Forum - View topicWhat are you reading right now? Why?
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Master Menos
 Posts: 15 |
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Reading: Seven Deadly Sins
Reason: I was introduced to it from a website that I (now) moderate a couple of months ago and tried it. Most of the characters ended up being great and the story is surprisingly entertaining and manages to keep in good standing most of the time. Things in the current arc of this is very intense so far. |
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RAmmsoldat
 Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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Thats been on my dreaded wishlist for a while now, it looks like it could be quite dark in parts despite the cheery adventure vibe i got from the first chapter.
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RAmmsoldat
Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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I've read a couple of volumes of both REAL and slam dunk, I've been collecting both but decided id get large amounts and re-read it. From what you say it sounds like i should read slam dunk first and then move on to real but from the small amounts I've read of both i can see REAL is a different beast. |
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Jose Cruz
 Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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The Brothers Karamazov - Reading the manga adaptation of this classic novel. I am at the beginning so far, it has been a good read and each of the brothers has indeed very characteristic personality. I found incredible in this manga how much information it packed in a few pages. Well, trying to adapt a classic novel into only a few hundred pages of manga lead to a very compressed narrative.
The Great Gatsby - The same I said about the manga above I can say about this one. Great read as well, I haven't read the original novel but this manga appears to be really great, far above the average manga read. Characters feel very much like classic hollywood characters. Hetalia Axis Powers - Now for reading some light comedy trash, I decided to begin reading Hetalia after hearing about it for several years now. Though sometimes funny, it is full of racism/national stereotypes and that's about it. It got pretty boring after a dozen chapters so I decided to drop it. Nozoki Ana - Some bland erotic manga set in college where a college student happens to have a hole in his wall which he can use to spy on his neighbor's apartment. However, his neighbor, a sexy colleague of his at the university, also spies on him and indeed plays the role of a femme fatale. Last edited by Jose Cruz on Thu Jul 09, 2015 11:46 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I am reading Kisses, Sighs, and Cherry Blossom Pink because I was in the mood for some yuri.
I picked this because it is by Milk Morinaga, who also did Girl Friends, which I really like. The book is a series of independent stories but most of them are about the same two girls, Nana and Hitomi, and form a distinct chronology. If a few other stories were removed this would really be a graphic novel about them. I think that it would be good as a novel, but it also works well as an anthology. I just reached the end of chapter 12 and I think that it is also the end of the story of Nana and Hitomi. It was a good story with an ending that satisfied me. The last two chapters seem to be independent stories with different girls. I found it interesting that near the middle of the book Nana asked "When girls do it, what exactly do you have to do for it to count as sex?" Unfortunately she was just talking to herself and nobody answered the question. I should make it clear that whatever it is nobody in the book seems to be doing it. This is yuri, with nudity and kissing and hugging and such, but there is nothing explicit. Nothing that I would call sex. I have really enjoyed Kisses, Sighs, and Cherry Blossom Pink. I have not quite finished it yet but I expect to like the last two stories as much as the rest. EDIT: I have now finished the book. I did not like the last two stories quite as much as the others, mostly because they were inconclusive, but they were still enjoyable. The girls were cute and interesting and there was some decent humor. I will recommend Kisses, Sighs, and Cherry Blossom Pink to anybody who likes, or is just interested in trying, yuri. |
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Akane the Catgirl
Posts: 1091 Location: LA, Baby! |
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I don't usually come here, but I am reading some manga right now. In alphabetical order:
Attack on Titan: With the last chapter, I found myself thinking the following: "Aw, everything appears to be so peaceful, and it looks like things are turning up for our heroes...something bad's going to happen at the end, isn't it?" Yup. Now, I'm going to share my two biggest theories in regards to the Beast Titan. They are a bit spoilerly, so I'm going to tag them. Here goes. spoiler[The Beast Titan only recently turned back into a human. He's probably Annie's unseen father, and given that we haven't seen Ymir in a while, I'm going to guess that Beast Titan ate her. Rest in peace, Ymir. If you're dead, that is.] Other than that, I'm enjoying the ride. I can't wait for the next chapter. Black Jack: I bought the first volume on IBooks, and I am very much enjoying it. This is easily my favorite Tezuka work, as it succeeds in telling many different types of stories. From melancholical tragedies to heartwarming fluff to horror tales, it excels at almost every chapter. Love it! Flowers of Evil: It's about sex, and it's not a porno. No seriously. I'm towards fhe end of Volume Four, and I am in love with this manga. To me, Shuzo Oshimi GETS how teenagers work. He captures the ennui of small town life, along with the sexual awakening of our leads. Sawa Nakamura may be one of the most fascinating female leads I've seen in a while. (Apparently, she's based on someone the author knew. 0_0) @Jose Cruz I politely disagree with your view of Hetalia. On the surface, it seems like nothing more than a racist diatribe. However, having seen almost the entire anime, I felt that the show was WAY too fluffy and cute to be mean-spirited. It didn't feel hateful (at least, most of the time), and almost all the cast was likable in their own unique ways. Also, I should mention that Japan himself is a walking laundry list of Asian stereotypes, so at the very least, Hidekaz Himaruya isn't playing favorites. From what I've heard, Himaruya got the idea for Hetalia while studying abroad in New York. Huh. Also, thanks for confirming that the Deadman Wonderland manga wasn't that much better than the bloody snoozefest of an adaptation. |
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Triches Jeu
Posts: 1 |
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Black Jack
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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@Akane,
Well. I didn't mean that Hetalia was racist but it's humor is based on national stereotypes and I found it a bit repetitive after reading a dozen chapters of it. Reading right now: Parasyte really great manga. Very compelling and entertaining story of a teenager and his alien parasyte. Has a very 80's Japanese feel (reminds me a bit of Bubblegum Crisis in that sense) and though the art is simple it fits the environment of the manga. Terra Formars very entertaining: I can't stop reading it. Though one problem it has is that it doesn't feel realitistic to expect the world of 2619 ad to be so similar to the early 21st century, also it doesn't appear that sending a dozen men to Mars would be a viable tactic against an army of cockroachmen. The art is very good as well. A Bride Story that's a manga with awesome art. Level of detail is amazing and fitting for the highly ornamented clothing central Asian tribes depicted in the story. Overall I am finding out that I am enjoying manga more than anime in the past year or so, I believe it is because manga allows you to control the pace of the reading while anime imposes on the viewer its own pacing. |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9832 Location: Virginia |
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Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn was released this week. Core Signal asked for my impression of the book. I'm not good at this sort of thing but I'll give it a try.
The manga is story by Shirow Masamune of GITS and art by Rikudou Koushi who did Excel Saga. Shirow reports that this was originally written as an original anime script that didn't get made. To begin with, I enjoyed it. The artwork is a bit more "cute" than would be normal for a Shirow work, but works with the story. The story has the full body prosthetics of GITS in an early version. However the tone of the book is the humor of his earlier Dominion series along with some of the over the top events of the later Orion. It is not as dense as most Shirow manga lacking the footnotes and involved technical descriptions. TLDR: If you like all of Shirow Masamune's works, then I recommend it. If you have only read or seen GITS you may be let down. |
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CoreSignal
 Posts: 727 Location: California, USA |
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^@Alan45, So it sounds like Pandora in the Crimson Shell has a mix of GITS-style body prosthetic stuff with some of the wackiness of Dominion and Orion. The artstyle isn't my preferred choice, but it's not a dealbreaker for me. I like both Dominion and Orion; I honestly think the latter is sadly overlooked in comparison to the rest of Shirow's work. Anyway, I'll give Pandora a shot, and thanks for your impressions.
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9832 Location: Virginia |
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I liked that the artist enhanced the idea that this was an early version of a full body prosthetic by showing visible joints, like a doll. The character is initially thought to be a robot.
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Jose Cruz
Posts: 1773 Location: South America |
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I have been reading Gunnm Last Order it had been quite a long time since I read a manga with such poignant atmosphere. I don't know why but I found the original manga as well to be the best piece of cyberpunk sci fi story I ever experienced. It's incredible how much emotion and atmosphere is packed in each page of this manga. How human the characters are even though their bodies are often not. And the art is conventional but really well done. I haven't read enough to give it a rating so far it has been the best read I had since Vinland Saga.
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nhyalfhena
Posts: 5 |
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Guyver
Because a long time ago I watched it on video until they stopped production (as far as I know). It suddenly came back to mind a couple of weeks ago and so I recently decided to look into the manga. Have not been disappointed so far 
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ayanami000
 Posts: 79 |
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{Please read the Over-quoting Guidelines. ~nobahn}
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zawa113
 Posts: 7357 |
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Been renting things and reading American comics lately, oddly enough. But let's begin, shall we?
One Piece 1-8 (so basically up through Sanji joining) OP is just talked about differently from the other big SJ series so I gave in and got the box set 1 (which has East Blue and Baroque Works arcs). And so far, it's good, and I see signs of greatness, but it's yet to get to the "godly" status everyone seems to agree upon. I wouldn't mind that starting in Baroque Works though as so far, it's been solid. But while the shonen fighting parts are ok, it's really the character interactions and how they immediately seemed to mesh into a bigger whole after joining the crew that I've best enjoyed. And that's what I'm hoping to see more of as it goes on. Oh yes, and ridiculous shonen villains, can't forget those. And having access to magical power fruits, I'm sure there will be a number of devil-fruit villains yet to come. But hell, even the non-fruit ones are nuts. They might not be posing vampires, but they're memorable all the same. So yeah, hoping it'll go from "pretty good" to "really really good" by the end of Baroque Works arc, which would then prompt me to buy more. Rented some things from the library too. First up, My Love Story 4, 5 are just as diabetes inducing adorkable as the first three volumes were and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Despite it giving me high blood sugar. Also got Twin Star Exorcists, which I found to be ungodly cliche and boring. Between "Exorcist who doesn't want to be an exorcist", "forced marriage due to prophecy with clashing personalities", "really secretly good at his shonen lead ability" and subpar fighting and other cliches, I really see no reason to continue this. Shame Viz brought over this and not Binbougami-ga! (which looks pretty funny based on some images I've seen from the anime) Tokyo Ghoul has sold me into checking another volume. Some of my fav manga bloggers were more "meh" about the first volume than I am, but I'm all about the tropes it uses and I quite enjoy them. I'd also like to settle in for more sweet shojo creamy goodness with So Cute It Hurts!, about cross-dressing twins who totally fall for someone at each other's schools in classic shojo cliches. But there's enough other interesting things going on in the background to keep me invested. Like the one girl that the boy twin falls for is deaf and he's trying to prevent that mean pop-star girl from making his sister's life hell when they switch back (he's having her do his history classes for a week because she likes history). So it's cute and fluffy, not as diabetes inducing as My Love Story, but few things are, but still a nice tasty morsel of shojo. Oh yes, and I've been reading American comics. I've decided to get into those apparently. Like I needed more things to spend money on. I should be investing in how to clone my cat, not comics. Letter 44 is part astronaut explorers, part politics, all involving an alien race building some... thing out in space. But I'm absolutely hooked on both parts (which are quite linked to one another) and eagerly await the next trade paperback (I could get issues, but since I'm so used to manga, that's just weird to me). I shall continue on with positive before I get to things that aren't quite working for me with Aama, which I suspect is a French comic or something? I mean, it credits a translator and won some French sounding comic award. It would also explain why Wikipedia is lost on it and it has no issues in America, only books. Of totally not enough pages, I want more now! But it starts with some slight amnesia framing device and a journal, explaining the "up to now" thing, but it actually works really well to ease me in. And then it's interesting scifi goodness. With a terraforming attempt of sorts using an evolution accelerator sort of things that is making things difficult on the planet in question (for humans at least). Still not sure why the robot needs to smoke, except to look cool I guess? Rat Queens is just a fun series. Doesn't take itself too seriously at all, that's for sure. It's a fantasy and magic type of series with lots of fighting and fun characters. And lots of shrooms (Betty likes to mix shrooms with drinks too, but she also stabs things in combat pretty awesomely). And we're starting to get into character backstory! I quickly learned that Image has a lot of their first trades listed for $10 (which makes them $5 during a sale for me at the local comic shop), so it's how I keep ending up buying some of these. Like Shutter, which follows a former journalist/explorer girl as she learns her family tree wasn't quite what it seemed and some of her "siblings" may want to kill her. It's exciting and fun to read, and vol 2 came out, but new ones aren't 50% off that first weekend so... next time.... And there are more conspiracies in Morning Glories. Wasn't sure how I'd do with a high school American comic (I'm used to them in manga by now though, to the point where I ignore it), but sinister academies full of suspicious death and characters? Yes please! The first volume was a bit more on establishing the main characters and some of the setting, but I can't wait to read more! And I got 38 issues for like $24 (60% off sale this weekend!) Also a one volume webcomic turned proper book by Archaia, Nimona was quite enjoyable. Fits nicely in one volume and I like the Adventure Time-esque art work a lot too. I don't want to spoil too much on how it turns out, but it starts off as a simple fun shapeshifter girl joining a villain and enjoying henchmen things, but it turns serious and it works well. Since Noelle Stevenson has another series from Boom called Lumberjanes, I definitely plan to check that one out too. And for the last of my positives for now, Wayward, which most reminds me of a manga of these. Part of it is a half-Irish, half-Japanese main moving to Japan and having a lot of spirits and mystic powers and whatnot. It's still setting up its world, but the wait until September for more will be tough. And now to ones that aren't working quite as well. First, Black Science is somewhere in the middle. I'm not sure if I'd like to try more or not, it's weird. Guess that's what libraries are for. I like the premise, but I'm finding it a bit hard to follow at times. The Sandman, despite its immense popularity and love, hasn't done much for me in the first 4 issues. I hear its start is comparatively rough, but I'm finding it really difficult to follow too. The third issue seemed to follow the titular character to get a bag of sand, and maybe being grounded more in the real world made that one chapter easier to follow, but then issue 4 went back to "wtf is going on again?" I had actually rented a more recent entry from the library and enjoyed it a lot more, so I had higher hopes going in too. East of West is pretty popular too, but I'm also findings its politics less than interesting and somewhat confusing. I'd think I would find apocalypse stories where they're trying to bring it about with the four horsemen more interesting, but I'm just finding it dull. Thanks to the library, I was able to get tpb 2 and 3, but couldn't muster my way through them. I have plenty more things for the future though! Effing sales and curiosity get me all the damn time... And the library is useful too. I've only read 2 issues of Fables, but I definitely see myself reading more asap. |
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