Reivew: K-ON!

I guess it was inevitable that I would have to cover one of those 'cute girls doing cute things in a cute after-school club' stories for this month's theme, and I might as well start with one that basically helped set that trend in the first place.

K-ON! (Keion!), by kafifly.  First published in 2007 and first published in North America in 2010.

PLOT:

Yui is a rather ditzy girl looking to join a club at school.  She ends up getting roped into the music club by its energetic leader Ritsu, alongside the shy girl Mio and the kindly Mugi.  Together they decide to form a band, but they keep getting distracted by things like instrument shopping, cake, teaching Yui how to play music, cake, various holidays, cake, parties, cake...wait, it's time for them to give their first performance for the school?!

Review: HONEY AND CLOVER

It's September, which means it's time for The Manga Test Drive to go back to school with a month of manga about schools. ( After all, it's safer than going back to actual schools as of this writing.) 

That being said, for all the focus that anime and manga put on high school sometimes it's nice to read a series about college for once, even if it's not perfect.

HONEY AND CLOVER (Hachimitsu to Kuroba), by Chica Umino.  First published in 2000 and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

Takamoto is a sophomore at an art college in Tokyo.  He lives in the broken-down men's dormitory, where he's surrounded by his equally strange (and equally poor) classmates.  There's the senior architecture student Mayama, who is always in some sort of relationship drama, as well as Morita, a bizarre and hapless slacker.  Things change for them when one of their professors introduces them to Hagu, an elfin blonde who looks like she's 12 but is in fact an artistic prodigy.  In the midst of all the wackiness all around them, all three boys end up falling for Hagu to some degree over the course of the school year.