Ranked #202

Silver Diamond (Manga)

This manga is a GREAT read. The story is a pleasant yet unusually complex exploration of friendship, the value of living, and how these views change through betrayal and newfound trust. I thought it was a hilariously, uplifting and sweet shonen-ai. Yet there were darker themes, such as family abandonment and loneliness, giving it added depth.

The Mangaka sucks you in with the art, it's creative and yet mind warping ideas that reinforce it's portrayal of a fantasy-inspired parallel Japan universe (Flower webs, Living pretty tree guns, seed clocks that grow on trees, Crystal water snakes etc, etc).

It could also be considered a harem, only instead of cute females protecting/serving the main male character, it's hunk-o-dory male eye candies doing the work (Not sure what you would call that. Reverse-reverse-harem??^__^

The only down side is that it's not completely translated. I wish the scantalators hadn't stopped at volume 8, and according to Baka-updates, it's been a year since anyone's updated it. T^T *grrrr* read more

What I love most about this series is that every chapter is sixty pages long with tons of dialog. So when a new chapter comes out, I can enjoy it for up to twenty minutes before I get to the end and have to suffer waiting for the next one.

...let's try that again. The amazing thing about this manga is that Sugiura doesn’t forget *anything*. I hear she only plans two or three chapters in advance? But considering the size of the chapters this is like planning an entire volume in advance. Her attention to detail is, frankly, obsessive, but it's that obsession that makes Silver Diamond so very, very, very solid.

A bit of history: Sugiura Shiho's previous work, Koori no mamono no monogatari (Ice Cold Demon's Tale), ran to 24 volumes -- an insane, unheard-of length for a BL (Boys Love) manga. However she has said that Silver Diamond will (probably) be shorter. read more