The manga recommendation/derision thread

[estragon]

Originally Posted by Ample Vigour

I just want bad things to happen to Mohiro Kitoh

Fair.

[Raven]

Yeah, someone don't necessarily have to express it in their work to be a paedophile. I even think some people will consciously restrain from doing so, out of fear of being suspected. Anyway, my childhood memories is forever tainted now.

Originally Posted by Zef

Time will not be kind to Kiyohiko Azuma.

Originally Posted by ghosttaster

Did he actually do something or he just draws cute, young girls?

Yeah, what's up with him? I'm completely unaware.

[liquid]

He did some porn comics, but as far as I know they all feature adults?

I guess some of his Sailor Moon/Tenchi Muyo fancomics have slightly off-color jokes?

[Zef]

It's simply becoming increasingly difficult to look at Azumanga and not think it was inspired by some personal perversity of his, what with Kimura being given a "how kooky!" treatment, or his "pervy" self-inserts in Tenchi and Battle Athletes. I admit I may be misjudging, or jumping the gun, but at this point it's hard to go back and try to look at his manga removed from the current social context.

[The Raider Dr. Jones]

Originally Posted by Ample Vigour

I just want bad things to happen to Mohiro Kitoh

[Ample Vigour]

Originally Posted by Zef

It's simply becoming increasingly difficult to look at Azumanga and not think it was inspired by some personal perversity of his, what with Kimura being given a "how kooky!" treatment, or his "pervy" self-inserts in Tenchi and Battle Athletes. I admit I may be misjudging, or jumping the gun, but at this point it's hard to go back and try to look at his manga removed from the current social context.

I think as individuals, as members of a community that likes japanese trash culture, and as part of broader society it's healthy to re-examine our relationship to art that sexualizes (or looks the other way re: the sexualization of) girls. Azuma doesn't exist in a vacuum, and neither do his comics.

If our culture's examination of harassment, assault, etc. only goes as far as finding people to declare anathema, then we're giving up the chance to change the bigger cultural stuff that so easily accepted the Kimura jokes or the endless obsession that adolescent girl characters have with the size of their boobs.

I guess what I'm saying is that the chances of Azuma being a freakish sex pervert are 100% (because he's in comics) but the real issue here isn't what one dude has or doesn't have on his hard drive.

[jovewolf]

While I agree that it is a good idea to critique and explore the societal impacts of artistic works that glorify sexual harassment or violence or what not, I get rather uncomfortable at the idea of suggesting that the author of a work is a criminal simply because their works feature such things.

Especially in face of the fact that the whole thing that ignited this discussion was the arrest of a creator whose work did not feature, to my knowledge, anything resembling the child porn they got arrested for possessing.

Azuma or Kitoh or whoever might have some dark skeletons in the closets or past, or they might work out the worst of their natures through their art instead of indulging in worse habits, but I don't think we should pillory them before any evidence of wrongdoings they've performed comes to light.

[muteKi]

I thought this article about the gender (and, to a lesser degree, sexuality) demographics of the yuri genre was overall quite interesting, though the conclusions are slightly tenuous due to limited amounts of publicly-available data.

[Ample Vigour]

I got three sentences into the methodology before tapping out. There are no conclusions here save the ones the author brung to the table.

[Mightyblue]

Gogdamn that was one hell of a OPM (Murata) chapter. 134 pages!

[BEAT]

Originally Posted by Mightyblue

Gogdamn that was one hell of a OPM (Murata) chapter. 134 pages!

Holy shit it was so good.

[ghosttaster]

Full disclosure: I ordered the first 2 volumes of Akira Toriyama's short works in Japanese because I am a nerd.

Fingers crossed that they make it safely across the sea to my faraway abode in the US. If they make it here without incident I'll probably hunt down Katsuhiro Otomo's non-Akira, non-Domu stuff as well.

[WisteriaHysteria]

Wait. Did Mob Psycho 100 just end???

[Joe McGuffin]

Originally Posted by WisteriaHysteria

Wait. Did Mob Psycho 100 just end???

Apparently!

[estragon]

I knew that there was a colorized and flipped version of Akira sold in Japan based on the old Marvel/Epic publication .

But what I just realized looking at some amazon.co.jp reviews is that the dialogue is also re-translated back into Japanese, based on the English script.

[ghosttaster]

Originally Posted by ghosttaster

Full disclosure: I ordered the first 2 volumes of Akira Toriyama's short works in Japanese because I am a nerd.

Fingers crossed that they make it safely across the sea to my faraway abode in the US. If they make it here without incident I'll probably hunt down Katsuhiro Otomo's non-Akira, non-Domu stuff as well.

They came, safe and sound. The rabbit hole is open and I'm stepping in, fellas.

Anyone ever ordered anything to the US from Mandarake?

[WisteriaHysteria]

Mandarake is pretty amazing. I use it from time to time and have never had any problems. As long as you can figure out how to navigate the site, it's all pretty easy. Just be mindful of the quality of good you're purchasing, since a lot of the site deals in used or display goods. If you're OK with some wear and tear then it's nbd, but if you want things crisp and new, just keep an eye out for the used rating. The only real problem is shipping and deciding which option/compromise is right for you.

[Rosewood]

I read the first volume of Descending Stories, and while it's been a number of months since I watched the corresponding parts of the story in the anime, I kind of feel like the anime is better. I got a fuller sense of the Rakugo performances, thanks to the marvelous voice actors, and the psychological tension felt more tense. The mangaka's love for the form shines through better in the manga, I think, and I like how readers are encouraged to attend a real performance in the mini-manga in the back of the book.

[Peklo]

Started a re-read of Gunnm (sorry everyone, Battle Angel Alita retained its Japanese title when it was released over here so I just think of it as that out of habit. I'm not trying to affect some attempt at localization "authenticity", god forbid). My first time through the series was quite long ago, and I feel like I'm better equipped to appreciate what's good about it now. Mainly I'm struck by the economy and clarity of Kishiro's action layouts, the richness of his textural shading and ability to convey motion. Those aspects especially carried Motorball, which is just a fantastic distillation of all the borderline juvenile emotive states that competitive sports arcs in fiction can manage to elicit. The page below is one of my favourite moments from it, within context or not.



There's also a bunch of really goofy and fun lines, like "come back in 4.5 billion years!", which I'm very much into.

[WisteriaHysteria]

Originally Posted by Rosewood

I read the first volume of Descending Stories, and while it's been a number of months since I watched the corresponding parts of the story in the anime, I kind of feel like the anime is better. I got a fuller sense of the Rakugo performances, thanks to the marvelous voice actors, and the psychological tension felt more tense. The mangaka's love for the form shines through better in the manga, I think, and I like how readers are encouraged to attend a real performance in the mini-manga in the back of the book.

The show is the definitive version, hands down. It takes its source material and elevates it well beyond the original author's abilities or ideas, for reasons you described and many more. To the degree that the show even impacted the author and definitely affected how she wrote the ending.

There was an interview I read not so long ago (I linked it in the anime thread; forget where exactly) conducted after the show had aired, but before she had completed the manga. And in it, she lavished praise on the show. Not in phony ways that lots of people will do, in order to be a good corporate stooge or being overly polite. But in ways that felt she was genuinely impressed and thankful. And a part of the interview that really stuck out to me was a point where she commented on how the anime's depiction of Miyokichi blew her away because of how it re-contextualized the character for her, and how she didn't even properly understand her own character that she had created. The implication that, in the manga, Miyokichi is merely a plot device and a villain, and in the anime, we have a fully realized character with perspective, thoughts, ambitions, fears, passions, etc. So at the end, when we see Miyokichi able to make up and make peace with Yakumo, I felt like that was the author apologizing to the character and giving her the ending she deserved.

[Ample Vigour]

Originally Posted by Peklo

Started a re-read of Gunnm (sorry everyone, Battle Angel Alita retained its Japanese title when it was released over here so I just think of it as that out of habit. I'm not trying to affect some attempt at localization "authenticity", god forbid). My first time through the series was quite long ago, and I feel like I'm better equipped to appreciate what's good about it now. Mainly I'm struck by the economy and clarity of Kishiro's action layouts, the richness of his textural shading and ability to convey motion. Those aspects especially carried Motorball, which is just a fantastic distillation of all the borderline juvenile emotive states that competitive sports arcs in fiction can manage to elicit. The page below is one of my favourite moments from it, within context or not.

The Motorball arc is so damn weird and disjointed, but still hits its high points true. It's so easy to forget this was his first big serial.

[The Raider Dr. Jones]

Originally Posted by Peklo

sorry everyone, Battle Angel Alita retained its Japanese title when it was released over here so I just think of it as that out of habit.

Did Europe get it in the big oversized editions, like they released in Japan back in the '90s? Like A4 size?

[Peklo]

The volumes I have are like 13 cm x 18 cm paperbacks, so about the standard size for commonly sold magazine rack manga, which I guess this was when published in 2006 in Finnish. Not sure if that was the first or last time the series was brought over. It's also unmirrored, however, as I guess the older English Alita volumes aren't.

[Joe McGuffin]

Originally Posted by Peklo

Started a re-read of Gunnm (sorry everyone, Battle Angel Alita retained its Japanese title when it was released over here so I just think of it as that out of habit. I'm not trying to affect some attempt at localization "authenticity", god forbid).

Interesting thing about this is that the new US printing keeps the "Battle Angel Alita" title, but seems to revert all the other Viz-era localization changes aside from her name (Zalem instead of the Scrapyard, etc) and I imagine only that to avoid not tying into the movie.

Heh, I wonder if they'll try and round up the OVA cast to dub it for Japan like they did with the live-action GITS...

[Peklo]

Seems like the Finnish localization sticks to the Japanese terminology for the most part. For reference:

• protagonist = Gally
• the city in the sky = Salem
• the destitute city underneath = the Iron City

[The Raider Dr. Jones]

Back when dinosaurs walked the earth I remember reading some interesting translation notes from the cat who did the original Viz version. He said he didn't mean to spoil the "Jeru" / "Zalem" thing, it's just that when he started on the project, Kishiro hadn't actually gotten to the point in the story where he made that connection. ("Tiphares" was I think coined as the result of some complicated accidental punning in Hebrew, I forget how it went.)

[Ample Vigour]

Originally Posted by The Raider Dr. Jones

Back when dinosaurs walked the earth I remember reading some interesting translation notes from the cat who did the original Viz version. He said he didn't mean to spoil the "Jeru" / "Zalem" thing, it's just that when he started on the project, Kishiro hadn't actually gotten to the point in the story where he made that connection. ("Tiphares" was I think coined as the result of some complicated accidental punning in Hebrew, I forget how it went.)

It's a ref to Tipheret from the Tree of Life, or so sez the note I read when I revisited the comic this year.

[Joe McGuffin]

Originally Posted by Ample Vigour

It's a ref to Tipheret from the Tree of Life, or so sez the note I read when I revisited the comic this year.

Yeah, and then he maintained the Kabbalah connection with "Ketheres Elyon" higher up the orbital beanstalk.

[Vendrick]

Ommmg new Berserk chapter!!!! So awesome!!!!!!

[Peklo]

Preach.

Sweet Blue Flowers is up to two of its four total double volumes, finally officially in English. The translation is much better than the scanlation that's floated around for years, so please support it! Maybe one day Wandering Son will come back...