Manga Cipher

[Dagger]

[CENTER][IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v632/DaggerIX1/4247_400x600.jpg[/IMG][/CENTER]

This shoujo series is a couple decades old but is just now being released by CMX. The similarities between it and the twin sub-plots in Ouran High School Host Club are so numerous that if you're familiar with Ouran, you can probably predict a lot about how things will develop in Cipher.

Cipher came first, of course. ;)

The main characters are the identical twins Cipher and Siva and Anise, a girl who befriends them. Growing up, the twins were child stars. Two years ago, though, Cipher stopped acting. Siva is the one who attends school and acts--or so Anise thinks, until she figures out that they have both been living as "Siva"... switching off day after day, in both school and acting gigs, for the entirety of those two years.

To keep her quiet, they make a deal. She has two weeks to figure out which one is Cipher and which one is Siva. If she gets it right, they'll tell her why they started switching off. If she fails, she has to stop poking her nose into their business.

Cipher is a fun (and often funny) series with some darker elements. Siva and Cipher have a very touchy-feely relationship--exactly the kind of set-up that Ouran simultaneously parodies and uses for its own drama--but it doesn't come off as being cheap or even incestuous. The heroine is individualistic and rarely thinks about romance: I was tickled pink when [spoiler]she and Cipher started kissing just as casually as Cipher and Siva.[/spoiler]

I'm up to volume 5, in which they start to delve into the twins' back-story. Volume 6 should be out already, and I'm hoping to get my hands on it soon.

~Dagger~