|
Found this thread, Read the first volume of IAAH and  . The other recommendations are either already familiar or something that feels like I have to read ASAP. I am home. Just to add to Nausicaä's praise, Miyazaki started the manga in 1982, but if you look at the final panel, it's dated to 1994, so the story really kept going long after the anime was produced. The anime covers roughly one third of the whole story and you are truly missing out if you think the manga is not worth it after seeing the anime. I'm probably going to end up getting that new hard cover thing, even though I've bought the series like, three times now. Here's one of my favorites: Excel Saga Energetic teen girl Excel is a member of a super secret organization ACROSS that tries to take over the world, but starts by trying to take over the city of Fukuoka. This proves to be tricky since ACROSS consists of Excel, her sidekick Hyatt who keeps spewing blood every five minutes and Ilpalazzo, their mysterious and charismatic prettyboy leader. Also their secret headquarters are in the sewers and ACROSS's budget is... lacking, so Excel and Hyatt end up doing all kinds of dead end temp jobs in order to make ends meet. While most people know Excel Saga as the parody anime from early 2000s, the manga is more of a satire of modern Japanese society. Political corruption, unemployment, the estrangement of youth from the older generations are among the themes in the manga, but there are quite a lot of explosions, androids and mad scientists thrown in to keep things entertaining. Viz (the company who licensed the manga) describes Excel Saga as "if Michael Moore directed Power Rangers" and that's not too far from the truth really. There is still a hell of a lot of anime and manga parodies and references thrown in, but they are not as "in your face" as in the anime. I definitely recommend this for experienced readers with many classic series under their belt, because there is a lot to catch. The story itself starts out extremely slowly but it picks up the pace in volume 5 or 6 or wherever a certain girl named Elgala shows up. The first few volumes are basically used to set up the premise and to introduce the the extensive cast, and all the characters do get developed later, in some surprising ways. Just to emphasize, after the beginning the story takes a completely different direction from the anime, so please give this one a try even (especially?) if the anime didn't seem like much. Viz's translation is top-notch by the way. They have managed to localise some very tricky wordplays and the translation notes in the end are worth reading, even in their retardedly small font white text on black background form. The dialogue may seem stilted at first but it's mostly Excel's over-the-top formal language in the beginning and it does get toned down later. The manga actually finished not too long ago and the final volume was released in English just a couple of days ago. Laputanmachine fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Jan 19, 2014 |
#
¿
Jan 19, 2014 00:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 4, 2024 21:50 |
|
|
Last weekend I grabbed an old manga from my bookshelf that I hadn't read for 10 years. Gunsmith Cats is an action-packed manga by Kenichi Sonoda about a young gunsmith named Rally Vincent who works as a bounty hunter on her free time. She owns a gun shop and is a crack shot with almost any kind of firearm. She's also a serious car nut and loves 1970s muscle cars. She has a best friend/sidekick named May Hopkins who's an explosive expert. Edit: Batoto has some Spanish scanlations of the first chapters if someone wants to have a look-see. Don't know about the quality of the translation since I don't speak the language. (Sorry about the bad quality of the pics. It's an old manga, I couldn't find any English scans and I only have a camera myself.) (These are original English prints by Dark Horse from the late 90s, so they are flipped and read left to right)   The series is based in Chicago and the girls have frequent run-ins with the mob. The series author Kenichi Sonoda has mentioned old action movies such as The French Connection and Blues Brothers as influence and the manga does have a lot of really intense gunfights and car chases. Sonoda himself loves guns and muscle cars and while everything else is drawn in a somewhat simple style, the guns and the cars are very detailed and there's frequently all kinds of trivia about them sprinkled in the manga.   The series is well paced and the action rarely lets up. Reading this flipped bothered me a bit since it felt like the story was based in the UK what with the traffic and the cars' steering wheels being on the wrong side. Luckily Dark Horse has put out a revised edition with unflipped pages and I'm seriously considering buying it. If you're interested, and happen to stumble upon the original print run here's the order of the original volumes since Dark Horse didn't bother with numbering those days: Bonnie and Clyde, Misfire, The Return of Gray, Goldie Versus Misty, Bad Trip, Bean Bandit, Kidnapped, Mister V, Misty's Run. The re-relases are big omnibus editions, they're numbered and there's four of them. Gunsmith Cats is a hell of a good read if you're looking for something with a lot of action and not so much existential pondering and sulking. There's quite a bit of nudity at times, but I wouldn't still classify it as an ecchi series. It's about as ecchi as, say, Bride's Story, although the series are very different in other respects. Some time after the original series ended, Sonoda returned to the theme and drew Gunsmith Cats: Burst. It spans five volumes and it's pretty much direct continuation of the original series, but isn't nearly as good. It's still got intense car chases and ridiculous gunplay, but somehow it all reads like a fan fiction. The characters seem a bit off and there's some stupid otaku pandering thrown in that really seems out of place. The translation is also stilted and kind of bad. The original series was translated by Dana Lewis and Toren Smith and while it was wordy, it had a lot of flavor and gave personality to the characters. The Burst translation was done by Studio Cutie and it's just weird and stilted at best and horrible speedsubbed garbage at worst. I counted at least two occasions where a character declared they could care less if _______ and they weren't the only crimes against English language. For some reason two of the extra chapters in the end of the final volume of the original series were reprinted and retranslated by Studio Cutie and added to the beginning of Burst vol. 1. Here's a direct comparison: Original translation (flipped, read left to right)  Studio Cutie translation (unflipped, right to left)  Rally and detective Coleman are old friends who trust each other a lot. The original translation reflects that, while the new one is completely sterile and robotic. Anyway, if you like unrelenting action, guns and fast cars, Gunsmith Cats is the series for you. Consider reading Burst if you've finished the original series and still want more. Just don't expect it to be as good. There's also an OVA called Gunsmith Cats: Bulletproof, but it's very mediocre. It really isn't worth hunting down which is a shame. If a decent animation studio got on the case, Gunsmith Cats anime could be really good. Maybe that will happen someday. Laputanmachine fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Oct 2, 2014 |
|
#
¿
Oct 2, 2014 20:27
|
|
|
Suben posted:Thankfully the OVA exists with none of the creepy poo poo from the manga. It's just a good, fun '70s cop show style series. Unfortunately it also has very little of the ridiculous gunplay and car chases. It's just bland. The manga is one hell of a ride in good old action movie style. Only Black Lagoon comes close to being as good, and the anime adaptation on that one was also good and had the right sort of drive. I get the feeling May is some sort of remnant from a possible early prototype/proof of concept series with a lot more sex and fan service. I know there was a series called Rolling Bean, starring Bean Bandit, the professional getaway driver who's also in GSC and Rally was his assistant in that one. But I haven't seen/read it so I don't know how fanservicey it is. I get why people don't like May, but saying she ruins the series is a bit much.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 23, 2014 00:09
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 1, 2015 08:19
|
|
|
Uznare posted:You probably should recommend stuff that can be read legally, much like how you did that in ADTRW. There are a ton of great manga that can be read without resorting to scanlations. That would exclude series such as Qualia of Purple and I Am a Hero from recommendations, so you can kindly stuff it. There are some great series that get to be licensed from time to time, but licensing is a business and playing it safe is a good business practice, meaning there is a metric fuckton of Shonen Powerlevel Friends X type series for one or two genuinely interesting seinen ones. Recommendations, and indeed scanlations give a bigger chance for more experimental series to gain fans from outside of Japan. Then there's poo poo like Dark Horse putting Eden on indefinite hiatus and all the older volumes being out of print and hell of rare.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 19, 2015 22:56
|
|
|
At least Monster has an ending. 20th Century Boys after the last timeskip is a goddamn mess. Almost as bad as Lost.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 23, 2015 21:15
|
|
|
Dr. Hurt posted:But if you read it, make sure you read 21st Century Boys so you get the complete ending! Has Billy Bat ended already? I kind of stopped reading after it was revealed that JFK was assassinated becaused Notmickey was on the dark side of the moon and then there was some Iga ninja in Edo period protecting some scroll with presumably Notmickey drawn on it and got some heavy end-of-20thcenturyboys vibes from that. I can usually follow some pretty complicated and nonlinear stories (GitS Man-Machine interface for example. Also Hotline MIami 2's plot on video game side), but Billy Bat was a mess. If it gets better and has a decent ending, I might pick it up again, because the premise and the beginning were intriguing. 20th Century Boys has probably the strongest beginning of all Urasawa stories and it keeps it up pretty well, but the last third or so is completely unnecessary and Urasawa writes himself into a corner so badly he has to make another series to try and make some sense of it. Didn't work IMO. Despite all that, I still like it and it's definitely worth a read. As a whole, Pluto is his strongest and tightest work. It's based on one particular chapter of Astro Boy, but you don't really need to know anything about it. The story has retained some elements of the original, but for example the roles of the characters have been switched around and the story has been significantly expanded. It is a real work of art in its own right.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 25, 2015 14:43
|
|
|
Manwithastick posted:I've just finished reading Gantz and Battle Royale (also loving "I am a Hero"), I kind of like these gory action stories with a good premise , can you recommend me anything? Eden It's An Endless World by Hiroki Endo is worth a look.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2015 18:59
|
|
|
Yeah, Shirow was incredible back in the 80s and 90s. Right now he's doing a new manga series with Rikdo Koshi of the Excel Saga fame. Judging by the first book it's got cute girl cyborgs with ports placed in interesting places and not much else, but I'm willing to give the series a chance, just because of what the authors have done previously. Excel Saga too had a fairly uninteresting start but it turned out to be loving amazing once the plot really kicked into gear.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 23, 2015 07:07
|
|
|
I have now read two chapters of Helck and we already have a tournament with power levels and a tsundere elf teen (really x centuries old, guys) girl screaming baka. Is this going to get better or should I just cut my losses and stop here? The art style being the most generic poo poo doesn't help matters either. I know I haven't gone in too deep yet but goddamn this first impression isn't doing any favors.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 5, 2016 16:27
|
|
|
Happy Hedonist posted:I've recently read MW, Tekkonkinkreet, Nausicaa, and Uzumaki. I read Akira last year. I'm thinking about picking up Sunny because I enjoyed Tekkonkinkreet and Ping Pong so much. I'm not a fan of most of the popular stuff out there. For instance One Piece, Berserk, Attack on Titan, and Jojo do very little for me. One Punch Man seems pretty fun but I'm mostly caught up on that too. Have you tried any series by Naoki Urasawa? They're mostly psychological thriller stuff. He's been named as the Hitchcock of manga, which is a bit much, but he is very good at building suspense. Monster and Pluto are his strongest two series IMO, but they're all pretty good. Word of warning though: even though 20th Century Boys starts out phenomenally strong, the story kind of breaks apart after halfway mark. As a whole it's still worth a look though. Makoto Yukimura's Planetes is a very good and even somewhat realistic look to the future 100 years from now. His ongoing series, Vinland Saga is an incredible historical Viking manga. It's quite violent at times, mind, so if that was what put you off Berserk, be warned. Speaking of historical stories, Kaoru Mori has a couple of good ones. Emma is a romantic drama set in late 19th century London and Bride's Story is same genre, same period but set in central Asia. Finally my own favorite oddball choice, Excel Saga by Rikdo Koshi. I think the English publisher Viz put it best when they described it as "if Michael Moore directed Power Rangers". It starts out incredibly slow and somewhat aimless, but once the story gets going, it gets very good. That takes about 5 or 6 volumes though.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 16, 2016 07:08
|
|
|
All Jump series are trash.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2016 23:55
|
|
|
Captain Invictus posted:Hell that didn't even bother me, the only thing that bothers me is the baffling inclusion of a sound effect index, an index in the back of the book full of nothing but translations for sound effects rather than have them on the corresponding page proper. Viz does that for some reason. It's their thing. I remember the sfx index in Monster and Excel Saga and it was baffling in those two as well. As for the print quality, I suspect it's more a stylistic choice than anything. I have another publisher's print of Nausicaä and it also has that off-white paper with not so much faded, but non-black ink. I am very bad at colours but it's something like very dark brown. Maybe Miyazaki demands it?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 27, 2017 22:32
|
|
|
Maybe I should give Billy Bat another chance. I read it while it was still being published but it started to look like another 20th Century Boys so I stopped. The beginning was gripping but then it just started to look like Urasawa painting himself into yet another corner.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 16, 2018 11:28
|
|
|
It's still just Shounen Jump and calling it the netlix of manga is really an overstatement. Sure it has a lot of stuff but when most of it is hotblooded boys being stupid and loud while bigtittied ladies are bigtittied (or alternatively little sisters are flatchested) I'm going to take a hard pass. Also One Piece sucks IMO but I understand people have differing opinions. Call me when they do the same deal with the stuff Viz has published in their Signature lineup.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 8, 2018 19:36
|
|
|
ryonguy posted:Uh does Yen Press do anything of worth besides Dungeon Meshi? All their other stuff looks like mediocre d-list works copying bigger sellers from other publishers, like Hatchette is just hoovering up whatever titles don't have a license without any regard to quality. Aside from Yotsuba they also have Bride's Story.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 10, 2018 07:01
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 4, 2024 21:50 |
|
|
Went and checked out Alita, it was fine, I kind of liked it but didn't love it. Too many plot lines, too much going on, Nova was barely there and the new musclehead baddie, already forgot his name, was so boring they had to underline his badness by making him kill a puppy offscreen. Makaku was way meaner and a real bastard. I would have liked them to cut off the motorball bullshit completely and just focus on bounty hunting but I guess they had to have something to cram into the trailer. The flick was fine but it would have been better if they just focused on the first book. Also I disliked how sleek everything looked. I wish this movie was done with more 80s style sfx with maybe David Cronenberg in the helm. Iron City wasn't nearly as gritty and sick as it should have been. Now it was just slightly dusty.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 18, 2019 21:51
|
|