Forum - View topicWhat are you reading right now? Why?
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Tenbyakugon
Posts: 789 Location: Ohio, United States |
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I picked up volume one of Yu Kinutani's adaptation of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex the other day. It'll suffice to say that I will be buying volume two. (And I believe I read that volume three came out recently too?)
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ReAnimate
Posts: 16 |
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Gintama volume 15.
I really like Gintama, it has me bursting into laughter from time to time. Such a shame ViZ dropped it....I will get up to volume 23 though. |
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OldCharlieStoletheHandle
Posts: 1288 Location: Mastic Beach, NY |
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It's been a while since I posted here and I'm really behind on my reading, but I did read a couple of manga recently that I really enjoyed.
I read Apollo's Song by Osamu Tezuka while waiting for my car to be serviced (had time to read it all and the newspaper and then some...). I found it an entertaining read, although the contrast of Tezuka's often goofy-looking characters with a story line that mostly tries to be very serious took a bit of getting used to. The story of a young man cursed to go through eternity finding love only to have it destroyed again and again is apparently meant to be some sort of commentary on the cycle of birth and death, though I'm not sure it's really clear what this is all supposed to mean. I've been collecting most of the Tezuka manga that Vertical has released but haven't gotten around to reading as much of it as I would like. Their releases are very high quality and this book (I got the single-volume version) is no exception. I rated this manga as "very good". The other day while waiting in the hospital waiting room for my cardiac catheterization I read volume one of Jiro Taniguchi's A Distant Neighborhood, then I read volume 2 yesterday (2 volumes total). Taniguchi is one of my favorite manga artists and here he shows he's also no slouch as a writer. The plot: A 48-year-old businessman gets drunk one night on a business trip; the next day, still hung over, he boards the wrong train and ends up in the town he grew up in. Having some time to kill before the next train back he first goes to see the place he lived then goes to his mother's grave. Suddenly, he is transported back in time to when he was 14 years old, several months before the day his father abandoned his family. Although he is now 14, he retains his memories, which leads him to try to discover why his father left and whether there is any way he can stop this from happening. While the story seems a bit predictable at times it also feels very real. I highly recommend this manga to anyone who is looking for something different manga-wise. I rated this manga as "excellent". |
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RAmmsoldat
Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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Its on my list as id heard good things about it and the plot sounded very interesting. |
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zawa113
Posts: 7357 |
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Just got in and read vol 3 of Wandering Son. Despite these suckers costing $20 a piece, I'm actually up to date. Seems I tend to buy hardcovers and omnibuses closer to their release dates for some reason. Also, I thought the cover would be pink, but that spine is solid red.
Anyway, more goodness! I think the characters have become easier to distinguish in the art department, the mangaka admits problems with this, thus using the tried and true trick of "different looking hair", but she has overall improved. I really wish this manga had existed when I was younger (and had been published in English too obviously) as it's basically more of gender identity confusion treated with respect. But it's not just a good manga because it takes something seriously that most manga don't (though it is a big part of it), but that the two mains are both very interesting and the world around them isn't exactly ready to accept them. I do highly recommend this manga, I just wish the release schedule wasn't one volume every 7ish months! Though the next manga Fantagraphics is going to publish is Heart of Thomas, I've already got that on pre-order (but it's gotten delayed from August to at least October! Dammit!) Also, upon looking online, seems the mangaka did Aoi Hana (not to be confused with AnoHana), which TRSI announced getting the anime of. I might have to get that actually. *edit Almost forgot that I saw the greatest translation note ever. For Calpis, the translation note was simply "google it". I've had Calpis before (sold as Calpico in the US), it's...weird, but not bad |
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RAmmsoldat
Posts: 1261 Location: North wales coast |
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Dorohedoro volume 3 showed up today so i just sat down and read through it and it was just as awesome as the first 3 volumes. I decided there and then I couldnt wait for the rest so I've used the profits from a game i just sold to order volumes 4,5 & 6. This manga has fast become one of my favorites.
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Buster Blader 126
Posts: 1206 Location: Mississauga, Ontario, Canada |
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You covered exactly why I hadn't already ordered it from Amazon.com. My location also gives it away. And now I'm regretting it, because the price for a new copy jumped by $9. Seriously, what the hell? I don't know if I should chance it on a used copy. ~ Meanwhile, I'm still slogging through Excel Saga - I'm now going through Vol. 4-6 at a pace I wish was faster. My insistence on reading all the notes supplied by Carl Horn doesn't help (anybody who knows him or is familiar with his work knows what I mean). I am starting to enjoy it a little more though, with some of the new characters being introduced. In-between those volumes, I've read Pokemon Adventures Vol. 13 and the first volume of Initial D. The former is still a blast considering the story developments going on, while I did not expect to enjoy the latter so much, despite prior knowledge of the first several chapters. |
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OldCharlieStoletheHandle
Posts: 1288 Location: Mastic Beach, NY |
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I just finished reading The Book of Human Insects by Osamu Tezuka. It's a pretty engrossing tale of a mysterious woman who achieves great success in different careers by getting close to successful people and mimicing them. It would be hard to say more without giving spoilers, but this is something I would definitely recommend for anyone looking for a really mature work. The main problem I had with it is that it kind of has a non-ending, but still this is definitely worth picking up (available as a single hardcover volume from Vertical). I rated this as Very Good.
I'm close to finishing Lychee Light Club, another single-volume release from Vertical. The blurbs want to compare this to the novel Lord of the Flies but I don't think that is a good comparison. LotF concerned a group of normal schoolboys who become savages after being marooned on an island. The kids in LLC are messed up from the get-go. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be some sort of disturbing commentary on otakudom (think of the wackos in the live-action portions of Otaku no Video only far creepier) or what. It actually reminds me more of the true story of the "thrill killers" Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold; at times there are also echoes of what I've read in history books about the early days of the Nazi party. It's extremely graphic, including one scene (so far) of underage boys spoiler[fellating each other (though this is definitely not done for purposes of tittilation, some prudish types might see this as kiddie porn)]. I'll have to see how it ends before deciding what to rate it. |
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Takokujin
Posts: 266 |
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I'm on the Vol. 4 of Twin Spica.
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st_owly
Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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Have you cried yet? |
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zawa113
Posts: 7357 |
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^ I could've sworn that said vol 3 yesterday....
Anyway, I haven't posted for a while, thus I am going to start my report of all the fun stuff I got at Otakon, yay! I'm mostly starting with the shorter series, just fyi. I went with Sakuran first, I mean, it is a Vertical book. Sadly, the book decided to get the spine bend, it's my first freakin' time reading it! Bah! In another thread, Vertical_Ed said it's their first time using this printer so...hopefully it's just that? Curious if anyone else got spine bend or if I'm just unlucky these days. Anyway, I was rather wanting more of this. I rather liked the main, and we basically see her go from a brothel maid to a Oiran, or top whore. So it's basically a character study, but a really solid one. Artwise, it's overall good, but sometimes I had trouble telling who was talking or some of the decorative hookers apart. But for anyone looking for a good character study, I do heartily recommend this. Except my spine is already bent! HOW?! But having all those color pages in it is quite nice, and it's not just a few in the beginning, like 5 chapters start off with 4 color pages and they are all there! Not printed on glossy paper, but it also makes them not stick out like a sore thumb when viewing from the side, so that's good. As for book size, it's a typical Vertical smallish book, so it's a bit smaller than a normal Viz book. It's almost 300 pages on the plus side, so they did a very nice release. And unlike Viz's translation of Ooku, this is perfectly readable and not in Fakespeare! I do approve of that. And here we have Wild @ Heart, complete in one omnibus. And really, I don't feel like there's much to say about it. It's like the most perfectly stereotypical shojo ever. This girl's dad finds a wild child on some island and she gradually falls for him. There's some hijinks, then his family finds him, and it ends just sooooo predictably. I mean, it was enjoyable in its own way, but having read 6 volumes of Arisa and 2 volumes of Kitchen Princess, I know Natsumi Ando is capable of soooo much more. I do think it would make a perfect shojo complete in one gift for a 10 year old though, and I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way, I could see it being a good gateway drug sort of thing. There's also a couple of short stories, I kinda wish one of them had gotten a full series instead. I dunno, there's just not much to talk about here, it's incredibly middle of the road. There's nothing special, but there's nothing bad either. It's just your standard fluff shojo. Glad I only paid $4 for it, honestly. Does Usamaru Furuya get a hard on for drawing? I am 100% serious, it's the only possible way to describe the labor of love that the artwork in Genkaku Picasso is. I mean, this is the third work I've read by the guy, and this one by far has the best artwork. See, half of the chapters take place inside a picture that our main character (nicknamed Picasso, though he prefers DaVinci) has drawn, and it has a distinct...filter (or what would be a filter for an anime) compared to the not pictures, and it's just soooo cool! But ok, I don't usually rave about the art in manga this much, but it really is an integral part, considering that the story is about a kid who almost dies and is only able to stay alive by drawing pictures of the problems in people's hearts then diving into them (just his soul, mind you) and fixing the problems from there. But the pictures, it's like they contain an entire world! Like when you painting jumped in Mario 64. But slowly, his helping people also earns him friends around him, so the cast does overall build upon each successive picture. It's a rather hard series to describe, it can be formulaic (see evil, draw it, jump in), but it's just so damn unique and enjoyable that I kinda don't care. I found the ending a bit predictable, but all the others to have nice twists. It's a short 3 volume series, so I would suggest getting it now. 4 out of 5 |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 2606 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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It's like Beast Master-Lite. I've just finished Taiyo Made 3M or "Les geants de mon coeur" as it was called in the language I read it in (French - a souvenir of Japan Expo). It's a cute little trilogy by Takako Shigematsu, the author of Tenshi Ja Nai and Ultimate Venus about Taiyo, a high school girl whose brother has died in a car accident. (Seriously, car accidents and mysterious wasting illnesses must be the leading causes of death in Japan.) He was a great basketball player and so in his memory, and because her own injury in the accident has made it impossible for her to run track anymore, she decides to manage the school's basketball team. Naturally she finds herself torn between brooding Mizuto (light hair) and hyperactive Hinoki (dark hair), but it has some nice touches and unexpected twists. It probably won't get an English release any time soon, and I'm frankly surprised that Taifu put out a French edition, but it was a fun read an totally worth the 3-for-2 deal Taifu had going on. Now I'm indulging in some YA garbage, uh, light reading with the end of Jillian Larkin's Flapper trilogy, Diva. If you like melodrama that isn't overblown, the 1920s, and something that practically reads itself, this is a great series. It's like candy for your brain. |
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zawa113
Posts: 7357 |
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Yeah, it really is. It's been a while since I've read Beast Master, but yeah, Beast Master is easily superior. |
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Sailor S
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I'm chugging along through Monster. I think I finished volume 12 last night, and depending on how I feel I might go through another volume tonight. I'm maintaining an interest in where it's gonna go, but I'm partially saddened because I like one of the characters here spoiler[and every time some character beside Tenma gets involved, they die]. I hope that won't be the case this time, but we'll see.
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mooshiloop
Posts: 2 |
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I'm reading most of the popular ones
like: Naruto, all of Aikawa Saki's shoujo works, and earlier just finished reading 16 Life, One Piece, Full Metal Alchemist, Sket dance, Death Note, REAL, SLAM DUNK, Otomen and VAGABOND Such different art styles in each but i love it! |
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