Shiho Sugiura's Silver Diamond Volume 1: Silver Seed

Rakan is a young teenager who is an orphan. Ever since his grandfather died, he's lived alone in the house he once shared with his grandfather and mother, who died long ago.

At school, he's well known for bringing in huge bunches of flowers, which he gives away to the teachers, even though all the girls sigh after him. But he doesn't know a thing about how to deal with girls his own age, and so he just leaves them alone.

He also doesn't know why the plants on his property grow so large, lush and wild. All he does is water them, and they grow like crazy, while his neighbor, who is a gardener and takes incredible care of plants, doesn't get the same results he does with just water.

Meanwhile, on another world, Chigusa, a man from a cursed family who has been fighting against the young, handsome, but evil Prince is sentenced to death and shot full of arrows. But then his body vanishes from its place of execution. Everyone seems happy about this but the Prince.

The world is mostly all desert, though it used to be lush and verdant. But now it is mostly sere and Barren, and only the Prince's powers keep everyone alive. Chigusa tried to assassinate the Prince, but failed.

Until his body crashes down onto Earth, in Rakan's very overgrown backyard. Rakan is surprised to see the strange man, but is attacked by some very strange black... things that followed Chigusa.

Chigusa shoots one with a gun that seems more plant than worked object, but misses the thing. Thinking that Chigusa was shooting at him, Rakan grabs the gun, which immediately begins to grow. Rakan stabs it into the ground, where it grows into a tree. Chigusa calls him "Sanome" and makes Rakan touch a strange root-ball like fruit that grows into another gun, with which he kills the strange black things.

Chigusa, for the most part, is stunned on seeing Rakan, at first thinking that he is the Prince, for they look exactly alike, but he soon realizes that Rakan is something quite different- A Sanome, who can make all plants grow with merely a touch. If the Prince were to find out about Rakan, he would kill him, so Chigusa decides to take on a new role as Rakan's bodyguard.

But the Prince wants to make sure that Chigusa is dead, and sends another man, Narushige, to ensure that Chigusa has perished. Narushige is of a family where only women are born to them and have any sort of power- the Shigeka family. But Narushige is useless to them- he can't birth more women of his clan, thus making him also cursed.

Rakan has offered Chigusa shelter, and is torn between embarrassed and annoyed by the way Chigusa doesn't know how to bathe and insists on sleeping in the same room as Rakan. So when Narushige aso ends up in his backyard, he offers the other man his hospitality as well, along with Narushige's snake/sword Koh.

At first Narushige is planning to kill Chigusa, but when he sees the truth about Rakan, Rakan now has two defenders/bodyguards. and he'll need them, for the Prince has dispatched another man, an assassin, to track down and kill both Narushige and Chigusa, ensuring that they never return- and the best way to threaten them is to take out Rakan...

This was an interesting start to the tale. First we meet Chigusa, and because he alone out of all the people on his world can tell tell that the Prince is something evil and unsavory, is trying to assassinate him. But the Prince is saved, and he throws Chigusa into a dimensional vortex, where he ends up on earth. Rakan, on the other hand, is addicted to being normal, and loves doing all the things women normally do, like cooking, cleaning and other housework. He doesn't remember much about the other world, but he's determined to be nothing more than an ordinary human, thank you very much...

Sadly for him, but wonderfully for readers, the arrival of Chigusa and, later, Narushige blow huge holes in his ability to think of himself as normal. Mostly because they aren't really normal, either- Chigusa is pretty much unkillable, and Narushige has Koh, his snake/sword companion, and both are determined to protect Rakan from the bad things they know are coming.

So far, we have seen enough of the other world to know that the Prince is creepy- he's almost always shown smiling, even when he's sending people off to kill others, he doesn't speak, he talks telepathically to a retainer who does the speaking for him (and that's creepy), and he's always wearing gloves. But his ability to send assassins out to kill for him seems to be equalled only by Rakan's ability to befriend and make peace with those who are trying to kill them, so while there is some awfully weird stuff going on, it does make you want to read more.

I also like the spare, open linework of the art. But it's raining prettyboys in the pages of the manga, so those who like their stories heavy on the eye-candy will find plenty of fruitful places to rest their eyes. Definitely worth looking into. Rcommended.