Oh good, this was a webcomic that had started by the time webcomic review month 2012 rolled around, just wasn't sure if I wanted to talk about it since it was so new so I decided to put it off for a year and cross my fingers to hope that it didn't stop updating in the meantime. And it didn't, I love it when that happens! Also makes me feel a bit better with choosing to wait another year before talking about some other comics but for the moment let's just talk about this one.
Fragile by MarĂa Victoria "Shouri" Robado
Marian and her friends are starting their final year of high school and while some of them definitely know what they want to do with the rest of her lives others don't. Add in work, romance, and strange new students and it's certainly not going to be a boring year in any case.
Slight clarification on the summary, the story actually starts a bit before Marian and co start their senior year of school but judging from the summary on the site itself the story won't be continuing beyond that so I think that mine is still an accurate synopsis. In any case, in case you can't tell from the summary this is practically a shojo manga in webcomic form (if not in the age/demographic definition of the word then certainly in the way it borrows a lot of popular shojo tropes). Yet, unlike quite a bit of OEL manga I read when TokyoPop was still around, this story feels like one that merely borrows from the genre rather than tries to mimic one of its stories. It's a bit slow to get going, heck the story feels like it's still getting going even though it's four chapters in now but I'm hoping that once the characters get a bit more established and some more time has passed (in-comic) that the pace will pick up a little bit and that everything with progress nicely.
Fragile updates every Tuesday and Thursday online, there is a print edition for the first half of chapter one but I haven't seen any more plans for a print version so if there's one coming (which I strongly suspect to be true) then it's a bit of a ways off. The story can also be read in Spanish although it seems like only the first chapter has been translated so far.
2012 "E" comics
2011 "E" comics
2012 "F" comics
2011 "F" comics