Dave Welsh of Precocious Curmudgeon has a review of the first issue of Shojo Beat which covers much of the ground I was intending to stomp on, so I suppose that takes care of that. I'd quibble with his evaluation of Kaze Hikaru and Godchild - I kind of liked the former, more so than the loligoth incoherency of the latter, anyways - and I'm not really sure where Baby and Me can go from the first volume.

He mentions the Cosmo-girly embarrassing aspects of the presentation, but he doesn't get into the heavy larding of girls-magazine rubbish *inside* the covers. If it never gets worse than what's contained in the first issue, I think I can tolerate it, but there are limits to what I'll take in the name of shoujo manga. I didn't mind buying the thing, but carrying it around under my arm in public was a tad bit deflating to my sense of intellectual superiority.

H/T to Irresponsible Pictures.