Hideyuki Kurata

This is the first volume in the series featuring the Paper Sisters Detective Company - two women and a young girl who use their incredible paper-manipulation skills (more in the realm of telekinetically created bullet-proof paper walls and other creations than good origami) to help people with their problems. With the exception of the young girl, Anita, who hates reading, the Paper Sisters are book addicts. These are the kind of women who will spend their food budget on books, despite having show more a potential avalanche of books in their home.

Each chapter features a separate story, and few of the stories are in any way connected to each other (characters from one story do reappear in another, but rarely). In the first story, the Sisters help a woman find a stolen book. In the second story, the Sisters help a young boy fulfill his elderly friend's dying wish to return a book to a mysterious library. The third story doesn't have much of a plot - it's just a funny snippet about the Sisters trying to deal with the results of one of them spending their entire food budget on books. The fourth story is about an alien who's threatening to destroy the world unless the Sisters can show her a book that can convince her that humankind is worth keeping alive. In the fifth story (which is told in chapters 5 and 6), one of the Sisters, Maggie, befriends a sick young girl by reading to her. The sixth and final story, like the third story, doesn't have much of a plot - Anita has become fed up by the books cluttering up their home and tries to get the book-loving Sisters to clean things up and get rid of any books they don't need. Unfortunately, Anita, not being a book-lover, doesn't understand that, for a book-lover, all books are potentially useful or have some emotional value.

If you're going to spend your money on manga, I'd probably recommend getting something else instead of this - the art is kind of boring, the artist's use of tones could've been better, and the stories aren't anything special (I kept feeling like I'd read most of them before, in other books and manga). However, it's not the worst manga I've ever read, and I felt that it was actually better than the series that came before it, R.O.D. Read or Die by Hideyuki Kurata (story) and Shutaro Yamada (art). Whereas that series was more action oriented, this series is more humorous and occasionally touching. Read or Die's main character, Yomiko, had a love of books that was almost sexual in the way Yamada drew it, whereas the Paper Sisters have a very intense, but more normal-feeling love for books.

(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.) show less

Simple and I liked the paper powers, but I'm starting to think manga isn't really my genre. I just haven't connected with any of the characters very deeply, and in this case I found my attention drifting regularly.

I came to this series when a friend gave me a copy of R.O.D. the TV series. I loved it and later checked out the OVA, Read or Die. (R.O.D. the TV series is an amalgam of Read or Die and Read or Dream, two different series following different characters in the same universe.) Although I've watched a smattering of anime, this book is my first exposure to manga, which definitely takes some getting used to structurally.

As an introduction to the R.O.D. universe, this book is fairly poor. There is show more almost no utilization of the Paper Sisters' abilities and no grand adventure. Still, I really enjoyed this book. It's a bit schizophrenic, since most of the chapters have autonomous plots and range from silly to sappy to strange to hilarious, but it's charming and fun. Chapters 3 and 7, my favorite chapters, had me cracking up. The domestic storylines are definitely this series' strength. There's a lot of book love throughout, which makes it a good choice for lifelong readers, especially those who can laugh at themselves. I would, however, recommend R.O.D. the TV series as a better introduction to these characters and this universe. If you can't find the TV series, though, I'd still recommend giving this book a chance. show less

I haven't read manga in a while, so I forgot how quickly I read graphic novels! It's great to see intelligent, compassionate, and diverse women solving mysteries and prioritizing sisterhood (rather than being obsessed with boys/romance). Their paper master powers are interesting and often fun. It's also comforting to see other female bibliophiles.