Yo I heard you like reading comix backward, homie... - by Gingerbread Man
Kroakie on 5/9/2011 at 13:32
Quote Posted by dexterward
Ok, it`s an anime, but I bet manga isn`t far off in quality.
Actually all 3 mediums (manga, movie, TV series) of GitS follow a different continuity. They use the same main cast, and share some plotlines, but the tone and story are quite different. Of the three, the TV series is my favourite.
Fullmetal Alchemist is probably my favourite manga. Chock full of awesome heroes and badass villians, and every one of them well-developed. The 2nd anime is also the most faithful and well-done adaptions I've seen, so those who don't like reading can go for that.
For something more macabre, hmm... maybe FrankenFran or Homunculus. Haven't followed Homunculus for a while, so no idea how it is now, but the first 7 volumes were pretty interesting.
Yeah... Berserk is good, though the tone of the recent chapters seems to be lighter and fluffier. And damn the chapters come out really slowly.
demagogue on 5/9/2011 at 13:40
Quote Posted by Sulphur
My absinthe-swilling friend keeps raving about the One Piece manga, anyone know how worthwhile that is?
When I was teaching Japanese middle schoolers, One Piece was the typical favorite manga for them. It's fun. There are pirates and action, but it's targeting middle schoolers. Sort of like the action hero cartoons we (in the US) grew up on, like the Fantastic Four.
I like it for Japanese learning because it always gives the phonetics for the kanji (another sign it's for kids).
It's funny. My Japanese friends on Facebook were talking this week. A woman was talking about liking chocolate, and another (adult) guy said (in Japanese) "hey that's like Luffy", and she said "What's a Rufi?", and he had to explain it's from a kid's comic and he also likes chocolate. It's like saying "Hey that's like Spiderman." and the other person asks "What's a spider man?", it's weird (1) a person can become an adult and not know about it and (2) a grown adult would make a comparison to a kid's comic; makes the guy sound a bit on the weirdo otaku end.
Briareos H on 5/9/2011 at 13:50
I haven't been reading manga in a long time. I'd advise anything by Jirō Taniguchi. Try aruku hito / The Walking Man or chichi no koyomi / The Almanac of My Father.
Thirith on 5/9/2011 at 14:00
Oh, I also greatly enjoyed Uzumaki, a weird, surreal, funny-yet-disturbing horror manga. It's somewhat inconsistent in how well it pulls it off, but I'd still recommend it if you're into Lynchian horror.
gunsmoke on 6/9/2011 at 17:49
My new roommate is shooting tats in Tokyo right now, he is an anime freak and actually shoots traditional Japanese art on natives. I'll text him and get some good manga suggestions and why they should be considered tonight after he gets home from sniffing panties purchased from various vending machines scattered around Honshu.
saatana on 6/9/2011 at 19:09
Used to read a lot of manga when I was younger. I've read most of the titles mentioned in this thread and I still check the new chapters of Berserk every six months or so, but not much anything else so I can't really mention any fresh titles. Seems like it's been seven years since I last read Blade of the immortal and some ten new volumes have appeared since then. Can someone tell me if it's still the shit and should I look it up again?
If you're into cyberpunk I can contribute with Blame, which is probably my favorite manga ever (since Miura seems to be getting sloppier with Berserk) and also one of the rare series that has actually been fucking finished. Pretty compact for a manga with ten volumes and it has a very untraditional style in many aspects. Basically it's about a synthetic human on a mission upward in an unfathomable megastructure. Unlike in most manga theres almost zero bullshitting: little and short dialogues, fights are fastpaced and usually spectacularly short, the timeline is fascinatingly blurred and x amount of hours/days/years can pass in a few openings. The mangaka is a graduated architect and he is really good at projecting the sense of vast space through his refreshingly sketchy style.
Volitions Advocate on 6/9/2011 at 19:26
The 2 I'd recommend would be Ruroni Kenshin (probably called Samurai X in english speaking countries.... ugh). the official translation is a little bland, but if you can manage to find scans and fan-translated text, it's a pretty damn good experience.
Also: X, the movie crammed this huge manga into a tiny 2 hour movie that made little sense. They then tried to rectify it by doing the same story again in a series, which I haven't seen. Its a little convoluted, but the art is great. I'd recommend it.
Gingerbread Man on 6/9/2011 at 20:30
Takin' notes and lookin' fo' scans. Many of the suggested titles, though I'm sure wonderful and worth reading, don't exactly sound like "up my street" as you Americans say. I likes the horror, especially supernatural and violent. Scary and unsettling things, too - but not too slow paced for I like my horror unrelenting.
Just as I prefer my women.
