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Manga

Started by The Boston Crab, August 05, 2018, 09:51:39 PM

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I've read a very small number of graphic novels, don't like superheroes or anything like that and not really watched much anime besides the big name stuff like Ghibli, Akira and other Otomo stuff, Cowboy Bebop and assorted movies. Then I watched Berserk, influenced by what I'd heard about the Dark Souls links and it literally blew my mind. I eventually decided to read the manga and it blew my mind to a completely different level. I'm now pretty much up to date, awaiting volume 39, and I finally accept that I was wrong to ignore manga. Obviously, a lot of people would rate Berserk as the greatest work in the medium but I expect a lot of people don't like it and would rate other stuff which is worth reading.


Having looked for stuff similar to Berserk (which isn't necessarily what I want), I've downloaded the following:


Claymore
Vagabond
The Vinland Saga
Kingdom
Gantz


I've also downloaded stuff like 20th Century Boys, Monster, Pluto and a few other bits.


Has anyone got any brilliant recommendations? Or, any pointers towards any of those mentioned?


Cheers.

chveik

20th Century Boys is fantastic, one of my favourites
Spiral, if you're into horror
Dragon Head, Blame!, two great post-apocalyptic mangas
Onward Towards our Noble Deaths, the story of the Pacific War from the point of view of a japanese soldier
Tezuka's Metropolis
Gunnm
Lone Wolf and Cub

rue the polywhirl

Chobits is the prettiest looking manga that I've seen. A couple of the zelda mangas are pretty good. I'm not really a manga head who's into blood and guts so would like some reccomendations for some softer works.

madhair60

My favourite non-comedy manga is Full Metal Alchemist, not too long, nor too short, excellent ending. Good anime too but manga is better.

Best comedy is first 14 or so volumes of Ranma 1/2, which are perfect and beautiful.

Sin Agog

Might be too lyrical for what you're looking for, but Daisuke Igarashi's Children of the Sea is the most beautiful manga I've ever read.  It's ostensibly about two foundlings who have an affinity to the sea which may be extra-human, but it's largely an excuse for Igarashi to create amazing, often wordless panels of all the marine life you could think of.  Although the characters amd world-building here are all very well done as well.  Most of his other work sounds similarly magical.  I think the series he did about a Japanese girl who drops off the grid and lives a totally self-sufficient life in the mountains had a few movies made out of it.  Seemed more like a How-To book than a manga, which I'm totally cool with.

Also, for some dark, disquieting shit (although nowhere near as depraved as Suehiro Maruo...oy), Junji Ito's works are your ticket.  Would especially recommend the long, complete volumes of Uzumaki and Tomie.

Been re-reading an old '70s manga called The Drifting Classroom, which is a horror/Lord of the Flies-style classic about a school whisked into another dimension/the future, along with the thousand+ students within.

Blame is indeed great.  Almost wordless intricate world-building by a former architect.

Osamu Tezuka is still the master of this manga shit.  So much of his stuff is recommendable, and totally different from one another (although there was usually a slightly cruel, misanthropic streak even at the heart of his lighter work).  His masterpiece is arguably the Phoenix series, but he wrote and drew until he completely fucked up his wrists, then carried on anyway.  Would also recommend by him MW, Dororo, Apollo no Uta, Buddha, The Tree in the Sunlight, Vampires, the one about Adolf H...

Oh, and there's this one guy called Yoshihiro Tatsumi who's like the Japanese...Nabokov, maybe?  Whatever, he was like a proper manga author when such things didn't exist.  He even got a Korean animation made about him. Check out Abandon the Old in Tokyo if you can stomach some of his grim, urban vignettes about discarded foetuses and the like.

Thanks lads, I've got hold of a number of the above. Not really into horror but some interesting suggestions. Cheers.

samadriel

It's seems pretty obvious, but have you read Akira?  Fantastic stuff, and Domu is pretty good too (albeit much shorter).

I'll second Gunnm (The translation is Battle Angel Alita, if you didn't know), I love it.  I haven't read all of it, but Hellsing is fun, trashy vampires-vs-Catholics/Nazis/all-sorts action, give it a punt.

Cheers, Sam. I've got Akira now, never read it but love the film. I'll see if I can find Domu. Everything I've seen based on Otomo's work has been incredible. I really recommend the anime shorts collection, Memories, if you've not seen that. Three very diverse pieces of work.

I'll put Gunnm on the back burner for the moment because I'm not really into sci-fi stuff but I've read a number of promising things about it.

I watched the anime of Hellsing about fifteen years ago and really enjoyed it, one of the first I ever saw when I was in China. I'll defo check that out.

studpuppet

This is billed as horror but I think it's more supernatural in taste - I certainly didn't think of it as horror, mainly because of the b/w images, but also because there's a certain amount of humour as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kurosagi_Corpse_Delivery_Service

Edited to say I've also been enjoying this:

https://kodanshacomics.com/series/seven-shakespeares/

Small Man Big Horse

Has anyone ever read Learning Curves by Maison Ikkoku? It's just that I noticed they had several volumes in my local Oxfam this morning but I know there's a lot of terrible Manga out there (as with all media) and will only buy them if they're recommended.

madhair60

Just burst out laughing having a think about Ranma 1/2 then. God it's good.

I spent the whole day getting properly up to date with Berserk and I can't believe it's on hiatus there. After everything. Finally. And that moment. Hiatus. I'm just going to start all over again.

greenman

As far as Ghibli goes I would recommend the Nausicaa manga, starts off pretty inline with the film but pretty soon moves into grander and more serious territory more akin to Princess Mononoke.

Cheers. I didn't know that it didn't just follow the film (or vice versa, you know what I mean) and it's one I've picked up, as well. Love the film so will defoe give it a go.

greenman

Quote from: The Boston Crab on August 06, 2018, 04:35:56 PM
Cheers. I didn't know that it didn't just follow the film (or vice versa, you know what I mean) and it's one I've picked up, as well. Love the film so will defoe give it a go.

The film came out early in the manga's run and ontop of shifting events around a good deal only covers less than 1/4 of it,  its not actually THAT long because Miyazaki worked on it in fits and starts between other films but it didn't actually finish until 1995.

You could argue it makes his career as a whole easier to understand with the way that as when his films got lighter in the late 80's and early 90's(or at least less obvious in there darkness) the manga went in the opposite direction then when the Manga finished you had that darker side push into the films from Mononoke onwards.

Huh, sounds even more promising. I'm a fan of everything I've seen from Ghibli but I don't really know anything about them or Miyazaki.

Gantz is quite something. Pretty dark and cynical, I feel a bit grubby. Need to read the Eclipse again to lift my spirits.

Phil_A

I'm a big fan of Barefoot Gen, a comic about the Hiroshima bombing written and drawn by a survivor(also the first Manga to get an English translation incidentally)

I won't lie, it's fucking brutally harrowing though. Gave me a few nightmares.

Swoz_MK

Quote from: The Boston Crab on August 05, 2018, 09:51:39 PM
Claymore
The anime series is one of my all time favourites but never read the manga, very interested to hear if its good.

Sin Agog

Quote from: Swoz_MK on August 07, 2018, 10:49:44 AM
The anime series is one of my all time favourites but never read the manga, very interested to hear if its good.

It's pretty similar, but I think it was one of those cases where the anime rushed forth an ending because the manga hadn't been written yet.  It's worth continuing the story from the point where the plot diverges.  Think that was around Volume 11 or 12.

Swoz_MK

Excellent, thank you!

BlodwynPig

*Donald Trump goes back on his word*

Quote from: Swoz_MK on August 07, 2018, 10:49:44 AM
The anime series is one of my all time favourites but never read the manga, very interested to hear if its good.

I somehow missed this, I thought Blod's post was the most recent and didn't scroll up. I didn't even know there was a Claymore anime, I might well give that a go first to get an idea of the tone.

I don't know if you've watched Berserk, by the way? I suspect that would be right up your street given you're into Souls stuff, I think I remember.

Swoz_MK

Oh yeah Berserk is fucking fantastic. Again, one I've never read but only seen the anime.

bgmnts

How does Manga work when localised? Does it still read right to left?

It depends. Most stuff seems right to left and you get used to it very quickly though I've found it harder with an actual book versus scans. You get the odd thing which is left to right and reordered on the page but I suspect that's not too popular with weebs.

Quote from: The Boston Crab on August 08, 2018, 09:42:54 PM
I didn't even know there was a Claymore anime, I might well give that a go first to get an idea of the tone.

It's burdened by an annoying little kid character, Raki, who bleats and whines and constantly, needlessly endangers himself for the sake of cheaply manufactured peril. It would be a 10/10 show if it was only about Claire and the silver-eyed warriors. With Raki involved, I bring the score down to 7/10. He is a significant problem.

I've not read it but I suspect the manga might be the better option for Claymore. Raki would probably be much less irritating without a voice actor. At the very least, it would be easy to skim past and ignore him in that medium.

bushwick

I've never been that up on manga but Lone Wolf & Cub is classic stuff. Also a big fan of Hideshi Hino's horror stuff (his films are worth seeing too if you like OTT daft arty sicko vibes)

Brief update on stuff I've been reading.

Gantz

I'm about two thirds of the way through. It had elements of The Prisoner to begin with and while there is still that key element of a grand mystery, it's become increasingly larger and larger in the scope while drifting away from what first made it interesting to me. It's initially quite nihilistic in terms of social criticism and while those elements remain, they're more simplistic and largely ditched for massive destructive battles and graphic violence. I am struggling to keep up with all the characters but that's not necessarily the fault of the work as much as my casual reading when I'm pooped before bed. Despite these criticisms, I have really enjoyed it for the most part. There are sometimes interesting sci-fi moral and philosophical ideas in there. The art is frequently superb and there are some nuanced characters in among the tropey stuff. This is probably what I expected manga to be like, albeit a bit darker. It seems that the author either lacked inspiration to develop the initial concept from a narrative point of view, so he just decided to make everything exponentially more outlandish. Crazier weapons, more sexualisation, insane monsters, grander scale but it's by no means more interesting, or that much worse. Berserk at its best feels profound and poetic, Gantz at its best feels like a gateway to better stuff for teenagers.

Glebe

Haven't read any manga in yonks. I don't have a lot, except for a complete (I think) set of 3X3 Eyes.