mesmerized by Yasushi Suzuki's spine-chilling tales of love and entrancement this fall 2008, because this enchanting collection of spellbinding illustrations and twisted tales is a must-have! Note: 32 page hardcover volume, all in color
Ten years ago, there was an explosion at Hisano's apartment building. She would have been there, but she'd been hit by a bike ridden by a boy in blood-stained clothes. He dropped a toy scale when it happened, and she's been hanging on to it as a good-luck charm ever since. Now Hisano's in high school. One of her teachers was murdered, and the police are investigating. A young man suddenly appears carrying the toy that scale belonged to. And perhaps... can he also see the hallucinations Hisano has always been plagued with? Everything is connected as the pattern slowly rises to the surface.
Summary by Hyper Parfait: Kuchiki, a flutist, was plagued by nightmares every night that forced her to seek the help of counselor Matsuzaki. Ishikura, a police inspector, unexpectedly discovered a headless mummified body in an empty apartment and is now on the case. When Kuchiki regains her lost memories, the curtains also opens to a tragedy!
From Aestheticism: 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.
From Midnight Scans: Kitou Hijiri, a student, confessed his feelings to a Chemistry teacher named Nakatani Ayano whom he had fallen in love with 8 years ago. Somehow when he was young, he lived beside Ayano and bear feelings for her. Ayano, in turn, could not resist Hijiri’s determination and strong feelings towards her. What will be the ending of their taboo love?
A group of 15 elite high-school students are gathered at a very special, high-class high school. To graduate from this high school essentially means you'll succeed in life, but graduating is very difficult. The school is presided over by a bear called Monokuma, and he explains to them that their graduation hinges around committing a murder. The only way to graduate is to kill one of your classmates and get away with it. If the other classmates discover the identity of the killer, the killer is the only one executed. However, if they fail to catch the killer, only the killer graduates and the others are annihilated. Which of the 15 will survive the bloodbath to come?
In the panic surrounding a worldwide pandemic which kills 15 percent of the population and cripples many more, a secret organization, the Propater, topples the UN and seizes control of much of the world. A boy and a girl, raised in an abandoned virology research center, immune to the virus, are attacked by the Propater and escape. Based strongly on Gnostic mythology, all major characters are named after gnostic deities, and have analogous roles.
If you wished for your own death, how would you like to go? Here is one boy's encounter with a grim reaper...
Miwa confesses his feelings to his friend Katou, but in response, Katou introduces Miwa to his gay friend Hashina. Miwa is shocked, and rejects Hashina, but that just makes Hashina fall in love creating an unrequited love triangle. Miwa finds comfort in Hashina, but will he ever be able to let go of his feelings for Katou?
Two twins, separated by fatal illness and a selective cure. Kasumi and her sister, Shizuku, were infected with the Medusa virus, which slowly turns the victim to stone. There is no cure, but of the two only Kasumi is selected to go into a sort of cryogenically frozen state along with 159 others until a cure is found. At some point in the undetermined future, Kasumi awakens to find herself and others who were in suspended animation in an unfamiliar world with violent monsters. Resolving to unlock the mysteries of her current situation and the fate of her twin sister, Kasumi struggles to survive in a treacherous world.
From huamulan03.blogspot.com: 3 January 2011. ER doctor Matsuoka Tsuyoshi examines a patient presenting influenza symptoms. The next day, the patient dies from multiple-organ failure, followed by others who had shown the same symptoms. As the death toll rises, even the high-tech Japanese are at a loss over how to check the further spread of the deadly virus
A mystery/action plot: in the 13 hours 13 children spent in space, what had happened?? Not enough of the series has been released to describe it properly. It starts off 8 years after the spaceship incident, centered around one of the 13 children named Bono U. Meyer. He has an IQ of 240 and it seems people who are close to him have [coincidentally, perhaps?] been driven clinically insane. What is going on?
