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Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty
Currently in I am a hero: hideo makes poor life choices, again, while a middle schooler controlling a skyscraper-sized mass of alien???? zombie flesh throws a tantrum because she got shot a few times for looking like and being a giant monster

Wonder if we're approaching endgame

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nerdz
Oct 12, 2004


Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.
Grimey Drawer

Captain Invictus posted:

Currently in I am a hero: hideo makes poor life choices, again, while a middle schooler controlling a skyscraper-sized mass of alien???? zombie flesh throws a tantrum because she got shot a few times for looking like and being a giant monster

Wonder if we're approaching endgame

They also explained why the first kurusu appears in the volume cover after being killed by the new one, which is kinda weird.

HenryEx
Mar 25, 2009

...your cybernetic implants, the only beauty in that meat you call "a body"...
Grimey Drawer

Punkin Spunkin posted:

I feel like I'm finally starting to enjoy fire man and it's like chapter 19, feels like up to then it hid behind a lot of ~wacky~ disorganized thoughts and relied too hard on meta meta "hey isn't the story dumb and boring right now?? But hey I pointed it out!!!"

For all the problems Fire Punch actually has, this is just finding faults where there are none. Not sure what the ~wacky disorganized thoughts~ are about, maybe you're just referring to the strange pace that someone who suffers no consequences for anything puts the rest of the cast through a lot of the time. But some kind of meta meta (whatever that means) "this sucks lol amirite but i'm doing it anyway" never actually happens.

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

Captain Invictus posted:

Currently in I am a hero: hideo makes poor life choices, again, while a middle schooler controlling a skyscraper-sized mass of alien???? zombie flesh throws a tantrum because she got shot a few times for looking like and being a giant monster

Wonder if we're approaching endgame

Isn't Hiromi a high schooler? I mean her relationship with Hideo was still always weird and uncomfortable, but not quite "30 year old and middle school" weird (I wish he had stayed with that other lady I forget the name of, she was cool and also an adult).

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty

Ytlaya posted:

Isn't Hiromi a high schooler? I mean her relationship with Hideo was still always weird and uncomfortable, but not quite "30 year old and middle school" weird (I wish he had stayed with that other lady I forget the name of, she was cool and also an adult).

I mean he would have stayed with her but getting mulched by a garbage truck compactor kinda killed the relationship, literally

And yeah Hiromi is a highschooler, meant to say that not middle schooler (though it's not really any better, though it's led to entertaining shenanigans in the current situation due to her immaturity)

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

I kinda hope all this ends with Hideo not being with Hiromi; at the very least they've been highlighting Hiromi's immaturity a bunch so hopefully it leads to some "yo this isn't cool let's go our separate ways" ending (assuming both survive as humans).

I wouldn't really count on it, though. It seems to be playing up the whole "Hideo is risking his life to "save" her because of love" angle.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

HenryEx posted:

For all the problems Fire Punch actually has, this is just finding faults where there are none. Not sure what the ~wacky disorganized thoughts~ are about, maybe you're just referring to the strange pace that someone who suffers no consequences for anything puts the rest of the cast through a lot of the time. But some kind of meta meta (whatever that means) "this sucks lol amirite but i'm doing it anyway" never actually happens.
cool

HenryEx
Mar 25, 2009

...your cybernetic implants, the only beauty in that meat you call "a body"...
Grimey Drawer

Oh hey, good timing, just before i hit Submit. You'll like this then.



Might as well write some of that poo poo out, since i've been thinking a lot about Fire Punch the past day or so.
(Warning: this ends up being a long-rear end post, also :siren: SPOILERS! :siren:)
And by Fire Punch i probably mean more or less exclusively Togata, since he basically hijacked the story at the moment of introduction. I'm still not sure whether the author intended for that in the first place or not, which is a problem i'll come back to in a bit.

I barely even remember most of what happens in chapters 1-8 (a.k.a. pre-Togata) but it sets up a relatively normal comic story, with some characters, motivations, and a base outline of the world with room for completion. It's not even bad at it, it even sets up the antagonist with a relatable motivation for slaughtering an entire village: he's set up as somewhat of a valiant crusader facing omnipresent hardship and neccessary evil with a clear goal, and he happens upon a village where every home has human meat on the plates. And they're not just something like one or two voluntary sacrifices, as bad as that would already be, no- these are the arms of at least several dozen people. The implications are clear. And this is a man who'd rather starve to death than eat another, so he razes the entire village. For the benefit of all mankind, really.
These kinds of stories go on for a while, like the protagonist meets and rescues an abandoned up-beat little child to throw some conflict into the revenge motivation, he meets someone who can stop him and show him the limits of his current abilities, and so on. The kind of things you'd expect a comic like these to have. It has its tone and setting, it sticks to them but slowly develops them / fleshes them out, like how these blessings work and how they appear, what humanity's doing when it's not currently visible near the main character, what the rough technologic level is, the state of society.


Then Togata enters the scene. Togata has already seen it all. Togata's already been around for hundreds of years of people being miserable and making others miserable, and would much rather practice escapism via watching movies with interesting scenarios and other ways to live than lose his mind. But... humanity's not making movies anymore, so the resources are ultimately limited. Togata's too old for this poo poo, and doesn't care about anything except movies.

So, finally forced to face :airquote:reality:airquote: again, Togata decides: if this life is so garbage, maybe i should make it more like a movie. Let's make a movie! Movies are great, so this life aas seen in a movie would be better, right? So Togata takes the main character's life in this comic story, and tries to force it to comply to movie rules.

With some sweet action shots and close ups!

Bad rear end one liners! (shamelessly stolen from other movies) (but really just likes movie quotes)

Character building moments to establish the stakes!


But here comes the catch: It's all in-story. We've never left the paper so far. Togata doesn't actually live in a movie. He just lives, and :airquote:real life:airquote: gives as much of a poo poo about Togata as it is the other way around. With all the genre-aware ribbing and lamp-shading, the references and winks, they are never aimed at the reader behind the fourth wall. Togata only ever winks at his own camera. Predictably, trying to force Hollywood pacing and structure on the real world (even if it does actually follow story-telling rules behind the layer of abstaction called the fourth wall) goes poorly.

Turns out your cool self-recorded action footage is really just unwatchable garbage.

This is probably the scene that a poster above criticised for "making a dumb decision but it's okay because i point it out".
But really, it's just Togata being mad at things not going his way. Who would've thought that a blessing that lets you quickly heal any injuries and tolerate them to a great degree would probably find a lot of use in an elite soldier unit???
Especially since these people live a long time, So they keep staying in the unit while the normies die/retire and get replaced with more potential regenerators. Baffling, really. Why don't they let more fire users risk their death instead of potentially using their heat to do their part in acting against this frozen apocalypse?

He just keeps trying to strongarm "reality" into movie tropes. Sometimes, "reality's" (this comic's) tropes line up, and we get the dramatic background reveal when the main character meets a look-alike of his sister. Sometimes, they don't and to get some proper enemy ability users, he has to go fishing for convicted criminals and murderers to get a diverse set up and then at least dresses them up like the Avengers. (Spoilers: Things don't really work out, again. Who'da thunk.) His Main Character can't even really do poo poo aside from looking cool (when he's not naked for once) and being determined, so he even has to teach him how to fight and make proper one-liners and all from the ground up. It's a constant up-hill struggle for some slight entertainment in this boring and lovely life for Togata, while the rest of the world doesn't really give a poo poo and basically just goes along with what they were already doing, making some small concessions in the grand plan since you can't really go against a force like Togata.


That is, until the author comes in. This is where it gets difficult. Let's take a step out of the story and behind the paper now (this is why i put reality in quotes all the time up to now.) Dude obviously likes movies, and Togata's knowledge isn't just lip service, so Togata might very well just be an author self-insert. I dunno. Let's take a look at a cool part first.

The author doesn't just let Togami try to make his manga into a movie, he even sometimes indulges Togata's "vision" when in his vicinity. What i mean is, that this comic stops being paneled and framed and starts being shot instead. Check out this sequence of pages, coming just before most of the pages shown above:

The whole sequence was kinda confusing to follow visually and weirdly laid out when i read it the first time, and that's because the author isn't playing to the strength of his medium. Imagine this whole thing as a camera scene and suddenly it comes together:
Scene change cut to overhead of a speeding train. Angle changes to the front of the train and the camera closes in, entering through the conductors cabin and giving us a glimpse into the first wagon. Camera view changes to the side of the train and it now slowly lets the train "pass" in travel direction, showing us a sliding view of the cabin interiors. It scrolls by the first and second cabin with each soldier squad, the third with the officers, the fourth one with materials and the final fifth one with the "target": The box. It introduces the set of the next scene, each "stage" of the fight separately, detailing the flow of this next set piece in advance, before zooming in at the goal of it all in the end. This is straight up a movie scene, and it works beautifully as one.

That's why it's so awkward on paper, too: a comic's strengths lie entirely elsewhere, and you need to make up for the lack of flow and motion with things like paneling layout, perspective changes, and the fact that you can cram a lot more detail into any one moment. There's a million ways you could have made this scene work better in a manga, but as a camera shot, it's really good.

This doesn't happen all the time, but if you look out for it, there's more moments around Togata that would've worked well shot with a camera instead of drawn with a pen. It's also nice that while Togata's comments about movies don't always line up with the author making a manga, some things about storytelling and dynamics are interchangeable, so when the author introduces one of the officers and builds his character in the page and a half that we've seen him into someone we want to see dead, Togata is there to explain just how the author did that, under the guise of "This is just like a movie scene!". Not just through the obvious dialogue, but the reaction upon first contact, his facial expression, his demeanor, all in a very short span. You can call it lampshading or the author patting himself on the back or whatever, but i'll choose to interpret it as this dude loving movies and going "Hey hey! This is why it works so well! Isn't that neat, what you can do with some arranged lighting, careful positioning and well-chosen acting?". And i always like hearing how the things manipulating us work.

All in all, the author set up a basic story with some impetus, and then dropped a bored immature child with power into it that runs away with it. Seeing that child struggle against the uncaring world with a power that exempts it from any consequences, and giving it a relatable obsession like movies all in all makes for some entertaining distractions.


I suppose i should finally get to all the problems i keep alluding to, but man this post is long. I'll mention them a lot more briefly, which probably works out since they're also pretty apparent.

The shittiness of people is unrelenting in this. If it weren't for a certain someone providing an excellent counterweight, it would be overbearing (and it is in the first few chapters).
The art is only serviceable. Dude has a good grasp on movement, anatomy, framing, all that good basic poo poo, for comics AND movies both, but it's all unpolished, no gloss. Not neccessarily a negative, but there's much nicer things to look at.
The author starts to falter a little bit in regards to the established setting a little later on. There's still nobody who winks at the reader or acknowledges a fourth wall, not even the newest cast member, but he does things like giving Togata some movie set-ups long after Togata stopped really caring about shooting the movie.
After the city arc, the thing kinda runs out of steam a little, together with Togata. It feels like the author might not be sure where to go with it, and you get the impression that he might not really have anything planned out long-term, story or plot-wise (if the rude mood whiplash of Togata's appearance didn't already convince you of this in Chp.9). Things like the abducted and enslaved kid the MC met is released, but they don't really reunite and has barely any presence. You can attribute this to the tone of the story being "no poo poo, they didn't really have anything in common, these things don't work out". Togata's two followers just kinda vanish even as soon as the city arc starts, never to be heard from again. Some actual X-Men show up, but by this point Togata's already sorta disillusioned, and they don't amount to much and are just kinda around for a while. We start to get more and more backstory dumped on us, and not in the organic fashion that the author displayed in earlier chapters, but just by Togata going "this is what it was like" while hacking off a human face, forever. The world building suddely feels forced and kinda like "uuh, i need to go somewhere from here" instead of letting a story play out through its actors.
The ages start to not really make sense anymore. Togata's about 300 years old and and has experienced just the very tail end of the "warm days" before the ice age. Then there's someone introduced with about a thousand years, also a transhumanist, and (transhu)mankind has left Earth. What did Mister 1k do in the 700 years before Togata/the ice age? How is the remaining humanity still at the shown tech level after interstellar colonization happened? How the hell do they still have bullets and cigarettes after 300 years of ice age?


I mean, the set pieces are still pretty sweet, and the long continuous 9-page action shot of Togata driving the truck is probably my favorite scene in this. But the scenes where everything works together to create that amazing mix of unpredictable weirdness get rarer.

To be fair, it's still way too early to make any guesses towards the newest cast member's role in the story and how he's going to make it all fit. I'm hoping for the best so the pace gets out of this rut it's been in. He at least has his heart in the right place.

HenryEx fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Apr 30, 2023

RatHat
Dec 31, 2007

A tiny behatted rat👒🐀!
That is way too many words for a series like Fire Punch. I think it's kinda bad and all over the place in terms of tone and story.

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

To be fair, I think that the whole transhumans thing has always been planned, and is foreshadowed by Judas looking identical to the protagonist's sister (who likely also has the transhuman genes). For all its flaws, the series is good enough that I'm curious about what's going to happen next and want to keep following it.

HenryEx
Mar 25, 2009

...your cybernetic implants, the only beauty in that meat you call "a body"...
Grimey Drawer

RatHat posted:

That is way too many words for a series like Fire Punch. I think it's kinda bad and all over the place in terms of tone and story.

I thought the same until i, well, thought a little about why i enjoyed reading it after all, and that led me to notice things like the camera movements through the world and such. It's neater than it seems at first, but i still think the author doesn't really know what he's doing, and it'll probably fall off hard whenever he runs out of neat conematographic gimmicks to put to paper.

But, basically this:

Ytlaya posted:

For all its flaws, the series is good enough that I'm curious about what's going to happen next and want to keep following it.

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty
Wanting to see what happens next does not make a series good. I am curious what happens next in magical girls of the apocalypse but that doesn't mean it's not a poorly drawn bad mess of a series

It's ok to enjoy things that are bad

HenryEx
Mar 25, 2009

...your cybernetic implants, the only beauty in that meat you call "a body"...
Grimey Drawer
You didn't read that right. It's not "i wanna see what happens next -> it's good enough", it is "it's good enough -> i wanna see what happens next". These are different things.

Also, of the Apocalypse didn't even keep my morbid curiosity, Mahou Shoujo Site at least got me to the most recent chapter on that


edit for clarification:

Captain Invictus posted:

It's ok to enjoy things that are bad
I'm not arguing against this.

HenryEx fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Feb 3, 2017

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
New Suicide Island. Bad things happen. Whatever. It's kind of a dumb series.

I did enjoy the period when it was awkwardly translated by brits or whatevs and was just like "hey mate, were you stabbed by that bloke?? He's a mean bloke! we've got to go fight those other blokes!"

Punkin Spunkin fucked around with this message at 19:11 on Feb 4, 2017

Pewdiepie
Oct 31, 2010

6 chapters of I am a hero up!!! Only 3 chapters left in the entire series!!

Ibram Gaunt
Jul 22, 2009

Curious to see how it wraps up.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Yeah, I'm not sure it lived up to the potential that I felt it started with, but that sense of it getting gummed up and distracted also probably has to do with rate of updates, I'm sure if I give it a full read when it's done I'll be left with better overall impressions. Interested to see how he sticks the landing. glad the mc didn't end up killing his manga buddy & cult boy getting flamed was pretty darkly amusing
Tbh it's also my fault for assuming I'd love Hanazawa as much as Asano cuz they're buds and members of the new wave of seinen, I'm still not really sure how I feel about Boys on the Run and I thought Ressentiment was about ok and had some issues finishing up too. To be fair I should reread that, and also to be fair I'm not at all up to date with Asano's current series so I can't say it's gripping me like I Am a Hero did.

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty
Boys on the run never finished getting scanlated, did it

Ringo Roadagain
Mar 27, 2010

no

its hosed up

FAT BATMAN
Dec 12, 2009

I remember long time ago I think it was this thread that linked to me to a very short manga, that was from the perspective of a robot. This robot was in charge of a facility protecting and preserving DNA of all the animals on planet earth. All except human DNA. Humans created this robot when they realized the world was going to not be able to sustain life in the future. And it had to last thousands of years! It was very very good. Does anyone remember what it was called or have a link?

gimme the GOD DAMN candy
Jul 1, 2007
hotel

gimme the GOD DAMN candy
Jul 1, 2007
it makes me cry every time

Jose
Jul 24, 2007

Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster and writer
i got like 30 chapters into i am a hero and never got further is it actually worth reading to the end?

Webcormac McCarthy
Nov 26, 2007

Punkin Spunkin posted:

Yeah, I'm not sure it lived up to the potential that I felt it started with, but that sense of it getting gummed up and distracted also probably has to do with rate of updates, I'm sure if I give it a full read when it's done I'll be left with better overall impressions. Interested to see how he sticks the landing. glad the mc didn't end up killing his manga buddy & cult boy getting flamed was pretty darkly amusing
Tbh it's also my fault for assuming I'd love Hanazawa as much as Asano cuz they're buds and members of the new wave of seinen, I'm still not really sure how I feel about Boys on the Run and I thought Ressentiment was about ok and had some issues finishing up too. To be fair I should reread that, and also to be fair I'm not at all up to date with Asano's current series so I can't say it's gripping me like I Am a Hero did.

I love how Nakata's scriptures for Asada was infact Hideo's manuscript from way back in chapter FIVE. Nice callback. And Kizuki's death was hilarious, or did she get saved by ZQN-Haruki in the end?

Ibram Gaunt
Jul 22, 2009

Jose posted:

i got like 30 chapters into i am a hero and never got further is it actually worth reading to the end?

Depends what made you drop it.

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010
Is Hotel actually worth reading past the first chapter one shot? I got to chapter two and I was like uhhhh :wtf: is going on is this the same manga

I'm really confused.

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty
I don't think the subsequent chapters are actually part of it or even by the same author and also they are poo poo

ChairMaster
Aug 22, 2009

by R. Guyovich
It's an anthology kinda thing, the other ones have nothing to do with the first one.

I enjoyed It Was All For The Tuna, but probably skip the others, yea.

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty
Man, I am curious what I am a hero will end on if there are only 3 chapters left. If it's just 3 chapters of hideo being a crazy person I'd be cool with it

Punkin Spunkin
Jan 1, 2010

Captain Invictus posted:

Man, I am curious what I am a hero will end on if there are only 3 chapters left. If it's just 3 chapters of hideo being a crazy person I'd be cool with it
Same. It'd be nice going out how we came in, plus I seem to remember almost enjoying I Am a Hero pre-zombies more as weird as that sounds.

Law Cheetah
Mar 3, 2012

Punkin Spunkin posted:

New Suicide Island. Bad things happen. Whatever. It's kind of a dumb series.

I did enjoy the period when it was awkwardly translated by brits or whatevs and was just like "hey mate, were you stabbed by that bloke?? He's a mean bloke! we've got to go fight those other blokes!"

i always liked the part of that series where its the process of the main character figuring out a way to hunt wild deer from mostly scratch and i always wanted to find a series thats just that somehow

Webcormac McCarthy
Nov 26, 2007
New Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction chapters I hope Kadode can at least score before the End Of The World :(

Carpator Diei
Feb 26, 2011

Webcormac McCarthy posted:

New Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction chapters I hope Kadode can at least score before the End Of The World :(

Dead Dead Demon's is the tale of our time, and I'm not saying this lightly.

HenryEx
Mar 25, 2009

...your cybernetic implants, the only beauty in that meat you call "a body"...
Grimey Drawer
I think i'll wait for Dedede to end before i invest the time in it.


Can anyone recommend me a series that is (at least partially) from the POV of the villain? Something like Death Note or Dexter. Doesn't neccesarily need to be Seinen i guess (Death Note isn't, after all), but bonus points if it's more psychological than supernatural villainy.

Erg
Oct 31, 2010

HenryEx posted:

I think i'll wait for Dedede to end before i invest the time in it.


Can anyone recommend me a series that is (at least partially) from the POV of the villain? Something like Death Note or Dexter. Doesn't neccesarily need to be Seinen i guess (Death Note isn't, after all), but bonus points if it's more psychological than supernatural villainy.

http://kissmanga.com/Manga/Zannen-Jokanbu-Black-General-san

it's a VERY cerebral manga

Personal_Nirvana
Dec 28, 2012
I would say Heads and Homuncullus kind of go in that direction, and both are psychological mangas.

Metal Pink Babble
Mar 31, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

HenryEx posted:

Oh hey, good timing, just before i hit Submit. You'll like this then.



Might as well write some of that poo poo out, since i've been thinking a lot about Fire Punch the past day or so.
(Warning: this ends up being a long-rear end post, also :siren: SPOILERS! :siren:)
And by Fire Punch i probably mean more or less exclusively Togata, since he basically hijacked the story at the moment of introduction. I'm still not sure whether the author intended for that in the first place or not, which is a problem i'll come back to in a bit.

[perhaps he is intended as a scribe who records the words of illiterate prophets as they paraphrase verbatim the word of God. I'm responding to this essay but ch 39 is still loading on my metered 2g wifi. I used to have at least three neighbors with open wifi before usurious telecoms with hooklike probosces made phones smarter than contractees]

if i were more specific, i'd sound like an idiot. So let me straight to the point getting, sounding cool.]

HenryEx posted:

I barely even remember most of what happens in chapters 1-8 (a.k.a. pre-Togata) but it sets up a relatively normal comic story, with some characters, motivations, and a base outline of the world with room for completion. It's not even bad at it, it even sets up the antagonist with a relatable motivation for slaughtering an entire village: he's set up as somewhat of a valiant crusader facing omnipresent hardship and neccessary evil with a clear goal, and he happens upon a village where every home has human meat on the plates. And they're not just something like one or two voluntary sacrifices, as bad as that would already be, no- these are the arms of at least several dozen people. The implications are clear. And this is a man who'd rather starve to death than eat another, so he razes the entire village. For the benefit of all mankind, really.
These kinds of stories go on for a while, like the protagonist meets and rescues an abandoned up-beat little child to throw some conflict into the revenge motivation, he meets someone who can stop him and show him the limits of his current abilities, and so on. The kind of things you'd expect a comic like these to have. It has its tone and setting, it sticks to them but slowly develops them / fleshes them out, like how these blessings work and how they appear, what humanity's doing when it's not currently visible near the main character, what the rough technologic level is, the state of society.

humor's warm. cynicism's a frozen entree.]


HenryEx posted:

Then Togata enters the scene. Togata has already seen it all. Togata's already been around for hundreds of years of people being miserable and making others miserable, and would much rather practice escapism via watching movies with interesting scenarios and other ways to live than lose his mind. But... humanity's not making movies anymore, so the resources are ultimately limited. Togata's too old for this poo poo, and doesn't care about anything except movies.

So, finally forced to face :airquote:reality:airquote: again, Togata decides: if this life is so garbage, maybe i should make it more like a movie. Let's make a movie! Movies are great, so this life aas seen in a movie would be better, right? So Togata takes the main character's life in this comic story, and tries to force it to comply to movie rules.

With some sweet action shots and close ups!

Bad rear end one liners! (shamelessly stolen from other movies) (but really just likes movie quotes)

Character building moments to establish the stakes!


But here comes the catch: It's all in-story. We've never left the paper so far. Togata doesn't actually live in a movie. He just lives, and :airquote:real life:airquote: gives as much of a poo poo about Togata as it is the other way around. With all the genre-aware ribbing and lamp-shading, the references and winks, they are never aimed at the reader behind the fourth wall. Togata only ever winks at his own camera. Predictably, trying to force Hollywood pacing and structure on the real world (even if it does actually follow story-telling rules behind the layer of abstaction called the fourth wall) goes poorly.

Turns out your cool self-recorded action footage is really just unwatchable garbage.

This is probably the scene that a poster above criticised for "making a dumb decision but it's okay because i point it out".
But really, it's just Togata being mad at things not going his way. Who would've thought that a blessing that lets you quickly heal any injuries and tolerate them to a great degree would probably find a lot of use in an elite soldier unit???
Especially since these people live a long time, So they keep staying in the unit while the normies die/retire and get replaced with more potential regenerators. Baffling, really. Why don't they let more fire users risk their death instead of potentially using their heat to do their part in acting against this frozen apocalypse?

[*points at zebra-striped blackbelt on gi* Infinite ammo]

HenryEx posted:

He just keeps trying to strongarm "reality" into movie tropes. Sometimes, "reality's" (this comic's) tropes line up, and we get the dramatic background reveal when the main character meets a look-alike of his sister. Sometimes, they don't and to get some proper enemy ability users, he has to go fishing for convicted criminals and murderers to get a diverse set up and then at least dresses them up like the Avengers. (Spoilers: Things don't really work out, again. Who'da thunk.) His Main Character can't even really do poo poo aside from looking cool (when he's not naked for once) and being determined, so he even has to teach him how to fight and make proper one-liners and all from the ground up. It's a constant up-hill struggle for some slight entertainment in this boring and lovely life for Togata, while the rest of the world doesn't really give a poo poo and basically just goes along with what they were already doing, making some small concessions in the grand plan since you can't really go against a force like Togata.

[his concession is a stand. he operates a lobby trafficking the body of the savior to be served as snacks during an intermission. cynicism = >9000点]

HenryEx posted:

That is, until the author comes in. This is where it gets difficult. Let's take a step out of the story and behind the paper now (this is why i put reality in quotes all the time up to now.) Dude obviously likes movies, and Togata's knowledge isn't just lip service, so Togata might very well just be an author self-insert. I dunno. Let's take a look at a cool part first.

lol, being reminded of self-insertion reminds me of Arnold's best line in the movie [The Sixth Day]. After obliterating the antagonist, fallen atop his own lifeless and naked clone, he said in the most ridiculous Austrian accent "When I told you to go screw yourself, I didn't expect you to take it literally." Completely over the top, and :awesome:

HenryEx posted:

The author doesn't just let Togami try to make his manga into a movie, he even sometimes indulges Togata's "vision" when in his vicinity. What i mean is, that this comic stops being paneled and framed and starts being shot instead. Check out this sequence of pages, coming just before most of the pages shown above:

The whole sequence was kinda confusing to follow visually and weirdly laid out when i read it the first time, and that's because the author isn't playing to the strength of his medium. Imagine this whole thing as a camera scene and suddenly it comes together:
Scene change cut to overhead of a speeding train. Angle changes to the front of the train and the camera closes in, entering through the conductors cabin and giving us a glimpse into the first wagon. Camera view changes to the side of the train and it now slowly lets the train "pass" in travel direction, showing us a sliding view of the cabin interiors. It scrolls by the first and second cabin with each soldier squad, the third with the officers, the fourth one with materials and the final fifth one with the "target": The box. It introduces the set of the next scene, each "stage" of the fight separately, detailing the flow of this next set piece in advance, before zooming in at the goal of it all in the end. This is straight up a movie scene, and it works beautifully as one.

[Guy montag realized he was the fourth wall when his own wife tried to bump him off to collect on his life insurance. ]

HenryEx posted:

That's why it's so awkward on paper, too: a comic's strengths lie entirely elsewhere, and you need to make up for the lack of flow and motion with things like paneling layout, perspective changes, and the fact that you can cram a lot more detail into any one moment. There's a million ways you could have made this scene work better in a manga, but as a camera shot, it's really good.

This doesn't happen all the time, but if you look out for it, there's more moments around Togata that would've worked well shot with a camera instead of drawn with a pen. It's also nice that while Togata's comments about movies don't always line up with the author making a manga, some things about storytelling and dynamics are interchangeable, so when the author introduces one of the officers and builds his character in the page and a half that we've seen him into someone we want to see dead, Togata is there to explain just how the author did that, under the guise of "This is just like a movie scene!". Not just through the obvious dialogue, but the reaction upon first contact, his facial expression, his demeanor, all in a very short span. You can call it lampshading or the author patting himself on the back or whatever, but i'll choose to interpret it as this dude loving movies and going "Hey hey! This is why it works so well! Isn't that neat, what you can do with some arranged lighting, careful positioning and well-chosen acting?". And i always like hearing how the things manipulating us work.

All in all, the author set up a basic story with some impetus, and then dropped a bored immature child with power into it that runs away with it. Seeing that child struggle against the uncaring world with a power that exempts it from any consequences, and giving it a relatable obsession like movies all in all makes for some entertaining distractions.


I suppose i should finally get to all the problems i keep alluding to, but man this post is long. I'll mention them a lot more briefly, which probably works out since they're also pretty apparent.

The shittiness of people is unrelenting in this. If it weren't for a certain someone providing an excellent counterweight, it would be overbearing (and it is in the first few chapters).
The art is only serviceable. Dude has a good grasp on movement, anatomy, framing, all that good basic poo poo, for comics AND movies both, but it's all unpolished, no gloss. Not neccessarily a negative, but there's much nicer things to look at.
The author starts to falter a little bit in regards to the established setting a little later on. There's still nobody who winks at the reader or acknowledges a fourth wall, not even the newest cast member, but he does things like giving Togata some movie set-ups long after Togata stopped really caring about shooting the movie.
After the city arc, the thing kinda runs out of steam a little, together with Togata. It feels like the author might not be sure where to go with it, and you get the impression that he might not really have anything planned out long-term, story or plot-wise (if the rude mood whiplash of Togata's appearance didn't already convince you of this in Chp.9). Things like the abducted and enslaved kid the MC met is released, but they don't really reunite and has barely any presence. You can attribute this to the tone of the story being "no poo poo, they didn't really have anything in common, these things don't work out". Togata's two followers just kinda vanish even as soon as the city arc starts, never to be heard from again. Some actual X-Men show up, but by this point Togata's already sorta disillusioned, and they don't amount to much and are just kinda around for a while. We start to get more and more backstory dumped on us, and not in the organic fashion that the author displayed in earlier chapters, but just by Togata going "this is what it was like" while hacking off a human face, forever. The world building suddely feels forced and kinda like "uuh, i need to go somewhere from here" instead of letting a story play out through its actors.
The ages start to not really make sense anymore. Togata's about 300 years old and and has experienced just the very tail end of the "warm days" before the ice age. Then there's someone introduced with about a thousand years, also a transhumanist, and (transhu)mankind has left Earth. What did Mister 1k do in the 700 years before Togata/the ice age? How is the remaining humanity still at the shown tech level after interstellar colonization happened? How the hell do they still have bullets and cigarettes after 300 years of ice age?

[ x-men reference. i like your style, dude.]

HenryEx posted:

I mean, the set pieces are still pretty sweet, and the long continuous 9-page action shot of Togata driving the truck is probably my favorite scene in this. But the scenes where everything works together to create that amazing mix of unpredictable weirdness get rarer.

To be fair, it's still way too early to make any guesses towards the newest cast member's role in the story and how he's going to make it all fit. I'm hoping for the best so the pace gets out of this rut it's been in. He at least has his heart in the right place.


effortposts like these are the reason i fell in love with these forums. this man is a gem. here's a video:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYq03HajrhI

Metal Pink Babble fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Feb 7, 2017

Metal Pink Babble
Mar 31, 2012

by FactsAreUseless

Captain Invictus posted:

Man, I am curious what I am a hero will end on if there are only 3 chapters left. If it's just 3 chapters of hideo being a crazy person I'd be cool with it

if the series dies in three chapters, OI call an author ragequit.

hayashida q was supposed to end dorohedoro last volume. Miura kentaro can milk his flagship series until Fukushima daiichi and daini melt a hole into the earth's core due to his strategic use of pacing steadily through writers' block, and well-timed franchising.

I reaalllly jive with hideo. let us please not stop hoping for a continuation of i am a hero.

Squidster
Oct 7, 2008

✋😢Life's just better with Ominous Gloves🤗🧤
To You, The Immortal #11


The manga is both very good and very crushing.

I can't believe that the villain stitched her face together and is still chasing them. I imagine she's destined to become Lady Ahab, hunting the white Spirit Bear forever.

EDIT: Oh hey #12 is out too!

Squidster fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Feb 10, 2017

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Mentat Radnor
Apr 24, 2008

~Water flowers every day~
A new chapter of Dead Dead Demon's is up, and things continue to look grim. :ohdear:

But also, lol.

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