Forum - View topicWhat are you reading right now? Why?
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crosswithyou
 Posts: 2892 Location: California |
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Read it a few days ago, but Kuroshitsuji vol.17 was great. Love Sebastian. *___* There's an ad for the live-action movie on the obi. Just... no. >__< Saw the trailer in theaters too and double no.
Currently on the 7th vol. of the Fushigi Yuugi double-volumes. |
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Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I just finished Gunsmith Cats, including Gunsmith Cats Burst, and Jormungand. Gunsmith Cats was terrifically entertaining, although Gunsmith Cats Burst wasn’t as strong as the main series. Jormungand was often entertaining, but closed as a disappointment, all the more so because I really wanted to like it.
Kenichi Sonoda is great at providing excitement and fun. Gunsmith Cats was perhaps the most consistently energetic, engaging and entertaining things that I’ve ever read. It’s not a masterwork of pathos and drama, but the mangaka put effort into creating a likable, even interesting cast. I was often surprised by how long any given story was when I looked back on how many pages it had occupied, because they were so lively and breathless that I never lost interest enough to notice the time. He even made car chases and a long street race that gripped my attention. That’s noteworthy because I don’t usually care much for that sort of thing. I liked Rally Vincent oodles. She was awesomely badass and cool, but never overbearing or ostentatious. She had a graceful touch of sweetness that was humanizing, but never debasing. (Sonoda has purportedly said that she’s a celibate lesbian, but I prefer to think that he inadvertently created a character who’s perhaps a homoromantic asexual) It helps that she was buttressed by an excellent supporting cast. Kenichi Sonoda constructed that curious, informally, but strongly familial dynamic that is so effective in manga and anime out of Minnie May, Misty, Becky, Ken and even Bean Bandit. Bean was especially interesting. He had a veil of mystery about his origins and what he really thinks, but was utterly cool at the same time. I don’t think that ‘honorable’ is quite the right word, but he had a definite core that controlled his actions, which is much better than if he were just some ruthless, badass nihilist. It’s all well drawn too. The action scenes were energetic and often more visually intelligible than a lot of manga, which I must admit I often have trouble following. He’s pretty good at making his characters expressive. Their emotions tended to be straightforward and well shown by facial expressions and body language. There’s plenty of salacious nudity, but it’s kept within the bounds of idealization and usually well enough settled in context that it’s actually sexy rather than distracting. I could tell that this was a work from a different era. The bodies were drawn differently than I think they would have been in a contemporary work. While there are ample curves, there’s a sort of ‘narrow’ quality that applied even to the hulking Bean Bandit, whom we do get to see in most of his glory in a shower scene. (Although his ‘true glory’ was only strongly implied by an expression on Misty May’s face, if you know what I mean) That said… am I out of line to be squicked out by Minnie May? It’s not that she likes sex… a lot. I’m cool with that. It’s not even that she’s only seventeen years old at the beginning, because while it’s a tad alarming, it’s ultimately an arbitrary line. It isn’t even her past as an underage prostitute, which was never dwelt on too luridly, although that the manga never really deals with the idea of that being a seriously bad thing very seriously. What it is, I think, is that regardless of age, she’s drawn conspicuously very young, even younger than her age, and frequently nude in sexualized contexts. She’s also in a committed relationship with a man twice her age whom the story made clear met her and began their relationship years before when she was young enough that it definitely doesn’t sit right with me and he outright defines himself at one point as somebody who likes kids. (And I don’t think that’s in the paternal sense) It’s even more disconcerting given that in the original Japanese, Minnie May is evidently taking some herbal concoction to stunt her maturation, which was rewritten as unsuccessfully trying to correct it in the English version. (That’s a change that survived in the revised edition, which otherwise removed the first English version’s giving her initial age as eighteen) There’s so much else going on that it’s hard to get too hung up on it, but… well, YEESH! Then again, I thought that sexiest character in the whole thing was Iron Goldie… well, maybe up to the point where spoiler[her brainwashed sex slaves, whom Rally’s crew had captured, attempt to commit suicide upon calling Goldie and being told by her that she doesn’t need them anymore.]. At any rate, don’t mistake me. I enjoyed the Hell out of it and it’s a really excellent work all around, it just has some, shall we say, dubious elements. Its sequel, the conclusion to the story, Gunsmith Cats Burst, doesn’t have the ‘zazz’ of the original. It didn’t feel as well put together and exciting as the original series and never matched its relentlessly compelling feel. I think that the artwork changed slightly for the worst too. It resembled the original stories, but was more angular, sharper-edged and stiffer. It also made Goldie look almost like some middle-aged secretary, lacking the imposing presence and luscious menace of her original appearance. Despite being lesser on the whole, I can’t decry it as bad. It was just somehow more mundane. I did, however, appreciate the surprisingly melancholy, sincere feeling of its last chapters. It was bittersweet, sincere and offered satisfying closure to everybody’s story. I really wish that Gunsmith Cats had been adapted into a full series or more OVA episodes. These stories could work really well in animation. I wish that I felt the same about Jormungand. It was much like the anime, which followed the manga closely, thus it had the same dissatisfying last act. I really wanted to like Jormungand, because it has a lot going for it. I enjoyed the CIA agent who occasionally pursues Koko being portrayed as an annoying, usually ineffectual jackass. The familiar dynamic of Koko’s crew was very endearing and they were very appealing on the whole. The portrayal of George ‘Bookman’ Black as a hardworking sensualist, well for food at least, who was smart, extending to being smart enough to realize when he was outfoxed, worked very well. I also can’t deny that the bevy of totally badass, supercompetent women muchly appealed to me. (To my surprise, I think that the anime made Valmet more muscular than she is in the manga, which isn’t what I would have expected) I liked the look of it too. Keitarō Takahashi has a peculiar knack for weird, but expressive facial expressions. I particularly liked the subtle shifts in Chiquita’s stalwart subtle smirk. In the end, however, the story just didn’t have though careful thought for it to pull together. Koko’s plan is intimidating and intriguing as long as it stays tantalizingly inscrutable, but when she reveals her scheme, it just doesn’t seem like it should work. I see the theme that the mangaka was trying to portray, but its consummation just doesn’t work. I also think that the series suffered for the want of an effective villain who could be a genuine and consistent threat to Koko. There’s no sense of strong opposition or that Koko can really be beat, so everything feels a little listless. There are also some uncomfortable and creepy bits. Valmet is portrayed as infatuated, rather immaturely, with Koko, which is only superficially reciprocated by Koko sometimes rather aggressively fondling Valmet’s improbable breasts. It felt like something just added on for the ‘amusement’ of certain segments of the audience rather than actually relevant to the characters, so… meh. And then there’s that whole bit where spoiler[Koko’s naked baths with child soldier Jonathan ‘Jonah’ Mar degenerate to Koko fondling Jonah and giving him lurid looks.] That did feel like it was tied to the characters, but just… eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee… So Jormungand can be fun for a while and has a lot of cool stuff in it, but doesn’t hold together or deliver in the finale. Next up is probably The Limit. Last edited by Surrender Artist on Tue Sep 17, 2013 5:25 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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I started a shoujo (omg yes, ME reading a shoujo manga imagine that
 ) titled Usotsuki Lily. The heroine is dating a cross-dresser who pulls off a VERY convincing girl. It's actually quite cute and very funny. Aimed at an older audience but certainly not smut. No trace of anti-feminism either (if anything, it's PRO). Though some state that reading this psuedo-yuri manga makes them feel a bit odd with the romantic scenes between a girl and a boy disguised as a girl it makes me think this is a shoujo series a male audience could really get on board with.
LOOK OUT FOR THE TRAP. |
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TsunaReborn!
 Posts: 4713 Location: Cheltenham UK |
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If you do pick up The Limit let me know if you do a review style post on here as I would enjoying reading your thoughts. It sounds like the Limit falls into a similar pit fall that spoiler[Jormungand] does, but its still a very good read. If your interested my thoughts are on pages 101 & 102 
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Donslipo
 Posts: 21 |
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"Qualia the Purple" - it's and interesting one, but sometimes confusing
"Apocalypse no Toride" (Fortress of the Apocalypse) - Because it's sometimes good to read some fucked-up shit ;p "Ajin" - Because when anime comes out people will be like "OMG next SnK!" "Danganronpa" (manga version) - because after playing the 1st game, I sucked up everything related to it 
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Surrender Artist
Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I'm not sure what kind of thing you expect me to say, but alright... Limit didn't satisfy me. It has impressive emotional intensity at times and is a tight story, but it didn't really take hold of me. I think that things like this have to take you in very early, or they won't ring true for you. I don't think that it got me on its side early on, so the emotions just felt overwrought and too direct for me to become really invested in. The emotions and characterization all ring true in some sense and I appreciated that nobody was straightforwardly sympathetic or repulsive. However, it all comes too close together, strong and straightforward for my tastes. I would've liked more quiet moments to nurture the mood and atmosphere to build to things more gradually as well as reveal things more subtly, even though that would be hard to balance with the fittingly efficient pacing. It's like a glass of straight bitters. I understand that some people drink them like that, but I feel that they need to be carefully combined with other good ingredients in a cocktail. Perhaps it's just because they're all adolescents. The emotional excess and impulsiveness might be appropriate to that age, but then authenticity seems to be at odds with effectiveness. A different weird analogy occurred to me. The Limit felt like an nineties OVA. It seems like it has a good idea and is trying very hard, but doesn't have the time to do it right, so it all feels too breathless and pressed together. Hell, sometimes as I read it, I could imagine hearing the voices of the characters as though they were in an old Manga Video dub: a lot of exaggeration and overacting with people sometimes trying their best, but not having the retakes and careful direction needed to sound right. I feel like The Limit has the right idea and intent as well the right basic approach, but might be improved if the mangaka revisits it years later after she's matured. |
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crosswithyou
Posts: 2892 Location: California |
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Finally finished reading Fushigi Yuugi. Part 2 was a lot more different than the OVAs than expected.
Read Magi vol.18 and am in the middle of Magi: Sinbad no Bouken vol.1. Was reading it on the train and nearly cried. Good stuff. Last edited by crosswithyou on Sun Sep 22, 2013 9:48 am; edited 1 time in total |
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TsunaReborn!
Posts: 4713 Location: Cheltenham UK |
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Just your thoughts SA - I fully appreciated your drink analogies and now its the afternoon I might help myself to one...
Now back to the topic at hand. I agree their emotions were all over the place, although I have never been in spoiler[an accident and woken up surrounded by my dead friends], I do think some of their issues were very trivial compared to the situation they were faced with. I also agree that that the series felt rushed. I wish it was spread over 2 or 3 more volumes so more atmosphere and tension could have been built rather than throwing surprises at us out of no where to keep us interested. Also they could have explored more that way I.e spoiler[the group could have gone over the rope bridge earlier to explore]. Again as I said in my previous thoughts; I did enjoy the series - the 6th volume was my main problem which I would link to a point you made about the mangaka needing to mature a little more. |
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stove top stuffing
 Posts: 117 Location: "Orygun" NOT "Orygone" |
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Just read the newest chapter from Aku no Hana. Where spoiler[the f uck is Nakamura!?] The waiting is killing me.
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Surrender Artist
Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I just started reading Q Hayashida's Dorohedoro. It bought it as the marquee feature of Mangatember (that still doesn't work) and it has not disappointed.
This manga is so frickin' awesome! I've just finished volume two and damned near jumped up and down clapping my hands in glee while grinning like an idiot. Okay, "damned near," my ass. I jumped up and down clapping my hands with glee while grinning like an idiot! Maybe it's just really closely attuned to my weird tastes, but Dorohedoro has me about as enthusiastic, excited and just plain YIPPEE as anything has in recent memory. It has a cool set up between The Hole, a grimy, ramshackle interdimensional slum that Sorcerers from another, not actually that much nicer, dimension visit to practice their magic on its often helpless inhabitants, which usually just means that the Sorcerers cruelly f**k with them... by doing things like crudely transmogrify them into bugs. The central character is Caiman, a huge guy with a lizard's head and some man somehow inside him. He can't remember who is he or anything about his past. He puts sorcerers' heads in his mouth where they see the man inside him and if the man says, "you aren't the one," Caiman straight-up kills them. He's searching for whoever transformed him, presumably 'the one'. His partner is Nikaido. She's a robustly built woman who cooks really good gyoza and wrecks people's sh*t. In one scene, she slashes a dude's head open with a naginata so forcefully that his brain flies out and she catches it in a baseball cap. The seeming lead antagonists are Shin and Noi. Shin wears a mask that looks like a human heart, in the sense of the friggin' organ, and messes people up with a hammer... or just punches straight through them. Noi is a cheerful girl with powerful healing magic, enough to regenerate almost anybody, who is seven feet tall and built like Ivan Drago! F**K YEAH! (You don't even know that she's female at first because she usually wears a mask like Jason Voorhees and a loosely-fitting ensemble that betrays only how imposing she is) I love Noi. Goddamn am I transparent... There's also the loser Fujita and unfortunate Ebisu, who gets really messed up early on and spends most of the manga a comic grotesque of addled madness. The art has a very detailed, but very rough pulpy style. It can be a little hard to decipher at times, but it suits the atmosphere perfectly. Dorohedoro is very gory and violent, but the art manages to give the blood'n'guts'n'decapitations a gruesome feel, but not being especially realistic, dodges being disturbing or upsetting. I wish that the whole thing were in color, because the few color pages here and there look really cool. It's dark and weird and messed up and blackly humorous and I bloody love it! I also read Helter Skelter last night. It feels unfair to write about it now, because it's really good, but I'm a little too hyped up about Dorohedoro to give it its due. It is excellent stuff. It's a story about an aging model who goes to desperate measure to stay in the game. Nobody hasn't heard this before, but Kyoko Okazaki gives the story a strange, almost erratic flow that runs around the protagonist's wild decline in sharply compelling way. I felt her frustration, angst, desperation and rebellious excess very viscerally. It's angry and frantic and fearful, which sometimes happen all at once. The art has a rough, sketchy feel that seems almost sloppy at times, but meshes fabulously with the tone of the story. For some reason it has a sort of spoiler['to be continued' ending, but I wonder if it ever will. I hope so, because I would so read a story about a one-eyed black-market plastic surgery 'victim' model who becomes some sort of underworld queen in Mexico.] Awesome, awesome, awesome stuff. Man, I needed my spirits raised and these did it! Read Dorohedoro! Read Helter Skelter! DO IT NOW! |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7358 |
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I've read Helter Skelter as well, I'm just not sure how it could raise one's spirits. It reminded me of watching a trashy US TV "reality" show in many ways, particularly one of those ones where people are catty jerks for no reason. And when I watch those shows, I kind of weep for humanity and desperately want to flee the country. Helter Skelter, while very awesome indeed, kind of did that for me. I would call it awesome, I'm just not quite sure how this is a spirit raiser.... after all, the characters aren't exactly likable people. They're very compelling, indeed, but every time I walk in on my mom watching Housewives of [insert city here], I need her to explain 1) do these people hate or like each other? 2) if they hate each other, why are they always hanging out? and 3) how are you watching this? So I'm guessing she's going through something similar that I went through with Helter Skelter. Hey, maybe I should have her read it! At the same time though, I must stress that Helter Skelter was more than that. Housewives and Honey Boo Boo don't have subtle social commentary, this does. This will make you think afterwards. Honey Boo Boo will make you think "who the hell eats that much butter and ketchup?" but nothing significant. |
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ZeroXSword
 Posts: 8 Location: Oregon |
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I just got through reading volume 8 of Real. Incredible manga. Very inspirational. I started reading it because i'm a huge fan of the author; Takehiko Inoue. I'm still reading it because i'm hooked. It's one of those manga that's just so addicting.
It's about three guys; one who's disabled and plays wheelchair basketball, one who's a dropout and plays basketball while trying to figure his life out, and one who ends up in a wheelchair and has to adjust his life to it. Highly reccomend it. |
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Surrender Artist
Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I'm less high on Dorohedoro now that I've settled down and the story seems to have settled into its direction. Make no mistake, however, it's still super cool.
Sample dialogue: Maitre d': Our toilet is a fire toilet. It connects directly to Hell. Caiman: What the f**k? It seems to have more direction now, but there's still a lot that's awesomely weird to this world. Like, say, a baseball game where one team's third basemen is some unholy Frankenstein's monster made from dead sorcerers and the center fielder is a giant cockroach named Johnson. Oh, and I forgot to mention En. He can turn things into mushrooms.
Well, it was more my fist-pumping enthusiasm for Dorohedoro, but I suppose getting to read good things in general raises my spirits. Or perhaps I appreciated seeing people who're bigger screw-ups than I am... even if they're just imaginary. I suppose that's some of the appeal of those trashy reality shows. It's sort of perverse and exploitative in that way. It's that want of any conscience or purpose that gives them those unfortunate qualities and differentiates them from Helter Skelter. I could also empathize with the characters of Helter Skelter in a way that shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo aren't set up to allow. (I've been blessed to see little of any of that, so I'm on shaky ground on judging that) I found something a little triumphant in how some of the characters rejected their perverse circumstances. It was messy and too late, but I don't think we'll ever see the human thumb vanish and spoiler[become some kind of one-eyed Mexican bandit queen or whatever the Hell that ending was.] |
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Tamaria
 Posts: 1512 Location: De Achterhoek |
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That can only say one thing. Shocking! I love Dorohedoro. |
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Vertical_Ed
Company Representative
Posts: 278 Location: New York, NY |
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spoiler[Yeah, I kinda wanted to remove that as it is misleading. That is the ending. There was never going to be more. It's a tired trick some authors use. And maybe given the context this was cute back when this was penned, but it doesn't work well now (especially with the message about her accident).] |
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