Land of the Blindfolded 1 (edition 2004)

One thing that really bugs me about shoujo manga is that up to half the pages in the graphic novel are side stories/short stories completely unrelated to the title story. If you don't yet have enough material for a full-length book...then don't print one! Yeesh. It's not rocket science.

Anyway, this graphic novel seems a promising start to the series. Kanade sees the future when she touches someone...her new friend Arou can see the past. Their friendship is cute, but it's pretty clear more will happen in future volumes. Kanade is a real sweetheart, always ready to go out of her way to help others because of her visions, even though she knows that her efforts won't be appreciated. ( )

Rereading the first part of the series so I can catch up on it... It's about a girl who can see people's future upon contact and a boy who can see the past that she ends up liking and dating. Add in another boy who can see the future, but has to concentrate to, who is also in love with her. A cute love triangle type series. :) ( )

Kanade sees the world as being full of blindfolded people, unaware that there is more to to it than what meets the naked eye. In her case this blindfolds slips and sometimes when she touches someone, she can see their future. However, the future is not always pleasant and Kanade has made a point to keep her distance from everyone around her, until she meets Arou. Arou is also a secret seer, but in his case he sees the past. Can a girl afraid of the future and a boy comfortable in history help each other to make their small portion of the world just a little safer?

This was quite a cute shoujo story. Both lead characters were very pleasant and genuinely nice people, hence the addition of the third party interloper, Namiki, in the third act. I enjoyed the friction between Arou and Namiki and the obviously brewing little love triangle. As a whole, this is a nicely drawn, sweet manga but did seem to lack a little extra something that would make me feel really hooked on it.

Since this is the first book of a series I would have thought that they would have just had a complete volume of the main story. Annoyingly, about one-third of the book was taken up with a random one-shot which really wasn't nearly as interesting as the main one. ( )