Sooo, since I'm back in the Philippines, I found an interesting manga called Love is in the bag. What's better, the team who made it is all filipino(?). Now, I'm not a very big fan of filipino(?) manga. one reason, is they're super huge reliance on coloring (*cough*OzineManga*) or they have very good ideas, but since the pages are so short and due to the constant worrying if they ever reach outside Luzon (*cough*Filbar'sFablesandEpicsmangas*Cough*) or they start out really well...until quality and release times just mess up(*cough*MangoJam*cough*)

These reasons usually deter me from even buying one, so i was really surprised when it came out in volumes. A better and more hopeful chance of finsihing it, so I up and bought one.

So, when I opened it and began to look at the first page....I cringed. It was like three big panels and the drawing isn't very good. I know they released these as issues on the ceelphones before but, it really was I don't know....the page just seemed...wasteful. But, since I bought it, I continued to read and my expectations kept going up and down. For one thing, the drawings aren't very consistent, they shift from chibi to normal, to retro shojo style then all over again, and sometimes proportion is...ermm...not very good. I see tiny errors here and there. Then the panelling, I know, it was released by issues before but...there were so many panels in a page, and I had to get used to it somehow.

Oh and screentone and toning, they did it well...too well. There are scenes, where it just doesn't feel black and white, and I really needed to get used to it (*cough*hasonlyreadjapanesemanga*cough*) for example, there are areas where the toning was so clean it just didn't feel right. It was as if it was colored then just changed the mode to black and white. Plus, there was a scene where they were at the beach, the males had shiny shoulders, like they were rubber or something. Plus, they need more work on screentoning, in some areas. But there was one scene, that made me go, wow they really knew what to do. it was the part where Mark Spencer was looking up, toning was really really good.

Plotwise, Beginning was very weak, Middle was so-so, and ending was strong, plus they did a very nice cliffhanger. There were very nice gags as well, plus it was a nice romantic comedy touch, that was alright. I had to get used to some of the lines though...like "Let's get this season started!" Honestly...I cringed. Oh and personally, fourth wall guy was not a good idea. Oh and the basketball composers thing? ...........No comment.

So I give it an 80% due to the fact i enjoyed it until the end. ^^ Plus at 388 pesos (7-8 USD) it was okay. I know I'm measuring them in japanese manga style, and yes, they may have been going for a unique touch or something, but then It's not like I know much about the comic style here very well.

All in all, I'm going back to cebu and getting Volume 2, the cliffhanger was really good to make me want the second one. ^^