Back from vacation!

I actually got back about a week ago. This was my annual "visit family, binge read manga, and maybe eat out occasionally" vacation. Last year, my dad wasn't able to make it in time to see me, so I was thrilled that, this year, I got to see my entire immediate family. This, combined with some major anxiety related to the friend who was going to help me out by driving me to the airport cancelling on me less than a day before my flight, plus the cold I caught about halfway through my vacation, resulted in me reading way less than I normally do. But I did get through some stuff.

Manga:

• Black Butler Vol. 27
• Blue Exorcist Vols. 1-2
• Haikyu!! Vols. 1-2
• Maid-sama! Vols. 1-18 (the entire series)
• Skip Beat! Vols. 41-42 

Books:

• How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery

I also watched a lot of TV, some of it at the airport and on the plane, and some of it while my dad was home:

• Aggretsuko (anime TV series) - I saw Season 1 and the Christmas special a while back. I watched episodes 1-4 of Season 2 on the plane and enjoyed it.
• The King's Avatar (live action TV series) - Netflix finally fixed the English subtitles! They now make sense, for the most part. My dad and I made it almost halfway through the series together, and I watched a little more after he left. There's a revelation in episode 18 or 19 that I was not fond of, but I still plan on finishing the series.
• Violet Evergarden (anime TV series) - I originally intended to watch this at the airport and am glad I opted to watch it during my vacation instead. I don't like crying in public, and this series would have done it. I'd love to have this in my DVD/Blu-Ray collection, but it doesn't look like it's available. I'm hoping it doesn't become an Aniplex of America release, because, as much as I enjoyed it, I don't want to pay $140+ to own a 13-episode series.

REVIEW: Skip Beat! (manga, vols. 37-39) by Yoshiki Nakamura, translated by Tomo Kimura

I'm almost done with my vacation reading posts - only one more to go after this. Then I'd like to publish a "best" and "worst" of 2017 post.

If I had the shelf space, I'd start working on buying the entire Skip Beat! series so that I could periodically reread it. It's so good. Whereas other long-running series leave my feeling impatient, Skip Beat! just keeps working for me. I'd be perfectly fine with it not ending any time soon, which I suppose is a good thing, since it doesn't seem like it's going to. Here's hoping that it continues to be translated into English until the very end.

The three volumes I read during my vacation included the series' first on-page glimpse of Kyoko's relationship with her mother, along with a flashback to Kyoko's mother's past. Great stuff, especially volume 38.

As usual, there are major spoilers past this point.

REVIEW: Skip Beat! (manga, vols. 35-36) by Yoshiki Nakamura, translated by Tomo Kimura

Sadly, there weren't enough volumes of Skip Beat! published in the past year for me to be able to go on a giant binge during my vacation. It's too bad, because this series is consistently enjoyable. It's rare for me to still love a series that's been running for so many volumes, but Nakamura somehow manages to keep the characters and story from stagnating.

That said, these two volumes were pretty weak. I still enjoyed getting to see the characters again, but Ren disappointed me in volume 35, and volume 36 was enjoyable more for what it seemed to be setting up than anything else.

This is the last of my post-vacation reviews. As usual with these, there are lots and lots of spoilers. Read on at your own risk.

Skip Beat! (manga, vol. 33-34) by Yoshiki Nakamura, translated by Tomo Kimura

I continue to adore this series and wish I owned it all, so I could go back and reread the earlier volumes. However, I have no clue where I'd keep 34+ volumes, so I continue not to buy any of it. I wish I had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

I'm amazed that, even after this many volumes, this series still hasn't gotten stale. Nakamura appears to have an endless supply of exciting ideas and developments. I only wish there had been more than two new-to-me volumes available for me to read over my vacation.

This post contains spoilers, so proceed with caution.

Skip Beat! (live action TV series), via DramaFever

Skip Beat! is a Taiwanese drama based on Yoshiki Nakamura's manga of the same title. Most places I've checked list it as being 15 episodes long with an hour or more for each episode, so I guess DramaFever must have cut the episodes differently, because the series is 23 episodes long there, with each episode only 45-46 minutes long.

The TV series follows the manga fairly closely (with some differences that the series then had to scramble to explain), covering events up through volume 13, for the most part. The most significant difference is that nearly everyone has been renamed. Ren is Dun He Lian, Kyoko is Gong Xi (once called Xiao Xi, for reasons I didn't understand), Sho is Bu Po Shang, Moko is Qin, Yashiro is Mr. Du, Lory is Luo Li, etc.

Shang was supposed to inherit his family's inn but ran away with Gong Xi in order to become famous. Gong Xi was his devoted supporter, working multiple jobs so that he could live in luxury, until she found out that he just saw her as a maid. Determined to get her revenge by becoming more famous than him, she auditioned to join LME, a rival talent agency.

Skip Beat! (manga, vols. 31-32) by Yoshiki Nakamura, translated by Tomo Kimura

These were not my favorite Skip Beat! volumes ever, but they were still fun. I found myself returning to them again and again during my vacation, in order to reread my favorite scenes.

Every time I dive into Skip Beat!, my enjoyment of it always seems to take me by surprise. I really need to start buying it. And I'm sure I've said this multiple times in the past – the length of the series always holds me back, even though I know I'd be getting my money's worth.

As always with these "vacation reading" posts, my descriptions contain spoilers. Read on at your own risk.

Skip Beat! (manga, vols. 16, 19, 24-30) by Yoshiki Nakamura

Skip Beat! was my absolute favorite out of all the manga series I read during my vacation. I really need to buy it, because it's one of those series that I think would hold up really well on a re-read.

Kyoko is lots and lots of fun, steadfastly refusing to be a dreamy, wimpy romantic heroine. Ren loves her, but he also realizes that love isn't on her radar at all and does his best not to expect more than she's ready to give. Sometimes Kyoko and Ren read each other completely wrong (leading to much hilarity for readers), and yet Nakamura has them avoid a few Big Misunderstandings that other authors might have milked for at least a volume or two. Thirty volumes in, and this series has yet to feel stale. That's pretty amazing. I honestly think I could have spent my entire vacation reading nothing but this series and I would have been happy. It's that good.

Read on for spoiler-filled synopses of the volumes, plus a few brief comments.

I'm back!

My vacation was nice, and now I'm trying to get used to being in my own apartment again. I posted absolutely nothing while I was gone (I didn't even check my email!), although I read lots and lots, and even watched a few TV shows with my mom and dad. I figure I'll do something much like the posts I wrote after my last vacation - one post per manga series, rather than per volume, with no promises that I'll write about everything.

Here's what I got through, along with brief comments in case I don't get around to writing posts:

Skip Beat! (manga, vols. 5-6, 10-15, 17-18, 20-23) by Yoshiki Nakamura

This post took WAY longer to write than I expected. And it's long.... Thankfully, this is the last of my "manga I read during my vacation" posts.

This series was by far my biggest vacation winner: I read more volumes of it (14!) than any other series, I read all the volumes I had at my disposal, and I enjoyed it so much that it was painful not to have more available (and painful to have gaps in what I did have).

I love this series. I watched the anime and tried the first manga volume a while back, but I decided I probably wouldn't ever buy the manga, because I didn't want to commit to something long-running. I think I may have to change my mind about that. I had forgotten how much fun Kyoko is.

Somehow, Nakamura manages to draw things out without driving me completely crazy. There's no sign of how long it's going to take for Kyoko to accomplish her goal of becoming a bigger star than her ex-boyfriend. It may take a while for Kyoko to recognize that she has feelings for Ren. I don't care - I love this series anyway.

Kyoko is awesome, clueless one minute and pulling amazing acting skills out of thin air the next. Even though the formula for characters' awesomeness seems to be pretty much the same each time - the character has some sort of horrible acting block or obstacle, it comes down to crunch time, and the character pulls off a brilliant in-character improv session - I eat it up each and every time. It's so much fun to read!

The romance in the series is good, too, somehow made even better by Nakamura's decision to have it progress achingly slow and even take a backseat to all the acting drama. Ren realizes he loves Kyoko well before Kyoko has the same realization about Ren. Ren backs off a bit because of some dark stuff in his past I haven't read about yet (is it in one of the volumes I had to skip, or a future volume? I guess I'll find out some other time), but he seems to get over that a bit. Even so, he doesn't try to force Kyoko to admit she has feelings for him too. I loved that Yashiro freaked out about this, while Ren seemed barely phased by Kyoko's obliviousness.

Again, I love this series. It's shoujo with a nice sprinkling of shounen. There's romance and relationship drama, but then there's Kyoko, who would not be out of place as the main character in a shounen series, shouting "I want to become stronger" and being underestimated by others right up to the moment where she does something completely fantastic.

As usual, if you're leery of spoilers, you may want to avoid reading the descriptions below and just skip to the read-alikes/watch-alikes section at the very bottom.

Here's what I could be writing about...

I'm reaching new levels of pathetic - I can't seem to make myself write my posts! Or update my Shelfari bookshelf. Also, I managed to damage myself while sleeping and now can't turn my head all the way to the right - yesterday it hurt enough that I tearfully gobbled down arthritis-strength Tylenol just so that I could keep cataloging (we're about to get a 500-book shipment in, all at once, and I'm the only cataloger...), but today I'm doing a bit better and can laugh at how stupid the situation is.

So, since I can't offer anything else at the moment, I'll just write up a list of most of the stuff I'm procrastinating on writing about. As in, I haven't even written notes for myself. Crud. Well, I'll include some mini notes here.

• Foul Play by Janet Evanovich - A woman's job (as a TV clown entertaining children) is taken by a chicken. She gets blamed when the chicken goes missing, but, not to worry, a veterinarian who has fallen instantly in love with her is there to help her clear her name and figure out the true culprit. It's goofy romance - you've really got to be in the right mood to enjoy this sort of thing. I was in the mood for the romance, but not so much the mystery. Oooh, missing chicken, how mysteeerious...
• Slumdog Millionaire - It's amazing how much hype you can miss out on when you don't watch TV and only vaguely pay attention to news online, but even I heard about this movie. I just didn't want to pay $20 for it. So, when the local entertainment store had a "buy one clearance rental DVD, get a 2nd for $1" sale, I jumped on it. I liked the movie, but I felt the actual romance in it was lacking. The only thing I hated was the nearly unreadable subtitles. Also, I wanted to smack Jamal's brother.
• Naughty Neighbor by Janet Evanovich - A press secretary with an annoying (and sexy) neighbor finds her life turned upside down when said annoying neighbor's troubles start spilling over onto her. These troubles involve politicians and a missing pig. Notice a missing animal theme? The mystery is even more pathetic in this book than in Foul Play, but I found the romance more interesting. This is actually kind of embarrassing to admit, and, if I ever manage to make myself write a full post, you'll see why.
• Resident Evil: Degeneration - The Raccoon City tragedy is over, but that doesn't mean it's forgotten. After all, who could forget a bunch of zombies and other things even more horrific? Seeking revenge for the death of his family, a man lets the T-Virus loose, but things really start to suck when he becomes infected with the G-Virus. Actually, the outbreaks are pretty well-contained, so the horror is fairly small-scale. And kind of boring. With painful voice acting, despite the voice actors being veterans of many anime. The English voice actors - there's no Japanese language track. This was a horrible, horrible movie. I plan to sell it as soon as I've written a full post about it.
• Promises in Death by J.D. Robb - Coltraine, Morris's girlfriend and a fellow cop, is killed and it's up to Eve Dallas to bring her murderer to justice. It's not just any old case for her, not just the job - and I was thinking, "when is it ever just the job for Dallas?", but Robb made such a big deal about this I had to mention it. Robb tried to play with readers' emotions by bumping Coltraine up to "Morris's increasingly important girlfriend" status in the previous book, but I found I couldn't work up the kind of shock and sadness over her death that Robb was maybe going for. I did really like Dallas's new car though. I wonder how she'll wreck it?
• Serve It Cold by Ronnie Blackwell - One of my Podiobooks listening choices. It features several readers, but not quite enough people for me to always be able to tell the voices apart (especially when it comes to female characters). This one involves marijuana, nice New Orleans detail (not sure how accurate it is, but it all sounded good to me), a very fishy divorce case, some exhibitionists, art, and murder. I liked it, even though it was a bit too complicated for work time listening.
• 8810 by Nicholas Taylor - Another one of my Podiobooks listening choices. A guy gets a job in the auditing department of a big insurance company and must deal with the boringness of his job, his coworkers (some become his friends, others are just weird, and some fall somewhere in between), and the Dilbert-like idiocy that is just a part of corporate life. It's kind of like The Office, only it's not consistently funny. However, it's still well worth a listen. Plus, I love some of the Colorado details - the bit about Halloween in Colorado is absolutely perfect and absolutely true.
• Black Bird, vol. 1 by Kanoko Sakurakoji - Misao is horrified to discover that Kyo, her first love, is actually a tengu, a kind of demon, and that she has the dubious honor of being special - a demon who drinks her blood gains a long life, one who eats her flesh gains eternal youth, and one who makes her his bride will have a prosperous clan. Kyo wants her to be his bride and promises to protect her from all who would harm her, but Misao doesn't want him if he only wants her for what she can do for his clan. I don't know what the whole series will be like, but this volume was one big excuse for Misao to get hurt repeatedly, so that Kyo could heal her. By the way, he heals using licks and kisses. If you flip through it and think it has a lot of sex, that's because you're mistaking the healing scenes for sex scenes. I'm sure the similarity is intentional. It's not porn, but it's racy. I think it may become my guilty pleasure, at least until I tire of watching the many ways Misao can bleed all over the place.
• Fullmetal Alchemist, Season 1, Part 1 - I now own the whole series (minus the OVAs, which I might not be able to afford for some time - if I decide to pay it, the ALA membership fee will kill all my extra cash and then some this month). You have no idea how happy this makes me. I would list this series among my top 5 favorite anime. I've only ever seen it all in English dub, so it's a treat to see it in Japanese. Watching this while I'm watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood really brings home how fast the new series is speeding through things. On the one hand, I think that does a disservice to the characters and some of the heavier emotional stuff, but, on the other hand, the pacing of the original series could've been a tad faster.
• In Odd We Trust by Queenie Chan and Dean Koontz - I haven't quite figured out yet how much of the writing Koontz did versus Chan, but, regardless of who did how much, I wasn't impressed. This manga-inspired volume, which takes place before the events of Koontz's Odd Thomas, didn't communicate Odd's charm well. Plus, the story was very simplistic, and the art was wooden. I don't know what Chan's art is like in her other works, but, in this, the artwork as a whole needs to be more dynamic and there are basics, like perspective, that need work (Sherry's headband, or whatever you call it, really bothered me - you can always see the entire curve of it, even when her face is in profile).
• Skip Beat!, vol. 1 by Yoshiki Nakamura - ILLiad is down at my library and has been down for two weeks now, so, while I'm happy that I've started reading this manga, I can't wait until it's possible for me to request the next volume, because it seems like it might be a while before I can reach the point where the anime ended. I really like this series, but I have to admit that I prefer the anime so far - I just like the artwork in the anime better.

See how fantastically behind I am? Well, for now I'm just going to go do some neck stretches, but maybe I'll get a full post written tomorrow. Right.

Skip Beat! (anime TV series) on Crunchyroll.com

I've heard somewhat conflicting things about Crunchyroll's legality, so I debated a bit about including a post about a show I watched on it - as far as I know, if Crunchyroll isn't legal, there's no legal way for someone in the US to watch Skip Beat!, beyond buying a Japanese copy online. I do hope that Skip Beat! does get licensed in the US. Aside from the ending, which caused me to scream in frustrated rage, I really enjoyed this show.

Summary:

Kyoko has devoted her entire life to making Sho, her childhood friend and currently her boyfriend, happy. When he decided to leave his family's inn behind and follow his dream of becoming someone famous, Kyoko dropped everything when he asked her to and went with him to Tokyo. She worked two jobs to pay for her and Sho's large and expensive apartment, despite the fact that Sho was rarely there. Even when he did come home, the longer they were in Tokyo the snappier he got with her. As far as Sho is concerned, Ren is his biggest rival in show business, so Kyoko hates Ren because Sho does.

One day, Kyoko finds out that Sho only sees her as his maid, someone to support him, feed him, pay his rent, and do all his housework. Now that he's making good money on his own, he plans to dump her. Kyoko, enraged, tells him that she will find some way of getting revenge upon him. Sho only laughs at her, saying that the only way she could possibly do that is by going into show business herself.

These new revelations about Sho bring forth a side of Kyoko that she never realized existed. All her life, she's worked, and failed, to please others - her mother, and then Sho. Now she wants no one's love, only revenge. With that in mind, she goes to a talent agency as big as Sho's, which just happens to be Ren's agency. Through sheer guts and determination, she manages to get an audition. She fails it because of her lack of desire for others' love, something that the head of the agency believes is vital for a star. However, he's intrigued enough by her to give her a second chance, and she ends up in a special section called "Love Me" - she must cheerfully do whatever others ask of her, earning points when she does something well and with the goal of pleasing others, and losing points when she does something badly or for selfish reasons. It's not easy - Kyoko must fight the demons within herself that Sho brought out in her, and she must deal with Ren, who seems to hate her for wanting to get into show business for revenge. However, Kyoko gradually discovers a genuine desire to be an actress, and, as Ren recognizes this genuine desire, he begins to thaw towards her.

Commentary:

I didn't really like this show at first. I couldn't stand how much Kyoko's life revolved around that jerk, Sho. First, she's his doormat, cheerfully giving up on all the things she wants (like going to high school) to help him do what he wants. As much as I hate Sho for using her, she made it easy for him to do so. Second, she let Sho rule her life again after she left him, by the shear strength of her desire to take revenge upon him. She's not waiting on him hand and foot anymore, but, by making her every action a step towards taking him down, she's just as tied to him after she's left him as she was when she was with him. She can be such an awesome girl at times, so it's kind of tough to watch. In those early episodes, one of the things that gave me hope for Kyoko was a bit in the opening credits - Kyoko, dressed like a princess, running past Sho without even looking at him. That bit indicated to me that, at some point, Kyoko would grow out of Sho, get over him, and surpass him without even thinking about it. I couldn't help but cheer her on.

I started warming up to the show at the same time Ren started warming up to Kyoko a little. During episode 7, Kyoko, in an attempt to show up a horribly spoiled actress, acts out a tea ceremony scene with Ren despite being in horrible pain. She's so dedicated to what she's doing that she prompts Ren to act at his full ability, until he notices that the only thing keeping her from passing out is her willpower. Even after filming is stopped, Kyoko still doesn't quit, not until the "customer" is gone (her mother trained her to serve customers with a smile, no matter what, in preparation for her eventually marrying Sho and helping him run his family's inn - Kyoko uses this training to get through the shoot). Once Ren realizes this, he leaves the set and she passes out. At this point, Ren admires her for her dedication to her work, even though he still hates what motivates her. At this point, I decided Kyoko was awesome.

Kyoko actually reminds me a bit of some shonen anime/manga heroes. Shonen anime and manga are full of heroes who don't always seem particularly bright, but these guys continually surprise people. At just the right time, they pull off some kind of amazing strategy, or they demonstrate keen perception, or something else you wouldn't expect from them. Even if only for just that brief time, those characters are cool. Kyoko can be like that. Usually, she's scary with rage (whenever something makes her think of Sho), or she's overly bubbly and energetic with happiness. She can be incredibly naive, and she can never seem to figure out why Ren gets so mad at her sometimes, even though she can read him like a book at other times. All kinds of characters underestimate her, until she does something truly awesome. At one point, she's at an audition and, in seconds, comes up with a new scenario idea for her and her partner after her original idea is stolen. At another point, after allowing her rage for Sho to almost ruin a job vital to her budding acting career, she pulls off a truly stunning performance.

There are some shojo anime and manga that I love mainly for the scenarios and the guys - the main female characters can, at times, be too annoying for me to really like them. However, Kyoko really grabbed me. I liked her, and I liked how much she came to love acting. I was happy when she made her first female friend (because she was always around Sho, all the girls she knew while growing up hated her - yet another reason why she despises him now). It's a nice friendship, too, and made me think of manga/anime like Fruits Basket - Kyoko and Kanae (or Moko, as Kyoko likes to call her) support each other through tough times and never end up at each other's throats over a guy, thank goodness (one of several things I came to hate about anime/manga like Fushigi Yuugi).

I liked Ren, too, though. He can be pretty mean to Kyoko at times, but it's easy enough to understand why he doesn't like her at first - for a guy who loves acting so much, it's got to be hard being around a girl who gets into acting for such a negative reason. As he thaws towards Kyoko, and the audience is treated to more of his thoughts and a few details about his past, he becomes more than just a pretty face. I particularly enjoyed the problems he had at the end of the show, when he, who had been such a perfect actor up to this point, couldn't figure out how to portray a character dealing with feelings of love he knows he shouldn't have. That's part of the reason why the ending made me so mad - although there are indications that Ren will work through his troubles, absolutely no loose ends are tied up. Ren is never shown finally managing to portray the character, and the budding romance between Ren and Kyoko is still a budding romance. Yashiro, Ren's manager and hilariously supportive of a relationship between Ren and Kyoko, would probably be tearing out his hair over this ending, and I'd be right there with him. By the way, Yashiro was another thing I loved about this show - for a minor character, he's amazingly fun.

The first time Sho went all goofy (as cool as he tries to act when he thinks others are watching, he tends to be like a big kid when he's alone, with his manager, or with Kyoko), I thought his voice sounded suspiciously familiar. I thought he might be voiced by the same person (Mamoru Miyano) who voiced Ouran High School Host Club's Tamaki - I looked it up, and I was right. Ren also sounded somewhat familiar to me, but I never guessed that he was voiced by the same person (Katsuyuki Konishi) who voiced Soubi in Loveless. In addition to loving most of the show, I really enjoyed the voice acting. It was great getting to hear some people I'd enjoyed in other shows again, and I'll have to hunt down other stuff Kyoko's VA (Marina Inoue) has done. I'm tempted to see if I can find Library War - the description makes it sound perfect for a library nerd like myself.

Overall, I really enjoyed this anime, but, oh, the pain of the ending! Either they decided to be faithful to the manga and wait until the manga got further ahead before creating a second season (and, although I've read about many fans wishing for a second season, I have yet to read anything confirming that there will be one), or they decided to see if they could make the "where's the rest of the story?!" pain so great that fans would go out and spend their money on the manga just to find out how things end. I really hate it when that happens - the ending of His and Her Circumstances made me feel the same way, although I at least got to find out how that one ended a couple years and many library holds later. Skip Beat! has now been added to my list of manga I'm trying to get through ILL - I don't know how many volumes of the manga were covered in the anime, so I'll have to start at the beginning.

Watch-alikes and Read-alikes:

• Gravitation (manga) by Maki Murakami; Gravitation (anime TV series) - Shuichi Shindo is a singer in a band that he hopes will become famous. One day, he loses a page of unfinished song lyrics. The handsome and caustic man who catches it insults the lyrics and sticks in poor Shuichi's mind. Schuichi later discovers that the man was Eiri Yuki, a famous writer, and seeks him out. The two eventually become lovers, but Yuki's emotional issues and Shuichi's rapidly developing musical career may tear them apart. Those who'd like another romantic show featuring a main character trying to make it as a star might like this. Gravitation isn't for everyone, since it features romance between two men - although neither the manga nor the anime are explicit, the anime keeps the physical aspects of the romance slightly more "off screen" than the manga.
• S.A (manga) by Maki Minami; S.A (anime TV series) - This series is also often referred to as Special A. Ever since she was a little girl and Kei beat her in a wrestling match, Hikari has always been second to Kei and considered him her rival. What she doesn't realize, even though everyone else figured it out ages ago, is that Kei loves her. In her determination to beat Kei at something, anything, Hikari has become a member of the Special A, an elite group at their elite school, right alongside him - will she ever realize his feelings for her, and what will happen if she does? My main exposure to this series has actually been to fansubs of the anime - since I don't think this anime has even been licensed by any company in the US, I'm kind of breaking one of my personal rules by putting it on this list - however, the manga is definitely available, so I suppose I'm only bending my rules. Those who'd like another series featuring an energetic heroine obsessed with surpassing someone and clueless about the potential for romance around her might want to try this.
  
• Kare Kano (manga) by Masami Tsuda; His and Her Circumstances (anime TV series) - Yukino is a vain and greedy (albeit likable) girl who has spent years making herself seem like a perfect, elegant, and humble student, just so that she can be praised and loved by others. One day, Arima, a boy she views as a rival, sees beneath her mask and uses this knowledge to blackmail her into helping him out with his tremendous volume of work. Arima appears to be the real deal, a good-looking, perfect, and humble student, but he has his own secrets, some of which are far darker than Yukino's. As Yukino spends more time with him, she begins to fall in love with him and wants to help him deal with the darker parts of himself. Those who'd like another romantic series featuring an energetic, kick-butt main female character and an emotionally blocked guy might want to try this.