At the moment: anime, books, and manga

Since I doubt I'll be finishing any anime/book/manga/whatever posts for at least the next few days, I'll just do a quickie post about what I'm working my way through right now.

Anime:

• Xxxholic (anime TV series) - I got a notification email from Hulu that most of the episodes in this show are going to expire in a little less than a week. There are 24 episodes - that's nearly 12 hours. Because I've never seen this show and have been wanting to know whether it's worth getting, I'm going to try to watch all or most of it before it expires. I think it's doable.
• Last Exile (anime TV series) - Another one that's going to expire in less than a week. This one is 26 episodes - nearly 13 hours. I don't expect to get to watch much of this before it expires, but that's not a big deal. I've seen almost all of this show before, and I liked it well enough that it's on my "To Buy" list. I had just been putting off buying it because I remember the ending being kind of depressing. What I hope to do before the show expires is watch some of the episodes that have Dio and Delphine, because I first saw this show dubbed in English and would like to know what those two sound like in Japanese. Plus, I love their character designs.

Manga:

• Hetalia: Axis Powers (manga, vol. 1) by Hidekaz Himaruya - After enjoying the anime so much, I decided to try out the manga. I keep track of several web comics, and almost all of them started off a bit rough (art-wise and/or story-wise), so it really shouldn't have come as so much of a surprise to me how many of the panels in this volume look so quick and sketchy, but it did. Well, I may end up preferring the anime's visuals, but I'm looking forward to seeing more of my favorite countries.
• Emma (manga, vol. 9) by Kaoru Mori - So, remember when I researched the skyrocketing prices of various Emma volumes and had a bit of a freak out? Not long after I finished the post, I filled out ILL requests for the volumes I hadn't read yet, and this is one of them. A flip-through has reminded me how absolutely lovely this series is (the anime is lovely, but it is a shadow of the loveliness of the original manga). I want to buy the manga volumes that are still affordable, but I'm afraid to. I'm a completist, and it will forever bother me to only own some of the volumes.
• Ristorante Paradiso (manga) story and art by Natsume Ono - I think I heard about this one via a brief review on Unshelved. Although I love the cover art, I'm not wild about Ono's art style in general. Still, the story and characters are interesting so far.
• The Devil Within (manga, vol. 2) by Ryo Takagi - This is the only volume of this series that I own, and, after reading some of it and then reading some reviews of the first volume, I have no desire to ever get any more of the series. This isn't a keeper. Happily, it was on clearance and only cost me $1, so the pain of knowing I spent money on this isn't as great as it could be.

Books:

• Spice & Wolf (book, vol.1) by Isuna Hasekura, illustrated by Jyuu Ayakura - I can't wait to read this, even if the odds are fairly good I won't like it as much as I liked the anime. I haven't had much success with light novels - in most cases, while it's easy to see what made someone think "that would make a good anime," it's rare I end up liking the books as much or more than the anime based on them. The Twelve Kingdoms was one of the few exceptions. I'm hoping this will be another.
• The Unconsoled (book) by Kazuo Ishiguro - I'm still working on this one, and I do believe I will finish it, it's just going to take a while. This book is like a dream where you find out you have a big part to play in an important event, but you don't know what that part is, or even necessarily what the event is about. In fact, I'm to the point where I strongly suspect that everything happening in this book is a dream.

Well, that's all. Now I'm off to do Sunday chores and get through as much of Xxxholic as I can.