Forum - View topicWhat are you reading right now? Why?
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Kuhaku
Posts: 3 |
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I am currently addicted too "Piano No Mori" or "Piano of the Forest"
Its about 2 boys one that's a rich boy that had piano lessons all his life and a poor boy that lives on the "edge of the forest" ( where all the scum is hanging around etc etc). Kai started playing the abandoned piano in the forest when he was three. Its a tale about those two boys and their own path. i love it its not something all too heavy and its about the piano world. It can be a real breather when you read something heavy or depressing 
I really recommend it ! |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7357 |
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Read the first volume of Slam Dunk because I did enjoy Real a lot, and yeah, I enjoyed this volume too and want more! It seems a lot more fun than Real, which can be rather serious, but I seem to enjoy sports manga more when the main character starts off not giving a damn. Of course in Real, sports is hardly the issue at hand. This seems that it'll be more sporty. But I think I've now identified my problem with Cross Game and that is that the characters cared too damn much about a sport I don't give a damn about, here, the dude doesn't even know he's supposed to dribble the ball and he starts playing to impress a girl. That, I can get behind.
Ok, so random question, but I've read 6 vols of Vagabond and I just can't seem to get into it. I know nothing of the thing it's based on so I can't go from that, but would anyone say it improves anytime soon or should I already be into it? |
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9835 Location: Virginia |
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@classicalzawa
I can't recommend Vagabond. I started reading it as it initially came out from Viz. Like you I got several volumes into it and gave it up. I eventually decided that I couldn't stand the main character. The casual pointless cruelty bothered me. While likely consistent with the times it got to be a bit much. The final straw was when the "hero" enters a compound and when challenged by the guard he casually cuts off both of the guy's hands. Just a friendly fight. I should note that this is a minority opinion. A number of others think it is great. |
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TsunaReborn!
 Posts: 4713 Location: Cheltenham UK |
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Vagabond is in my top four series of all time so I would highly commend it. I don't really understand much of the period it's set in but I really enjoy it for being about a great swordsman wanting to improve his craft and become one of the greats. It does become grittier and the characters gain more substance but the pacing doesn't really change too much.
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zawa113
Posts: 7357 |
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I don't necessarily dislike pointless violence, but I want that to kind of be the point, like Battle Royale, which was over the top with it all the time and made it damn obvious from the start. I think I recall that guard fight in Vagabond, or something like it, that kind of is a "what the hell, hero?" moment.
Yeah, I know most people like it, but I've read 6 vols, I can't seem to get into it... |
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Alan45
Village Elder Posts: 9835 Location: Virginia |
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@classicalzawa
I can deal with some violence but I tend to be picky about what I read or watch. I find it a bit hard to articulate what I find acceptable or not. Black Lagoon doesn't bother me. Battle Royale I won't touch in any format. If Vagabond doesn't speak to you drop it. Life is too short to be reading something just because others like it. |
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Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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Recently I came upon the rape scene in Please Save My Earth, the nature of which the story never leaves in doubt. I found it pretty unpleasant, but more for Mokuren's reaction, which did not show much I the way of appropriate or understandable psychological response. Subsequent mention of it certainly casts it as a bad thing, but I really would have been more comfortable if more care and attention had been paid to the fact that what spoiler[Shion] did was way not okay as well as to how it was probably really, really not a great experience for Mokuren. It felt both like an important overlooked, or at least underused. narrative thread and pretty creepy.
Contrastingly, I have really been enjoying the 1/4 columns scattered within the volumes. Saki Hiwatari is sometimes thoughtful and interesting, other times she's just a wonderful cheerful dork. I'm a sucker for that. (Sometimes my favorite part of A Bride's Story volumes are the "Hello, I'm Mori," omake)
Some people very worth paying attention to have been advocating for it. In some of the recent volumes, the editor's notes for Please Save My Earth have been urging me to read it too. I don't commit to series that long too often, but I suppose that I should put it on the list. The protagonist sounds like a good representation of the kind of character whom I'm curious to see more of. |
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zawa113
Posts: 7357 |
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^Yeah, yeah... that rape scene... not the strong moment in the series. Well as you said, Mokuren's reaction specifically, not the strong moment in the series... At least spoiler[Alice] was disgusted? But it kind of reminds me of Wing of Honneamise where I can't not recommend it just because it has that scene, which is just as jarring and god-awful. I'm guessing in the case of PSME, apparently being raped is some weird sexual fantasy for some people, maybe it was calling to that? But yeah, of the big three OOP Viz shojo monstrosities, PSME definitely handles sex and rape the worst. Banana Fish makes it very clear that it's a bad thing (it seems half the bad guys rape underage boys), but it actually traumatizes them and is never treated as a good thing. For Basara, it's consensual, not rape, but spoiler[the two mains find out like the day after they had sex that they're each other's arch enemies and never knew and then they feel great regret].
I adored Saki Hiwatari's 1/4 columns. I don't typically give a damn about quarter columns, but when she spends them talking about Dragon Quest, I am sold! Since Tower of the Future came later (during the 90s), more classic RPGs! She is always talking about RPGs, I love her! Isn't From Far Away 14 vols and PSME 21? What length do you usually go for? |
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Tamaria
 Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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In Tower of the Future her 1/4 columns serve as a timeline for mid to late nineties JRPGs. First is Final Fantasy VI (and some V). Then it's time for some Torneko and before long she spends what seems like half of her columns being a happy little Suikoden fangirl. It's kinda amazing. Back in those days I thought I was the weird one for liking games like that and years later I start reading shojo manga and find out many of them are into Dragon Quest and other RPG's 
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Surrender Artist
Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I just read the volumes, viz. 15 and 16, about Mokuren's past and this is where it's gotten really good. I liked the series to this point, but seeing Mokuren have a real, distinct perspective with some fire and sting in her improved my estimation and appreciation of the character and interest in the story a great deal. I think I can understand wanting to keep her as a bland, unknowable lovely object for this long, but I think that the character was left starved for substance for too long. It was quite clever repeating some scenes from Shion's story from Mokuren's perspective. Her interest in Shion is made more understandable and Shion is much more sympathetic. He's still a dick, but a smaller one.
I spent a while after it not entirely absorbing the page I was reading because I kept thinking, "whoa, wait, shouldn't we talk about this more?" Being raped is evidently among the commonest sexual fantasies of women and from the perspective of the person fantasizing, it is perhaps comprehensible, but from an outside perspective, it's awful. That kind of thing is pretty deeply uncomfortable and unappealing to me. I also consider the execution a poor writing chioce, although if the subject is treated effectively from Mokuren's perspective later on, my irritation might become milder, but for the most part, the bell is rung. By fitting coincidence, I recall that in one of the quarter columns in an early volume, Saki Hiwatari gushed over Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honnêamise while singing the praises of Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water. The rape scene there, which I didn't appreciate fully when I first saw it at the age of thirteen or so, had a similar effect on me of discomfort, bafflement and frustration over the reactions. It doesn't quite deter me from recommending the film, but I always mention it as a significant caveat
This will be an unusual experience for me as I never played those games, but I am curious. She's just started writing about them in the last volume or two (sixteen, I believe). I was raised so strongly associating video games with boys that this is interesting to me. I also didn't have the experience because I've never owned any game consoles and those I know who did had different tastes in games. I have experience with western computer role-playing games, most notably my beloved Baldur's Gate, but the Japanese ones are largely outside of my realm. The long series on dieting was fascinating, if a little uneasy. There seems to be some cognitive dissonance between her attempts to encourage people to be comfortable with their bodies in one series of columns, but seems to tacitly, if a little warily, embrace it in another. I can't hold this against her; in fact I find it, especially from a personal perspective, very understandable. And even though I don't have cats or want one, I have gotten all kinds of doofy smiles from reading her cat columns. Some cat owners just seem so cheerful.
Why, yes, it is! From the company you had mentioned it in, I had assumed without looking that it was longer. Fourteen volumes is still more than my usual. I tend to err toward series of ten or fewer volumes, continuing series notwithstanding, which is why Vertical usually serves me so well. I'm reading Please Save My Earth in part because I happened upon a great opportunity to buy an [almost] complete set. Nevertheless, fourteen volumes isn't terribly far outside of my usual length and it doesn't seem too difficult to procure. Given that our manga compatibility is 73.2% on MAL, perhaps I shall trust you and put it on my list. As far as anime is concerned, however, you might as well be a mysterious alien from the outer solar system. I shall henceforth believe that Classicalzawa is in fact a mysterious four million year old alien monolith of inscrutable purpose that is inexplicably way into Japanese comics. Now I need somebody to draw a yaoi version of 2001: A Space odyssee that gives HAL a cute bishie with big eyes for an avatar. Chotto. Shimasen. Dave-kun… |
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zawa113
Posts: 7357 |
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^Hold it, you're on MAL? Are we already friends on MAL? If not, friend me!
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crosswithyou
 Posts: 2892 Location: California |
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I'm in the middle of reading the latest Shinrei Tantei Yakumo novel but put that on pause yesterday when I bought Kuroshitsuji vol.19.
OMG, Kuroshitsuji... So. Friggin'. GOOD. I nearly finished reading it on my train ride home. Can't wait for the next volume but it won't be coming out 'til winter. =( It would be really nice if they animated the entire manga. Also picked up Noragami Shuuishuu vol.1 and Durarara!! Koukinzoku Hen vol.2. |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4828 |
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Reading Nisekoi and getting sick of looking at Onodera's dopey face along with what is unquestionably the worst hair style that has ever been drawn.......
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Surrender Artist
Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I finished reading Please Save My Earth last Friday and liked it as I had expected. The best part to me was the contrast introduced in the second half when it showed Mokuren's part in the story from her perspective, which was much spicier and livelier, thus less idealized, than others had seen. I wish we had seen more of that reflected in Alice. I even found her love for Shion, whom I thought was made a compellingly complex and internally conflicted character, rather convincing. That said, the portrayal of his rape of Mokuren and her reaction never sat properly with me and the symbolism of her Kiche invoked hints of a 'purity' theme, which I'm averse to.
The series seem to wobble some in the middle volumes as it was trying to find its course. This is a common symptom of long stories and probably exacerbated by Please Save My Earth so greatly overgrowing the length originally imagined by the mangaka for it. Some of the yakuza parts confused me at times and felt a little awkward. I liked the ending; it could be construed as anticlimactic, but fit the emotional arc of the story well and a more traditional CLIMAX would have been an odd fit. The epilogue by and large satisfied me; I'm fond of slightly elegiac finales that give us some idea of what happened to everybody after the conclusion of the story, especially when they have good ties back to the whole length and breadth of the story. Tonight I read volume of Ôoku: The Inner Chambers and am struck by how different this feels from most of what I read. It's much denser, demanding and more austere, but when I can muster the focus and attention, that makes it all the more bracing an experience. I think that clear glimmers of a conclusion are showing, but I expect that it will not hurry to an ending. I loved the portrayal of spoiler[Gennai Hiraga as a saucy, roguish woman who passes as a man.] That sort of character did, however, feel slightly out of place, but the series has been so ardently consistent that this was refreshing. In about as severe a reversing of course as could be imagined, after that I read Moyoco Anno's Insufficient Direction. It's an exceptionally goofy recounting of representative incidents from the married life of Oh, I read volumes ten, eleven and twelve of Attack on Titan last night. I continue to enjoy it quite a lot, especially its impressive female characters, although I'm not quite sure that I grasp just what happened and why it did by the end of the twelfth volume. I think that I might be more enthusiastic about manga than anime at the moment. Perhaps I should procure some more sooner than intended...
Well, as you asked so enthusiastically, done. Edit: Corrected Moyoco Anno's name from Myocco. Why can I never spell it rightly? Last edited by Surrender Artist on Wed Jul 02, 2014 7:53 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Aylinn
 Posts: 1684 |
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I have read the newest chapter of Pandora Hearts. Very good, I guessed that The Queen of Hearts is spoiler[Miranda Brama.] The scene with Jack was grimly funny with his “Hey Miranda, here you have defenseless Glen, you can now cut off his head like you wanted.”
 I also like the moment when small Vincent says the same thing to Ada at the same time as big Vincent says it in another place. And poor Echo, it seems she is losing to Zwei.
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