Author: Rizwan Merchant

H2

Kunimi Hiiro and Tachibana Hideo were star members of the district champion Seinan Middle School baseball team. However, while Hideo went to Meiwa Ichi High as a touted prospect, Hiiro was diagnosed with a glass elbow and ordered to stop playing. To distance himself completely from his beloved sport, Hiiro is attending Senkawa High, a school without a baseball team. However, destiny seems to be against him, as he soon finds out that Senkawa indeed has a fledgling baseball club with the pretty Koga Haruka as its manager. To make matters worse, the soccer team that Hiiro’s joined seems intent on humiliating this baseball club in order to lure Haruka away. Faced with a showdown between the arrogant soccer team and Haruka’s baseball club on the diamond, Hiiro once again steps onto the mound, and takes a first step towards Koushien that he once never thought possible.

Gravitation

Shindou Shuichi is the singer and songwriter for the up-and-coming rock group Bad Luck. One day while composing lyrics for a new song, he accidentally runs into the famous author Yuki Eiri, a famous author who proceeds to reads his lyrics and then promptly tells Shuichi that he has absolutely no talent. Insulted and determined to prove him wrong, Shuichi tracks Yuki down and pushes his way into Yuki’s life. However, Shuichi’s insistence on changing Yuki’s opinion has much more far-reaching consequences than either of them could ever expect and transforms both of their lives forever.

Genkaku Picasso

The misanthropic artist Hikari Hamura earned the nickname Picasso from the only person persistent enough to befriend him: Chiaki Yamamoto. Routinely, Chiaki accompanies Picasso sketching at the riverside, but one day a pilot loses control of his helicopter and it crashes into the area, killing Chiaki, but leaving Picasso miraculously unscathed. A few days later, he discovers a miniature, winged Chiaki in his shirt pocket, who tells him that he would have died if she wouldn’t have prayed for his survival in order to preserve his drawing talent. The gods agreed to spare him if he will use his talents to spare people; if he doesn’t, he will rot away. Picasso is originally unsure of how to help others, but he soon realizes that he can now see allegorical visions of troubled people’s hearts. Once he draws the visions, he must then enter the drawing to gain understanding of the person’s psychological troubles and help end their strife through interacting with the drawing.

Fruits Basket

Tohru Honda is a high school girl who became an orphan after her mother passed away. She was living on her own in a tent before the mysterious Sohma family welcomed her into their home. After beginning to live with them, it is accidentally revealed to Tohru that the family is bound by curses and secrets to a closed-off world. The family’s Secret of the Zodiac causes each cursed member to transform into their corresponding Chinese zodiac animal when weak or hugged by a member of the opposite sex. How will Tohru cope as the only outsider who knows of this dark secret? How will the feared head of the Sohma family react to the news that the secret has been discovered? Will Tohru lose her home once again?

FLCL

Naota has your average hypocritical preteen life. Or at least he would if he lived anywhere but in Mabase. Naota lives with his perverted father and nutty grandfather. His older brother who Naota looked up to left to play baseball in America; and now his girlfriend Mamimi won’t leave Naota alone. Naota’s life is pretty strange, but when a girl riding a Vespa shows up and hits him in the head with her guitar, things start to get a lot stranger.

Fall in Love Like a Comic!

A young junior high school student named Rena Sakura spends her spare time working as a mangaka at a popular, local publishing firm. The manga she creates consists of shoujo style romance stories, quite often with a slightly risqué premise. After the editor attempts to convince her that finding a boyfriend might provide good inspiration for future stories, Rena decides to ask the best looking, most popular boy in school, Tomoya Okita, to date her so that she can use the research for her work. Despite her strongest efforts to remain purely analytical, Rena finds herself slowly falling for Tomoya in ways she never originally intended.

Dragon Ball

There is a legend that says if all seven Dragon Balls are gathered, the dragon Shenlong can be summoned to grant any wish. Bulma, a young teenage girl who has just recently learned of the story, is so intrigued that she actually begins her own quest to find the Dragon Balls. While searching she runs into (almost quite literally) a strange boy with superhuman strength, a wooden staff, and – most surprisingly – a tail. His name is Son Goku, and to Bulma’s shock and elation, he possesses the 4-Star Dragon Ball. However, Goku is unwilling to give up a precious heirloom from his grandfather, so Bulma suggests that the pair journey together to find the rest of the Dragon Balls. No one could have ever imagined what this fateful meeting would produce…

DNA²

Momonari Junta suffers from a rather unusual condition: whenever he gets close to a girl or sees one naked, he gets sick and vomits. Then things do a 180 when he meets Aoi Karin, a girl who claims to come from the future. According to Karin, he will soon turn into the Mega-Playboy and impregnate 100 women, causing a severe overpopulation problem…and she’s there to stop that from happening. But then she shoots him with the wrong bullet, causing his transformation to accelerate instead of preventing it…

Devil Devil

Sword the Devil and Ios the Angel have been arch-enemies for the longest of times. Their last battle caused them to plunge into the human world and inhabit the bodies of two brothers: Souma and Kanna. As a result, Sword can’t use his supernatural powers, so in order to regain his body – and therefore, his power, Sword and Ios declare a momentary truce. Now, they must start their quest to regain Sword’s original form so that they can put on end to their age-old feud.

Destiny’s Hand

Welcome aboard Destiny’s Hand, a ship captained by the chivalrous “Gentlemen Pirate” that is literally unsinkable. The second most noteworthy member of the crew is young Olivia Soldana, a brash sixteen-year-old that can outdo any man. An unfortunate turn of events places Olivia in charge of the ship while the Captain is ill. His dying wish is to seek out the Devil’s Eye, a relic of destructive power that the worst of the worst desire, before it falls into the wrong hands. It is a seemingly impossible task that not only requires four pieces of a map, but a certain veil, a special crystal and a reluctant scholar that hates pirates as well! While seeking these items, Olivia faces the challenge of leading a crew that doubts her authority. This lack of trust is more than just an inconvenience, for the crew certainly needs to be united in order to take on Captain Mulgrew of the Kraken, a vicious pirate also seeking the Devil’s Eye who is not merely a thief, but a relentless murderer. Pirates such as he are causing all of the cities with ports to take action to stamp out piracy once and for all, and even the moralistic pirates of Destiny’s Hand are receiving no mercy. The ship might be unsinkable, but the crew members can easily die, and it seems that many of their deaths are drawing near. Will they be able to carry out the Captain’s wish amongst all of the chaos?