The Manga Thread: Unlimited

[estragon]

What is the sourcing on the 117 page edition? I'm pretty sure I owned that first Dark Horse trade back in the day and it was the correct length (~368 pages, forget if they reworked or removed the lesbian sex scene).

The only place I can find that 117 page figure is on an Amazon listing, and those are not very reliable, especially for anything with multiple editions or that predates Amazon. My instinct is that this is just an Amazon error and no 117 page GiTS trade exists.

 

[Purple]

It's a 2 page spread, so yeah they just excised it. Nothing vital the plot either just a quick gag of Battou going "hmm... the Major's off duty but this is important, lemme just connect directly to her current VR session and- ... oh."

 

[Felicia]

I am amused by the idea of the author inserting a sex scene that somehow goes on for over 200 pages in the middle of the comic, like a horny version of the whale taxonomy bits in Moby Dick.

 

[ghosttaster]

Input appreciated! Thanks y'all. Wanted to get the first edition, as the original Eclipse and Dark Horse Shirow trades are full size (plus I have the Appleseed and Dominion trades at this size already), but I was iffy on the listed length. Gonna get it anyway!

 

[estragon]

I am amused by the idea of the author inserting a sex scene that somehow goes on for over 200 pages in the middle of the comic, like a horny version of the whale taxonomy bits in Moby Dick.

My understanding is that Shirow has drawn his fair share of comics like that, too.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

My understanding is that Shirow has drawn his fair share of comics like that, too.

That's basically at least 80% of his output post the Great Hanshin earthquake.

 

[Daikaiju]

That's basically at least 80% of his output post the Great Hanshin earthquake.

I heard he lost his wife in that?

 

[Purple]

Also while I did point that out for the sake of "don't worry too much, it's kind of a one-off joke that got cut" it IS pretty messed up that someone cut it in the first place. Like, the establishing scene of the manga is the protagonist filling a politician with explosive rounds with particularly graphic results, and there's no shortage of visible nipples all over the rest of it. So it really just feels like "well, this is just too explicitly gay for American audiences."

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I heard he lost his wife in that?

Yeah, that was what I was alluding to. Guy's works really hasn't been the same since, imo.

...it really just feels like "well, this is just too explicitly gay for American audiences."

Yeah, 100%. Also, it's not nearly as big of a deal as this, but the original printings of the comics has everything horizontally mirrored and tons of primitive photoshopping to make it more like a Western comic. And it just makes the comic kinda weird to read.

 

[MarcAlan]

Viz just launched their Viz app, which is separate from their Shonen Jump app. For $2ish a month, you get a lot.

 

[JBear]

Kodansha is also formally launching their new app tomorrow, which is why Space Brothers was yanked down off of Crunchyroll, and I would gladly pay them to read it, except that it's only available in the US, not Canada. *sigh*

Not to mention some other Kodansha stuff like I'd like to read on there, like Vinland Saga, but no, Canada falls through the cracks of our increasingly balkanized media hellscape yet again.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

Viz just launched their Viz app, which is separate from their Shonen Jump app. For $2ish a month, you get a lot.

The main thing is it's mostly (all?) Shogakukan.

 

[Peklo]

Suzushiro's Maid to Skate art series has now been web-serialized. Classic in the making.

 

[Daikaiju]

Suzushiro's Maid to Skate art series has now been web-serialized. Classic in the making.

Yes. Good.

 

[Peklo]

Just putting it out there that Ikoku Nikki has finished publication. For broad thoughts on the series that I wrote about halfway through the run, consult the first page of this thread. It did not stray from those strengths throughout and goes down as an all-time great. It's still not licensed by anybody in English.

 

[FelixSH]

I have a bit of an obsession with Yu-Gi-Oh!, which flames up from time to time and makes me consume a part of the franchise. I have read the original, of course, but also tried GX (in case people don't know, this is the second series that plays in a school where all you learn is to be good at the card game) three years ago. Gave up in the middle, god, that was bad. It even had a few fun character bits, but they were outnumbered by boring stuff.

This month, I read the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX manga. It's better than the awful anime, but that doesn't say much. It is, except for the setting, pretty much completely different from the anime, not even having the antagonist of the animes first season in it, at all. It's weird. The characters are better, and the story is, too, even though it never is anything special. The duels are always fun, though, and I think I enjoyed the ones here more than in the anime. It helps that we go away from focusing on a handful of (bad) cards - the Black Magician is godawful, and Kaibas dragon is equally bad. Here, with the deck being just themed, we get more interesting duels. But it never really comes together, as the original did in all its weirdness.

I feel like I have nothing of value to say about this manga, but I needed to write down something, because that's part of my weird obsession. At some point, I will consume more Yu-Gi-Oh!, and learn about the later series.

 

[Mr Bean]

Two series that I’ve enjoyed recently:

First is Akane Banashi. It’s structured like a shonen sports manga but the activity is rakugo- a Japanese performance art where a single person sits down on a stage and tells a story. Akane watched her dad attempt to become a pro and was washed out for seemingly no reason my his school’s master, so now she’s gunning to be the best that ever was using her dad’s style and shove it in his face. It’s got all the usual hits of a shonen manga - competitions, colorful rivals, training arcs - the neat stylistic conceit is that the stories are drawn in a style like calligraphy since most of them are traditional pieces. You can read the latest chapters over on the official site.

I’ve also been reading Skip and Loafer. Very low key high school drama thing but the main character is adorable and earnest to a fault. Most of the characters start as archetypes but develop into actual people. It can be very drama drama drama, but for the most part it’s just a nice light fluffy sorbet of a read.

 

[JBear]

I’ve also been reading Skip and Loafer. Very low key high school drama thing but the main character is adorable and earnest to a fault. Most of the characters start as archetypes but develop into actual people. It can be very drama drama drama, but for the most part it’s just a nice light fluffy sorbet of a read.

I recently caught up on all of Skip & Loafer after the anime ended, and I too am really enjoying it. It's like... adjacent to high school romance but it's honestly more about the friendships and I am very into that. I cried so hard when two of the MC's friends had a bonding moment outside at night (being vague because I don't know how far you are). Also, they seem to be handling the MC's aunt really well so far in a way that pieces like this often fuck up, so that's nice.

 

[ghosttaster]

Kyoko Okazaki has a new book out in English, River's Edge.

Spoiler: it's awesome, buy it (and PINK and Helter Skelter)

 

[ghosttaster]

Fantagraphics is doin Atsushi Kaneko's Search and Destroy...?! Interesting to see them grow their manga catalog over time.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

There's a Spider-Man manga that just started coming out. It's called "Octopus Girl" and it's about what if Doc Ock gets sorta-Isekai'd into a little girl's body in Japan. Which if a scenario that has the potential to be very sourgey but so far it's been pretty wholesome and funny.

Spider-Man: Octopus Girl - MangaDex

Doctor Octopus falls into a coma; when he awakens, he finds himself inhabiting the body of Japanese middle schooler Otoha Okutamiya. (From...

mangadex.org

 

[Mr Bean]

I was bumming around mangadex the other day just browsing idly, decided to sort everything by highest rated on a whim and found this rather delightful webcomic:

The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn't a Guy at All - MangaDex

A popular Twitter shorts series depicting the love story between a gyaru and her classmate she mistook as a guy outside of school, bonding over their mutual love for rock music. Overwhelming winner in the Web category of the 2023 Tsugimanga Awards (by Kadokawa).

mangadex.org

It’s a cute little story about a popular gal and a secret rocker chick as they bond over their mutual love of western rock.

 

[muteKi]

Oh yeah it's great and every chapter is pretty short. Arai Sumiko has a great sense of alt lifestyle lesbian aesthetics so the whole thing feels incredibly natural even if the relationship seems like it would have zero chemistry to start out with. A bit like Failed Princesses from the other side of the gender expression divide. Deeply compelling.

 

[Peklo]

Delicious in Dungeon wrapped up its decade-long run just the other month, with the final volume(s) slated for English release. It is monumentally good, a true masterwork of the medium, and should be lauded for everything it does and did. If you've ever loved an RPG, read it. If you've ever loved the concept of a dungeon in genre terms, read it. More specifically, if you've loved genre aesthetics like the original Shining games, read it. Kui is a brilliant realizer of material realism as it relates to the fantastic, from the smallest mundane concerns of daily necessity to the larger ecosystems and cultures they're part of. The themes hold and never stray from their empathic and anti-racist throughlines while never communicating them through preachy sermons; it is in fact one of the funniest comics around even as it discusses those aspects. Every point of view matters, no one's sidelined or ignored, there is no exploitative gaze to be found visually or narratively, and every turn of dramatism is anchored by keen levity and humanism, every gorgeous action scene by moments of quiet repose. It's a work where everything and every angle to approach it from is uniformly good and enduring.

 

[ThornGhost]

Somehow missed that volume 26 of Noragami came out last month and grabbed it. Word is this is the next to last volume which is wild.

Adachitoka's art continues to be beautiful if occasionally a bit perplexing to follow in action scenes. Lots of things happening which I won't spoil, but I do not know how this story will wrap up in one more book. I guess we'll see!