Yay... more Mahou Shoujo Madoka stuff arrived in the mail today. :) On your right is the last and final volume of the manga adaptation of the series. I could have gotten this from the local Kinokuniya but everytime I went, they were out of stock. I was feeling lazy too and threw the manga in with my latest shipment since it added nothing to the cost of shipping.
On your left is the official commentary book on the series. Or at least I think it's a commentary, it's one of those books I intent to read much later when my command of japanese is stronger. The book is really very nicely printed and on quality paper too. Although it isn't hardcover, the quality of the sheet that wraps around the actual cover of the book is nice and stiff. Also, the paper has a nice texture to it too. The paper they used for the individual sheets is rather nice too. And for those of us who are in the habit of smelling their books :D, this book smells really nice. :)
The book is mostly text but has quite a view pictures scattered throughout it. There are several full coloured pages that book end the book. These are nicely printed too. I took a picture of it but as I am mobile blogging today and the new blogger droid doesn't like my gallery, i've been having trouble posting multiple pictures to each post. So, I may or may not add this photo later if this first attempt is not successful.
My only complain is that the way the book is bound means that you have to take some care when reading it. You can't open it too widely, if not you risk putting stress on the binding and getting loose pages in the future. I'm not too bothered by this cuz in the past when I was still reading single issue western comics, this was the recommended way of reading too. Anyway, if you're a book lover like I, you would treat your books with some care so it shouldn't be a huge annoyance unless you want to scan it or copy quotes from it.
This one is definitely hard for me to read and I wasn't going to start on it yet since I've actually started reading the novel adaptation of the series. The novel adaptation isn't that easy to read either. It has taken me 3 - 4 train rides to and from work to get to page 3. The grammar is actually not that hard for me and I can read chinese so can make very good and somewhat accurate guesses when it comes to the kanji. But there is no furigana and there is a lot of kanji and since I already know the story and i'm attempting to read this to improve my Japanese, i've made it a point to check all the kanji. That really slows things down. But other than that, it is a pretty good book for an intermediate level student, who is also a fan of the anime, to try.
K, time to change trains. Bye for now. :)
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