|
(Oh jesus what a page snipe!!! I'm sorry.) I finished reading Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction. Please excuse me for posting a giant CIA document with my thoughts. I've been reading this manga off-and-on for years since it launched, and it's probably my favorite manga next to Houseki no Kuni and Qualia the Purple. I'm still processing the ending, but my working conception of this story is that you have to treat it like metafiction to make sense. There's obviously metafictional elements of it, but I mean specifically that it's almost like If on a winter's night a traveler. The manga is almost like a grab-bag of different genre stories. 1. The "prime" story is about Ontan and Kadode's life in a late capitalist dystopia where a mothership is suspended over Tokyo. 2. Every volume is sandwiched between a manga-inside-a-manga, Isobeyan, which reflects the themes and events of the prime story. 3. Around 65% into the story, we jump world-lines and see a world where Kadode kills herself. The shift in tone is jarring and horrifying, even compared to the "prime" story's depictions of genocide. Mostly, though, the substory about Kadode's suicide is self-contained and feels like a different genre. 4. 8/31 happens and we are given an entire chapter depicting an apocalypse, akin to the extended apocalyptic sequences of Akira or End of Evangelion or Bokurano. 5. After 8/3, we once again leave the "prime" story, and we're taken to another story about Kadode's father waking up in a postapocalyptic landscape where an app rules human behavior and decaying hunter robots kill people on sight. The tech from the "prime" story becomes elevated to an almost unrecognizable degree, and we very clearly step foot into an elevated sci-fi mecha world. This is technically the same reality and timeline as the "prime" story, but by introducing the disorienting PoV change and never returning to the "prime" story, it effectively functions as a kind of self-contained substory. 6. Finally, we end up in one last secondary world, where the characters have grown up and have workaday lives. This is another recognizable genre ending that you see in lots of manga and anime stories. The meta element carries through to the finale, where adult Ontan and Kadode hear each other's voices from another timeline, which emphasizes the unreality of the final chapter. What I mean by unreality is specifically the "story" quality of what we're witnessing. We're not supposed to sink into the world of the manga and accept it as true. It's the opposite--we're supposed to be startled and recognize that what we're seeing is a story. Which is why there is literally a giant multidimensional hand of god that points at things in the final few volumes. I think a lot of what we see in Dededede is like, "possibilities." The alien technology and government conspiracies are just vehicles to transport us to these different possibilities. The throughline is Ontan, who is Absolute. In different timelines, her big brother is a fat internet troll or a jaded prodigy. In different timelines, earth is invaded or not invaded. But in the original timeline where Kadode and Ontan become friends, Ontan discovers love. I think her love for Kadode becomes an anchor for meaning. Because she loves Kadode, she can find value in life. And by having Ontan in her life, Kadode is able to keep going no matter how crummy and worthless the state of human existence is. The finale of Dededede is extremely similar to the finale of one of Inio Asano's earlier works, Nijigahara Holograph. Holograph is very similar to the story of Kadode's suicide, as it's about capturing the subjective despair of being a child in an abusive household and an uncaring school system. There's almost word-for-word dialogue and imagery that carries over, down to an announcement about laundry weather while the sky is blotted out by the apocalypse. It ends the same way as Dededede, with the characters encountering an adult version of themselves. One of the last lines of Holograph is "No matter how unfair or cruel the world may seem, you must keep a strong will. You are allowed to choose the way your life goes." This is mirrored in Dededede: "That was the day humanity ended. But I'm still alive. And I'm going to keep on living as long as you're by my side." So I think Dededede is sort of a natural evolution from Holograph. I think the difference between the two stories is love. In Holograph, the main character is completely unloved, and he can only replay the hatred and anguish in his life. When he becomes an adult, he is bitter and bewildered by the world around him. Dededede shows how much your life can change if you find someone who truly loves you. Even if the world falls apart, if you're not alone, you can find a way to keep on living. I think one of the really ambitious things that the manga does is use its "visionary" meta style to drive home its themes. By "visionary" I mean the glimpses into different "stories" that I talked about earlier--literally giving the reader visions of different possibilities. When the final volume opens with Kadode's dad, we are given a vision of a world where humankind has fallen to nonstop, ever-escalating violence, ruled by the guiding principle of xenophobia. The US fights China fights Japan, and all of them want to conquer the invaders' homeworld. The hunter bots kill anything they don't recognize as "belonging." In other words, we're given a vision of the natural conclusion of the logic we see in Kadode's childhood--the human tendency to label the Other as a Demon. The thing that is so striking to me about this awful post-apocalypse is how boring it is. It's just endless machinations by heartless monsters. We're teased and teased to see what's happened to Kadode and Ontan. In other words, by indulging in a vision of what this timeline is like, the manga is able to drive home its theme--"xenophobia begets violence and war. War is horrible and meaningless, and it converts everything around it to the logic of war. It robs life of its most meaningful elements, which are human connection and relationships." It does this really seamlessly by going on about factional warfare when all we want is to see Ontan and Kadode smooch again. I think that's why it ends the way it does. It gives a vision of a world that's more-or-less okay, comparatively. It shows how peace is genuinely more compelling than violence. But the manga also recognizes that a tidy, happy ending like that isn't always possible, which is why it's just a vision of a possible timeline. It's not the end of the story, because Ontan and Kadode will find a way to live no matter what world they're in. And it's saying the same thing to the reader, too: these are all possibilities, and it might be out of our own power to choose which timeline we end up in. But we need to choose love and peace over hatred and xenophobia. All of this is to say, Ontan is the best disaster-bi I've ever seen in all of fiction.
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2022 06:59
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 13:12 |
|
|
Huzzah! posted:Two new Mr. Villains Day Off. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 17, 2022 12:59
|
|
|
New Shimeji Simulation
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2022 06:21
|
|
|
Shadows House 141 lol at Shaun doing the fist pose too
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2022 12:23
|
|
|
Cephas posted:(Oh jesus what a page snipe!!! I'm sorry.) Thanks, long enough; read it all! I'll probably re-read it from the start eventually as with just monthly updates you'll end up missing lots of details, I'll make sure to re-read holograph first
|
|
#
?
Aug 28, 2022 17:36
|
|
|
Speaking of shadow house, theres a one shot crossover between that and the authors earlier work, Kuro. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2022 00:02
|
|
|
Honestly I'm still expecting the reveal that they take place in the same world somehow
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2022 00:09
|
|
|
RatHat posted:Honestly I'm still expecting the reveal that they take place in the same world somehow The author's tweet about the crossover said they were in different worlds.
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2022 01:59
|
|
|
In which the Princess learns a valuable lesson.
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2022 18:04
|
|
|
As someone who has purchases and consumes those novelty sodas at the truck stops like "Dill Pickle" and "ranch dressing". The Hell Lord gets me.
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2022 19:04
|
|
|
The Hell Lord continues to be the best character of the series.
|
|
#
?
Aug 29, 2022 20:14
|
|
|
Huzzah! posted:The Hell Lord continues to be the best character of the series. The Hell Lord is someone we should all look up to.
|
|
#
?
Aug 30, 2022 05:36
|
|
|
New Interrogation Princess
|
|
#
?
Sep 5, 2022 20:56
|
|
|
Shadows House 142 Big if true
|
|
#
?
Sep 11, 2022 22:57
|
|
|
New interrogation princess
|
|
#
?
Sep 12, 2022 20:35
|
|
|
New Soara and the Monsters House Finally, face to face with the Dark Lord.
|
|
#
?
Sep 21, 2022 23:38
|
|
|
Huzzah! posted:New Soara and the Monsters House I don't know what I expected given the cliffhanger from the previous chapter. But A chill country-like dude handing out rice balls was only towards the middle of my list. I also like how the artist can contrast the past and present Demon lord mostly through hatching on his features, it's something they did a lot in Marry Grave to convey intensity and I like it.
|
|
#
?
Sep 22, 2022 13:40
|
|
|
New Shimeji Simulation
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2022 09:42
|
|
|
Shimeji simulation is starting to give me anxious feelings. I am waiting for the other shoe to drop. and then I finished reading the chapter and that certainly seems like a shoe
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2022 01:36
|
|
|
A new chapter of Shadows House is out.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2022 05:42
|
|
|
Found a cute series called Gyaru and Cthulhu which once again proves that gyaru can make any concept wholesome as gently caress. Just an up and coming idol and her pet lovecraftian horror.
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2022 22:52
|
|
|
Brought To You By posted:Found a cute series called Gyaru and Cthulhu which once again proves that gyaru can make any concept wholesome as gently caress. Just an up and coming idol and her pet lovecraftian horror. these are in fact live-translated over in the comic strips thread on these very forums, which includes webmanga sometimes honestly a great thread to follow because of the old-timey newspaper scans too, jokes from a hundred years ago are so incomprehensible they wrap back around to being hilarious Mister Olympus fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Oct 14, 2022 |
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2022 00:02
|
|
|
high recommendation for uramachi sakaba, also translated and posted by giant ethicist in the comic strip thread and now on the 'dex
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2022 04:00
|
|
|
Hey, hi, those are me! (Hopefully I'm not doing something weird Manga-dex-culturally in basically dumping two or three years' worth of built-up translations over the course of a few days.) I was vaguely shocked to find that literally nobody else has apparently shared any Q-Rais at all (on that site anyway), so look forward to some surreal 4-koma bullshit once my new title submission for Chako goes through. Also check out Monya, it's one of my favorite comics ever but as a finished title with an unusual art style it's probably destined to sink like a stone over there.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2022 13:57
|
|
|
Giant Ethicist posted:Hey, hi, those are me! (Hopefully I'm not doing something weird Manga-dex-culturally in basically dumping two or three years' worth of built-up translations over the course of a few days.) badass. thanks for the tl and upload; it's a cute little comic
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2022 15:14
|
|
|
lmfao hamstur
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2022 15:15
|
|
|
Giant Ethicist posted:Hey, hi, those are me! (Hopefully I'm not doing something weird Manga-dex-culturally in basically dumping two or three years' worth of built-up translations over the course of a few days.) Thanks for the TL, it actually stuck out to me scrolling through the MD updates because I'd find multiple chapters of the gyaru series in a row so I hopped on.
|
|
#
?
Oct 14, 2022 16:52
|
|
|
Giant Ethicist posted:Hey, hi, those are me! (Hopefully I'm not doing something weird Manga-dex-culturally in basically dumping two or three years' worth of built-up translations over the course of a few days.) Gyaru manga ftw so thank you
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2022 09:32
|
|
|
New Soara and the Monster's House. The architect really took one look at the Demon Lord, went "I can 
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2022 16:00
|
|
|
SexyBlindfold posted:New Soara and the Monster's House. This man basically suplexed a twister. Our Main character was supposed to fight that...jesus christ.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2022 19:37
|
|
|
Brought To You By posted:This man basically suplexed a twister. Our Main character was supposed to fight that...jesus christ. Correction: He suplexed the entire monsoon season
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2022 20:41
|
|
|
Both the architect lady and the Demon Lord are great. This is great.
|
|
#
?
Oct 15, 2022 21:05
|
|
|
kidcoelacanth posted:high recommendation for uramachi sakaba, also translated and posted by giant ethicist in the comic strip thread and now on the 'dex This is basically Midnight Diner with cyborgs, so 100% my poo poo
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 02:04
|
|
|
SexyBlindfold posted:This is basically Midnight Diner with cyborgs, so 100% my poo poo
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 02:41
|
|
|
Yo, these rule and you rule for translating them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 03:30
|
|
|
grassy gnoll posted:Yo, these rule and you rule for translating them.
|
|
#
?
Oct 16, 2022 04:00
|
|
|
https://twitter.com/hirakeidayoo/status/1586584438317588480?s=46&t=FiUTbTktuTu6vKYY8fGOmA Happy Halloween
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2022 07:23
|
|
|
Anyone else reading Usuzumi no hate? It's a post apocalyptic series about an android tasked with retrieving and disposing of the crystalized bodies of humans in populated areas following an alien invasion. It's about what you can expect from a story about a lone traveler picking through the remains of human civilization but still enjoyable. And not without some interactions with other sentient figures   I always like the idea of the film buff getting time to finally watch through a catalogue of films. Something I wish I had more time to do myself, just without the whole dying and horror part.
|
|
#
?
Oct 30, 2022 18:00
|
|
|
Brought To You By posted:Anyone else reading Usuzumi no hate? This owns. Because BLAME! owns and it's basically that. Pity the magazine it's in publishes ten issues per year 
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2022 19:33
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 8, 2024 13:12 |
|
|
Ottoman the series has ended serialization but the translation still have a couple volumes to go. And as far as ways to access powerups goes. Holding congress is one way for sure.   sinky posted:Pity the magazine it's in publishes ten issues per year
|
|
#
?
Nov 2, 2022 05:12
|
|