What are you reading? (impressions)

myanimelist profile · Posted: Sat Sep 23, 2006 11:38 pm

Huffy wrote:

in anticipation of Kotonoha scanning Kiichi.

Scoop!
Looking forward to this now...

Fan Boy Joined: 08 Aug 2006 Posts: 12

They're going to start on Ki-itchi? ALL RIGHT!

Fan Boy Joined: 30 Sep 2004 Posts: 29 Location: transit

Not that i'm actually reading this right now but i could be if i wasn't broke and lame at kanji, anyway

I was wandering around some store today when I saw some really slick looking hardcover version of a furuya usamaru thing. With a cover looking all maruo suehiro style (it was next to the maruo stuff come to think of it).
I think the name was ライチ☆光クラブ

is there someone here who either is reading or has read this and can give me any comments on it?

myanimelist profile · Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2006 9:07 am

Havent read anything new in a while...

Only weekly stuff like Fairy Tail (the new series by Rave mangaka, Mashima) but I work on that so that's a given. Pretty cool for a shounen; never takes itself seriously and feels a lot more rounded than Rave (which was kind of awkward at times). Looks a lot better too; the same kind of evolution Oda went through, artwise.
I usually don't like Shonen Magazine stuff, but this feels more like a brassy version of One Piece; and at the same time a parody of everything in the genre.

Though it's only the opening chapters I can judge, it's off to a good start.
Oh, and it's really funny too.

Street Musician Joined: 16 Feb 2003 Posts: 530

This isn't manga, and really doesn't apply to anybody here except a very small handful like Stephen and Summersoldier (if he's even around anymore), but Numeri is the one of the funniest sites I've read in a while.

Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2006 9:06 pm

Yeah, the first time I saw Fairt Tail's art, OP popped in my mind. I'm a bit bored and in the mood for some simple shonen fun, so I might have to check it out. On the licencing front, it looking forward to finishing Yuunagi no Machi when it's released here in November. The first 2/3s were quite good, and I'm expecting nothing less from the final part.
My anticipation of "The Road" was well founded; it's exellent, probobly the finest piece of fiction I've read all year and I'd guess it will probobly go down as the best post-apocalyptic story ever. As expected from McCarthy, the world is unforgivingly brutal and harsh, perhaps even more so than "Blood Meridian," which was at times (disturbingly) exilerating in it's mythic image of the wild west. The Road's world is almost unrelentingly bleak, depicting the slow death of humanity. But unlike BM there is the smallest hint of hope in the form of the love between a father and his son. Not only one of the man's more accesable novels, but perhapse the most powerful I've read.

Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 5:41 pm

read some volumes of Nana, which is very soap opera-ey, which means addictive and pretty damned annoying for long stretches. I think it might be the best of the rock-n-roll mangas, mainly because she (the authoress, whose name escapes me) focuses less on the music (except for a few half-hearted attempts at ramping up street-cred with references to the sex pistols! ["whoah, underground music!"]) and do the whole glamy image thing way better {illustrated} than bremen.

myanimelist profile · Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:34 pm

ion_ford wrote:

read some volumes of Nana, which is very soap opera-ey, which means addictive and pretty damned annoying for long stretches. I think it might be the best of the rock-n-roll mangas, mainly because she (the authoress, whose name escapes me) focuses less on the music (except for a few half-hearted attempts at ramping up street-cred with references to the sex pistols! ["whoah, underground music!"]) and do the whole glamy image thing way better {illustrated} than bremen.

That was actually my main beef with Beck. I loved the interaction between the characters and seeing Koyuki evolve in his relations with the other band members and Maho. But when it drifted away from that and switched focus to the music aspect, I completely lost all interest.
Anyway, I haven't read Nana but I am watching the anime. Which was pretty addictive until now, like you say.

Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 7:28 pm

Nana can drive you nuts yet make you want more at the same time. Definitally a good series, but man can it be annoying.
I thought Kurosaki Corpse Delivery Service to be suprisingly fun. Sure, full of problems, but the whole macabre-Scooby Do thing is pretty cool, and even if all the stories don't totally work it's interesting to see how they're told. I'll probobly pick up future volumes of the series. There's some great stuff coming out in english in the next couple of months: Ohikkoshi, Town of the Evening Calm..., Awabi and of course Kirihito. Almost makes up for the crappy first half of the year.

myanimelist profile · Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 7:42 pm

Euhm, WHAT THE?
Yunagi no Machi, Sakura no Kuni is being published in English?
How did I miss this...

Roadie Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 51

So I bought Journey to the End of the World, Super Cruel and Terrible Tales of Mangaka and another Nishioka Kyoudai manga (well really a collection of one-shots) called Kodomo no Asobi.

Super Cruel and Terrible Tales of Mangaka chapter 15 has to be one of the funniest things I've ever read. Best ending ever.

Kodomo no Asobi: I thoroughly enjoyed it. I already translated one of the one shots. It's definitely a fun read.

Journey: No spoilers but I loved the rest of the story.

Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 1:22 am

Which one is chapter 15? If it's possible for you to say free of spoilers. Cruel and Horrible Tales is a riot for the most part, but some of the chapters are a little too contrived, IMO. Well okay they're all pretty contrived, but only in the sense that it exaggerates to a ridiculous level a lot of the manga industry absurdities. Which is absolutely fantastic. But in some of the latter chapters, I got the impression that he seemed to be running out of ideas. Not that it isn't a great book anyway - he was working with deadlines, and you can't really blame him for faltering every once in a while.

Is Yunagi no Machi the manga about the Hiroshima bombing? This will probably reveal me as the heartless dickhead that I am, but I thought that book was sappy tripe. Sorry. I know that it won some prestigious awards, so it must mean I'm wrong. Even though I'm never wrong. Maybe I'll try re-reading it again when I have the time.

Also, is Ohikkoshi the one by Hiroaki Samura? It's being licensed in English? That's kind of crazy, though I guess his Blade of the Immortal fame might make it commercially feasible. It's a lot better than Blade too, IMO. I'd like to see some more stuff like that from him.

Recently, I bought the new volleyball series by Yoko Nihonbashi, the title of which escapes me at the moment. It kind of makes a whole lot of sense if you think about it that she would do a sports manga. She was always good at doing the male/female bonding, which of course lends itself well to the sports genre, and hell you could argue that G Senjou was a sports comic anyway. Manga as a sport. The vibe is a lot closer to Plastic than G Senjou, and I don't think it compares to G Senjou in terms of sublime greatness, but a fun read nevertheless. There is somewhat of a cheese factor to it of course, this being Nihonbashi, but I've read enough of her stuff to get over it.

Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 3:08 am

Actually, I have to admit, I didn't get that much out of Yunagi no Machi either. Of course you could say "sappy tripe" is Fumiyo Kouno's calling card, but I liked Sansan-roku better. Not that Yunagi isn't a good book.

The chapter Ten is referring to is the one about the assistant who works for female artists and ends up getting chased out for accidentally seeing them changing, etc. and then ends up in the same situation at the end except with a bunch of hairy men instead. At any rate, one of the nice things about Tales is that each chapter is so short that even if it's apparent he's just desperately trying to stretch the smallest factor of being a mangaka into a full joke, it'll be over in 6 pages anyway.

Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 6:05 pm

Really? I thought that was one of the weaker chapters actually. My favorite is...uh, this should probably go on the thread for the series, and I probably shouldn't be talking about it anyway until more chapters are released.

Posted: Thu Oct 26, 2006 7:07 pm

Yeah, Ohikkoshi came out about a week ago. DH did a good job on it, though I liked the fan translation I read better. Blade of the Immortal was probobly the first manga I ever read back before the whole US explosion, so I have a bit of a soft spot for Samura. I still love most of Blade, though the prison crap is boring me to death.
I can't really see how you could hate Yuunagi, though I guess the style could turn some people off (still, I wouldn't go so far as to call it tripe...). In any case, Ode to Kirihito came out and it's pretty sweet, especially since we haven't seen one of Tezuka's bat-shit crazy thrillers in the states since Black Jack (and that was only like two volumes before Viz got cold-feat). Great stuff, sure to win all the awards come next year.

This week also marked the end of the two big experimental superhero books on the market: Seven Soldiers and Planetary. I'm just now catching up with SS, and despite the wild inconsistencies that you have to expect when Grant Morrison starts experimenting with random ideas, it's been well worth it for when he is on him game. I'm also behind of Planetary, though it's been more consistant (the be fair it was more focused from the start). To round off the trio of nutso-Brit writers who have a tendancy to jack off to themselves, a new edition of Alan Moore's brilliant From Hell was released this week. The somewhat less-crazy but no less talented Eddie Campbell provides the art (and some of the story), and it makes for an amazing read if you aren't afraid of some rather dense matterial.