Yes, I'm the new L. I haven't told anyone that I've met my real name in the past 7 months. The name that I give them has always been: L. But to further prove my point: I'm able to figure things out in 2 minutes flat. Things that would take people possibly a month to figure out.
I haven't read the Blood + manga yet, and I don't know anyone who has. I really only watched the anime. But I missed quite a bit of it, so I can't really tell you much about it.
Well with the manga, in volume 1 it starts off with the whole Star of Sorrow fiasco. Sunao Yoshida basically skipped Flight Night and Witch Hunt in the manga. But with the novels, the very first thing that you read is Flight Night, so the novels go in order. But with the manga, @_@ It's like a whole other series. I mean yes there are 1 or 2 things that happened in the manga also happened in the anime, but there's more that didn't happen. And so far, in the manga they've just reached the empire. ^_^