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What are you reading right now? Why?

Whelp, I got and quickly finished Speed Racer. Clearly this manga set must've sold terribly, I got it for $5.50 with shipping brand new, and that's the normal price for it. First off, why do I think it sold so poorly? Well older people who might fondly remember Speed Racer probably don't read comics, let alone those newfangled "backwards" comics. I'm sure there are some that do and all ten of them bought this set. Second, its MSRP is $40. A completely fair price I think, but yeah...it's still $40. Third, younger people my age who do read manga think of Speed Racer as "that cheesy 60s anime with the terrible animation" (at least, that's how I think of it). And lastly, that live action movie that DMP was riding the advertising coattails of for this didn't exactly do well, either critically or money wise. I haven't personally seen said movie, don't really have plans to rush over to the Redbox to see if it still has it either (it probably doesn't).
So, do I think it deserved to sell so poorly that about 2 years after the manga release you can get it for pennies online? Not really. Do I think it's a great manga? No, but it is really entertaining. As you can probably see from the picture, it's a gorgeous release, has a chipboard box that's probably sturdier than most anime boxes and two hardcover volumes with a few color pages in them. Really, I'm having a tough time calling between Speed Racer and A Drunken Dream for most gorgeous manga packaging in existence (but since I think A Drunken Dream is a better manga anyways, I'll give it the nod, also, I find the interview with Matt Thorn more interesting then the one with the late Peter Fernandez). Of course, Speed Racer had to restore pages from a freakin' newspaper, Drunken Dream didn't have that problem, and they did a good job, only the occasional page didn't look as sharp as the others.
So I feel like the stories from volume 1 vs 2 are quite different. 1 is "go race in some incredibly dangerous place" and 2 is "someone is trying to kill someone else and Speed will somehow stop them". Overall, I liked volume 1 more. But if you miss volume 1, that's cool because for some arbitrary reason, they decided to repeat, page for page for like 4 pages the scene where Racer X delivers a message to Speed to have a midnight race (and it's the same damn race), it rather created a facepalm moment for me. And it's not just like the other pages, it is the other pages. If I read up correctly, the manga came after the anime, but I don't mind. 60s manga, if you've never read one, does things with a punishing urgency, so no 5 seconds clips of a racer's car spinning around to reuse the animation as much as possible (but reusing the pages that one time got pretty close). So the manga is quite fast paced. But older manga do their action sequences different than newer ones, for people not used to it, it can take some time, but I think this is also a good manga to learn on as I think it's much clearer with the action than, say, early Astro Boy.
Oh yes, on to the story and whatnot, the whole thing at times feels like the mangaka just really liked drawing cars. It seems to border on car porn half the time. That's what stood out to me most, that and other crazy 60s manga things like racing through an active volcano. Character personalities are pretty basic, Speed likes racing and will stop in the middle of absolutely any race to try to help someone out. For some reason, his girlfriend Trixie has a helicopter and can operate it (ok, they say her father owns a helicopter company, but she's like 17, what 17 year old has a helicopter and can drive it?) Spritle and that monkey are annoying, but they get maybe a panel of shenanigans at best (and the one time they do sneak into the trunk, spoiler[they get their butts booted out of the trunk, from an airplane (the car was on an airplane to go somewhere), with a basic parachute], much to my delight). And then the races are "ridiculous thing A" happens then about half a page later, "ridiculous thing B" happens and by the end of the chapter, whatever racer was racer of the week was helped out by Speed sort of thing. It's nothing mindblowing, but for seeing cars race and do ridiculous things, you can't go from for $5, it's worth it at that price. Even though it's nothing special, it's still pretty fun.

Another day, another manga, right? Well, I finally finished Twin Spica! I ordered 9-12 during the Vertical sale in January, I do plan to mass buy stuff from them at Otakon, but while I (somehow) can wait to get the last two volumes of Black Jack, I determined that I could not wait to finish up collecting Twin Spica. I seriously didn't go into volume 9 expecting to read all of them in one go (on the basis that past volumes made me teary eyed both sad and happy at the same time, if there's one fault with this series, it's how it confuses your tear ducts), but then...yeah, I read them all! And was getting teary eyed the entire time! In case you are unawares and get confused, it's 16 volumes in Japan. English vols 1-6=1 Japanese volume each. English 7-10=1.5 Japanese volumes each. English 11, 12=2 Japanese volumes each. Not really sure why, but it's all there, that I can assure you.
So, what is this story about? I guess if I had to boil it down, it's a coming of age story about a girl who dreams of going to go into space (set in a sci-fi world where space travel is still a big expensive time consuming thing that takes a lifetime of dedication and hard work). And if you know that friendship is magic /)*(\ (brohoof) it certainly is here too. The characters are all wonderful and diverse, and above all, they feel real. They all act and interact so organically that they're an absolute delight to read. But it's also a series that will make you feel extreme nostalgia, even if you don't want to go into space. Following your dreams is a big theme of this series (and maybe part of the reason is made me feel so depressed when reading it). All sorts of poignant observations are made, the type that will simply make you pause on the page as your brain fully accepts the words. It's the sort of series that will make you ponder on what you've read far after you've read it.
The art matches it. It's a simple artistic style, but you can't help but pause on every full page spread of the stars to go "whoa", not to mention that Kou Yaginuma is fantastic at expressions and knows how to use them in panels well. The flow between the panels is also absolutely fantastic, it feels....very organic, it's tough to describe and rarely done this well.
This is one of the best manga to come out stateside in years, and one of the best coming of age stories ever created (the only one I think I like more is Hikaru no Go, both series even have awesome ghosts). It has great characters who interact naturally with each other and an inspiring story for the dreamer in all of us, maybe the one you didn't even know you had. Sadly, it has sold poorly, but not for lack of quality, I assure you. As a result, it'll probably go out of print, which is a shame as it feels like a shining star in English manga publishing has faded before it's time. I can only rate this series a masterpiece as it is excellent beyond words. Give this a shot, you won't regret it! And do so fast before it goes OOP Sad

I'm back into the manga scene. Can't wait to dive into some new manga. Twin spica sounds good.

I scooped up volumes 1-4 of Twin Spica from the comic shop the other day, purely based on everyone here's recommendation. Not had a chance to read them yet but man am I looking forward to it.

^ well read Twin Spica asap so you have plenty of time to go back and buy the rest (because you will want to).

Well, I've read some other stuff since Twin Spica. Obviously not as good as Twin Spica, but that's a once in a blue moon manga anyway.

First one I read (and was kinda reading as I was also reading Twin Spica, or more re-reading the first 8 volumes of Twin Spica, was Cipher. My basis for wanting this manga was simple: CMX shojo from the 80s. And indeed, this very description did not let me down. Cipher is about twins who share an identity at school. The main chick, Anise, decides to make friends with the school identity on a basis even weaker than mine was for buying the manga. Then she quickly learns that the two share a life. I feel like most manga with twins will somehow make it obvious to the audience who is who, but half the time I couldn't tell, though dialogue styles might give it away. Which makes sense since that's really their objective. I think it takes the audience about a volume longer than Anise to figure out who is who. During the last 5 volumes or so, it's not an issue though.
So mostly it's an 80s shojo manga, that takes place in New York and has that weird "NY as seen by a Japanese" sort of thing going on (though I was impressed that Minako Narita knew about lunchrooms and the 3 month summer break. If you so much as glanced at her side panels, you could see she was obsessed with American 80s pop culture people, especially Tom Bailey of the Thompson Twins (ok, he's British), but she had lots of other American stuff in there, but she drew Tom Bailey at least twice per volume), reminded me a little bit of Banana Fish that way with the Japanese interpretation of NYC. I feel like being an 80s shojo should give you most of the information you need, but ok, a bit more, it's a very character focused piece of manga. In particular, it's really about the two twin characters differentiating themselves after sharing an identity for a few years. They had reason for doing so, which is very slowly revealed. In the final 5 volumes, lots of new characters and introduced, and I really wanted that part of the manga to go on for longer since that was easily my favorite part, so easy to just eat it up! There is a spinoff following one of the characters from the latter half of the series, I plan to look into that (sadly, that wasn't licensed). For 80s shojo fans, I heartily recommend this provided you don't get annoyed with not knowing which of the twins is talking for the first two volumes and occasionally afterwards. I'd rate it 4 out of 5

Lesse, I think Fairy Cube was next. Short 3 volume manga that had so much more potential. The first volume is fairly solid, boy gets his body stolen, wants to get it back, and fairies and all celtic mythology is there and evil and has a parallel world. Then the second volume starts with this world domination bs that really just means the manga ends up biting off far more than it can possibly hope to chew in 3 volumes. The end result feels incredibly rushed, scenes would go by and I'd be like "wait, what happened? why?" and I'd do this waaay too often. By the end, I felt like I'd eaten one too many Cadbury eggs in one sitting. 2 out of 5

And lastly, I read Gaba Kawa, something else I got out of the 3 for $10 booth with Fairy Cube. Gaba Kawa was far more worth my money. Rie Takada clearly knew how to make a one volume shojo work, it's a short but sweet story that knows how to pace itself. I quite liked the main girl, usually I'd be annoyed of a girl who only wants a boy, but she's also fun and bubbly and carries the story quite well on her own. Sure, things like the process of falling in love will happen near instantaneously, but the manga remembers to have a lot of fun too, which I highly approve of. It's a nice little manga to breeze through on a commute or something or to give to someone trying to get into the whole manga thing but won't read anything long for the time being. 3.5 out of 5

^ I need to wait till I get paid first before I can have more Sad

In the meantime I read the second Love Hina omnibus yesterday. This was the 2nd series I ever read, borrowed from a friend, and reading it again sure takes me back. As harem series go, it's not bad at all. The girls are attractive, and the comedy is pretty good. It also doesn't drag on far too long.

I also read the first 2 volumes of Code: Breaker. It's an interesting premise and it somewhat reminded me of Death Note in places (although it's not a battle of wits), and the female lead isn't utterly spineless, which is a refreshing change from some shounen. She's tough and not afraid to stand up to the main character. I did enjoy it, and I hope when the anime comes out Kodansha decide to continue releasing the manga, as Del Rey only released 2 volumes.

I just finished inhaling the first three volumes of Princess Jellyfish (the French editions) and am, if possible, even more in love with the series than before. But...but Amazon.ca and Chapters don't have volume four listed yet even though it's due out in less than two weeks! DON'T YOU WANT MY MONEY???

Ahem.

Anyhow, Is This a Zombie?'s first volume was a bit of a come down, but still fun and entertaining. Next up is some death and gloom from Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service's 12th volume and then the ninth book of The Antique Gift Shop, many thanks to that random library in Ohio my library keeps getting it from. Gotta love Interlibrary Loan. Of course, all of these plans could change if the bookstore has Kate Quinn's latest novel of Ancient Rome in when I go tomorrow... Wink

I'm currently reading Bleach and Claymore. I'm a fair ways through Bleach (not halfway yet though Sad

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Friday I finally received (and immediately read) volume 12 of Twin Spica. It felt almost like a gentle release from some of the high emotions of the preceding volumes, which felt very appropriate for the series. I also enjoyed how certain chapters were portrayed from perspectives other than Asumi. It helped capture the spirit of the moment.

I also finally got around to reading volume 2 of Wandering Son. I've had it since it came out, but just didn't have the right mood for it for awhile. I love its gentle examination of topics, and hope that TRSI rather than Amazon have the correct date for the next release (late May versus early July).

I'm struggling to decide what to read next though. I'm in a certain mood, and unfortunately none of the volumes on my to-be-read shelf seem to be be matching that mood. Perhaps more Saikano, although my lack of volume 7 makes me hesitant to read volumes 4-6.

Well I'll just go with a few for today

First up, I recently read two things of short story compilations by Mitsukazu Mihara. First was Beautiful People, the other was IC in a Sunflower, and after reading both of them, I'd love to read one of her longer works. In that past, I had read Haunted Mansion, which I remember being so-so, but these two proved that she is great at short stories. I've been finding out lately that making good one-shots can indeed be a fair indicator if they're capable of making full on series too. I've read everything by Fumi Yoshinaga and a few of those books are short story collections. Granted, I did read Flower of Life and Antique Bakery first, but if I'd read her shorts first, I would've sought out more. Which reminds me that I also recently read Songs to Make You Smile, which Tokyopop felt the great need to plaster "by the creator of Fruits Basket" all over both the cover and spine, and the stories in there were quite enjoyable too. I'd already read Fruits Basket, but if I'd known the library had Song beforehand, reading it would've made me feel more comfortable going for Furuba. Though I didn't bother reading the short in there related to Tsubasa: Those With Wings as I've not yet read that series and had no clue if the short had spoilers. So yeah, I did enjoy the short story of all three books, sure they're not as good as, say, A Drunken Dream and other stories by Moto Hagio, but Hanshin/Half-god is the best short manga possibly written in the first place.

Ok, now I'm a bit confused on my feelings here for the next one. I've read the first 4 volumes of Blame! (though I have up to 7, call it a cheap deal that occurred that somehow netted me the rarest volumes in one fell swoop). I've seen some of the ratings on MAL, they're pretty high. The backgrounds are pretty damn awesome, vol 1 explains that the guy studied to be an architect and it's clear that he enjoys drawing backgrounds more than anything else in the entire world. But on the negative side, he can draw backgrounds, but not action scenes very well. Granted, this isn't bad to the level of Trigun's action scenes, but they're still pretty hard to follow. And the manga is mostly action scenes. So the problem here should be very very clear. My other problem is that the story isn't exactly clear. I can tell that some of this is being done as a sort of slow unraveling, which I don't have a problem with. Answering why they seem to live in a world that looks like...well it's hard to describe, lots of random staircases, it's all metal, there might be a sun somewhere up there, if you've seen the Metropolis movie (in particular think of the back alleys of the lower levels), that's as close as I can think of to it, that I don't mind them not explaining. Mostly because the characters themselves don't seem 100% sure why it's like that either. But when you mention cyborgs, androids, net terminal genes, silicon creatures, Safeguard, The Authority, I feel like I need some amount of definition here, or at least a very clear definition of who should be considered the bad guys vs the good guys. For the first 3 volumes, I though it was Authority, now it seems to be Safeguard, but neither of them have particularly good definitions for them. It makes following the plot a bit difficult, especially when spoiler[Cibo, obviously good guy, suddenly seems to contact Authority and everything seems to be fine,] I thought they were the bad guys before, dammit! Who are the bad guys? I mean, fights keep occurring, there are most certainly bad guys here, but I can never tell what faction they belong to! I'm not sure what the factional set up for this series is! I'm really hoping that it's explained, I really really do. Also, is everyone a cyborg or something? That's my general assumption at this point. I'm not saying that everything needs to be explained, that'll obviously take away the mystery, and much like Shadow of the Colossus, exploring is part of the fun, but I feel like if some of these things were explained more clearly, I would be far more into the manga. I'll finish to vol 7 before I order 8-10 online methinks, after all, Blame! is certainly a very addictive manga.
*edit, ok, read 5-7, like I said, since it's mostly pictures, it's a damn fast read, and yeah, I'm still just not very impressed. It's like I'm torn, interested in the conclusion, but still disappointed by the hard to follow action and confusing way the story is presented. Either way, I'm still sure I'm selling off my vol 1-7 and no longer plan to buy 8-10 (pm me if you're interested in 1-7. 4, 5, and 6 are especially tough to find)

And I also got the first two volumes of Penguin Revolution on sale during free comic book day (that explains Blame! above and IC in a Sunflower in case you were wondering). Luckily, I've set up a trade for vol 3 already, 4-7 will probably have to be ex-library, sadly, as I am not made of money. Anyway, I'd been interested in this ever since reading Tsukuba Sakura's other series Land of the Blindfolded, which, other than the manga explaining every chapter the basic set up of the series (somewhat justified in that it ran one chapter every 2 months but still damn annoying anyway) I found to be really enjoyable. Two volumes into Penguin Revolution, I'm enjoying this one a lot too. I don't usually care much for gender bender series, but perhaps since the focus isn't the gender bending itself (though it's certainly there to cause to confusion), I don't seem particularly bothered by it. And so far I'm really liking the chemistry between the two mains. So overall, I can't wait to read more and I'm annoyed it's not all sitting on my shelf right this instant! Hopefully I will get library copies in decent condition with somewhat easy to remove stickers (I mostly like them off the spines, it makes everything look prettier on the shelf, but since CMX volumes were thinner, I'll have to excavate very very carefully).

Well, after my unfortunate experience with the overrated Blame!, I decided to get the Biomega vol 1 I also bought recently out of the way. Luckily, it was much much better. The action was far clearer as is the story. The setting isn't as awesome, but it's still pretty good. I'll maybe rent some of that from the library, but I might actually be interested in getting more of this one.

I've also been reading Kamen Tantei, rather slowly. It's not that it's bad, it's just not very good for marathoning. It follows two high schoolers who want to write mystery novels. The girl is a bit crazed, she's really peeved any time the idea of the supernatural (like ghosts) might come into a mystery novel while the boy can actually see ghosts. Also, their pen name seems to be an actual person. It's a delightful mix of odd usage of fourth wall, it's like, you're sure this isn't really happening, but you're not sure in what way the fourth wall is being broken either. I'm still not sure if the sunglasses guy on the covers has come to life or if the whole thing takes place in the mains minds, hopefully the fourth and final volume will make that clear, but then again, I wouldn't be too pissed if it didn't either. Compared to the mangaka's Petshop of Horror series, this is far far more light hearted, even though the main girl has a tendency to want to kill off random people in her writings, but I also love how desperate she is to not use conventional tropes or anything supernatural despite it always happening, it's rather gleeful about the whole thing. It's just not good for marathoning like I usually do.

Recieved Breathe Deeply today and really enjoyed the story. It's a good medical drama, the type that plays with your emotions without becoming too over the top. There's just one thing that really bothered me: publisher One Peace Books did not use one period in the entire book. Why would anyone do something stupid like that? It's like reading a really bad scanlation...

I've just read Island (http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/manga.php?id=1560), by the same authors of Shin Angyo Onshi (Blade of the Phantom Master). It was published by Tokyopop almost a decade ago but I've bought six volumes still new at a book fair and at a great price, and ordered the seventh and last volume online. It was a very nice surprise and I would definitely recommend it to other seinen fans who enjoy horror/action manga, it has some elements that remind me of Berserk (great artwork, good action scenes - without the fantastical/medieval setting of course, as the action takes place in contemporary Korea -, the warped morality and violence) or Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (the whole final arc and the investigation and mistery surrounding it), mixed with some of MPD Psycho's mindgames. It's not as good as Shin Angyo Onshi and the ending is a bit abrupt (it's more like the conclusion of a regular arc), but a pretty solid series nevertheless.

^ I didn't even know that they had a series that came out in America, I need to look into that right away (more stuff to buy, yum.....?)

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Forum - View topicWhat are you reading right now? Why?

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What are you reading right now? Why?