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Manga I have read recently (updated)Follow

#1 Jan 24 2012 at 4:00 PM Rating: Excellent
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Thanks to the time I had off around the holidays, I read a whole bunch of new manga and manhwa. Most of them, alas, are incomplete... but there were some really good ones.

Sun-Ken Rock: Really enjoying this one. Basically about a Japanese guy who moves to Korea to follow a girl he loves... and then he ends up becoming a gang leader. VERY mature, lots of nudity, blood, death, and violence. I really enjoy the art style (there's an omake where the author does some Trigun spin-offs as well and they look amazing), and the story has been relatively good; it has ups and downs, but overall positive. Reminds me a fair bit of Akumetsu.

Vinland Saga: Actually read this one a while ago, but there are some new chapters out now. Very dark, it's somewhat based on the history of the Vikings and full of action (and lots of blood and violence, as usual). I'm enjoying it, although it slowed down a lot recently with the "farmland" arc.

Addicted to Curry: It's like a more ecchi version of "Yakitate! Japan," but focusing on curry. The manga itself is only slightly more than average, but I loooooove that they have "make this curry dish at home!" recipes in almost every chapter. I need to try some of them...

Btooom!: Survival game manga, a la Battle Royale. A bunch of "normal" people get thrown on an island, armed with explosive devices based on those found in a popular game. They need to gather chips from 8 other people by killing them in order to escape. It's nothing special from any other serving in the genre (and frankly I liked Battle Royale more, as the main character doesn't magically become an amazing combatant), but I look forward to each new chapter. Violent, and a decent amount of fan service, so... again... mature audiences only.

Team Medical Dragon: Pretty decent medical drama. It also has some nudity in it, which honestly I feel detracts from the storyline which is otherwise quite excellent. Reminds me of that game Trauma Center.

Transfer Student Storm Bringer: Kind of a goofy story about a kid who looks really fierce but is actually a wimp. Transfers to a new school, where lots of luck and bluffing keep him from getting pounded into the ground because everyone is convinced he's super strong. I enjoyed it right up to the end of the first "season." I thought it should have just stopped there.

Love in the Mask: Korean story about a girl who is brought in by a businessman and raised as a boy/bodyguard for his granddaughter. Goes on for waaaaaay too long, and then the ending is one of those annoying "And then 5 years later..." deals that I hate so much. I enjoyed it for quite a bit, but the end ruined it for me.

RRR: A manga about a would-be rock star who becomes a boxer. Follows your pretty standard fighting manga format, and I eventually lost interest in it.

Ouroboros: Story following two brothers, one a yakuza and one a police detective, who work together in secret to find and kill the people behind the murder of their parents 15 years ago. Only a dozen or so chapters out so far, but I really enjoyed it. Pretty violent; the brothers have no issue with killing people. Also some nudity, I seem to recall.




Huh, looking over this, it seems obvious that I've gravitated more toward mature manga. Oh well, they're pretty good! I don't necessarily care for anything with nudity or sex (since I don't feel like I can read that at work), but does anyone have any other decent suggestions or new things they've read?
#2 Jan 24 2012 at 4:40 PM Rating: Good
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Of those I've only heard of Vinland, and it's been highly recommended. I don't intend to read it until it is complete though. If you don't have one already Locke, you might want to invest in creating and maintaining a MAL profile. It's nice for tracking your readings and it helps when trying to remember series you've read. At the very least, it'd be nice for me to have someone's profile to look through for recommendations.

As for myself, I'm fairly addicted to horror manga.

-Junji Ito. I posted about Uzumaki before, but I've been reading a lot more of his works. He's a very prodigious mangaka, and the short stories makes it easy to jump into something without worrying about being tied down to a 100+ chapter manga. I find him to have a fairly diverse set of ideas and I like that he at least tries to focus more on psychological horror.

-Biomeat: Nectar. A survival horror series about an organism which is deisgned to eat any organic matter and serve as a food supply to a hungry human population. OF course it gets out of hand and the series is largely about the apocalypse cause by continual greed of those who would try to wield such an uncontrollable tool. I guess where this differs slightly from other survival stories dealing with a similar multiplying monster is that it follows the characters through different ages so that you get to see the spread of the apocalyptic creature. However, I felt the characters to be far too cliche and there is little of anything new about this take on a very familiar concept.

-Variante. A girl with a monstrous arm she can't control and her emotional trauma of being used as a tool to capture and defeat other "chimaera's." Very predictable. The protoganist grated on my nerves constantly. Shinji Ikari's whining never bothered me. Yukki Amano's cowardice never bothered me. But for some reason I feel no sympathy for Aiko and just wish she'd get over it. I trudge through this hoping for some redeeming twist at the end that just never came.

-Hotel. A delightful short scifi story about the valiant struggle of a computer to complete its directive as the entire human race fades away into oblivion.

-Abara. From the same author as Blame! Abara is a scifi horror series about the end of the world and the monsters bringing it about. The plot is largely left up to the read to piece together. I enjoyed it for the artwork and style of storytelling.
#3 Jan 24 2012 at 10:05 PM Rating: Excellent
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#4 Jan 25 2012 at 1:28 AM Rating: Good
Allegory wrote:
-Hotel. A delightful short scifi story about the valiant struggle of a computer to complete its directive as the entire human race fades away into oblivion.


I concur, this was really good.
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#5 Jan 25 2012 at 7:09 AM Rating: Excellent
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Omegavegeta wrote:
Allegory wrote:
-Hotel. A delightful short scifi story about the valiant struggle of a computer to complete its directive as the entire human race fades away into oblivion.


I concur, this was really good.

FYI, Hotel is done by the same Korean manga artist (Boichi) as Sun-Ken Rock.

Edit: He also has several other one-shots; they're all listed under "Hotel" on Mangafox.

Edited, Jan 25th 2012 8:17am by LockeColeMA
#6 Jan 26 2012 at 2:24 PM Rating: Excellent
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I've decided I have a love/hate relationship with manhwa. Some of it is really good... some of it just draaaaaaags. For example, Love in the Mask had potential, but then got sucky and bogged down as time went on. I've read a couple others that are just great; most recent is Annarasumanara. Fantastic use of color in it, although I don't think all of it is translated yet. Some others have been good too; Tower of God is pretty good too, although I feel like it's dragging a bit as well. Nineteen, Twenty-one was also good and I mentioned it in a prior topic (great for cat lovers).

The artistic style of manhwa is neat as well; usually about 5 very long pages.

Also, Al, Junji Ito's stuff is confusingly terrifying, Biomeat was pretty good (read it a while ago), and I personally didn't care much for Blame!, just because it was so hard to understand what was going on in the action scenes. Some artists do action scenes well; others do them poorly; and others do them poorly on purpose to capture the feeling of "whoa, wtf is happening?" that people would usually have when seeing such a scene. I think the author of Blame! does that last one... but it could just be poor drawing. Anyway, only made it about halfway through.

Edit: Oh, and forgot to mention another good one I read recently: Dorohedoro. It's pretty messed up and definitely mature; super violent, some nudity. Takes places in a dystopian world where magic users live separate from common humans and use them for magical experiments. Magic users get their powers from demon-shaped tumors in their heads, and use these powers in the form of smoke. Every magic user has a different ability, although they can bottle their smoke and let others release it to use the powers. And if a magic user dies, his spells are unmade. Anyway, story revolved around Kaiman, a guy with a reptile head, an immunity to magic, and no memory of his past or who cursed him to become transformed. He goes around hunting magic users to find out if they were the ones who cursed him. It's not complete, and as said it is really dark , but I very much enjoyed it.

Edited, Jan 26th 2012 3:29pm by LockeColeMA
#7 Jan 27 2012 at 10:29 AM Rating: Excellent
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My biggest issue with manhwa is that I usually end up confused the first page or so because I end up reading the panels in the wrong order from manga.
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#8 Jan 27 2012 at 10:56 AM Rating: Good
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Ha ha, yeah. I do that too sometimes.
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#9 Jan 28 2012 at 10:04 PM Rating: Good
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Started reading Superior, got half way into chapter 2 and I think I'm going to drop it unless someone here can give me a good reason not to. I wish I had a more reliable source for recommendations.
#10 Jan 28 2012 at 11:54 PM Rating: Excellent
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Allegory wrote:
Started reading Superior, got half way into chapter 2 and I think I'm going to drop it unless someone here can give me a good reason not to. I wish I had a more reliable source for recommendations.


Read most of the series a while back. Forgettable enough that, until you mentioned it and I looked it up, I had forgotten it.
#11 Jan 30 2012 at 12:07 AM Rating: Good
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Just thought I'd chime in here and say I've been reading History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, and enjoying it.
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#12 Jan 30 2012 at 5:52 AM Rating: Excellent
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Vataro wrote:
Just thought I'd chime in here and say I've been reading History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, and enjoying it.

Get 400 chapters in and get back to us Smiley: lol

Nah, I'm kidding. Kenichi was pretty good when I started it, but it just started to feel like any other fighting manga as it got further on (actually, it started to feel like DBZ). Granted, with more fan service.
#13 Jan 30 2012 at 3:16 PM Rating: Good
LockeColeMA wrote:
Vataro wrote:
Just thought I'd chime in here and say I've been reading History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, and enjoying it.

Get 400 chapters in and get back to us Smiley: lol

Nah, I'm kidding. Kenichi was pretty good when I started it, but it just started to feel like any other fighting manga as it got further on (actually, it started to feel like DBZ). Granted, with more fan service.
How does the manga compare to the anime? I've watched it, but not sure if there's something in the manga I might have missed out on.
#14 Jan 31 2012 at 12:11 AM Rating: Good
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I've picked up Battle Royale to replace Superior. It's a survival manga with a pretty straightforward premise. 31 chapters in and it appears to be well written. Not surprising, but not predictable either. So far I'm enjoying.

And not that it particularly belongs here, but it's not altogether worthy of a new thread. I know a few of you read Zetman, and if you already knew there was an anime adaption coming out, here's the preview.
#15 Jan 31 2012 at 12:59 AM Rating: Good
Allegory wrote:
I've picked up Battle Royale to replace Superior. It's a survival manga with a pretty straightforward premise. 31 chapters in and it appears to be well written. Not surprising, but not predictable either. So far I'm enjoying.
The novel for Battle Royale is, in my opinion, even better than the manga. Same story, but with more detail. Either way though, you are in for an excellent story.
#16 Jan 31 2012 at 5:34 AM Rating: Excellent
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Daimakaicho, Eater of Souls wrote:
Allegory wrote:
I've picked up Battle Royale to replace Superior. It's a survival manga with a pretty straightforward premise. 31 chapters in and it appears to be well written. Not surprising, but not predictable either. So far I'm enjoying.
The novel for Battle Royale is, in my opinion, even better than the manga. Same story, but with more detail. Either way though, you are in for an excellent story.

Agreed. And the movie is pretty darn good too (but I liked the novel most). I think I saw it at my first Otakon years and years ago.
#17 Jan 31 2012 at 7:29 AM Rating: Excellent
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Fun story. So mangafox just put up some chapters of Cross Days, and I started reading it and thinking "Hmmmm... this looks familiar... why does it look familiar...

Makoto


AHHHHH!! Nice boat, nice boat, nice boat!

Dammit, it's a parallel of School Days. Maybe I should not read any other chapters that come out, if it ends as horrifically as School Days does.

Edited, Jan 31st 2012 8:47am by LockeColeMA
#18 Feb 06 2012 at 12:40 PM Rating: Excellent
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Homunculus

Holy crap, this is a mindf*cker. I read most of it around a year ago, so my memory of the start of it might be a little off. As I recall, there's a guy living in his car next to a park full of homeless people. He lies to them about his situation, why he's there, what he does for a living. One day a young, rich guy comes by and asks him to take part in a scientific experiment: trepanation. For those who don't know of it, it's a (real) procedure that opens holes in peoples' skulls; it was done in Neolithic cultures, and is guessed to have been for anything from stopping migraines to allowing communication with spirits. The guy agrees (and gets a fair amount of money for it). As time passes after the operation, he begins to see some people as distorted shapes or monsters. The rest of the series is spent with him trying to figure out if he's going crazy, or if he has actually gotten some kind of power to see the true "hearts" of people through these odd shapes that he called homunculi. The series also winds backwards to explain who he is, how he got to where he is at the start of the series, and what his future entails.

Spoilers, while it's fresh in my mind.

It does seem like he gets some kind of psychic power to see the "true heart" of people. The most obvious reasons being the cases when he figures out something about the homunculi that he could never otherwise know (the yakuza in the robot suit, the fish from his friend's childhood, and with the yakuza with the gun near the very end). So it does seem like he gets some kind of power. But the ending is pretty obvious: it drives him insane. He starts to see everyone as himself, and wants others to focus on the inside, not the outside. It's almost like he reverts to his old, ugly self... but instead of becoming "twisted" and changing himself, he becomes semi-homicidal and demands his close friends get trepanned. He kills his girlfriend, and almost kills his best friend. At the end he's carted off by the police.


What a downer.

But I don't quite get some of the symbolism. I sorta understand why he takes on the aspects of those he helps, but not entirely... and why it's selective. He gets the robot hand, sand, and egg head. But he loses the egg head, never gets the fish, and while Nanako changes his face briefly, it changes back by the end. Also, why do they both wear each other's faces during sex near the end? It was pretty messed up to see that scene. And why doesn't he remember his old face, if he had a picture of it?


Oh well, it's a good series, but very mature. Fair amount of nudity and sex, lots of disconcerting behavior. Not too much violence though. Curious if anyone else has read it?
#19 Feb 16 2012 at 12:33 AM Rating: Good
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I've started on Rurouni Kenshin, but only 7 chapters in I'm wondering if I should drop it. I know when I was younger it was incredibly popular, and I can do shounen, but it just doesn't seem to be anything but cliche. I've seen the peaceful badass hero in Trigun already.

Anyone having read able to tell me if it changes significantly or is somehow worth treading through well trod territory?
#20 Feb 16 2012 at 4:12 AM Rating: Good
I'd read the latter chapters of Kenshin if you're looking for a better story than the last season and a half of the anime series (as it's all filler). Other than that, the Samurai X movies are a better telling of the story & the last movie follows the manga as opposed to the filler in the anime.

I really liked Battle Royale (I skipped the sequel after trying out the first few chapters), but I'm more into adult/horrer type manga (Gantz, Zetman, Berserk) than the various other flavors of manga.
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#21 Oct 23 2012 at 8:17 PM Rating: Excellent
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Cool, I can necro a thread without it being considered a necro!

In my quest to find new, good seinen, I've gone through several more series. Among them, I've read...

Wakusei no Samidare (also known as Hoshi no Samidare, and The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer: This is one of those series that I remember hearing about, I read the description, and immediately said "PASS!" I finally went back... wow. Worth it. The series is just the right mix of action, comedy, and some dark themes. It starts out pretty much as a gag manga; the protagonist wakes up one morning to find a talking lizard on his bed and a giant hammer in the sky. The lizard tells him that he's the Lizard Knight, and needs to support the Princess with the other 11 Beast Knights to prevent the Magus from using the Biscuit Hammer to destroy the Earth. Get all that? See why I skipped the series? It does go into some darker themes, such as child abuse, the inevitability of death, and whatnot... there's some minor fan service, but it's almost always used as extremely dry comic relief. By the very end of the series, I was so invested in the characters that I honestly felt a little choked up. I'd highly recommend it; it's not what I expected at all.

Threads of Time: Not a bad series, it feels a bit like Historie set in ancient Korea and Mongolia and mixed with some Samurai X. Basically a modern-day kendo champion starts having strange hallucinations that he's living in ancient Korea (Koryo). These start as dreams, but then become waking hallucinations, and finally he gets trapped in the past. He needs to figure out why he was sent there, what he's supposed to do, and how he can get back to his own time. There's a small amount of sexual content and a LOT of violence. I liked it, though the ending was a little wistful. Interesting history. The very end was great, but the final fight's resolution made me go "NO! He was SO CLOSE to getting the girl!!"

The World is Mine: Read this a few months ago; well, several dozen chapters at least. It's pretty messed up; I THINK Mon-chan (the "hero," and I use the term lightly) is supposed to be a Son Goku allusion, before Son Goku decided to become a hero and was still pretty much a monkey demon. The story itself follows a feral boy named Mon who does literally anything that he wants, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Kill some random people? Sure. Rape a grandmother? Why not. Butt-f*ck your male follower? Ok. Have said follower get arrested so you have an excuse to blow up a police station? Totally happens. Decide to single-handedly take on a Godzilla-esque monster that has been rampaging across Japan for the only reason that it pisses you off? That happens too. The story roughly follow Mon and his "friend"/follower Toshi as they become the most pursued terrorists Japan has ever known... besides a gigantic monster that tears across the country destroying everything in its path. The story was interesting, but (as one review said) is like having a dose of insanity injected directly into your eyeballs. Definitely not for the faint of heart. I forget why I stopped reading it at some point, but I did. Maybe I should pick it up again...

Ubel Blatt: Meh. It was like a less interesting, more high fantasy Berserk. Fair amount of nudity, lots of violence, shaky story. Story is about a fantasy world that was in a war against magical creatures 20 years ago. The emperor of the country gave 14 magical lances to hand-picked knights, who would complete a mission to seal back the magical creatures (which have a weirdass name like Wietchmechs or something. Honestly, just says "Elves" or "Demons" like every other high fantasy story... ). 3 died on the way, and 4 betray the group, but 7 succeed and return home as heroes. Now, 20 years later, a great calamity is predicted to shake the kingdom, a hero is to appear, and the heroes might fall. I read almost all of what's currently out, but it never really interested me that much.

Gyo: Argh, why do I read Itou Junji before sleep!? Storyline: While vacationing in Okinawa, a guy and girl discover weird rotting fish with spider-like legs coming out of the ocean. Insanity ensues. Like most of his stories, it's horror, it's designed to weird you out, and don't expect things to turn out well for the characters involved.


Also, and this is mostly for Poldaran, I've played through School Days HQ and gotten about seven different endings (including some of the sub-heroines). I actually like the sub-heroine ones best so far (In my two "good" endings for each girl, the other ends up miserable but at least not dead, and is entirely out of the story by the end. Hell, in one of the "good" Sekai endings, Kotonoha gets raped by Makoto's best friend. I still haven't gotten the bad endings yet, as I'm trying not to cheat and use a guide.
#22 Oct 25 2012 at 10:42 PM Rating: Good
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Aiki is awesomeness. You should read it and enjoy the awesome reaction faces.
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#23 Oct 26 2012 at 12:26 AM Rating: Good
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LockeColeMA wrote:
Also, and this is mostly for Poldaran, I've played through School Days HQ and gotten about seven different endings (including some of the sub-heroines). I actually like the sub-heroine ones best so far (In my two "good" endings for each girl, the other ends up miserable but at least not dead, and is entirely out of the story by the end. Hell, in one of the "good" Sekai endings, Kotonoha gets raped by Makoto's best friend. I still haven't gotten the bad endings yet, as I'm trying not to cheat and use a guide.

Back in the day when I was reading the TVTropes on the game/anime, I'm pretty sure they mentioned that part about Kotonoha several times. May be in several endings.
#24 Oct 26 2012 at 12:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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Deadgye wrote:
Aiki is awesomeness. You should read it and enjoy the awesome reaction faces.

I seem to recall reading the first few chapters a while back and thinking it was just fap material. Might have to give it another go at some point.

I started reading a series called "Again!!", which I've really enjoyed. Unfortunately it's ongoing and only has like 20 chapters out right now. I've also enjoyed Silver Spoon, which was made by the mangaka who created FMA. Started reading it a while ago, then read the most recent 30 chapters or so more recently. Makes me smile Smiley: smile

@Poldaran

Dang, that sucks. I don't think there's an ending where you get to kick your friend in the nuts, though I wish there was...

Also, the "harem" endings seemed disappointing. One was just freaking depressing.
#25 Oct 26 2012 at 2:00 PM Rating: Good
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It gets lighter on the over the top sex after the first 20 or so chapters.
#26 Oct 26 2012 at 2:54 PM Rating: Good
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LockeColeMA wrote:
@Poldaran

Dang, that sucks. I don't think there's an ending where you get to kick your friend in the nuts, though I wish there was...
I think there's one where you end up with him, though.
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