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RIGHT TURN ONLY!! - Mage in the Shell


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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:08 am Reply with quote
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when this feels more like a computer science dissertation in comic-book form instead of, y'know, an actual comic.


Oh, hell, yes. Shirow loves the techno-babble. That's why Dominion's the only series I remotely liked from him, since it relies more on his strengths in writing. The manga are better, though. But I'm surprised you didn't mention the deleted "cyber-yuri" scene. Laughing
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marie-antoinette



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 4136
Location: Ottawa, Canada
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:18 am Reply with quote
I definitely do need to actually look into Monster one of these days. But, as always, there are just so many titles on my list, plus of course the ones I'm already following and far behind on.

So many mangas, not enough time/money Sad
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Charred Knight



Joined: 29 Sep 2008
Posts: 3085
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 1:00 am Reply with quote
About Negima, personally I don't care that frankly it's not unique in anything other than the sheer number of stuff he throws in. The reason is simple, someone is eventually going to copy the original things losing their originality.

The best case of this is One Piece, which has always struggled in America simply because Naruto, and pretty much every other shonen jump story has stolen the "I am going to be the best ____" so One Piece has lost any originality it has. The result is that One Piece isn't even selling better than Rosario + Vampire.
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pachy_boy



Joined: 09 Mar 2006
Posts: 1323
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 7:08 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Shirow Masamune: too smart for his own good? There are moments—no, not moments, more like whole scenes—when this feels more like a computer science dissertation in comic-book form instead of, y'know, an actual comic. It's as if Shirow is so determined to show off the results of his high-level research and deep philosophy that he forgot the important part: telling the story.


Yeah. It's for that reason I couldn't get into Orion, although it looked cool when I flipped the pages of it at the bookstore, and it's for that reason I'm not even going to check out the original Appleseed manga. But I'm glad that I have Ghost in the Shell. If this is once again the censored version as I've heard, then I'm all the more glad I got the Dark Horse edition.

Here's hoping the Satoshi Kon manga gets picked up here, and the praise for Monster is well-deserved since I'm currently watching the series on SyFy.
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fuuma_monou



Joined: 26 Dec 2005
Posts: 1816
Location: Quezon City, Philippines
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 7:56 am Reply with quote
I actually special-ordered the bilingual edition of GITS a few years ago, but sold it when I saw how awful the lettering was. Seemed to be almost the same translation as the Studio Proteus version (didn't get to do a side by side comparison). The footnote overload really gets in the way whatever version you get.
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 10:10 am Reply with quote
marie-antoinette wrote:
I definitely do need to actually look into Monster one of these days. But, as always, there are just so many titles on my list, plus of course the ones I'm already following and far behind on.

So many mangas, not enough time/money Sad


If it's purely a matter of money, always make sure to check out your local library. I do most of my manga reading that way. You can always request for them to purchase it, or see if you can loan it from any other libraries they might be connected to. Libraries can be awesome that way.

Mostly, though, just read Monster. or anything by Urasawa. Seriously.
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hakojo



Joined: 18 Sep 2009
Posts: 208
Location: NE Ohio.
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 11:26 am Reply with quote
pachy_boy wrote:

Yeah. It's for that reason I couldn't get into Orion, although it looked cool when I flipped the pages of it at the bookstore, and it's for that reason I'm not even going to check out the original Appleseed manga.


You should give Appleseed a shot. The philosophical stuff is kept to a bare minimum - it's mostly plot and police action, with the occasional bleak moment of paranoid rambling on the part of the heroine.

Incidentally, I was disappointed to hear that they re-censored Ghost in the Shell for the new release. I guess I'll have to go find one of the old Dark Horse copies now...
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einhorn303



Joined: 20 Nov 2006
Posts: 1180
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:03 pm Reply with quote
Seriously, how can you review a manga without mentioning its censorship issues? That's bad journalism.
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ultimafullmetal



Joined: 09 Oct 2008
Posts: 70
Location: Fredericksburg, Ohio
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 1:41 pm Reply with quote
vashfanatic wrote:
marie-antoinette wrote:
I definitely do need to actually look into Monster one of these days. But, as always, there are just so many titles on my list, plus of course the ones I'm already following and far behind on.

So many mangas, not enough time/money Sad


If it's purely a matter of money, always make sure to check out your local library. I do most of my manga reading that way. You can always request for them to purchase it, or see if you can loan it from any other libraries they might be connected to. Libraries can be awesome that way.

Mostly, though, just read Monster. or anything by Urasawa. Seriously.

This is how i read most of my manga and watch most of my anime. My library is linked with others in northeast Ohio and you can order things from other libraries and pick them up at the one closest to you. It's really quite amazing.
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vashfanatic



Joined: 16 Jun 2005
Posts: 3489
Location: Back stateside
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 3:32 pm Reply with quote
ultimafullmetal wrote:
vashfanatic wrote:
marie-antoinette wrote:
I definitely do need to actually look into Monster one of these days. But, as always, there are just so many titles on my list, plus of course the ones I'm already following and far behind on.

So many mangas, not enough time/money Sad


If it's purely a matter of money, always make sure to check out your local library. I do most of my manga reading that way. You can always request for them to purchase it, or see if you can loan it from any other libraries they might be connected to. Libraries can be awesome that way.

Mostly, though, just read Monster. or anything by Urasawa. Seriously.

This is how i read most of my manga and watch most of my anime. My library is linked with others in northeast Ohio and you can order things from other libraries and pick them up at the one closest to you. It's really quite amazing.


When I was living in Iowa, I read Basara, with the copies ordered from a library in Arizona that had the whole collection. It really is amazing! You're paying taxes for your library, the books belong to you, so you really ought to make use of its services.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 3:46 pm Reply with quote
pachy: Appleseed's got the opposite problem, in that it's not deep enough, 'cus it wants to be that 80s cop show, but it's trapped by Shirow's inability to move a story forward, which is why that last anime movie blew, too. Plus, he suddenly decides to bring that story back into the "real world", rather than keep it post-apocalyptic. Guy can't make up his mind. Mad
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Sophisticat



Joined: 29 Oct 2008
Posts: 165
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 5:44 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Then again, it's not like Shirow was all that great as a storyteller in the first place;


Okay, this just got a big "wtf?" from me, which was just amplified by the nonsense that preceded it. If it were not for Shirow's mastery of storytelling, we would not have masterpieces out of GitS or Appleseed.

That's not to say he's without fault in some instances, just that the review of the negatives are completely off-base. Human/machine interaction on the level of consciousness is complex. Shirow's mastery is being able to present his visionary philosophy in relatively simple terms (GitS is really more cut and dry than given credit for). You'd think that an artist would be praised for putting in detail in his drawings, rather than admonished for it as one of the pleasures of reading GitS is precisely this amount of detail in both story and drawings, so I don't see how anyone could complain about it. There are instances where the concepts and philosophy are more convoluted than they should be, but the Puppeteer arc is hardly one of them.

I just have to conclude that most, if not all, of the "negatives" in the review are bullshit. There's a point where objective evaluation becomes opinion, not that I'd expect ANN to make the distinction.
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GATSU



Joined: 03 Jan 2002
Posts: 15279
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 8:24 pm Reply with quote
Sophisticat: We'd appreciate the detail if it had anything to do with the story, and not just the set-up.
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Youkai Warrior



Joined: 07 Aug 2008
Posts: 505
Location: Sarayashiki
PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 8:35 pm Reply with quote
marie-antoinette wrote:
I definitely do need to actually look into Monster one of these days. But, as always, there are just so many titles on my list, plus of course the ones I'm already following and far behind on.

So many mangas, not enough time/money Sad


The library is a good way to check out manga, and anime if they have any. I have a similiar problem, however, I found that much of the anime/manga on my list weren't worth my time or money. If I were you, I'd evaluate manga and anime titles. There could be some series on your list that really aren't that interesting after all. That's where the library comes in. You can check out a manga that is on your list to see if you like it or not, and if you don't, you didn't spend any money on buying a title you didn't like, yet read it in a legal way. And if you do, fork over the cash for the series. Razz Hopefully your library has manga, mine doesn't have that much at all. Rolling Eyes

Quote:
About Negima, personally I don't care that frankly it's not unique in anything other than the sheer number of stuff he throws in. The reason is simple, someone is eventually going to copy the original things losing their originality.

The best case of this is One Piece, which has always struggled in America simply because Naruto, and pretty much every other shonen jump story has stolen the "I am going to be the best ____" so One Piece has lost any originality it has. The result is that One Piece isn't even selling better than Rosario + Vampire.


It's a shame, cause I really like One Piece, and even though it is typical shonen, the characters and the humor, (not to mention the theme of pirates) set it apart from Naruto and other Shonen Jump stories. To me, it's sad that Rosario + Vampire is selling better than One Piece. I think Rosario + Vampire sucks, I think One Piece is better. Please note I am saying "to me" and "I think", so nobody criticize me for pushing my opinions on others, because I'm not. I'm saying what I think. Not what I think everyone should think.
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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 3:44 am Reply with quote
Rosario + Vampire is selling mainly because of perfect timing, right in the middle of this whole Twilight romantic-vampire craze. I'd bet that Karin/Chibi Vampire is also riding on the coattails of that too.

As for the Monster manga, it annoys me. Know why? It's out of print. I can't find a new copy of Volume 1 anywhere. Was it really that bad a seller? It'd be hard to tell people to go pick up a copy of Monster when Viz has stopped printing it and you can only get it used. (I've had some...negative experiences with used books. And the postal service when it comes to purchasing anything online.)
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