Blah blah blah, there's a lot of exciting news coming out of the New York Anime Festival. Code Geass on Adult Swim, so now you can ALL enjoy the trainwreck of trainwrecks! Kyou Kara Maou manga licensed, but will we ever see the novels, and will anybody rescue the anime from the black hole created by Geneon's collapse?

But the one thing that really caught my eye was this: An X-Men shoujo manga. No, seriously. Money quote:

The first, X-Men, was described as a shōjo title — "X-Men meets Fruits Basket or Ouran High School Host Club" according to one panelist — features Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning as an all-boys' school, with the only female student being Kitty Pryde. The work will be aimed at a manga audience; while the characters will be based on famous X-Men heroes, the manga will not require any prior knowledge of the original X-Men comics. The manga is scripted by Raina Telgemeier and Dave Roman, with art by Indonesia-based artist Anzu.

Okay.

That sounds kind of terrible.

But, I dunno. If they're really going to go all the way and rip off Ouran, I hope they recast Wolverine as Kitty's tranvestite mother. I mean, if you're going to make a terrible manga, you gotta make a really terrible manga. That's why Code Geass is so good. If it were a bit less awful then it would be merely awful; but it's SO awful that it's actually incredibly entertaining.

ETA: The official press release has more information.

Okay, so Xavier's school is still a school for mutants. Why is it an all-boys school, then? How or why Kitty is enrolled in an all-boys school is not explained. Oh wait, the press release makes it sound kind of like Xavier's school just happens to have an entirely male student body, and Kitty just happens to be the first girl enrolled. (Is it because she's the first girl mutant ever discovered?) Eh, it's really hard to tell from the press release. So Kitty gets caught in a social war between the popular kids (the Hellfire Club, led by Pyro, apparently) and the misfits. And she sides with the misfits. And then the misfits band together and form the X-Men. Hooray!

Sadly, this does not sound anything like Ouran High School Host Club. Mmmmm, needs more male cross-dressing, elaborate tea parties, and lesbian theater productions.

ETA 2: The more I think about this, the more dissappointed I am that Emma Frost hasn't been mentioned so far. Now, we've only got one press release to work from, so that doesn't mean that she won't be in the manga or anything... But if she isn't, what a waste! She would have been perfect as the Queen Bitch Popular Girl who starts out as the heroine's nemesis, turns out to be more complex over time, and then eventually becomes the heroine's reluctant ally.

I don't know how convincing of a shoujo nemesis Pyro can be AU-ed into. Then again, if they keep the detail about him being a dashing romance writer on the side... That will be kind of cool. ;)

ETA 3: The Beat has pictures of the preliminary designs for Wolverine and Jean. They look good! I can't tell how old Jean is supposed to be, though. Is she a student, or an adult?

Fruits Basket final chapter:
Oh gods. That was beautiful. Funny and beautiful and I outright bawled reading it.

Ah! My Goddess:
There were about three full-page illustrations of Skuld that just knocked me off my feet, they were so gorgeous. (Thank you for being awesome, Kosuke Fujishima.) ( Spoiler. ) Well, that's the end of that story arc, so I have no idea what's coming next. In other news, 2007 is the 20th anniversary of the Ah! My Goddess manga, so we can expect to look forward to all sorts of vaguely-promised special awesomeness, courtesy of Afternoon. Oh, and an advertisement listed prices for the PS2 game: 6800 yen (7140 with tax) for the regular edition, 9800 yen (10290 with tax) for the limited edition. Why isn't this information on Amazon.co.jp or any other retailer's website yet?! With the minimal price difference you might as well get the limited edition, since it comes with insanely awesome extras including an engraved silver watch. The combined worth of the extras is probably more than the 3000 yen price difference between the regular and limited edition. So I guess that makes the limited edition kind of a bargain.

Ouran High School Host Club:
The current storyline is boring. I only bought this issue for the triple furoku, which is very, very good for Ouran fangirls. A desktop calendar, clear plastic trading cards, and a set of four manga postcards. Mmmmmmm.

Tsubasa Chronicle:
I normally don't waste my time reading Weekly Shounen Magazine, as both School Rumble and Tsubasa Chronicle are series that I can only satisfy myself by reading big chunks of (read: whole tankouban) at a time. But when I saw everyone on livejournal going on about "chains" and "chess" and "chains and chess" together, I had to check it out for myself.

Damn. Chains. Damn. Of course, I have no idea what's going on, since I haven't read any of the chapters between the end of volume 17 and this one, but... Blargh, it's CLAMP fanservice. Does it *really* matter what excuse for a plot device that resulted in this particular situation?