some anime and manga

I've been enjoying some manga and anime recently.

I read the few translated chapters of 精霊の守人 Guardian of the Sacred Spirit and now I'm going through the anime episodes. Quite fun! I want to pick up the manga but haven't found it in bookstores yet.

I've also been reading 光と共に With the Light; quite interesting. Well worth the time to read it. It's educational and entertaining at the same time. They just came out with 文庫 for it - I think only the first 2 are out (15 total) - so I started collecting that.

I'm also on the 8th book of 魔法使いの娘 The Magic User's Daughter (The Magician's Daughter? The Wizard's Daughter?). I think this may be the last book. Very satisfying. Yukie Nasu 那須雪絵 is great at writing interesting, well-characterized stories. I don't know how she does it but she's totally consistent with everyone's characterizations; it's really a delight to re-read when I think about it. But of course, I don't notice this at first because the plot usually sweeps me along.

I finally read a "dark fantasy" one-shot of Yukie Nasu called 嵐が原　Lex Talionis. Apparently she wrote it in the middle of writing Here is Greenwood. It was really well done. Melancholy but realistic.
I should go through a bunch of the other books that I've collected. You can tell when her books are not going to be lighthearted so I've rather avoided some of them.
The volume contains a couple short stories that are also good; delightfully creepy but touching. She likes exploring the dark side of human emotions without making it a tragedy.