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Jason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - Happy Mania

Tangentially related: I remember a while back I read a suggestion that Scott Pilgrim might make a good gateway series for manga in America, especially with the movie coming out. While reading the series, I decided I couldn't agree, because Scott Pilgrim is very obviously not manga.

Scott Pilgrim characters have actual sex lives.

This column is TERRIBLE for my wallet; it keeps recommending series that sound intriguing and then I must buy them.

I really disliked this manga. As an older female manga reader, I should be right in the target audience but it failed to interest me. I found all the characters very unlikeable and so I lost all desire to read about them. It doesn't have anything to do with the sex (I read some hentai and yaoi so I usually enjoy it when it's included). But rather this: if you're going to go the mature and realistic route, then make the characters mature and realistic, not like idiotic spoiled children. I know quite a few adults act like that, but they're not people I find entertaining, just sad, and I don't want to read about more of them.

I had bought all the volumes in advance of reading the series, and was never more disappointed that I'd done so with a series.

Isn't it? We need to start a support group together or something: Manga-holics Anonymous! This column has already caused me to add several titles to my budget which already is hurting me. I need to save up money, not spend more!

Quark wrote:

Happy Mania! For some reason, I never see anyone mention this manga ever. I still have the first volume, but unfortunately I read it back when I was in my big prude stage, and didn't appreciate how funny it really was. Now that I've outgrown that stage of my life, and can actually handle it when characters have (oh no!) sex, I'd love to go back and collect them all.

When I was younger I also couldn't get into stories where the characters have sex, no matter how good the story was in other ways. I think many people prefer to read stories where the main characters don't have more sexual experience than they themselves do. And also, apart from the psychological aspect, the art of Happy Mania does get pretty explicit.

Dude, midnightcast, where do you get off lumping all josei and seinen into one category of depression and madness? Sure, lots of them are downer series, but at lest in some the heroes save the world with the help of rock and roll + giant robot!! (kudos to anyone who knows what I'm talking about) Seriously, there are tons of series for adults that don't wallow in real-life misery yet still are darker and more developed than the two-dimensional characterization and black-and-white moralism of an average teen series (obviously there are exceptions to the teen rule, of course).

If this is a typical example of the genre I wouldn't buy it either. It's not because of the sex as Quark mentioned in his post. It's the self distructive behavior.

Thanks to this column, I now have volumes 1 of Monster Collection and Happy Mania heading my way. My credit card hates you, while the part of me that has zero willpower is completely excited about this.

I bought all of Monster Collection at AX (5 books for $20!! WOO) and I just finished it a day ago. SO GOOD. I'm so happy I knew about it thanks to Jason. It's too bad it was so obscure, the manga would have made a fantastic late 90s fantasy OAV in the vein of "Fam & Irie" The world needs more from Sei Itoh.

I don't have a lot of experience with josei type stuff.. judging from some of the more negative comments here, I may also have a problem with finding the characters too annoying, but I'd like to give it a chance. The only shojo I've really gotten into in my limited manga past are ones with a supernatural bent (Fruits Basket, PSME), so I am curious to also hear about really good realistic stories as well.