The manga recommendation/derision thread

[WisteriaHysteria]

Humble Bundle/Kodansha are running a thingie for the next two weeks where different tiers of investment gets you a bunch of digital mangos:

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/f...odansha-comics

$1 Tier: Drifting Dragons Vol. 1-3

$8 Tier: Land of the Lustrous Vol. 1-5; Clockwork Planet Vol. 1-5; Flying Witch Vol. 1-4

$15 Tier: Cells at Work! Vol. 1-4; Heaven's Design Team Vol. 1-2; Fire Force Vol. 1-10; Pumpkin Scissors Vol. 1-15

$18 Tier: Noragami Vol. 1-6; I'm Standing on a Million Lives Vol. 1-4; Altair: A Record of Battles Vol. 1-8

$20 Tier: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Vol. 1-4; To Your Eternity Vol. 1-7; Mushishi Vol. 1-10; Battle Angel Alita Vol. 1-3

[Tegan]

Miss Komi is Bad at Communication is some good shit.

The elevator pitch: At a school that attracts strong personalities, one girl rises through the social ladder on her first day to become the untouchable ice queen of the school: the most beloved, popular, flawless student based entirely on looks, poise, and her intimidating glare. Then our POV character, Dipshit McNormaldude*, realizes that people are just misinterpreting her severe social anxiety and extremely poor communication skills as being too good for them. He befriends her and agrees to help her live out her dream of having 100 friends.

It's pretty good so far! It knows how to use its fairly serious themes in a comedy without ever feeling mean-spirited or using anyone vulnerable as the butt of the joke.

As a small-scale example of why I like it so much: one character, Osana Najimi (which IIRC is literally "childhood friend" because everyone's name is a pun), is some variety of gender nonconforming. They're normally female-presenting but presented as male in the past and will refer to themselves as male when it's convenient. What makes them great is that their gimmick is that they're everyone's best friend, so virtually everyone is completely cool with their gender identity being what it is. In the early chapters where the POV is hung up on it, it's portrayed as being entirely his problem for not getting it, and any weird shit that Najimi does is just them deliberately fucking with him because they think it's funny. They're super great.

*this is barely an exaggeration. His name is Tadano Hitohito, which I'm led to understand is "just some guy."

[Tegan]

nvm just got the the yandere character

[Positronic Brain]

Tegan, that sounds exactly like my jam - the elevator pitch is interesting enough to make me fo back to my, um, alternative ways of watching anime and reading manga.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Tegan

nvm just got the the yandere character

=(

[Tegan]

They at least call her out on her shit? It's still played for laughs a little bit too much though.

[muteKi]

That's a shame. On the other hand what you're describing sounds adjacent to Hitori Bocchi which is about a socially anxious middle schooler who gets abandoned by her friend after elementary school and told to make lots of new friends at her new school, like the whole class if possible. It also shares the punny nicknames for the characters.

[John]

I've been reading through Dragon Ball with the Shonen Jump subscription, and I really liked the non-Z parts of the series. I never watched any of the anime as a kid/adult, either Z or non-Z, so was only tangentially aware of it through memes. There's a ton of "jokes" that don't land, like all the creepy panties stuff, but overall it was a fun adventure through different landscapes. I liked the Dr. Slump cameo, which I'm guessing was only in the manga, not the anime?

I've also breezed through 35 chapters of DBZ. You can literally read a chapter in about 30 seconds, since it's either jumping 6 months ahead in the timeline, or covers a minute or two of the fights. I like this one a lot less than the original arc. Since it's all fighting, maybe it works better in animation? I just wanna see Goku go on adventures again.

[estragon]

Originally Posted by John

I've also breezed through 35 chapters of DBZ. You can literally read a chapter in about 30 seconds, since it's either jumping 6 months ahead in the timeline, or covers a minute or two of the fights. I like this one a lot less than the original arc. Since it's all fighting, maybe it works better in animation? I just wanna see Goku go on adventures again.

I think that DBZ gets much better as it goes on. Unlike the animated adaptation, the comic book version of Namek is expertly paced and probably the best plotting of Toriyama's entire career, and it's basically fun adventures where Krillin is essentially the protagonist. (Contrary to the received wisdom that the non-Saiayan characters fall away in DBZ, in reality DBZ is the first time they really seriously ever get the spotlight.... ) The unfairly maligned final saga (Great Saiayaman through Buu) is basically pre-Arrival of the Saiayans style fun highjinks again. Like, there are ostensibly high stakes, but also . . . a central part of it is an elaborate odd couple sequence with a cowardly pro-wrestler and a marshmallow looking eldritch avatar of death and destruction.

. . . does the official English localization of Dragon Ball include Krillin using homophobic slurs to talk about General Blue and extremely racist Chinese accents in the Dr. Slump sequence? I'm wondering if maybe a lot of the unqualified love for the original Dragon Ball is because it reads better in English translation where most of the blatant bigotry is removed and the """"only"""" major problematic element is the constant sexual assault against young girls.

[John]

Originally Posted by estragon

. . . does the official English localization of Dragon Ball include Krillin using homophobic slurs to talk about General Blue and extremely racist Chinese accents in the Dr. Slump sequence? I'm wondering if maybe a lot of the unqualified love for the original Dragon Ball is because it reads better in English translation where most of the blatant bigotry is removed and the """"only"""" major problematic element is the constant sexual assault against young girls.

Nothing stood out to me on the Dr. Slump chapters. I also didn't notice any "Kuririn" slurs against Blue, he only said "I didn't know there were gay bad guys" when Blue retracts from Bulma's advance. They did have Blue go anti-trans for a joke - Bulma gets upset because Blue's not into her, so she says "What would you say if I was really a man?" Blue screams that "I'd say you were a freak of nature!" and Bulma skitters away. They made Blue less overtly gay, and more narcissistic, obsessed about his beautiful appearance getting bloodied as his shame. You can still read between the lines, but it didn't come across as "you figured out my secret gayness, now you must die".

Overall, it was still problematic, but less so than the few chapters of Dr. Slump that I read before switching to Dragon Ball.

[estragon]

Originally Posted by John

I also didn't notice any "Kuririn" slurs against Blue, he only said "I didn't know there were gay bad guys"

In Japanese, Krillin just calls Blue a faggot. To the extent that there's even a joke at all, the joke is that gay people probably aren't actually real, but if they were real, it would be disgusting. In English, it seems like the translators instead tried to kind of write a joke with the exact opposite premise (that gay people are real and not necessarily bad). So, yeah, if that's representative, then a lot is improved in Dragon Ball by sanding the rough edges off of the worst aspects in the English localization.

[Peklo]

File this one for later, too, when Seven Seas starts putting it out late this year: Nicola Traveling Around the Demon's World is one of the best things I've read, and you should read it too.

[Adrenaline]

Should I read Battle Angel Alita?

[ghosttaster]

Originally Posted by Peklo

File this one for later, too, when Seven Seas starts putting it out late this year: Nicola Traveling Around the Demon's World is one of the best things I've read, and you should read it too.

Looks awesome!

[Joe McGuffin]

Originally Posted by Adrenaline

Should I read Battle Angel Alita?

Yes.

[ghosttaster]

Originally Posted by Joe McGuffin

Yes.

I second that. It's surprisingly awesome. I'm not real hot on the sequel series' though. The art loses its auteristic flair and honestly the "plot" isn't something I was that invested in anyway

[Kirin]

I love me some Battle Angel, and keep being tempted by the new deluxe editions even though I have all of the originals and can't really justify it.

[Zef]

Originally Posted by Kirin

I love me some Battle Angel, and keep being tempted by the new deluxe editions even though I have all of the originals and can't really justify it.

[Peklo]

Hoping that Takako Shimura's Musume no Iede gets picked up eventually. It's queer as all get-out as at this point is the Shimura standard, but with the added dimensionality of body diversity, adult focus (in addition to teens; it's a large ensemble) and divorce as major ongoing themes to fuel the introspective drama.

[ghosttaster]

Finally got around to reading Dororo and it's pretty much as good as everyone says... I feel that the quality of the stories kinda falls off around the end, though (during what Im guessing was the series' run in Boken O).

[Tegan]

Originally Posted by Peklo

Hoping that Takako Shimura's Musume no Iede gets picked up eventually. It's queer as all get-out as at this point is the Shimura standard, but with the added dimensionality of body diversity, adult focus (in addition to teens; it's a large ensemble) and divorce as major ongoing themes to fuel the introspective drama.

I checked in on this back when it launched but never stuck around past the first few chapters, but I'm glad it turned out good! I'm gonna have to get caught up.

[ghosttaster]

Anyone have any opinion on the last couple batches of DMP Tezukas? If Amazon is to be believed, theyve put out a huge number of short story collections and other things lately.

I've generally felt that their curatorial sense was incredibly lacking compared to Vertical, but Im intrigued by The Crater, Alabaster and some others.

[Tegan]

Originally Posted by ghosttaster

Anyone have any opinion on the last couple batches of DMP Tezukas? If Amazon is to be believed, theyve put out a huge number of short story collections and other things lately.

I've generally felt that their curatorial sense was incredibly lacking compared to Vertical, but Im intrigued by The Crater, Alabaster and some others.

They actually came out a few years back, but they were exclusive to DMP's online store.
The last Tezuka things I picked up were from the Unico/Triton of the Sea/Captain Ken era of DMP and at the time I got the impression that Viz/Vertical/Dark Horse had just already snapped up all the good shit and that there just wasn't much good Tezuka left, so I haven't bothered with any of the more recent releases. I'd love to hear impressions if you do decide to get any of them.

[Tegan]

Hachimitsu Scans picked up a shoujo series called Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku about a girl who decides to keep standing by the childhood friend that she has a crush on even after said friend publicly comes out as trans. It's only two chapters in do I don't really have a handle on what it's actually about so far, but I'm already in love with its unwillingness to treat trans bodies in a way that's neither derogatory nor idealized.



(Maybe it's just because I read so many crossdressing manga, where the characters are unambiguously feminine)

[Peklo]

Yeah, I latched onto it immediately pretty hard for that reason, even if it's tentative. It feels so often the sense of empathy in trans narratives is intertwined with how convincingly the person in question is seen to "pass" by their peers within the fiction, and even by the audience existing outside of it. Even this much deviation from that framework is notable and welcome.

[John]

Originally Posted by Kirin

I love me some Battle Angel, and keep being tempted by the new deluxe editions even though I have all of the originals and can't really justify it.

If anyone just wants to read the Alita stories and not own the paper, the original 9 volumes are on ComiXology Unlimited. You could finish them in the free 30 day trial, or it’s $6/mo past that. There’s not a huge manga selection that I’ve seen, so I’ll be sticking to Shonen Jump as my paid subscription.

[Johnny Unusual]

I'm reading Fourteen. It's the last series from Cat-Eyed Boy and Drifting Classroom creator Kazuo Umezu. It's... crazy.

In brief, it is an apocalyptic horror epic where a genetically engineered chicken breast turns into a chicken man, starts calling himself Dr. Chicken George (because... he's a big fan of roots, maybe), vows revenge on mankind for the mistreatment of animals. Then things start getting weird. I haven't read much of Umezu's work but there's something about this particular series that feels strangely... Jack Kirby-esque (specifically 70s era Kirby)? Maybe it's the sci-fi trappings or being unabashedly wacky ideas that are also him commenting on modern life (it's clearly about the author's anxiety towards the future and mankind killing itself ecologically), but it definitely feels that way to me. I'm really hoping some company gets around to reprinting this series.

Also, this is how the president dresses for a while.



Also, this character introduction that comes out of nowhere is crazy. Even the who thing is sci-fi crazy, it steps things up a notch.



Then she gets, in my opinion, more Kirby-esque.



Oh, yeah, and there's this crazy-ass robot for a while.

[ghosttaster]

I'd love to see more Umezu reprints, particularly Fourteen or Shingo. Would love to see a complete Orochi too, or Drifting Classroom omnibii. Maybe Viz'll give Umezu another shot now that they've committed to that Ito line.

Also I gotta say that the Ito No Longer Human doesn't really excite me. Its the second adaptation of that book to come out in English, and I don't recall the Usamaru Furuya one setting the world on fire. Not to say that Ito's version couldn't stand on its own merits but if Frankenstein was any indication, his strength is not really in adaptation. I'd much rather see more and more weird short collections.

[Tegan]

I'd just be happy for any horror manga that isn't Junji Ito at this point. I enjoy me some Ito, but we get new Ito constantly while everything else is scarce. What's even ongoing right now? Happiness and The Voynich Hotel and ???

I'd love to get Fuan no Tane aka Seeds of Anxiety in English.

[Mightyblue]

I wouldn't really classify Voynich as horror, exactly, more of a charming love story between a goddess of fate and some mafia schmuck.

[Tegan]

I haven't read it; I'm just going by a vague memory of it and an amazon genre listing. Good to know though!