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I read all of monster and 20th century, and I agree Pluto is probably the best way to introduce Urusawa. I'm enjoying billy bat for the most part but I like the focus of Pluto a little than the multi-generation ensemble cast. It doesn't hurt that Pluto is a much more manageable length to boot.
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Feb 1, 2015 08:07
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Captain Invictus posted:Also, looking back on 20th Century Boys, I don't think it's very good. It meanders and some of the reveals and pivotal moments are incredible, but as a whole I find it middling at best. I definitely felt it dragged on a lot longer than maybe it should have. This pretty much. I'd say it holds up very well until the last time skip. After that it becomes a mess. Monster and Pluto are incredible, although Monster tends to set up its reveals for so long they aren't really reveals anymore, especially towards the end of the series. I too started reading Billy Bat a couple of years ago but the plot got so loving confusing that I had to stop and this is coming from a guy who could follow Man-Machine Interface.
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Feb 1, 2015 08:19
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I randomly gave Monster a chance. I was expecting some kind of horror genre manga. It was that but not in the way I expected. It surpassed my wildest expectations. I remember it hooking me pretty drat fast but I would still tell anyone to give it some time.
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Feb 1, 2015 08:29
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The animated adaptation of Monster is really, really good.
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Feb 1, 2015 10:00
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20th Century remains my favourite. It's the first thing I read by Urasawa and I still adore it, so I think it's an excellent introduction. Yeah I'm not gonna argue that it peaks quite a bit before the end, but for me it's all about the journey which is still super exhilarating, even on a re-read. I don't think I've ever been thrown around so wildly by a piece of fiction, I loving love it.
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Feb 1, 2015 15:47
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It's incredibly strong for a long time but I...just stopped caring after a certain point. There's only so long you can keep stakes high before it becomes tiresome.
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Feb 1, 2015 16:20
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If this thread is still taking suggestions: Me & the Devil Blues (Drama, Horror, Seinen) A take on the life of bluesman Robert Johnson with some heavy gothic horror overtones. This being a manga, don't expect it to cleave too close to reality. For instance: Clyde Barrow (of Bonnie & Clyde fame) is a major character and confidant of Johnson's in this universe. Biographical quibbles aside, the art is FANTASTIC and sets a mood so well it might as well be a full-blown horror manga. Only four volumes total, so it should make for a fast read if you're interested.  Dorohedoro (Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy, Seinen) Starts out as a REAL friggin' weird noir about an amnesiac-turned-lizardman trying to find out his pre-lizarding identity. And it gets much weirder from there. Has a frenetic, punk-as-gently caress art style I love to bits. The mangaka was once an assistant to Tsutomu Nihei, the guy that does Knights of Sidonia and the Blame! universe, but she takes her stuff in a much more "zany", high-energy direction than the dourness of Nihei.  Hideout (Horror, Drama, Seinen) Plot-wise this manga is nothing special, but it's legit one of the best looking horror manga I've ever read. I'm a pretty big sucker for art in a manga, so when you look as good as Hideout I can forgive uninteresting characters or plot foibles. Fortunately, Hideout isn't too bad in that regard. It reads like a mangaka's take on a Tales From the Crypt story of uxoricide and the poetic karma that follows. It's only one volume so any more talk about the plot would almost have to be spoilers, so let me just mention again I think it looks really, REALLY good.  Shigurui (Action, Drama, GORE, Seinen) Ever read a samurai revenge tale and wish every character in it was human garbage? Well have I got the manga for YOU! Tarantino-levels of comic uberviolence? Check. Moral repugnance including (but not limited to): misogyny and infanticide? Yep. Pretty much the only thing redeeming the various characters in this manga is the sheer will they exert in trying to horribly murder each other. A series this steeped in bleak runs the risk of causing eye rolls just from how X-TREMELY DARK it is, much like Berserk, but I found the art to be very nice and the characters horrible, but more importantly INTERESTINGLY horrible. Recommended for fans of violent trainwrecks.
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Feb 1, 2015 21:32
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Me and the Devil Blues is actually starting back up thanks to the ridiculous success of the author's terrible/great series, Prison School. Dorohedoro is absolutely outstanding and is just about to finish. It's probably one of the most unique series of anything I've ever read, everything from the characters to the powers to the way magic works to the world setting to the ridiculous, ridiculous violence(decapitations and slice-and-dice dismemberment are a chapterly occurrence) is just so different from most other series. It's also genuinely hilarious a lot of the time, too.
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Feb 1, 2015 22:15
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Sad Mammal posted:If this thread is still taking suggestions: I've read three of these four (haven't heard of Hideout) and they're all fantastic. I had a hand in scanlating Shigurui so I might be biased, but I liked it most out of those 
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Feb 1, 2015 22:16
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Oh dang. Congratulations on having a hand in releasing Shigurui for English speakers! After I got caught up on Shamo I had a hankering for dirtbag-on-dirtbag violence and Shigurui scratched the itch wonderfully. Speaking of, might as well throw that out there too: Shamo (Action, Drama, Crime, Seinen) Remember all that poo poo I said about Shigurui? Well apply all that to mixed martial arts instead of sword fighting and you have this. The series shows the logical conclusion of giving a Sopranos mook brutal martial arts prowess. I liked the series at first because of how well the artist seems to "get" the flow of a fight scene, and the art's only gotten better and better since the series has gone on. As a word of warning: the series is NOT shy about showing the results of gang warfare and victimizing innocent citizens from a man well-trained in physical violence. That being said, if that all sounds too intense, the series gets a fair tone reboot into something much more palatable around volume 20, so start there if you just want some martial arts melee action.
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Feb 1, 2015 22:39
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Captain Invictus posted:Dorohedoro is absolutely outstanding and is just about to finish.  I read this series like... I think almost a decade ago? And thought it ended really abruptly, but now it turns out that it's actually been steadily updating this whole loving time!? I really wish I found this out yesterday morning, and not 10 hours before I have to be in at work. 
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Feb 2, 2015 05:52
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It was actually a few chapters from ending when the manga magazine it ran in went bankrupt, so there was a long period of time where it was just floating in limbo, but it got picked up again and I think there's a half dozen chapters or less to go.
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Feb 2, 2015 06:00
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Hideout's artist is really really cool and his big stylish spreads with the spatters and scribbles blow me away. He has also done:   Green Blood, a good old fashioned revenge western (please overlook the anime knife-gun)     Rainbow, a collaboration with another author, and the story of a crew of juvie inmates just after WWII who find strength in each other, refuse to lose to a lovely system, and struggle to reclaim their lives 
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Feb 2, 2015 06:32
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Sad Mammal posted:If this thread is still taking suggestions: Viz (I think) got this one and released it as two books containing two volumes each. Should be an easy find at a half-price books, and they're really interesting.
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Feb 2, 2015 06:45
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What is with these prison comics and starting things off with a hearty helping of male rape?
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Feb 2, 2015 15:47
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Discendo Vox posted:What is with these prison comics and starting things off with a hearty helping of male rape? It's like the number one thing people know about prisons besides "there's bars on the windows". Still not great.
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Feb 2, 2015 15:57
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Okay, I feel like making a hard sell: The World is Mine (Action, Drama, Mature, Psychological, Seinen, Supernatural) "Meet Mon, a violent killer faithful only to his own eruptive desires, and his timid companion Toshi, a demolition-devil with a fanatical thirst for destruction. Their killing-spree across Japan is destined to intersect the path of the enormous 'Higumadon,' a mysterious beast on a Godzilla-like rampage from Hokkaido to Tokyo." Essentially Natural Born Killers + kaijū flick. The art is the complete antithesis of the 'cuteness' that defines much of anime/manga and has a lot of the ordinary ugliness that I personally feel best demonstrates what actual people look like, so give this a shot if you've ever found that cute aesthetic off-putting. Also, most will find the violence, rape, and initial aimlessness repulsive, but I would still give it about 30 chapters before completely giving up on it. And if my obviously glowing recommendation doesn't spur you on to read this, here's two reviews that outline things in more detail albeit with some spoilers.
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Feb 2, 2015 20:24
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I am having a hard time finding some of these series. If anyone could PM me. I remember Barnes and Noble used to have a giant row dedicated to manga but it was impossible to tell what was good or not by just browsing.
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Feb 3, 2015 08:09
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If it's still in print, amazon is probably your best bet. if not, try ebay.
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Feb 3, 2015 08:25
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Coaaab posted:
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Feb 3, 2015 09:01
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Daler Mehndi posted:I didn't understand the dialogue. Maybe it's a translation issue. A shame because I actually liked the art. But I can't follow the story as it is. robots never sleep posted:Beyond the action and characters, TWIM also received recognition for the frequency and accuracy of the portrayal of regional Japanese dialects. Much of the story takes place on the north end of the main island of Honshu, in the prefectures of Aomori and Akita, northeast of Tokyo, and Arai took special care to recreate the accents and speech patterns of the local people, despite the fact that he himself was raised in the big city, where there is no accent. This feeling of geography is very important to the manga, which uses an almost ludicrous amount of Godard-esque (or would that be Anno-esque?) subtitles, announcing the time and place at every scene change. In this way, the events of the story are given a strong documentary-like realism, a grounding that helps further reinforce the sheer scale of what is portrayed. It is often difficult to follow the dialogue, for a variety of reasons. The regional dialects of Aomori and Akita can be quite unfamiliar compared to standard Tokyo Japanese, and require an acclimation period before the patterns sink in. As well, Arai's voice as an author carries some peculiarities. In moments of quick action or extreme emotion, his characters will often break down from full sentences to choppy, blurted interjections. It's hard for me to tell if these are simply attributable to the idiosyncracy of the writer, or are perhaps a depiction of the slowing of time during sequences Arai wishes to emphasize (thus breaking the comic Golden Rule that you have all the time in the world to give your speech before the next panel advances the sequence). In addition to these more fundamental language issues, Arai also bogs down some of the pacing in the middle of the story with extended technical discussions about things like the military chain of command, political maneuvering and manipulating public perceptions, things that he himself admits he did not understand before drawing the manga, but were necessary to give it the serious portrayal his subject deserved.
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Feb 3, 2015 16:17
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 Freesia (Action, Drama, Dystopia, Psychological, Seinen) If you're caught on I Am a Hero and want another manga with a batshit nuts main character, this is your series. Freesia takes place in a what-if Japan similar to Terry GIlliam's Brazil, only instead of focusing on an office worker in a horribly oppressive dictatorial dystopia, this series focuses on a government assassin in a horribly oppressive dictatorial dystopia. With prisons overcrowding, Japan has adopted a new policy of dealing with convicted felons: The Vengeance Enforcement Act. Essentially, after you're released from prison, a separate legal system plays out to decide whether or not you're worthy of "Vengeance", i.e. the government sending an assassin after you on a given date. "Targets" (people selected for vengeance) are allowed to hire their own bodyguards, with government-issued protectors in the event a target cannot afford one. The series focuses on Kano, a VERY mentally disturbed young man who gets brought on as a new recruit for performing vengeances. Kano is completely bonkers: he lives in a hallucinated fantasy world more often than he lives in reality and thinks his targets want to be killed by him. Kano is actually one of the more well-adjusted characters in the series. As can be expected, not all is as it seems, and basically everyone is only looking out for himself. The series does a really neat job of worldbuilding, and the scratchy, western style of art is very distinctive.
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Feb 8, 2015 20:25
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 Taiyou no Ie(House of the Sun) - Drama, romance, comedy, tragedy House of the Sun is a dramatic romance/comedy that follows Mao, a high schooler whose mother left her father and she felt unwelcome at home all of a sudden, and Hiro, the eldest brother of three siblings who went through some horrible tragedy in the past. Mao, who used to stay over at Hiro's family's place all the time as a kid, winds up moving into the house he lives in. It's a wonderful series that is simultaneously funny and fluffy shoujo, while also lending real gravity to trauma and people being afraid to face their problems. It just finished being scanlated at 50 chapters and is a really great, heartwarming read all the way through, even if it can stab at your heart as well as warm it. I highly recommend it if you're one for romance series.
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Feb 12, 2015 07:28
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So is anyone else starting to get tired of protagonists named Hiro? It was clever the first time, and ok the next few, but now it's just started being annoying. We get it. The hero is named "Hiro". Ha ha. Come up with something new already, mangaka.
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Feb 12, 2015 07:53
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That kinda looks like a romance series about a 20 year old dating a middle schooler.
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Feb 12, 2015 07:54
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Captain Bravo posted:So is anyone else starting to get tired of protagonists named Hiro? It was clever the first time, and ok the next few, but now it's just started being annoying. We get it. The hero is named "Hiro". Ha ha. Come up with something new already, mangaka. Lurdiak posted:That kinda looks like a romance series about a 20 year old dating a middle schooler. It's a romance, but it also focuses a lot on dealing with tragedy and divorce issues, bringing back together broken families, learning to heal, etc. Captain Invictus fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Feb 12, 2015 |
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Feb 12, 2015 10:19
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Captain Invictus posted:This is a joke post right, you do know that Hiro is an actual name in Japan like John or Ben would be in the US? What he means is that they rely on the significance of the name being an element of the story more often than he'd like. I haven't seen it enough to know if I'd agree or disagree though.
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Feb 12, 2015 10:23
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I guess. Hiro in that instance is just a dude though, it's not something that affects his stance in the story. Relationships between people a handful of years different aren't exactly uncommon. Hell, my parents are 7 years apart.
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Feb 12, 2015 10:29
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A quick look at Behind the Name says 'Hiro' means a bunch of stuff but 'hero' isn't one of them. It's not really any more significant than a dude being called Andrew and being brave.
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Feb 12, 2015 10:31
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Lurdiak posted:That kinda looks like a romance series about a 20 year old dating a middle schooler. I guess I can see the art, and that cover art in particular, being a little unnerving if you're worried about that, but no they're both late teenage at least. The series is a pretty ordinary romance drama targeted at teenage girls, the polar opposite of otaku bait icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Feb 12, 2015 |
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Feb 12, 2015 13:46
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Captain Invictus posted:He is older, but not by THAT much. I think there's a 4 year age gap between them. Pass.
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Feb 12, 2015 16:15
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Lurdiak, could you not post in this thread anymore? You rarely say anything of substance and you seem to think that you passing on reading a series is worth posting about. Thanks.
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Feb 12, 2015 16:37
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Captain Invictus posted:Lurdiak, could you not post in this thread anymore? You rarely say anything of substance and you seem to think that you passing on reading a series is worth posting about. Thanks. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings wrt this manga.
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Feb 12, 2015 16:40
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Hakkesshu posted:Berserk is so unique in that the general message seems to be "the world is hosed and everything is horrible forever, your worst nightmares are true and no one is ever going to live a happy life or afterlife, but hey you shouldn't give up!" There's a really good post in the five-plus year old thread in ADTRW that goes into it, but the biggest theme in Berserk is fate and destiny vs humanistic free will. The fact that this is expressed via a monster of a man (who actually gets weaker as a result of making friends!) with a six foot sword murdering the living gently caress out of demons is just icing on the cake.
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Feb 12, 2015 16:41
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Lurdiak posted:I'm sorry I hurt your feelings wrt this manga. Nah you're just being a poo poo-stirrer. I'm saying be a better poster if you're going to bother posting in this thread instead of just dropping one sentence(or one word) posts.
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Feb 12, 2015 16:43
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Captain Invictus posted:Nah you're just being a poo poo-stirrer. I'm saying be a better poster if you're going to bother posting in this thread instead of just being some kind of one-sentence post factory. I'm sorry that discussing how I feel about a manga is considered poo poo-stirring.
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Feb 12, 2015 16:44
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Next-Jin Engine posted:I don't know if it's due to everyone already knowing the author's work by heart or anything, but I feel like Naoki Urasawa at least deserves a mention or footnote. I feel that his works are incredibly accessible to western audiences: Monster, 20th Century Boys, Pluto (especially Pluto), and Billy Bat. It's because only two of those were licensed in English until recently, or were out of print, and the ones you couldn't get were the easiest sells. Monster and Master Keaton are fantastically easy sells ("a doctor saves the life of a boy who grows up to be a serial killer and hunts him down while being pursued by the police" and "it's like Indiana Jones but if he was an insurance investigator and also MacGuyver" are pretty easy elevator pitches). Not that Pluto and 2*CB aren't great books but they're a little harder to convince people to read than the other two.
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Feb 12, 2015 16:47
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Lurdiak posted:I'm sorry that discussing how I feel about a manga is considered poo poo-stirring.
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Feb 12, 2015 16:52
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if we don't stop the shitposting pretty soon this place is going to look like ADTRW. absolute madness
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Feb 12, 2015 17:11
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Coaaab posted:One of the reviews actually goes into this in a bit more detail:
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Feb 12, 2015 17:38
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