What do you think?
Rate this book
リーゼロッテと魔女の森 [Liselotte to Majo no Mori] #2
Liselotte & Witch's Forest, Vol. 2
Liselotte, the daughter of a feudal lord, has been exiled by her older brother to the land east of the east of the east. Despite the bitter past that put her in these straits, Lise enjoys her new life with her twin attendants, Alto and Anna, the familiar Yomi, and Eugetsu, a young man who not only harbors a secret but also bears a striking resemblance to an old acquaintance, Enrich. However, Lise's quaint idyll is shattered when none other than a witch comes calling...!
209 pages, Paperback
First published April 20, 2012
4 people are currently reading
124 people want to read
About the author
Natsuki Takaya
150 books2,700 followersName (in native language) : 高屋奈月
Natsuki Takaya (高屋 奈月 Takaya Natsuki, real name Naka Hatake) is the penname of a Japanese manga artist best-known for creating the series Fruits Basket. She was born on July 7, 1973; (Tanabata). Takaya is left-handed and once revealed that she wanted to be a mangaka since first grade, when her sister started drawing.
She was born in Shizuoka, Japan, but was raised in Tokyo, where she made her debut in 1992. She enjoys video games such as the Final Fantasy series or Sakura Wars, or working on her different manga series, such as Fruits Basket, which is the second best-selling shōjo manga ever in Japan, and the top selling shōjo manga in North America. Fruits Basket has also been adapted into a twenty-six-episode anime series.
In 2001, Takaya received a Kodansha Manga Award for shōjo manga for Fruits Basket.
According to Takaya (in a sidebar of a Fruits Basket manga volume), she enjoys drawing girls (girly ones) more than she does boys. Takaya also enjoys electronics and music, but dislikes talking about herself. Also revealed in a sidebar of Fruits Basket, Takaya broke her drawing arm (left) after Fruits Basket volume six was published. She had to go into surgery, and as a result, had put Fruits Basket on a brief hiatus. Takaya made a full recovery, but complains that her handwriting had gotten uglier, due to the surgery. During her hospital stay, she gained an interest in baseball.
Natsuki Takaya (高屋 奈月 Takaya Natsuki, real name Naka Hatake) is the penname of a Japanese manga artist best-known for creating the series Fruits Basket. She was born on July 7, 1973; (Tanabata). Takaya is left-handed and once revealed that she wanted to be a mangaka since first grade, when her sister started drawing.
She was born in Shizuoka, Japan, but was raised in Tokyo, where she made her debut in 1992. She enjoys video games such as the Final Fantasy series or Sakura Wars, or working on her different manga series, such as Fruits Basket, which is the second best-selling shōjo manga ever in Japan, and the top selling shōjo manga in North America. Fruits Basket has also been adapted into a twenty-six-episode anime series.
In 2001, Takaya received a Kodansha Manga Award for shōjo manga for Fruits Basket.
According to Takaya (in a sidebar of a Fruits Basket manga volume), she enjoys drawing girls (girly ones) more than she does boys. Takaya also enjoys electronics and music, but dislikes talking about herself. Also revealed in a sidebar of Fruits Basket, Takaya broke her drawing arm (left) after Fruits Basket volume six was published. She had to go into surgery, and as a result, had put Fruits Basket on a brief hiatus. Takaya made a full recovery, but complains that her handwriting had gotten uglier, due to the surgery. During her hospital stay, she gained an interest in baseball.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews
July 3, 2018
Check out more manga and graphic novel reviews @ Perspective of a Writer...
Liselotte is a young woman of noble birth who moves to a remote part of the land with two servant children, Alto and Anna. Nearby is a forest, said to be the home of witches. When one attacks her she is rescued by a young man named Engetsu, who reminds her of someone from her past. When Yomi a witches' familiar joins them the mystery deepens...
The art in this volume improved! I do love Natsuki Takaya's simplicity but I also love all the added detail! I felt like more things happened because of the details in the art, even though the plot was only slightly better in this volume... It's truly amazing at how the right balance in the art makes the story truly come alive!
Even though the plot is moved forward through the most random of motivations (and rather thin ones too at that) I was quite excited by how events unfolded! We meet some witches (and how funny are they!) and an assassin who Engetsu seems to know... And we learn a ton more about Liselotte's past. I'm now quite motivated to read more...
I was tense. I admit that it was mainly in the second half of the volume... This is NOT going to be getting your heart rate up... BUT I do care about everyone and CAN'T BEAR to see someone get hurt!! Yomi is so fascinating too, its his purpose I'm dying to learn more about! The mysterious aspects of the story do stay strong and drive you through the story.
This manga is just so authentic! You believe in each character and their roles and want to see them in action... I quite like Liselotte and how much she cares for everyone and how accepting she is of being sent away from everything she knows. And Engetsu is such a single minded soul! I totally ship these two...
I suspect this is a short series... there just isn't enough plot to go around even though the mystery and the characters suck you in. Still Liselotte makes you want to root for her and I for one want to see the outcome of the Lislotte & Witch's Forest series...
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Authenticity
⋆ ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Tension
⋆ ⋆ ⭐⭐⭐ Plot
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Art
______________________
You can find this review and many others on my book blog @ Perspective of a Writer. See my manga and graphic novel reviews in a special feature called Saturday Morning Cartoons...
September 12, 2020
Honestly was thinking this was kind of boring, but it took a real turn and got intense and now I'm into it.
November 16, 2017
The fraught backstory hinted at in volume one gets fleshed out here, AND IT WAS DELIGHTFULLY FULL OF ANGST.
August 18, 2015
Cette suite est bien meilleure que le premier tome. Natsuki Takaya sort presque l'artillerie lourde. Je dis presque parce qu'on peut s'attendre à de nouvelles claques dans les prochains tomes. Celle qu'elle envoie ici n'est pas toute gentille, aussi tôt on ne s'y attend pas forcément. En tout cas elle m'a fait grand effet et bien évidemment ce tome s'arrête à un moment critique. C'est là où je me remercie d'avoir pris du retard dans la série et d'avoir acheté le tome 3 en même temps que celui-ci. Bon, depuis d'autres tomes sont sortis, mais je ne vais pas m'attarder dessus. Ce tome 2 c'est du bon Natsuki Takaya.
Ma chronique complète : http://bloggalleane.blogspot.fr/2015/...
Ma chronique complète : http://bloggalleane.blogspot.fr/2015/...
October 27, 2016
Volume 2 was definitely better than volume 1. Interesting interactions, BEAUTIFUL art - of course, left us on a cliffhanger. aaaaaand I have wait until January to find out what happens. :(
June 2, 2023
3.5/5 dropped down. While it has improved a lot story-wise there are issues that have continued into the second volume which makes it hard to read.
In my first review I noted how I was unhappy with how the darker parts of the story was being pushed aside. It wasn't that I did not enjoy the happier more household (and now neighborhood) antics of the cast. The character interactions between them are strong and are a real pull for the series. But I had wished that it was more balanced between the two with a faster pace. This is accomplished better in the second volume where the darker intrigue moments flip-flop with the cheery neighborhood antics really well. It's interesting to learn more about Engetsu, Liselotte's backstory, and the drama surrounding the witches (both amongst themselves and with humans). And while the art isn't over-the-wall amazing it is strong and has a clear direction.
But readability is an ongoing issue. There are multiple scenes where there is something simultaneously happening in the present as well as a flashback (or two) and the transition between them are awkward and jarring. The speech bubbles also are set in the middle of panels, extend into other panels in a way in which its hard to tell which panel you're supposed to read them in, or are put in a weird visual order. All of which makes is so that following dialogue in the proper order is confusing. It isn't helpful that there are multiple times when two or more people are talking simultaneously sometimes without referencing each other and others times referencing each other or only referencing each other halfway through the conversation. The character writing is also weak or same-y amongst some of the cast making it even more difficult as you have to find out who exactly is speaking. It also doesn't help the dialogue is sometimes stilted or feels jump-y. It really can make reading it too confusing.
Again, its not bad. The story is building up in an interesting way, the romance continues to get stronger as we learn more of Engetsu/Enrich's and Liselotte's backstory, and the art enhances the atmosphere of each scene well. But there are just a bunch of things that can get in the way of making what should an easy to follow story more difficult that it should be and harming the reading experience.
In my first review I noted how I was unhappy with how the darker parts of the story was being pushed aside. It wasn't that I did not enjoy the happier more household (and now neighborhood) antics of the cast. The character interactions between them are strong and are a real pull for the series. But I had wished that it was more balanced between the two with a faster pace. This is accomplished better in the second volume where the darker intrigue moments flip-flop with the cheery neighborhood antics really well. It's interesting to learn more about Engetsu, Liselotte's backstory, and the drama surrounding the witches (both amongst themselves and with humans). And while the art isn't over-the-wall amazing it is strong and has a clear direction.
But readability is an ongoing issue. There are multiple scenes where there is something simultaneously happening in the present as well as a flashback (or two) and the transition between them are awkward and jarring. The speech bubbles also are set in the middle of panels, extend into other panels in a way in which its hard to tell which panel you're supposed to read them in, or are put in a weird visual order. All of which makes is so that following dialogue in the proper order is confusing. It isn't helpful that there are multiple times when two or more people are talking simultaneously sometimes without referencing each other and others times referencing each other or only referencing each other halfway through the conversation. The character writing is also weak or same-y amongst some of the cast making it even more difficult as you have to find out who exactly is speaking. It also doesn't help the dialogue is sometimes stilted or feels jump-y. It really can make reading it too confusing.
Again, its not bad. The story is building up in an interesting way, the romance continues to get stronger as we learn more of Engetsu/Enrich's and Liselotte's backstory, and the art enhances the atmosphere of each scene well. But there are just a bunch of things that can get in the way of making what should an easy to follow story more difficult that it should be and harming the reading experience.
September 13, 2022
Liselotte wants to meet the neighbors, so to speak. Rather than just assume the witches in the nearby forest are dangerous, she decides to...bake them a cake and go calling on them. Like a "hey I'm new to the neighborhood, surely you guys aren't dangerous" reverse welcome wagon. Maybe not the play I would've made, but I can respect her gumption. She does indeed meet the neighbors, and finds them a bit of a mixed bag in terms of dangerousness. A familiar face (to Liselotte, anyway) appears, and we get some major backstory revealed.
Where the first volume was a bit light in terms of interesting plot points, this one seems to have made up ground. Our heroine gets some tragic tones, and her love interest gets some additional fleshing out (...so to speak).
I did find the action and some of the back-and-forth dialogue hard to follow, though. I don't know if that's a product of the text bubbles being in confusing locations or a translation issue or what, but I had to re-read a bit in the thick of the backstory in order to grasp what was going on.
November 2, 2018
Lots of developments in volume 2 of this story! It feels like everything is happening very quickly. While Lise and the twins are settling in to their new life with the mysterious Engetsu and the witch's familiar Yomi, them living in close proximity to the witch's forest means they won't be left alone for long. Lise, like a typical shoujo manga protagonist, decides that the best way to make peace with the witches is to go and introduce herself and make friends, so the gang troops into the forest, where the action picks up almost suddenly.
I wasn't expecting the story to move so fast, and the mood of the story swings very quickly from lighthearted and even shallow comedy to dark tragedy. We learn a lot about the witches as well as Engetsu, with a bunch of new characters introduced, but it almost feels like too much at once. The pacing in this manga is really weird and choppy, which I had already noticed since the beginning, but it becomes more obvious in this volume as it flips almost instantly from light fun to deadly serious, and it doesn't really work that well. Still, I am interested enough to see where the story will go from here, especially due to that twist at the end...!!
I wasn't expecting the story to move so fast, and the mood of the story swings very quickly from lighthearted and even shallow comedy to dark tragedy. We learn a lot about the witches as well as Engetsu, with a bunch of new characters introduced, but it almost feels like too much at once. The pacing in this manga is really weird and choppy, which I had already noticed since the beginning, but it becomes more obvious in this volume as it flips almost instantly from light fun to deadly serious, and it doesn't really work that well. Still, I am interested enough to see where the story will go from here, especially due to that twist at the end...!!
March 25, 2017
This book is unnecessarily hard to read. The story is relatively simple and might even be kind of enjoyable, but the art and the dialogue boxes are so choppy it becomes difficult to follow. Six-word sentences will be divided up into three word balloons. Balloons and captions are splattered across each page, often simultaneously and usually with no indication of which character is speaking or narrating. The flow of the pictures is poor, with action sequences difficult to track due to the obstructing sound effects and word balloons and a frequent tendency to focus in on random body parts. Here's hoping the creator stops self-sabotaging in future volumes.
September 19, 2017
3 Stars.
Really cute, but the artwork is sooooo similar to Fruit's Basket that I can't help comparing (before you point and say "SAME PERSON" I totally know that, but it is more than just the same style). The story is a little confusing, to be honest, but I think I'm piecing it together. I definitely plan to reread this one, as I think I'll get a lot more out of it the second time around.
So, would I recommend it? Yes, if your looking for a cute (and so far, short) manga series and need another fix after finishing Fruit's Basket.
Really cute, but the artwork is sooooo similar to Fruit's Basket that I can't help comparing (before you point and say "SAME PERSON" I totally know that, but it is more than just the same style). The story is a little confusing, to be honest, but I think I'm piecing it together. I definitely plan to reread this one, as I think I'll get a lot more out of it the second time around.
So, would I recommend it? Yes, if your looking for a cute (and so far, short) manga series and need another fix after finishing Fruit's Basket.
December 16, 2017
This volume was very interesting. We found out a lot about Engetsu (though the next volume will delve further into his history) and we are getting some questions answered. The story itself is still unclear, we are finding out about everything that has happened but the actual plot of the story is seemingly still absent. So far it's a fun read with a very calm plotline and characters (with a bit of complicated and somewhat dark history) and a light read.
October 8, 2020
Liselotte starts a flower garden. More of Liselotte's back story is explained as she was to choose between exile or immediate death by command of her brother the king. Liselotte wants to introduce herself to the witches and she does. Liselotte meets with the witches and an assassin tries to kill her, but Engetsu stops him.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 16, 2017
The artwork is gorgeous, although once in a while there's too much going on in a panel and it's hard to tell what I'm looking at. I really, really like the characters and the story is interesting. I'm sad to know that it hasn't been finished! Guess I'll just read and enjoy what I can.
July 25, 2017
Nope, still bored.
Even with much more action stuff happening this time, and more dark past flashes ... those flashbacks weren't inserted very well and the few bits of comic relief here and there were not meshing well
Do like the Witches' taste in fashion & familiars tho!
Even with much more action stuff happening this time, and more dark past flashes ... those flashbacks weren't inserted very well and the few bits of comic relief here and there were not meshing well
Do like the Witches' taste in fashion & familiars tho!
November 13, 2021
There’s more action in this one, and it took an interesting turn, but the story feels choppy and hard to follow sometimes. Maybe the chaos is intentional? I’m sticking with the series because I love the author’s work, and I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.
August 18, 2025
Liselotte may have been sent to the remote home by the forest, but she's trying to make the most of it. Even as things aren't going the way she's planned, she keeps up a cheery disposition. There's new twists to the story that are definitely not what I was expecting.
February 21, 2017
I just love Takaya work, I am so happy she is back.
August 11, 2017
Nope. Not interested in this one. Main character also feels like a carbon copy of Tohru
May 4, 2018
Way to play with my expectations, Takaya-sensei!
May 20, 2018
3.75 stars
review to follow
review to follow
March 25, 2019
A lovely continuation, by one of my favorite authors. That cliffhanger was intense, I cannot wait to read the next one.
October 22, 2019
I guess they weren't kidding about the witches in the forest! What is the deal with this mysterious guy, anyway?
January 21, 2020
3.5 stars
July 5, 2022
I have absolutely no clue what's going on but i"M SCREAMING
February 16, 2023
Well… that escalated quickly!!! So many twists, almost too quickly! I’m not sure how I feel about this story but it certainly got more interesting…
June 9, 2023
Just not for me. I didn’t find the plot very interesting and the plot and dialog with flashbacks overlapping with the present and overlapping speech bubbles made it hard to follow.
August 27, 2024
very unsure how i feel about this
Displaying 1 - 30 of 45 reviews