@“Syzygy”#p51078 Wow. I am now even more excited to Get Caught Up.
@“kingnothing”#p42548 seconding the dai dark recommendation. Dorohedoro was already on another level and now dai dark is just bursting at the seams with good vibes. Consistently laugh out loud funny. Hope it pays off with whatever it wants to do.
Surprised there hasn't been a chainsaw man recommendation yet so here's my obligatory "get in before all the coming anime discourse ruins it". If you want something shorter his previous work fire punch is only eight volumes. It's fantastic overall with the slight caveat that there's some incredibly gross stuff in the first maybe two volumes. It's also not really that funny in the way chainsaw man is.
I have a long list of manga to read and I’m starting with FMA, Ran and the Grey World, and Witch Hat Atelier. I also wanna work through all of Urasawa’s stuff eventually.
I read the first deluxe volume of Berserk and came away from it feeling very iffy. Especially the last event of the volume made me feel like…is the creator writing a trauma check that he absolutely cannot cash. That scene in particular strikes a personal chord and if it’s poorly handled I’m not sure I can trust the rest of the work.
@“Syzygy”#p58528 Good to know! That first deluxe volume did feel fairly immature, the aggressive use of dark spectacle felt more like it was just setting an aesthetic table and less like a real meaty narrative. So when I got to that part I wasn’t really feeling like it was going to handle it in a way that felt honest. I’m open to reading more.
The first two volumes of Berserk are notoriously trashy, and they seem to be there as a sales pitch of sorts, once the continuity of the series was secured Miura started playing more in the long run, developing the characters and the drama more subtlely and over the span of several arcs. Word of caution though, if you are sensitive to certain things Berserk comes with a good amount of trigger warnings including ||rape, child abuse, pedophilia, torture|| and a long long etc. There is a conversation there concering the varying degrees of success and failure with which Miura implements those subjects but seeing that you were already turned off by the first two volumes I‘d say it’s recommendable to at least be aware what you're getting into.
Full disclosure: I love Berserk and it's one of the most influential mangas of the last couple of decades but I'm of the opinion that some of its stuff has not aged particularly well.
If anyone is looking for a solid one-volume read, Robo Sapiens: Tales of Tomorrow is a good buy. I approached it thinking it was going to be an anthology, but its short stories are primarily about showing its recurring characters moving through a pretty massive span of time. Really clean cartooning. If you‘ve seen and enjoyed, say, Masaaki Yuasa’s Kaiba, I think you'll get something out of it. I liked it more the further I got into it.
Is anyone reading Taiyo Matsumoto's No. 5? It's beautiful, it's incredible, and it's also kind of impenetrable. I'm glad it's all going to actually come out in English this time--I look forward to rereading it when I have all of it front of me.
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is getting an official English release! this is really wonderful news. it's such a charming series, and the reason i now live in Yokohama
https://sevenseasentertainment.com/2022/02/16/seven-seas-licenses-yokohama-kaidashi-kikou-manga-omnibus-series/
@“whatsarobot”#p58543 I about screamed when I saw this news earlier. This was my remaining white whale English license want after Saint Young Men finally started coming out stateside.
@“AbandonedRocketship”#p58548 buddy!!! I like your avatar. I didn't know Taiyou Matsumoto did some Mother fanart.
@“JoJoestar”#p58541 Appreciate the warning JoJo. I had picked up through just years of Being Online that Berserk is pretty brutal. I am open to it and generally am fine with stuff like that but I think after not being all that impressed with what I was reading to then being confronted with maybe one of the most difficult things you could choose to depict I was like…man can this dude actually pull this off in a way that's not going to be incredibly shitty?
I'd like to actually share some of my favs though!
Years ago I read [Makai no Ossan](https://onepunchman.fandom.com/wiki/Makai_no_Ossan#:~:text=Makai%20no%20Ossan%20(%E9%AD%94%E7%95%8C%E3%81%AE,the%20mother%20of%20their%20children.) which instantly became one of my favorites. It's a slice of life story about a family that lives in Hell. Super absurd and funny, charming as hell, and each "chapter" is basically just a single page vignette. It's by ONE and was released concurrently alongside One Punch Man for a bit. Feel like there's zero chance it will get an official English release but it was unofficially translated in its entirety.
I'm also a lifelong Initial D weirdo having seen the entire anime a dozen times and read through the manga just as many. The manga is generally a lot better, especially compared to the post-First Stage anime adaptations. The English translation from Tokyopop used horrific name changes(Takumi=Tak, Natsuki=Natalie, Itsuki=Iggy, and more!) so it's not a great read. The fan translated volumes online are good though. It has an interesting history in English because Tokyopop published them for a while but went out of business before the manga had even been completed in Japan so those volumes just stopped coming out. Then Comixology picked it up a couple years ago and released the remaining volumes, plus translated the new ones up to the end, and made them exclusively available digitally through their subscription service. They still used the Tokyopop names though which sucks shit. I'm bummed they'll probably never see a physical printing, and even if they do they'll feature the terrible localized names.
@“connrrr”#p58570 Thank you, I like it too! It‘s from this thing that I want very much but haven’t been able to justify ordering yet… Look at all the killers contributing to it!
https://www.1101.com/mother_project/items/book_pollyanna_en.html
@“AbandonedRocketship”#p58661 well that's going on my wishlist immediately!!
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[Invisible Parade by MISSISSIPPI](https://glacierbaybooks.com/product/invisible-parade/)
Sci-fi slice of life short story collection. Really really good stuff. It has the tone of Attack of the Friday Monsters! Funny and melancholy! Highly recommend it.
@“antillese”#p44989
Huge news in my Alita journey: I finished the original run thanks to the local library and the deluxe editions. I thought that the ended to the “official” run was… abrupt to say the least. For those of you who haven‘t read it, Alita is ||baited into picking up an IED that was rigged to look like a child that she struck with her truck in the middle of the night. She rushes toward the kid and realizes too late that it is a bomb remote detonated by Desty Nova.|| I suppose I shouldn’t have expected her to have a happy ending, but it's simultaneously unsatisfying.
I was also let down by the dark secret of Zalem. I feel like all the Zalemites ||being driven insane realizing their brains run on chips|| doesn't fit the setting strongly enough. I didn't feel they set the cultural stakes high enough in Zalem for that to be meaningful to those characters in the way it was. Maybe I missed some of this?
The bonus stand-alone "Ashen Victor" story was strong and one of the best motorball-related pieces in the whole story. I didn't care for the use of the trope of violence against a sex worker as a motivating factor for the lead character. I know it was 25 years ago, but it also seems lazy with respect to the rest of the _Alita_ storytelling.
I liked my time with the work as a whole. I may pick up the _Last Order_ books if I can find them at the library too.
Finally, if I can post some "Dad Chat", I had an interesting experience where a miscommunication with my wife resulted in the final _Alita_ book being delivered to my 11-y-o daughter who is mad about _Sailor Moon_, _Pokemon_, _Splatoon_, and especially _My Hero Acadamia_ manga. My daughter read it before I was able to retrieve it and it lead to an interesting conversation about what content is and isn't appropriate for kids in our family. We also got to talk about the use of violence in the story as satire and how if you don't have context, it can desensitize you to violence.
It sounds like she thought the story was confusing (she realized it was the end of the story) and that the pictures were gross and the villain was scary. It's not going to ruin her for life and I think she's mature enough to handle it as a one-off, but if she was to ask, I would have said no.
So what I'm saying is that talk to your kids about the media they consume, they accidentally consume, and how it may differ from the media you consume as an adult and why!
@“sabertoothalex”#p58616 I recently recommended Berserk to a friend and had to give a good-faith warning about the darker content. I would say it‘s not voyeuristic, but it’s absolutely gratuitous in some areas – >!Wyald, the trolls and Ganishka!< are examples of violations that did not need to be so explicitly depicted. I really wish there was an interview with the creator that explores more of his choices there, because those moments are hard to justify. Seeing the main characters heal from their trauma is what makes the story compelling. Still, not everyone gets that chance and women in particular are sometimes treated as disposable objects. I find it ultimately to be an uplifting story with more depth than you‘d expect from those early volumes. Berserk is rightly considered a masterpiece due to its strong characterization and peerless art, but it’s also rightly considered edgelord material for things that don‘t age well. That said, it’s not Gantz. The good far outweighs the bad and the series vastly improves as it goes on.
I recently started reading Path of the Assassin by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, which is my first exposure to actually reading one of Koike‘s longer historical series. Let me tell you: it’s really good if you like absolutely unhinged stories that are in a historically accurate setting! Kojima‘s art is good but I don’t have too much to say about it, I do have some thoughts on Koike's writing though!
Kazuo Koike's reputation is really interesting in the US because people usually talk about his work as if it's just some historically significant thing that a lot of research was put into to make it accurate to the time of its setting and they'll talk about how influential he is, mentoring people like Rumiko Takahashi and Yuji Hori and inspiring people like Frank Miller. What they don't usually talk about is that Koike writes stories that make him come across as KIND OF A PSYCHOPATH. I think Mad Bull 34 is the best example of Koike at his most unhinged (I continue to hold out hope that it some day gets printed in English), but even Path of the Assassin has the crazy! I'm not even finished with volume one, yet it already has a plot point where a young lord is having sex with his wife for the first time and the way she behaves make him somehow think she may have had sex previously with a left-handed man, causing him to think about a left-handed retainer who works for his family and I guess figure out their secret (the narrator confirms that this is indeed the case). It's an absolutely nutzoid plot point! And that's not even touching on the rape story that happens in the previous chapter which is handled in a way that would definitely upset some folks.
I have to say, I'm finding it to be entertaining but WOW, Koike had a screw loose and his stuff tends to be just about every kind of problematic. It's astounding to me that he's as highly regarded as he is! I wish more of his stuff was in print in English.
i‘m all the way up to Punk Hazard in ONE PIECE, and i’m a bit unsure how i feel at this point.
apart from the Davy Back Fight arc, i loved absolutely everything up to Marineford, but i actually felt that the build-up to >!Ace's death!< dragged a bit, though the payoff was ultimately worth it. immediately post >!time-skip!<, i really enjoyed the bits featuring >!kid Luffy, Ace and Sabo!<, but Fishman Island and now Punk Hazard have felt a bit sloppy, compared to everything that came before. the art is, at times, too chaotic to make sense of, and the story also lacks the kind of cohesive tone (which had at turns been silly, serious, and intriguing) which it had until now.
people online say that things start to get back on track around Dressrosa, and that the Zou and Wa no Kuni arcs are quite good, but i've been a bit disappointed overall in the >!post-time skip!< stuff so far. only a bit, but still.
anyone here care to weigh in?
@“Syzygy”#p61493 great reply. thank you. >!i‘m a little discouraged by that assessment, but not surprised by it. and so far at least, i’m a fan of Trafalgar Law, even though he is very identifiably the Shadow the Hedgehog of ONE PIECE. (i‘ve already purchased a couple of ONE PIECE “novels” because i found them for cheap, one of them being the Law book.) i must also add that part of my commitment to sticking with this series is Oda’s repeated claims that it will wrap up soon (in this case, “soon” being three to five years, maybe?). i think the emotional pay off will be worth it, if/when the series does conclude, and even if only for a moment, all of Japan (and the world) takes time out to appreciate the accomplishment and celebrate ONE PIECE. that will be a fun cultural moment to be a part of.!<
>!yeah, it has been weird, trying to retcon Shanks as this big, powerful 四皇 character, partly because those Four Emperors seem to terrify everyone, but also because it's hard to think of him as a villain? but in a way, it does make a sort of sense, since Luffy's perception of... everything... is skewed and naively optimistic. so it's as if, up until now, we've had the Luffy Ideal of Shanks in our heads, but now we're starting to see him the way the greater world does. that's a fun trick. Oda is good at fun tricks.!<
>!i do sort of feel like Brooke and Franky are shoehorned in without much to do, which is a symptom of quite a lot of the characters and story beats. but a surprising number of them turn out to have implications and payoffs in due time. and, overall, the series continues to be a study in maximalist entertainment with enjoyable and inoffensive WTF moments.!<
and really, at the end of the day, i love Luffy, and enjoy spending time with that lunkhead, >!even if that's something that barely happens much at all, post-time skip.!<
@“Syzygy”#p61502 hadn‘t thought about it in those terms before, but you’re right. >!if we wanted to be charitable, perhaps we could say that the death of Ace traumatized Luffy to the extent that he‘s undergone some sort of regression.!< still, i’m not bothered by the change.
side note: i don't really understand why Ace became as popular as he did, or why >!his death!< affected people so deeply. >!he barely had any character traits, apart from encouraging Luffy to be a great adventure, and being a general all-round Onii-san.!< maybe that's all some people need to latch onto a character!