News
Alice in the Country of Hearts, PPoi! Manga End
posted on by Egan Loo
Soumei Hoshino is ending her manga adaptation of QuinRose's Alice in the Country of Hearts (Heart no Kuni no Alice) game in the October issue of Mag Garden's Monthly Comic Avarus magazine on September 15. QuinRose is marking the manga's end with a special web page that showcases the manga's numerous editions in different languages. Tokyopop published the fourth manga volume in North America last month.
The original fantasy romance adventure game, the manga, and the planned (but delayed) anime adaptation re-imagine Lewis Carroll's classic fantasy novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with bishōnen characters. (The game's Japanese title is a wordplay on that novel's Japanese title, except it replaces "Fushigi/Wonder" with "Heart.")
After more than 19 years, Takako Yamazaki has also ended her classic shōjo manga pPoi! in the October issue of Hakusensha's Melody magazine last Saturday. The manga centers around Taira "Hei" Amano, a third-year middle-school boy who is short and cute "like a girl" (onna no ko pPoi!), but is actually a fiercely intense person. The story follows his coming-of-age with his cool sports jock friend Banri Kusaka, a shy and beautiful girl named Hinaki Ichinose, and others.
Yamazaki launched her manga in Hakusensha's LaLa magazine in the summer of 1991, but she then moved it to Melody magazine. 9.6 million copies of the 28 compiled book volumes have been published. The manga inspired a live-action television adaptation in 1999 with News idol group member Tomohisa Yamashita (also known as "Yamapi").
Source: Mainichi Shimbun's Mantan Web, Comic Natalie, Otomen
Update: LaLa's publisher corrected. Thanks, TheHTRO
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