Shout Out Loud vols 1 and 2 - Satosumi Takaguchi

I successfully pimped this to at least three people last weekend, scribblemoose, new_kate and toscas_kiss. It's one of Tokypop's Blu titles, and I found it addictively sweet and funny.

It's about Shino, a baby faced thirty something voice actor, whose greatest creation is a squeaky voiced kids cartoon character. His seventeen year old son suddenly turns up at his door and announces that he's going to live with him. Money is tight and Shino decides he must accept boys love voice scripts (oh noes!) to make ends meet.

One of the most interesting things is the reflection of real life voice acting (not that I know anything much about it), like the dodgy jokes the casts constantly make about each other, the pairing off and the rumours. I did wonder if the manga-ka was basing her characters on actual seiyuus. I'd love to know.

I liked the pacing, overall, although it did fall down at one or two points. I felt like some plot points were rushed, like the story at that point needed a few more panels just to form a pause or a beat. It made me realise that good pacing is important to me in a manga, and actually I've never properly considered how mangaka do it.

In a story I can usually tell when an extra bit of something is needed-- either a whole scene or just an extra beat, such as making the characters simply look at each other, or having a silence, or describing some sound or bit of the environment. I noticed that, quite often, Minekura introduces the same sort of feeling by making the last panel of an arc big and expansive and roomy - lots of sky and landscape. A natural stopping place because you have a lot to look at? In any case, it introduces a pause.

I've forgotten quite a lot about the plot by now, having only read through once. But ( here are some vague spoilers )