Wednesday, 10:00

mangaroo challenged me (and anyone else who wants to play along) to name my top five one-shot manga stories. I really had a good time putting this together. Not only was it fun to dig through my bookshelf and re-read things I'd forgotten about, but it was very refreshing to judge each story on its own merits, rather than having to warn off people ala "Well, this one story is really good, but the rest of the volume is crap, so...". Anyway, here it is.

Edit: Apparently I'm too stupid to keep track of what is a locked post and what isn't, so, quoting mangaroo on the rules:

The Challenge
I challenge you ... to name your top five (ten, if you want to be ambitious) short stories. Please include the title of the volume it's collected in (if collected) and the name of the artist. And feel free to take it out of these comments and make top-level posts for my enjoyment.

The Rules
A short story should be complete in one chapter. If it stretches to two, you should note that in your comments (and I'm afraid the judges will deduct points from your total score). Episodic chapters of longer series don't count (think Harudaki) and could result in your being disqualified. Omake, 4コマ, and any 書き下ろし shorter than 12 pages (how's that for arbitrary?) do not count as additional chapters.

The Rules Revised (Since no one had any intention of following the rules anyway. I am the world's most ineffective dictator.)
5 favorite one-shot stories followed by 5 favorite shot + chaser stories (aka "two-shots").

( I didn't even look at any of my shoujo manga. I wasn't supposed to, right? )

Next, please?