And it looks like a completely different animal. o3o)
I’m quite sure a lot of fellow fujoshi started getting into BL with Yami no Matsuei either as their gateway shoujo to BL manga or as a complimentary shoujo almost BL manga to their already growing collection of BL in the early 2000s. All of us were shocked by the sudden inclusion of tentacle rape by volume 11 and I’m quite sure all of us were shocked when author, Matsushita Youko took a major holiday (rumors are she was completely obsessed with Final Fantasy 11) right smack when she had already got a good portion of her main story line going. A lot of us almost gave up on her after not hearing a word about her in year.
While she published volume 12 last year, Matsushita finally returns to the pages of  The Hana to Yume , a complimentary special magazine to Hana to Yume. She even drew the cover and yeah… it’s a whole lot different to what we saw 5 years ago.
She might have changed in terms of style but here’s me hoping that she doesn’t give us another five years of waiting to see what happens next to those memorable shinigamis of Yami no Matsuei.
Thanks to Fuuko of Hazukashii kedo for the tip. The edited image above was from a fan twitpic.
I love this anime! It’s amazing and Tsuzuki is such a cutie. 0.0
Mataushita had a bad hand/wrist injury(not because of FF11,although I don’t doubt she did enjoy playing the game while during her hiatus), whixh explains the long hiatus and drastic style change.
I am looking forward to seeing updates on this manga, one of my first to fall in love with. I love the old shonen-ai style but there is something about the new style I love as well.
The new style looks familiar. Where have I seen it? New Suzuki looks a little like Toru Naruse from Harlem Beat. New Hisoka still looks androgynous but less female, maybe?
late to the party buuuuuuuuuut dude wtf is up with that drastic new art style?! it kinda brings to mind that old rumour about OZAKI MINAMI not penning the last few volumes of BRONZE, and instead the ending was ghost-written (ghost-drawn?) by her assistants at the behest of her editors.
Wow, Tsuzuki’s been so drastically de-aged in that second picture that he barely looks old enough to be legally served liquor in the U.S. (age 18), let alone in Japan (age 20, I believe). Not that that he’d be likely to be too concerned about that, as long as it didn’t prevent him from eating desserts and sweets that might contain alcoholic ingredients like brandy…
Speechless! A different animal indeed… was she so popular that the publisher would just welcome her back after 5 years (of FF11??) with a front cover? Oh yes, the Vol11 trauma. As if coping with the style changes wasn’t enough, Matsushita had to dish out a scene to makes us hide v11 in the deepest recesses of our shelves/drawers/bed.
Those were the days!
We should have expected the “cursed scene” to come out. I mean, anyone remember the scene about Touda’s past at vol. 10? Yep, the one Matsushita-sensei drew the imprisoned Touda, chained to the wall wearing nothing but a pair of torn stockings that doesn’t cover anything. I nearly passed out from excessive nose bleeding.
Yami no Matsuei has been a favourite of mine since I was 13, so I’m thrilled to see it return after all these years! But I’m not so thrilled about the change in art style… what I loved about Matsushita was how typically “old school shoujo” and expressive her art style was. The new style feels a little sterile, to me… but I hope the story is still the same and I’ll absolutely read it no matter what.