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Thanks for the link to the thread with the Qualia updates.
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Feb 22, 2015 17:58
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Sometimes you just gotta go a little over the top and stupid. Sometimes you gotta go a LOT over the top and INCREDIBLY stupid but also fun. And if you think that stupid and fun and over the top and ridiculous sounds enjoyable, you need to look into a Manga called : Kongō Banchō What's it about? A Banchō is sort of a gang boss, manlier than manly. The titular character is named Kongō and he becomes a Banchō, a leader of men, a god in his own right. He starts out by assaulting some Yakuza who rip up a little girl's painting. What does he assault them with? A car. He picks up the car and calmly walks into the Yakuza's hideout and beats the snot out of all of them to force them to apologize to the little girl. It gets even more stupid and hilarious and awesome from there. Turns out there's this big project by all kinds of weird super-powered people to take control of Tokyo (and later on, Japan) and make the world a better place by enforcing ridiculous and stupid lifestyle changes upon the people. One guy, who lives in a small 4x4 foot box claims that if he wins this big battle he'll force everyone in japan to live in tiny cubes and they'll be happy because I don't even know why. It's so goddamn stupid. But it's entertaining as hell. I was going to post links to where it can be purchased but I cannot find anywhere to buy it, so the only way I can find for anyone to read it is online : http://www.mangachapter.me/1490/kongou-banchou.html (If anyone can post a link where english translations can be purchased legitimately I'll quite happily take down that link, but I don't think there's an official us version available yet) Still on the fence? Here's three consecutive pages to show you what it's all about.    EDIT : And two more just because why the hell not.  
khy fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 04:03
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khy posted:Kongō Banchō Banchō, so rare these days...   (from Short Cuts)
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Feb 24, 2015 05:11
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Man, Akumetsu is one of the last things I'd suggest to someone who was debating starting reading manga.  Neuro would be a really good reccomendation though. Cuntellectual fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Mar 5, 2015 |
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Mar 5, 2015 06:41
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Then recommend it. Akumetsu is stupid and fun head-explodey ridiculousness, and disappears up its own rear end at the end
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Mar 5, 2015 07:26
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Captain Invictus posted:Then recommend it. Yeah I liked it but it you can practically hear an audiable thud as the quality drops off as it goes on. I can't think of a fancy way to do it up for Neuro either. 
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Mar 5, 2015 07:35
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Captain Invictus posted:Then recommend it. Actually Akumetsu is stupid and good all the way through the series and I'm glad I finally made the push to finish it a year or so ago.
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Mar 8, 2015 19:30
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I'm a mutant who really likes sports manga so I'm gonna talk about a couple of sports manga I like. Slam Dunk  Slam Dunk is a basketball manga written and drawn by Inoue Takehiko that ran from 1990 to 1996 over 31 volumes. It follows the high school delinquent Sakuragi Hanamichi, who has been rejected by 50 girls after asking them out. Suddenly, he comes across the girl of his dreams, who asks the 189 cm Sakuragi if he's interested in basketball. Without thinking, he replies that he's a basketball prodigy - and quickly finds himself joining the school's basketball team.  Slam Dunk is one of the golden standards for modern sports manga; not only is it well-written, very funny, and absolutely gorgeous, but it represented an important change in sports manga at the time. Before Slam Dunk, most sports manga centered around an extremely skilled protagonist, often leading a down-on-their-luck team to victory. Sakuragi is very tall, and very athletic, but at the beginning of the manga he doesn't know even the very basics of basketball. Not only did this aspect of Slam Dunk end up being very influential in modern sports manga, but it also allowed the author to easily explain a relatively unknown sport to a new audience. Give it a try, even if you aren't really into basketball. Eyeshield 21  Eyeshield 21 is an American Football manga written by Inagaki Riichiro and drawn by Murata Yuusuke, of One Punch Man fame. It ran from 2002 to 2009 over 37 volumes. Someone already mentioned this, but I wanted to talk a little bit more about it. Kobayakawa Sena is constantly bullied at school, and is too cowardly to ever stand up for himself, instead relying on his overprotective older sister figure, Mamori. His grades aren't great, he's very small and weak, and his only real talent is that he can run (and accelerate) very quickly. When he enrolls at Deimon High School, he is soon accosted by Hiruma Youichi and Kurita Ryoukan, a megalomaniacal quarterback and kindhearted center, who are frantically trying to recruit more people into their American Football club. After shanghaiing Sena into the team as a runningback, Hiruma gives him a shaded eyeshield as a disguise from Mamori and other athletic clubs, spreading the rumor that he is Eyeshield 21, a mysterious runningback from the US with unbeatable speed.  Like Slam Dunk, Eyeshield 21 is very funny and looks fantastic. Unlike Slam Dunk, Eyeshield 21 is completely nuts as far as athletic abilities go; while most characters don't ever break the laws of physics or anything, most major characters would be incredible prodigies in real life, and of course you have to accept both that American Football is suddenly very popular in Japan AND that it is obscure enough that the characters need to constantly explain the rules to the audience. I also feel that the last few arcs get a little too ridiculous and the ending kind of reeks of "we need to end quickly because the manga just got canceled," but it's a really fun ride up to that point - the games get pretty suspenseful, and it's not afraid to have the main characters lose. (Also, it's all the strategy and action of American football without all the nothing ever actually happening.) All-Rounder Meguru  All-Rounder Meguru is an MMA manga written and drawn by Endo Hiroki. It began in 2008 and is still going, and currently has 15 volumes (although the translations are way behind). Takayanagi Meguru is a pretty average dude who did karate when he was younger. He regularly goes to an MMA gym for exercise purposes, and on a whim one of the trainers enrolls him in an amateur shooto match. Meguru gets hooked soon after that and starts attending training with other members of the gym who hope to become pros, and is joined by a number of other pro-hopefuls around his age.  All-Rounder Meguru is pretty laid-back compared to the intensity of Slam Dunk and Eyeshield 21. All of the main characters are amateurs, and the manga makes no illusions about that; they sometimes win and lose fights without any substantial drama, and they're usually fighting in cramped gyms. I also just think the characters are written really well; there's a subtlety to them that isn't usually found in sports manga. I also like that Meguru himself has been, so far, probably the worst fighter out of the four main characters; his talent seems to be that he's very versatile, but he spends a long time struggling because he doesn't have the more obvious talents of his friends. All-Rounder Meguru actually features several women as main characters (Maki, in the above image, is pretty drat great), and they get a surprising amount of the spotlight for a male-oriented sports manga. This brings me to an honorable mention, Teppuu, which I'd do a full write-up on (it's absolutely one of the best sports manga I've ever read) but I feel that it requires a familiarity with normal sports manga story beats to fully appreciate. (I've also lost hope on ever seeing more of it translated.) Teppuu primarily follows a female MMA fighter in high school, but with a twist: despite being the protagonist, she's basically the rival or villain character who would show up in most other manga. Definitely check it out if you enjoy anything up above. DoubleDonut fucked around with this message at 11:24 on Mar 10, 2015 |
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Mar 10, 2015 11:19
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 I also already recommended Teppu in Sampler 3.I hear the author had some serious health issues and had to go on hiatus, that on top of it being a monthly series means while there's not been much in the way of scanlations, we're not all that far behind either.
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Mar 10, 2015 11:36
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It's 6 in the morning, I don't have time to read all those drat samplers! Also I knew about the hiatus, but I thought I heard that it was updating again.
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Mar 10, 2015 11:39
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WickedHate posted:Cool! Didn't know this thread existed. Minor note; There's two translations of Hellsing. One's by Dark Horse and the other by CY Manga. Don't get the CY Manga version because it has nowhere near the quality of the Dark Horse one. I'm gong to recommend two series by the same creator - Tsutomu Nihei. First up is BLAME! Which I've long-suspected is a badly-translated version of BLAM!, the sound the protagonist's gun makes.  BLAME! is a pretty simple story of a man named Killy traversing the Megastructure, a colossal over-built automated city in search of Net Terminal Genes. A very very long time ago, people could access the internet via telepathy or just with the appropriate genes as a code (think like Ancient stuff in Stargate: Atlantis). Unfortunately a virus corrupted the human genome, and ever since everyone's been locked out. Which is bad, because it's resulted in things like construction robots just endlessly building things over previous structures haphazardly. And the security systems don't recognise the various scattered villages of humans as human, so they get killed on-sight, which is not a good thing when they can transform solid mass into robot soldiers. What makes Killy special is his gun - The Graviton Beam Emitter. It's his only weapon through the entire ten-volume run, and the only one he needs. It does this;  That's Level 2. Level 1's basically a high-powered handgun shot. It goes up to a total of five power levels, and at Level  Something is about to have a bad bad day. As is Killy due to the recoil. What's part of Blame!'s charm is Tsutomu Nihei's amazing artwork, creating grim vistas that seem to go on forever and look like they've been there a very long time. Indeed there's a few stretches in the early manga volumes of Killy just traversing buildings just to show how far a trip is between the few colonies of people. And probably with the author cutting out very long stretches of Killy's travel time too. The only negative thing about his artwork is his characters tend to wind up looking a little wall-eyed  .  He also has an amazing cyberpunk aesthetic in his characters to create an eerie merging of flesh and machine.  Blame! has ten volumes in total, and though it's a slightly older series you can still find all ten volumes fairly easy on Amazon. Next up is BiOmega.  BiOmega's set much closer in the future, and follows a Synthetic Human named Zoichi Kanoe. Synthetic Humans are essentially nigh-unkillable motherfuckers working for (and created by) TOA Heavy Industries as Agents to combat a nanomachine pandemic that is turning people into zombies called NJ5. And the virus is especially nasty due to it being spore-based. All it takes is one zombie sporing in a high wind to infect a lot of people. Something to note is the zombies aren't actually a focus or antagonist of the story, they're only really part of the scenery.  Synthetic Humans are immune to the infection (their genetic makeup is way off normal humans, to the point they survive on just water), and Zoichi's assignment is to track down a girl who is one of a rare few with natural immunity to NJ5 (in fact it actually makes her relatively immortal with rapid-regeneration). If you're noticing a similarity between Zoichi and Killy with the handgun and all, Tsutomu cribs a bit from his other works . TOA Heavy Industries also appears in BLAME, incidentally, though Zoichi's gun isn't another GBE. It's simply a nasty little electromagnetic railgun with only two settings and is about as powerful as an anti-tank rifle. He keeps a big-rear end rifle stored in his bike for anything worse. He also has a goddamn axe  . BiOmega also has this;  Meet Kozlov. He's a Russian scientist who circumvented the chance of infection by having his brain installed in the body of his pet bear  . The story takes a weird shift half-way through, but it's still an entertaining journey on the whole with a slightly weak ending. It's also a fairly recent series, so all six volumes are easy to come by. Tsutomu Nihei also has a third series that is still ongoing, Knight's of Sidonia, but this post's getting long enough as-is.
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Mar 15, 2015 16:20
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Neddy Seagoon posted:BiOmega also has this; Alright well I know what my next read is going to be then
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Mar 15, 2015 16:43
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Somehow, I should have known from the descriptions that it would be the dude behind knights of sidonia, but that still hit me out of left field! Either way, I'll definitely be giving those a look.
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Mar 15, 2015 21:25
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Yep, I put KOS in one of the samplers a while back. It also has a cyborg bear-human hybrid though that one is a girl and wears frilly aprons and stuff but also pilots robots because she's a badass. She's the best. 
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Mar 15, 2015 23:43
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Seconding the recommendation for BLAME!. I reread it every now and again just for the sweeping vistas and cyborg designs. Also, there is a one-volume prequel to BLAME!, called NOiSE- containing a bit of a backstory to the megastructure and other lifeforms that end up inhabiting it.
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Mar 16, 2015 00:46
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The Impaler posted:Seconding the recommendation for BLAME!. I reread it every now and again just for the sweeping vistas and cyborg designs. Also, there is a one-volume prequel to BLAME!, called NOiSE- containing a bit of a backstory to the megastructure and other lifeforms that end up inhabiting it. I keep meaning to hunt that down, and really should get it off Amazon before it's just gone for good. Captain Invictus posted:Yep, I put KOS in one of the samplers a while back. It also has a cyborg bear-human hybrid though that one is a girl and wears frilly aprons and stuff but also pilots robots because she's a badass. She's the best. I swear I looked through the samplers to make sure it wasn't there already  .
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Mar 16, 2015 01:45
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Which I've long-suspected is a badly-translated version of BLAM!, the sound the protagonist's gun makes. The series is, in fact, "BLAM!". Or "Buh-lam-uu" in the Japanese. It's also cool as ice, with a ridiculously unique aesthetic. Everyone should jump on it. And Blame!², and NOiSE, and really everything he's done.
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Mar 16, 2015 05:25
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Neddy Seagoon posted:He also has an amazing cyberpunk aesthetic in his characters to create an eerie merging of flesh and machine. This reminds me a lot of Chi-Chian. Which is a good thing, that kind of style rocks.
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Mar 16, 2015 05:54
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Boogaleeboo posted:The series is, in fact, "BLAM!". Or "Buh-lam-uu" in the Japanese. It's also cool as ice, with a ridiculously unique aesthetic. Everyone should jump on it. And Blame!², and NOiSE, and really everything he's done. I love Tsutomu Nihei's stuff just for the aesthetic  . I'm actually half-tempted to get that recent model kit of the Tsugumori (the protagonist's giant robot from Knight's of Sidonia) just because it's probably the only memorabilia there'll ever be of any of his stuff.WickedHate posted:This reminds me a lot of Chi-Chian. Which is a good thing, that kind of style rocks. Character designs like this are his bread-and-butter, so go take a look at any of his stuff if you want more. Incidentally as this is in BSS, he's also written and drawn a five-part Wolverine comic called SNIKT! and illustrated a story in the Halo Graphic Novel called Breaking Quarantine.
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Mar 16, 2015 06:53
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Yep his art is pretty rad. 
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Mar 16, 2015 10:26
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DoubleDonut posted:All-Rounder Meguru I just blitzed through all 90 some chapters of this today and enjoyed the hell out of it. Enjoyed Teppu too. No idea why I like MMA manga so much, can't stand the actual sport.
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Mar 17, 2015 07:34
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Same with rocky and real boxing
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Mar 17, 2015 07:46
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Captain Invictus posted:Same with rocky and real boxing Eh, with Rocky I only ever care about the main fights. Meguru and Teppu I actually care about everything else besides the fights, the fights are just bonus.
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Mar 17, 2015 09:36
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The fights in Rocky are actually goddamn terrible. It's more about the character, especially in the first 2 films.
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Mar 17, 2015 09:42
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Lurdiak posted:The fights in Rocky are actually goddamn terrible. It's more about the character, especially in the first 2 films. alright, dark secret time. Rocky is boring. 4 is the only one semi interesting outside of the fights. Balboa has the best fight. Everything else is a snore fest.
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Mar 17, 2015 09:45
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Leper Residue posted:alright, dark secret time. Rocky is boring. 4 is the only one semi interesting outside of the fights. Balboa has the best fight. Everything else is a snore fest. He's a simple man who manages to become somebody in a world that says people like him should be nobody. I understand if that's not compelling to everyone, and I also understand why people respond more to the superhero theatrics of 4, but I "get" the movies.
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Mar 17, 2015 10:01
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I've never actually seen any of the Rocky's. I was going off most of what I'd heard about the movies(which admittedly isn't much, but cultural osmosis is a helluva thing). And real boxing kinda sucks to watch in my opinion.
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Mar 17, 2015 11:36
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Captain Invictus posted:I've never actually seen any of the Rocky's. I was going off most of what I'd heard about the movies(which admittedly isn't much, but cultural osmosis is a helluva thing). Sure, but Rocky and his opponents seem to have never heard the phrase "put your dukes up" and just eat punch after punch until the hardest puncher falls down. It's fine though, the movies aren't about that, just like Raging Bull is absolutely not about the boxing.
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Mar 17, 2015 14:35
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I actually have one more manga to recommend; Blood Blockade Battlefront , aka B3, by Yasuhiro Nightow. (His other big work is Trigun, which is also well worth a read or watch.) The premise is simple. Long ago, in the shady distant past of three years prior, the city of New York vanished overnight. And in its place a new city appeared called Jerusalem's Lot, filled with every supernatural entity you can imagine, can't imagine, or don't want to imagine . Ever since then every nation, cult and criminal syndicate's moved in to try and get a piece of the action because the center of the perpetually-foggy city is a passage to the Beyond, the world where all the supernatural denizens have wandered in from. Basically everyone and anyone with dreams of ruling the world using magic or weird supernatural technology is scheming away somewhere in Jerusalem's Lot. In theory, humans are safe there (there's an accord keeping the more exotic denizens from just chowing down on people), but that's pretty much only so good as they don't go wandering into dark alleys. The standard Police response to crime is to go in with six-meter-tall powered armor and shoot-first-ask-never with automatic weapons. And they rarely actually win against anything their own size. In the middle of it all is the main character; Leonard Watch.  He made a deal with an elder god, partly by accident, and in return for his sister giving up her eyesight (she willingly gave up hers so he wouldn't have to) Leonard got The Eyes of the Gods. With them, Leonard can see anything within reason (microscopic zoom, fast-moving objects in perfect detail, as well as seeing straight through illusions to see what's actually there, that kind of thing). But only for short bursts, or his eyes start to literally overheat in his head. And shortly into the first volume he gets mixed in with the only real good guys in the city by accident - Libra. They're a secret society keeping the city from falling off the knife-edge by going round and dealing with all the nastier threats trying to sweep the board. They actually pre-date the appearance of Jerusalem's Lot by centuries, it's just that up til now they've mostly dealt with the isolated threats that have popped through from Beyond on their own (stray vampires and the like). Almost all of them use varying styles of Blood-based martial arts and magic, which is where the manga's title comes from.  The art can get a bit busy and hard to follow at first glance in some fights, but the writing is quite fun and it's amazing to see just what weird creature will sit down at a table in the background or be walking along the street besides the main characters. Rather than sequential chapters the manga is broken into individual episodic stories with roughly 2-3 per volume. The content of which can range from a life-or-death game of demonic chess with constantly-changing rules to get much-need intel, to having to chase down the cat belonging to the girlfriend of one of the main characters. Or the curse she put on his dick and balls will blow them up if the cat isn't found within twelve hours. Special note should be made that the main villain, who very sadly has only appeared in the first volume to-date, is called "Femt: The King of Depravity"  . He's a very fun madman of a villain, and it's a genuine shame he hasn't poked his nose out again.
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Mar 17, 2015 15:43
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Speaking of MMA series, after half a year off, new Teppu! I was kinda hoping Eyebrows'd get taken out unexpectedly, but I'm happy that at least everyone recognizes she's kind of a freaky weirdo.
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Mar 19, 2015 10:10
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Captain Invictus posted:Speaking of MMA series, after half a year off, new Teppu! Yessssss! I've been waiting for new Teppu for way too long. Here's to hoping it gets back to a regular schedule.
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Mar 19, 2015 10:32
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Back when I was into Manga heavily I tried reading Trigun, by volume 10 of 14, I think, I could no longer tell what the gently caress was going on. And it was all because of the art style. Nightow is a good artist, but if he's still doing the crazy art stuff he did in the last few volume of Trigun, B3 might be hard to choke down.
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Mar 20, 2015 17:38
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Everyone ought to watch this here teaser trailer right now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bdb1V0Io_g&hd=1   I have faith Captain Invictus fucked around with this message at 05:21 on Mar 23, 2015 |
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Mar 23, 2015 05:19
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Captain Invictus posted:Everyone ought to watch this here teaser trailer right now Leave the image off. Let it be a surprise .One episode and we'll explode though 
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Mar 23, 2015 05:23
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And if you don't know why that's so exciting, let me remind you that you should be reading One-Punch Man:Captain Invictus posted:ONEPUNCH-MAN(action, comedy, seinen, supernatural) - Onepunch-Man is easily one of, if not the most gorgeous and detailed series you'll ever see. There are entire chapters that can, and have been, animated. Check this poo poo, yo:
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Mar 23, 2015 05:24
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Captain Invictus posted:Everyone ought to watch this here teaser trailer right now What's he saying at the end there?
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Mar 23, 2015 05:59
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Leper Residue posted:What's he saying at the end there? "I'm a dude who heroes as a hobby"
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Mar 23, 2015 06:03
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   Kakukaku Shikajika, an autobiographical manga by the author of Princess Jellyfish(Akiko Higashimura) just finished being scanlated. This is an autobiography that tells the story of Akiko Hayashi, the author as she was in her third year of high school at the beginning of the story. Through her friend Futami, Akiko starts going to an art class led by Kenzou Hidaka, an intimidating teacher who spends much of his time yelling at his students and keeping them focused on drawing with the use of a bamboo sword. Akiko is initially confused by the behavior of the teacher and her fellow students in the class, but she keeps going regardless, eventually becoming the manga author she is today. Winner of the 8th Manga Taishou in 2015. It is extremely good. It's a blunt, no-holds-barred look back on her life, her choices, and perhaps most importantly, her teacher. It doesn't mince words about the difficulties of her life choices and becoming a manga artist, nor does it shy away from pointing out that she made some poor decisions that to this day she regrets. It's not particularly funny or anything, but it's a wonderful story. Rarely do I get so emotionally affected to see a series end, but I definitely teared up after finishing the final chapter. Completed series. http://www.amazon.com/x304B-x304F-x...%81%98%E3%81%8B
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Apr 21, 2015 15:40
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Kakukaku Shikajika is a great read and is relatively short as these kind of things go. Everyone should read it.
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Apr 22, 2015 08:54
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Saikano http://kissmanga.com/Manga/Saishuu-Heiki-Kanojo I'm kinda nostalgic for this one since it was my introduction to comics exploring dark concepts in a simple and personal light. We don't need long brooding Rorschach narrations to tell us that war is hell, life is precious, and the human mind is just as horribly complex as it is fragile. All we need is one psychologically broken child soldier telling her fellows that she hopes the seals at the water park will be okay after the city is flattened. Weird art style that borderlines on chibi at times and extended sex scenes that are painfully heartbreaking rather than erotic, but holy poo poo is it a punch to the heart. Also, I tried but I reeeeeally didn't like I Am a Hero. While I enjoyed seeing the brutal honesty of the Japanese comic publishing world, I kept wanting the cast to stop being self-pitying assholes and loving DO SOMETHING! HEY HIDEO THERE IS A ZOMBIE IN A CAR WITH YOU. HOW ABOUT WARNING THE OTHERS THAT THERE IS A loving ZOMBIE IN THE CAR. No? Now everyone is dead and it's all your fault, but you left gas money on the dashboard, so the scene is supposed to be..... funny? Innocent people died because of his refusal to act. Hilarious. Paying for the trip was more important to him than saving a life. That's not funny or thought provoking, that's just sick. There are plenty of other scenes like this but that one sticks out in my mind. Now, I enjoy a good black comedy and serious horror story probably more than the average person, but this just feels... dirty, I guess is the right word. Mr.Chill fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Apr 30, 2015 |
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Apr 30, 2015 13:47
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