NONONONO

I don't know why I can enjoy sports manga about sports I will never watch or participate in. But yeah. This one's about ski jumping - apparently women aren't allowed to compete in the Japanese Olympic ski jumping? So this girl has to pretend to be her dead twin brother, in every aspect of her life, in order to go to the olympics. Oh, the high jinks. And ironic cross dressing.
Here it is

Ahhhhhahahahahahaha.

Best page of GANTZ ever?

Sorry for the delay

Finally purchasing a desk this weekend, can't wait to get some of these topics up. Sports manga and attention to detail post coming up.

1000 manga

http://www.1000manga.com/directory/

Looks like onemanga got tired of suspending series and decided to start a less legit site. Which they directly link to. Ok, whatever.

Where I Began...

I Remember as a kid seeing Mazinger and Speed Racer on TV in spanish, and thinking it was the coolest thing I ever saw. When I moved to the states I remember watching Robotech aka Macross (the original series is still one of my favorites) and thinking that there is something different about these shows compared to other cartoons being shown at the time. In high school I was introduced to Akira which lead me to getting into anime. I watched it for years. Countless episodes of many series and many different genres.

Along the way I met Danny who was also into anime, which at the time was rare because it was not very popular back then. Well, he was the one who introduced me manga. I've been into it ever since.

I generally tend to like manga with really good artwork. Of course the story is just as important, but I can deal with a mediocre one so long as the art is well done. That being said, here are a few titles that more or less cover the spectrum on quality.

Stuff with both great art and good storyline in my opinion include: Akira and Monster

Good art, not so good story: Tenjou Tenge


Not so good art (although not terrible), but good story (so far): Sundome


I hope to go more into detail on most of these at a later date. All titles are available through amazon or ebay or your local book store.

Guilty Pleasures No. 1: High School

I enjoy high school romance comedy manga quite a bit. I think it has to do that it makes me reminisce of my time in high school. However, my days were absolutely nothing like these stories. I would say it is because I went to an all boy's high school but I think it all has to do with the fact that these are fictional characters. Now I'm not saying that this kind of thing doesn't happen somewhere, its just that if it does it isn't nearly as exaggerated as it is in these stories.

Anyway, there are tons of series about innocence, awkward first loves, and whatever else that happens in these high schools that are dear to me. I's is one of my top recommended series and I currently look forward to the releases of Love Com that show up in my comic store bin. The few I listed below are some recent ones that come to mind that should definitely be checked out.

Ane Doki

Here we have a young middle school kid who by bizarre circumstances ends up having a idol quality high school girl living in his house with him while his father is out on business.

This series is complete and is a quick read.

http://www.onemanga.com/Ane_Doki/

Fujoshi Rumi

Boy likes girl, girl likes Yaoi, boy still likes girl, girl thinks about boy with other boys or as her as a boy.

Check your local store or Amazon for this one, three volumes out to date.

Sundome
I don't even know what to say for this one. It is so far over the top with the pervy situations the main characters put themselves into. These kids have some very crazy fetishes and somehow all of this manages to happen in high school.

Check your local stores or Amazon for this, currently there are up to volume 6 with seven coming out in August.

Angel Densetsu / Kyou Kara Ore Wa

In my "Japan has the most violent schools in the world" series, I've got 2 favorites. Apparently this is an entire genre where people just get into fights at school. Over and over, every issue. So they have to be pretty decent to keep my interest. (I read over 80 chapters of Worst and I don't remember one thing about it.)

Angel Densetsu has a pretty entertaining angle, although I admit, it does get worn out after a while. On the other hand, right when it's getting really stale, the writer calls it quits, so it's all good.

The angle is: Seiichirou Kitano is a new transfer student who looks like satan incarnate. He has all the stereotypical features of pure evil. The author was very explicit. But the poor kid is actually a really nice guy. He just wants to help everyone get along, and usually misreads every situation. He can't help how he was drawn.

It's a pretty funny series, although the joke does get a little old after awhile. There are a few serious moments, too.

This manga is the creation of Norihiro Yagi, who continues to write Claymore. He has a rather unique art style, and you can see it evolve in this series, and throughout Claymore. Claymore is worth mentioning, although it's a totally different type of book, very solemn/serious, and with the added no-fail cliche of teenage girls in armed combat. Without too much armor on, of course...it would just slow them down.

Claymore is set in a fantasy realm where demons are eating the hapless peasants. They can only be fought by the aforementioned (and naturally superhuman) teenage girls. This is actually addressed as a plot point later on, believe it or not. Overall, I think it's definitely worth a look, although the plot has lost my interest somewhat lately.



Back to fighting in high school. Constantly. There's another series I recently found (it's only recently being translated and posted at onemanga, although I believe both these series were published in the early 90's) called Kyou Kara Ore Wa, which means, From Today, It's My Turn. Bitches.

This book, when I think about it objectively, has done a surprisingly good job of keeping my interest. Generally, it follows the same formula of nonstop fighting, and everyone heals at a rate Wolverine would be jealous of, so they can fight again the next day. But it's actually supposed to be a comedy, and I think it's a pretty good one.

The hook is: 2 supposedly normal guys happen to transfer to a new school on the same day. The day before, they both go to a hair salon and get a ridiculous hair style. The plan is: now that I've moved to a new school, no one knows me. I'm going to act like I've always been a badass. The thing is, they bump into each other on the way in, looking normal, and on the way out, looking EXTREME. Is life in Japan really this simple? I guess that's why the middle aged ladies tried to by drugs from me while I was standing in the street. Long hair = DRUG DEALER.

So when they get to school they obviously can't just act tough, they have to beat the shit out of everyone. So they do. That's a pretty good summary of everything I've read so far, but check it out. It's a lot better than it sounds.

Gamble Fish: Liar Game - seriousness/meaning + fan service!

Which brings me to another, much more recent favorite. Gamble Fish appeals to me for a very similar reason as Liar Game. It's a series of "games" that the main character is gambling on. He's got some mysterious objective involving his father, but no one cares. We're too busy looking at the "art."

Each game is a scenario that seems unwinnable, but that the main character stakes everything on without blinking a single exaggerated eyelash. You're left to guess how in the world he'll pull it out. Let me tell you ahead of time...you won't.

It's lighthearted and ridiculous but still interesting. Hopefully there's a lot more left, only 40 chapters released right now. Check it out at OneManga.

My favorite "psychological" titles

If I could only recommend 5 manga series to anyone, the first 2 are listed in my last 2 posts.

But the next 2 end up getting grouped under the genre of "psychological" thrillers.

1st, Death Note. Since I started reading it, they animated it, then made a bunch of movies. Everyone already knows about it, so I'm not going to say any more. I liked it before it was cool, damn it!

A series I like even more is called Liar Game. (It's also been made into a TV show that's about 95% faithful to the manga...not bad.) Liar Game's hook is that it's a (fairly long now) series of logic puzzle scenarios. I bothered to mention Death Note because if you liked the mental chess that that series banked on, you should love this one 100 times more.

The main character is a girl that's the ultimate in naive. She receives a box containing a million in cash, and an invitation to join "Liar Game." The invitation says something like "Now that you've opened the card, you've already agreed to the terms of this contest." Kind of like Microsoft's TOS agreements.

This contest (first round, anyway) is to see if you can get your opponent's cash. Anything you lose you have to pay back or they sell you into an Arabic harem. Of course the story begins with her losing it all by handing it over to the other player.

Then she enlists the aid of a genius "swindler" who has just been released from prison, in order to get her money back and save herself from a future with Steven Seagal. This guy even looks like the evil bastard in Death Note. I know what hair style to get Japanese people to think I'm cool, but also a genius.

The first round is pretty elementary, actually, but the fun doesn't end there (it still hasn't ended, actually.) There are many much more complicated games from there on, with many more players. Each one is structured to let the reader try and work out how he'd attack the problem. Then you see various characters try different strategies and the problem is shown from all angles.

The TV show is a little different from the book, but not greatly. Some of the characters were re-vamped, and one of the games was solved differently, but if you like live-action Japanese TV in all it's super overly dramatic glory, check it out.

My #1 most addictive manga: GANTZ

Hopefully everyone's already aware of this shiz and is caught up. Otherwise, say goodbye to a week, since we're on Chp 317 as of tonight. If you like it half as much as me, anyway...I read the first 120 chapters basically non-stop.

Although this manga is not the best thing I've ever read, it's definitely the most addictive. It's got a lot of characters and subplots, and I've found most of them pretty interesting. It starts off a little like LOST...people who might have died end up in a strange place with unexplainable shit going on.

Let me ruin the first few pages for you: two guys get hit by a train, are clearly decapitated, but instead of dying, they're beamed into an apt in Tokyo that probably goes for around 4-5k a month, considering the view. That's when we get fan-service. That's right, like 3 pages in, already with the HH-cup naked chicks. The main character, embodying every Japanese high school kid, immediately starts molesting her, even though it's apparent she died by cutting her wrists in a tub before she fully appears. In front of 10 other people. You're cooler than me, man.

Here's the rest of the hook: all the nearly dead people in this room are told to put on some bondage inspired rubber suits, grab some ray guns, and go kill aliens...by a giant black sphere in the middle of the room. That was enough to get me pretty solidly.

The execution for a few more volumes follows these people as they react to this evolving video-game like situation where they get beamed in every few days to fight ever-harder hordes of creatures, and try to figure out what the hell is going on. Then the story gets a lot more insane, but I don't want to ruin anything.

All in all, the writing's pretty good, the characters are believable (the male ones, anyway) and the story is very intriguing.

The only thing I would say detracts from the story is the ridiculous fan-service...there's not that much of it (not relative to some shit I've seen) but it's just a little silly. I guess that's what sells? I don't know, I read this shit for free.

There's also one really random subplot that doesn't seem to go anywhere. Vampires show up out of nowhere. That's right, fucking vampires. They seem to know something about what's going on, but having read far enough to to know most of it myself, that doesn't make any sense with the current explanation. They mostly disappear from the plot, almost as quickly as they appeared. I'm guessing the writer regretted that little experiment almost as much as the guys who wrote Highlander II.

PS - the animation of this story pisses me off - don't watch it. If you insist, stop around ep 13.

#1 Best thing I've ever read: BLAME!

BLAME! by Tsutomu Nihei
This shit is genius. Pure art. This title falls under the sci-fi realm; the main character, Killy, is on a quest to find uncorrupted human DNA in a future world where the earth been augmented into a structure that extends past the moon. Don't ask me where they got all the raw material.

The plot is really just background to the amazing art of Tsutomu Nihei, and an excuse to develop the characters (somewhat) and make some social commentary about our species. There's very little dialogue, but the moods and tone of the story are communicated very well without it. At times, the drawing style is very rough and there are several panels I wasn't sure I understood the actual action. That didn't really matter, though. Large stretches of the story are scenes of traveling through the giant structures. There are hundreds of panels that I would love to have hanging on my wall (I'm working on a few of them, actually.)

Just do yourself a favor and click here to get a taste:
http://www.google.com/images?q=tsutomu%20nihei

Out of all the books I've read, movies I've seen, art I've experienced - this is one of the few that have made such a huge impact on me. I've re-read it probably 50 times now, and I doubt it will ever get old. Can you say that for any book you've ever read?

Nihei has done several other works. Most of these are related to BLAME! - I think several are prequels. Unfortunately, none of them really gripped me the way BLAME! did. Here are a few brief comments...

Disclaimer -rough Nihei is still better than 90% of the other stuff I've read. I still liked all of these series, I just don't think they live up to his original masterpiece.

The longest is Biomega, at about half the length of BLAME!. We get a taste of the BLAME! style art...but I don't feel like it (the art) had the same time and energy invested. Not saying that the work as a whole didn't - there is a lot more plot and dialogue. But the backgrounds, the buildings...the world was not the focus. I didn't feel much connection to the characters, either. The whole thing is too fast paced and jumbled as hell. I believe it's supposed to explain the origin of the BLAME! world, but although I follow the main idea, I didn't really understand 90% of what was going on, even with the addition of things like recaps. The style and tone of the original were not there for me.

Noise - this is definitely a prequel with a much simpler and shorter plot. It's a pretty straightforward dime-store detective story about the world before BLAME! and the origins of some of the craziness which appears in it. I think it's pretty good, overall. Again, the art and backgrounds, while great, don't give me the feeling he spent quite as much time on it.

ABARA - this is another prequel (I assume) similar to Noise, but a little longer. Some really fantastic art, but while BLAME! is 90% picturesque scenery and 10% action, this is the other way around. Still, some more of the fantastic panels I loved from BLAME!, a simple and short story, and a lot of ass-kicking.

Net Sphere Engineer - this is like BLAME II. I don't know if it's a prequel or sequel. The style is still more "direct" with a little more dialogue and explanation than BLAME!. The main character is very similar to Killy. It has huge potential. Unfortunately I've only read like 3 chapters. I don't know if it was discontinued or what, but the raws cut off in the very beginning.

I get all my stuff at:
http://onemanga.com
http://stoptazmo.com
http://mangahelpers.com

More to come soon.

I'll be looking for other members shortly and hopefully get this thing rolling soon.