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.