No.87059
Not me, I tell myself I should but I never get around to it. It's weird, because it can be very addicting and hard to put down, but it's very hard to start.
Heck, I get into VNs easier.
I think the secret is to get something to read it in bed where it's far more comfortable to read, which I don't have (yet).
No.87083
Shimeji Simulation is great, probably my favourite ongoing manga (although I'm only following maybe half a dozen, so that doesn't mean much).
Mainly reading Saigo no Seifuku (part-way through the third and final volume) at the moment. I want to like it, but I can't even remember who half the characters are most of the time and it feels more like a collection of intertwined one-shots than a true series given how little continuity there is between most of the chapters. And, no clue if it is intentional, but something about the atmosphere (even as far as the title) feels weirdly sombre to me for what is in substance a reasonably cheerful CGDCT Kirara manga. Other than that, I'm also reading Makka na Stroke, a single-volume shoujo tennis manga that is stupid enough to be decently entertaining even if it isn't really my genre, and Mikazuki no Karte, a short yuri romance series that is passable but rather dull, in that its premise sets up a lot of potential conflict yet consistently just sidesteps all that whenever it comes up.
No.87085
I rarely read manga because most of them rarely get updated, or have long intervals of wait between each new chapter and I can't stand it.
No.87088
I wanted to respond but I don't read anything special lately. The last thing I was exited about was magilumiere but I dropped it when they added some half baked social commentary because I just wanted a cgdct.
No.87216
It's just really hard to talk about manga on smaller boards because there's far more titles to talk about compared to anime but far fewer people who read manga and a far lower chance that at least one of them is going to be reading/have read the thing you're reading.
Earlier this year I read this series called Ijimeru Yabai Yatsu, I had stopped reading at volume 12 because of the lack of scans, but last week I saw that the most recent volumes have finally been uploaded. From the title you might expect some edgy psychological manga about bullying, and that's more or less what it is... for the first few chapters. Then the premise is turned on its head. And then, at some point it goes completely off the rails and turns into a bizarre battle comedy manga with transformations, power levels, and mind games. I'm not even sure if I'd call it "good", but it sure is an entertaining read.
I've also been reading Tokyo Babylon. Even though CCS has been one of my favorite anime for a long time, I'm not familiar with any other CLAMP works besides Rayearth and Chobits, so I figured I should give some of their other manga a try and this seemed like a good one to start with. Oh yeah, and I also read some Kochikame every now and then. Last year I tried tracking down the "lost chapter" that was cut from post-90s pressings because it made fun of the emperor and WW2, but it doesn't seem to be available anywhere on the internet.
No.87221
>>87216>Last year I tried tracking down the "lost chapter" that was cut from post-90s pressings because it made fun of the emperor and WW2, but it doesn't seem to be available anywhere on the internet.If you're talking about 「派出所自慢の巻」 included in volume 4, some raw scans of it were uploaded within the past year. They should be easy to find.
No.87223
>>87221Huh. Seems it was uploaded shortly after I gave up, I even remember checking the Share search engine and confirming that there were no hits. Nice.
Also, another poster here who reads that? Small world...
No.87255
>4/a/
Do any of you post in the manga thread on smug/a/? I check it out every now and then.
No.87396
>>87344would you sell the rest of your lifespan for 3 days with a shab?
No.90761
>>90760like this one
anime left me wondering
No.92314
I read manga when I got flu and bed rest.
i read shimeji, it needs imagination to read and enjoy and currently, my ability to imagine is getting worse.
the last manga that I read are takopi, kunoichi ksubaki, and summer time render.
No.92341
>>92339Oh, that was fast. Is this a new artist or did he leave some stuff drawn? If it's a new artist, wow that's impressive.
No.92343
>>92342That's still really incredible. If you told me it was Miura I'd believe you.
It's been about 4 years since I last read any of this, not a big fan of reading things sloooooooowly so I might catch up to this later.
No.92345
>>92339Despite all the action, it felt very random, for a lack of better word. But it's only a single chapter, not much to really measure it by yet. I'm afraid I also read it while wondering how much of that stuff was from Miura's notes, and how much was added, which certainly doesn't help.
No.92346
finally, another translated ponko chapter.....
they're coming out so slow, it's going to be literal years before I get to see the end at this rate.....
No.92352
What program does kissu use to read their manga? I feel like I always end up just reading online since I've hated every single offline reader I've tried.
No.92354
>>92352Program? You mean image viewer or what? I use honeyview which is the best image viewer of course, otherwise I don't think other types of programs are necessary since manga comes in a .cbz file most of the time nowadays which is very handy for reading entire volumes at once. Reading online is fine too though (as long it's not shitscans of low quality or with ugly watermarks). I alternate between manganato/mangadex/batoto when I read it online.
No.92355
>honeyview
same
No.92379
>>92352tachiyomi is so much ahead of the other options that it's not even funny. It's worth putting 100 bucks in a shitty tablet just for this if you read loads of manga
No.92384
>>92352pretty often to switch between mobile to pc, so i use neko
No.94034
>>94033Oh wow, you just reminded me that there used to be a manga and comic book reader program on the PSP. I wonder if there's any lost media out there that was only distributed there. I was looking a while ago but I was having trouble finding anything still preserved.
No.94162
Studying modern visual culture with my friends.
No.94181
>>94162>>94180yeah, how's it feel having friends?
No.94182
File:1.jpg (275.81 KB,1164x1629)
Kissu dot moe have you read Bibliomania?
No.94310
If you are enjoying Yofukashi no Uta I recommend reading Jitsu wa Watashi wa, another manga about a dorky dumpire but with some other monster girls as an added bonus. And DON'T make the mistake of watching the anime, it's Tsukihime tier, may as well pretend it doesn't exist.
>>94182Yes. It's a short read. I hope the author/artist does more stuff like it. They are completely mysterious and I can't find information about them anywhere.
No.94317
>>94310I think I must have read this awhile ago, but I don't remember anything about it. I'm going to keep reading anyways
No.95062
>>94310On volume 6 of this so far, it's kinda rough here and there but I'm overall enjoying it.
No.96647
>>96642Where are her shoulder boulders
No.97112
>>97016it will literally be faster to learn how to read japanese than wait for the fuckups at cyan steam to translate it at this rate
No.97216
>>97215This would be a good series if the guy knew how to draw. He's been drawing for what? Two decades? And he barely has improved.
No.97217
>>97216It's charming in a way that it's sort of a preservation of that early 2000's style.
No.97218
>>97216Elfen Lied's manga was somehow made more erotic by the low quality of the art
No.97219
>>97217Yeah, but it doesn't work when the focus of the series is sex. Especially when the artist draws pussy juice as shampoo. It's gross.
No.97224
>>97220sandpapery dickies
No.100980
>>100978I liked the early chapters but I ended up dropping Punpun at some point.
No.100982
>>100981Also I posted that image, but forgot to comment on how I liked that it's confronting somewhat the more /r9k/ outlook on life in a way we've had discussions on a bunch in /qa/ before.
No.100986
>>100978I've been meaning to try, too, especially since it's made by the same guy that did the DDDD manga I dumped on /qa/ a while back. If it's anything like DDDD, then yes he does do 'human' very well. There's something about the characters that are so believable and it's truly a talent
No.105019
>>96642Ponko scanlations are finally back (and apparently have been for 3 months now, but I didn't notice since I was only checking dynasty-scans for updates, whoops), but they're being done in ESLglish......
Why must this suffering continue...........
No.105031
>>97216>This would be a good series if the guy knew how to draw. He's been drawing for what? Two decades? And he barely has improved.For me the erotic power of the Elfen Lied manga was for some reason improved by the artist's lack of skill
No.105032
I just realised that I already said that in this thread a few months ago.
No.105034
>>105032it's a mark of consistency
No.107067
>>92379I use a cheap and kuso tablet too and it works fine for lower resolution scans, but trying to read something like this is on an 800x1280 display is hopeless.
Having a tablet with a better screen would be nice, but it's hard to justify spending several hundreds on something that will only be used as a manga reading device.
No.108820
>>108819but why spanish....
No.110123
>>108819I actually started reading this after seeing this post, and I finished it a little over a week ago, it's pretty great.
It's a mix of action and yuri, and also there's Hinako, I love her. Hinako's the best.
Too bad it's not fully translated yet... The translations are all over the place on different sites with different scan quality and there hasn't been a new chapter released anywhere in a pretty long time.
In the end, I read it on Tachiyomi with the MangaSee extension, and that goes up to volume 20 (uploaded in December of 2022), and apparently there's 23 volumes released in japan and it's still ongoing.
No.110124
>>108819I read the first 14 chapters (at least if my list is correct), back when that was all that had been translated, and enjoyed it. I'd like to give it another try sometime, although the length (23 volumes and counting!) is a little off-putting.
>>110123The scanlations stopped because it got officially licensed. Yen Press has published up to volume 21, with 22 releasing in October. The pirated version is currently one volume behind but will presumably catch up at some point.
No.110125
>>108820Spengo sounds exotic.
No.111179
>>87056I regularly read One Piece and Made in Abyss but loosely keep up with others that I read every month or so. Every now and then I will read something completed, recently I reread Oyasumi Punpun.
No.111196
>>111179I like the plastic surgery girl from OP
No.111305
>>111301That better not be natto
No.111325
Picked up Murcielago as well because of this thread, it's quite fun. And a lot edgier than I expected.
>>108820Didn't our lord and savior Kubo Tite already prove that Spanish is in the top 5 coolest languages?
No.111326
Like Japanese, it sounds very masculine when spoken fluently
No.111330
>>111325At one point I looked a bit into the Espadas because of flamenco 'n' stuff, and coming across sentences like this one was indescribably hilarious:
>This isn't even a Gran Rey Cero, a Segunda Etapa Cero Oscuras, and he is only in first release.Unreal how ahead of the curve he was.
No.111670
Alright, I've finished my tkmiz marathon, including the three Flandre doujins. I think all I've got left is the Spanish colored version.
But yeah, lotta pointlessness, suicide, and gigantic architecture, though what I'm gonna talk about the most is Shimeji Simulation. I mean,
>Slice of Life
>Seinen
While I liked Girl's Last Tour quite a bit and found the true ending to be way better than the anime's (the only way things could've ended), I believe Shimeji is a clear progression from it and just way better overall. GLT takes place in a dead world, where there's nothing to be done. It's executed wonderfully, but at the same this limits it: there's no mystery, most of the dialogue is either the girl's musings on pretty basic stuff or comments about their immediate reality, the handful of other characters that appear are ephemeral corpses. Shimeji has a real plot, a physically dynamic world, and a bigger cast of characters that can progress, change, do more stuff: a hole digger, a fringe scientist, or a janitor, each doing their own thing and interacting with others. As for the main duo: while GLT's is formed by the neocortex and the reptilian brain incarnate, Shimeji's is more about proactiveness and passivity, a dynamic that, again, has infinitely more impact in how things play out.
The 4koma label doesn't do justice to how experimental it constantly gets. You can't go two pages without boundaries being broken, warped, or not just being there in the first place. Paneling is simply a suggestion. He also adds these mini rectangles at the edges to squeeze in extra tiny moments, it's very cool. Pic can make it seem like a comedy, but it's much more than that, I'm posting it to show off how crazy the visuals can get without any serious spoilers.
Really, "surreal" doesn't do it justice. It's a word that can make you think of simple lolrandumb or disconnected senselessness. Take Nichijou, it more or less has a "flat" level of wackiness, which is not what happens here: its episodes pile up and the lunacy builds up on itself, making it go from silly, to crazy, to absurd, to absolutely insane. Everything goes off the rails, every single thing, for better AND for worse.
To anyone who liked Last Tour, you have to read Shimeji. It's bonkers. The difference between the two is comparable to going from Doom 1 to Plutonia. It's so much more than a meme depresso manga.
No.111672
Why do people who still care about Chainsaw Man hate Asa so much??
No.111693
>>111672Because they're chronically online NEETs who wish it was always nighttime!
hyuk hyuk hyuk
No.111929
After sitting down and reading Chainsaw Man I am no longer attracted to Makima
But is she so bad she qualifies as 2dpd?
No.111930
>>111929Also I hope the anime being a disappointment to many shows people about manga often being better
No.111951
>>111672I went from why do people hate Asa so much to why do people like Tatsumaki so much?
No.112302
For a shonen girl, Nami is written very weird, she often comes off like she has a personality disorder and I have no idea if this is intentional. Im amazed shes so popular
No.112352
I saw Goodbye, Eri while I was in at the bookstore and bought it on impulse. I haven't actually bought a physical manga volume in probably more than a decade. I didn't realize how long it was up until now, enough to fill up a tome by itself. Also didn't realize nearly the entire thing is paneled like a 4-koma. English manga is ridiculously overpriced. Apparently you can get used tankobons in Japan for ¥100-200, and this one cost me $10. Disgusting.
No.112374
>>111672The "memes" about Asa that just come off like women hate are making me hate the CM fanbase
No.112375
>>112352Its because theres way more manga available
No.112376
>>112374To be fair, women being horrible is a running theme in CSM.
No.112377
>>112376But most of the time its not their fault but the bigger problem is that people draw all the girls with huge asses even if there's no indication they have big asses
Like they constantly call Asa a "f*mcel" when she's obviously processing her feelings for Chainsaw Man
No.112379
uh oh... someone brought up girls on an imageboard...
No.112407
>>111670I've actually been holding off on reading Shimeji because I was worried about it being kinda like what Neia_7 was to Lain and just terribly difficult to stomach because of the self deprecating humor and wackiness overcompensating the contrast with their prior work lol
If tkmiz is actually having fun with the setting I'll probably check it out, thanks anon
No.112408
>>112407Shimeji just has way more stuff going on, it's incredible. Hope you enjoy it.
No.112448
>>112387never heard of it but it must be plenty popular to get an english physical release
No.112470
>>112448To some extent. Though it's one of those series where it got a physical release despite never being scanlated nor having an anime adaptation so it's also quite unpopular in some regard as well due to a lack of reach.
Well, if anyone was fond of the more melancholic aspects of the GA anime then I'd certainly recommend both manga.
No.112474
>>112302More wan piss girl thoughts:
Yamato is likeable but feels like she was added because Oni (and /ss/) like Inutade are popular
The rest of the oni are unremarkable
Nico looks like she would be kind of a bitchy cool beauty but is surprisingly kind and positive, I like her
Perona looking like an Amanchu character while having a mean streak is a cool juxtaposition
Boa sometimes feels like generic shonen love interest, sometimes doesnt
Rebecca is like slave leia, pretty much only known for an outfit
No.112792
read Baki and was sucky. Only the second series but It started getting very repetitive
No.112824
>>112792Baki's one of those things that you cant binge and have to be a very specific type of fan. I agree but its more eh than sucky
No.112865
>>112475The bar is low, but One Piece is very respectful to low power-level characters and support characters.
No.113813
baki baki give me the sucky
No.113816
>>113812Yeah I've heard the manga has some pretty big differences from the anime. The anime is one of my favorite ever so I should really get around to checking out the manga.
No.117689
>>94182Never4gat about this post, finally went and read it today.
It does that thing I like quite a bit where stuff is cobbled together from random bits and bobs yet completely fits together, a lot of its architecture often feeling like an impractically detailed mix of mesoamerican stonework, Zhou bronzes, and steampunk machinery. The creatures are even wilder. I
wasn't the biggest fan of the lore dump at the end, but it's still an amazing read.
It is indeed super short, 12 chapters with fairly little dialogue, super straight to the point, zero filler. You should honestly go and read it right now, it's insanely better than any youtube video you could tune into and shorter than all those essays that are so trendy nowadays.
No.118233
I've been reading the Mushoku Tensei manga and have read up to volume 7. I kinda want to keep reading it, but I really don't. It's a very unfaithful adaptation. The pacing is completely off, scenes are completely changed regularly, others are not included at all, and the characters have lost a lot of their depth and become more exaggerated. The only reason I can think of for the manga being this different is because the artist felt pressured to meet timelines, and felt pressured to make something exciting and that would sell well. The only comparison I can think of is like the anime adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist, but that at least had the excuse of running out of source material and so continued in its own direction. In this case, the LN was released years before the manga. I was curious if anyone else noticed just how different it is from the source material and decided to read some reviews on MAL, but most of them amounted to, "Creepy pedophile manga DO NOT RECOMMEND"... I guess I shouldn't expect much from a popular website what with Japanese media being somewhat mainstream, but it was still somewhat disheartening...
Anyways, here's an example of just how different things are between the manga and the source light novel (and anime):
Manga: Geese gives Rudeus a pair of Eris' panties as a parting gift as they reach Millishion. Rudeus then decides to go to the Adventurer's Guild at Geese's suggestion. After seeing people pull out their swords in an argument, Rudeus tries to diffuse the situation by trapping them in mud and knocking them unconscious with his stone bullet magic, but misses a single person. Rudeus in a split second puts Eris' panties over his face to hide his identity and then the person he failed to knock unconscious slices the panties off of Rudeus' face. As it turns out, the person who sliced the panties off of Rudeus' face was his father, Paul. Rudeus tells his father, about his adventure up to this point, but Paul chews him out for not thinking about what could have happened to the rest of the people who were involved in the displacement incident and for missing his message he left at the Adventurer's Guild at Wind Port and Zant Port. Now, this feels extremely weird for one simple point: in the manga, Rudeus regularly thinks to himself "what happened to everyone else in the displacement incident", but when Rudeus is getting chewed out by his father he thinks "it never crossed my mind that the whole Fittoa Region could have been affected." What? No, you literally thought about it a whole bunch!
LN and Anime: Geese leaves Rudeus, Ruijerd, and Eris just before they enter Millishion and tells Rudeus to visit the Adventurer's Guild. After entering the city, they decide to splurge on a nice inn to stay at and Rudeus tells himself he's finally going to spend the day writing a letter to his father, to tell him that he's safe, while Ruijerd and Eris can spend the day however they want. After some time, Rudeus decides to head out and explore Millishion and sees a child being kidnapped and trails them into a warehouse. He hides among the boxes and shouts out in embarrassment when he realizes he's hiding in a box full of panties. He then quickly puts a pair over his face to hide his identity after realizing his cover was blown. After fighting with the kidnappers, his father enters the warehouse and despite being drunk nearly kills Rudeus, only stopping after slicing the panties off Rudeus' face and recognizing that he was fighting his son, Rudeus. They decide to catch up in a bar next door and Rudeus explains what happened up to this point and gets chewed out by his father because Rudeus had had a carefree adventure and never thought about what happened to everyone else. Rudeus then beats up his father, only stopping after being pushed off of Paul by his younger sister Norn, who he hadn't seen since being teleported to the Demon Continent. Norn scowls at Rudeus, not recognizing him as her older brother, and yells at him to stop bullying her father. Rudeus then goes back to the inn and wallows in guilt for not once thinking about what had actually happened to anyone else, and for missing the messages posted by his father at the Adventurer's Guild in Wind Port and Zant Port.
No.118238
The only reason I'm conflicted on wanting to keep reading is because the art is pretty nice at times, and it seems like the pacing might course correct and slow down. Volumes 1 through 7 of the manga seem to cover volumes 1 through 5 of the light novel, whereas manga volumes 8 through 16 cover LN volumes 6 through 9. I feel like it'll have to course correct once Rudeus and Eris reach the refugee camp, but maybe it'll just gloss over the NSFW bits since the manga seems far more PG and fan service-y than the LN...
No.118239
>>118233Yeah, that doesn't sound too great. What made you pick it up in the first place?
No.118244
>>118239I really like what I've read of the light novel so far, and it's become something of a favorite of mine. So far I have read up to the point where the anime has stopped off at (Volume 10) and because the manga and anime are at roughly the same point in the story, I wanted to read through the manga and see what it was like. The anime is very faithful, only really having some minor, non-story changing omissions and changes, so I was hoping that the manga would be similar or maybe even a bit more faithful to the LN by including some of the parts that the anime doesn't touch on.
For example, the light novel covers other character's thoughts in more detail by changing narrators; Eris actually does read Paul's message to Rudeus at the Adventurer's Guild at Zant Port (or maybe Wind Port?), but because she idolizes Rudeus she keeps it to herself. She ends up thinking that Rudeus already knows and doesn't say anything to her because he's trying to keep her spirits up by not bringing up depressing stuff. Later on, when she sees Rudeus dejected at their inn in Millishion, she actually says that she'd kill Paul for what he did to Rudeus and truly means it; Eris both thoroughly respects Rudeus for leading them up to this point, and cares about him deeply. The anime only kind of hints at Eris' growing emotions for Rudeus as she steadily reacts less and less violently to his sexual harassment, but in the LN it's revealed that Eris had loved Rudeus before being transported to the Demon Continent and her love was solidified the moment she saw Rudeus fearlessly interacting with a Sperd when she first wakes up in the Demon Continent. The LN basically adds a layer of character complexity that the viewer can only really infer in the anime because the anime only covers Rudeus' perspective (for the most part).
So yeah... I was hoping the manga would be a lot more like that, but it's basically just a PG shounen ecchi manga with some attempts at comedy only vaguely following the story beats of the LN...
No.122029
So I've been reading a bunch of manga, predominantly horror, and have some reviews for them in the making. I had planned to open with Ride-on King, but seeing
>>>/jp/72171 I might as well go with one of the most positive, for Hikaru ga Shinda Natsu. I it enjoyed quite a bit, second only to Shintaro's work that I'll post about later.
The premise is set up in an admirably elegant way: two boys in the countryside are sitting on a bench, chatting, drinking a bit, and one of the two mentions a little oddity. His best friend's accent... is off. It's been off ever since he returned from a strange trip about six months ago, and that's not the only thing standing out. Hikaru's behavior is not what it used to be.
Hikaru is not what he used to be. It, rather. So, Yoshiki asks, you're not the real one, are you? Thus, a confession, a demonstration, and a threat all at once. "Hikaru" wishes above all to be a human, so please, I beg of you, I love you, don't give it away. Or I'll kill you. All that's certain now, is that Hikaru has died.
Said elegance comes from the fact that this all happens within the span of eleven pages, three of which are full-page drawings. The premise is in a sense an inverted Higurashi where the culprit is known from the get-go, and the protagonist uneasily collaborates with them in order to cover it up. They want to protect each other, Yoshiki cannot let his friend go even if he only lives on as a fake double, but their relationship is constantly in tension as wrongness encroaches upon the town in no small part due to "Hikaru's" direct involvement. And you know what else is in tension? Their sexuality! Take a good at those tags: it says BL right there on the tin. Homosexual tension with the doppelganger, who knows that you that you know. Of course, his name is symbolic: the
light is what's dead and gone. It's absolutely fucking brilliant and I loved it.
More than so any other manga I'm going to review, the visuals do a beyond excellent job at carrying the atmosphere. It uses varying angles, rotation, warping, impeccable lighting, onomatopoeia with great freedom, and some touching abstractions here and there to truly convey the moment's feel and enrich Yoshiki's depressed sadboy mug. There's a part with a bathtub where the main body of water and its splashes and the bubbles inside and the droplets flying out all have a texture that's just a joy to look at. "Hikaru's" real form, too, is not far from the typical body of his kind, but a little twist and a huge amount of detail make it into a superb execution that is rather reminiscent of Bibliomania's gorgeous art.
I can't speak as positively of the plot, its developments are not something that will shock you (at least so far), but I also wouldn't call it predictable. Investigating the surrounding mystery is not as strong as the suspense itself, the atmopshere and the noise, the main two and their warped romance, those are the heavy hitters. It's clearly josei, and the author's previous oneshots include in one story two friends being complicit in a murder and in another outright homosex so it's interesting to see this kind of progression. I do want to note that in chapter 16 Yoshiki does something I respect quite a bit, he may look weak but his resolve is commendable and it really caught me off-guard. Also, I'd recommend skipping the extra chapters and leaving them for later since they kinda obstruct the flow of the story.
Oh, last thing, don't torrent Yen Press' version, the scanlation is noticeably superior. At the same time, that one is FUCKED right now because they lost their translator:
https://desu-usergeneratedcontent.xyz/a/image/1710/25/1710256903197.jpgAnd that's the real horror right there. You can at least read it in Japanese here (spoilers, of course):
https://web-ace.jp/youngaceup/contents/1000183/episode/ No.122030
>>122029Looks neat, I'll give it a try.
No.122283
>>87056I've been reading Tower Dungeon (the new Nihei manga) as it comes out and it has been quite interesting so far. It's also interesting to see that it has been more popular than his previous recent-ish series, at least on 4/a/, where it has routinely received dump threads ~\(≧▽≦)/~
I recently finished Happiness, which I liked quite a lot - I do have a soft spot for romance (and vampires too). This was the second manga by Shūzō Oshimi that I've read, the other being Blood on the tracks, which I thought was ok. I did read that one in a day however, so I'm sorry for the bit of speed reading - I should've slowed down, I think I spoiled it somewhat, especially with the slow pacing in the second half.
No.122380
Moving onto the next horror author...
Hiromi Dollase's paper
Shōjo Spirits in Horror Manga opens with Kazuo Umezu as the one who kickstarted horror stories in shoujo, whose work took the happy and beautiful conventions of the time and flipped them by injecting terror into them, like his 1965 Mama ga Kowai that the collection Hebi-Onna kicks off with. What he did there was take the familiar mother-daughter relationship and make the okaa-san into a monster, which may sound simple but that kind of timely inversion must've been very powerful given it led to a subsequent boom in the genre. She even calls it "epoch-making," so nothing to scoff at considering the impact of shoujo manga in general. He's considered to be a titan, interestingly enough Ito has a specific oneshot talking about his relationship with him called
Master Umezz and Me and it's pretty neat. Whenever Umezu's characters face the terrible and their eyes grow dark or sullen, that's when you can see where Junji Ito picked up that exact same technique from. Mentions here too at 20:50 (talking with Naoki Urasawa):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0ZtMuCDlck&t=1250sHebi-Onna's motifs certainly never left Umezu, as women losing and/or struggling with their often cursed beauty is a mainstay across his decades of work, present since the start alongside antagonists hidden in plain sight, disguised or totally invisible and which only the main character can perceive, who's distrusted or directly abused by adults typically complicit (knowing or unknowingly) since these MCs are overwhelmingly children. These kids have to deal with the intergenerational trauma their parental figures are passing onto them, serving as the source of further trouble. Harder to explain is his usage of dreaming or psychic powers, which is frankly all over the place and I found it to be a major culprit behind his sudden and unsatisfying endings.
You can tell its age not just from how it looks but by how it's structured. The art style is recognizably ancient particularly in Reptilia/Hebi-Onna, but his paneling is also starkly different from today's standards: there are no frameless vignettes, no panels that stick to the border of the page or have diagonal sides, nothing that sticks out of a frame, it's all rectangular, encapsulated, gridded. Many pages are made up of an array of twelve squares arranged as 3 by 4, or something close to it. You could almost call it modular, following a standard all throughout. Devilman was coming out in the early 70s at the same time as Drifting Classroom, and it's insane how much more modern it looks in this regard despite being fifty years old. It basically pulls every trick in the book, so I have to wonder whether it was so well established by then or if Nagai was that much of a pro. In any case, Umezu stuck to his own style throughout those four decades of work.
My biggest criticism of Umezu is his characterization. The people he writes are... extreme, histrionic. Some little kid has his dad get run over by a superstar so he spends several years laser-focused on hating, pursuing and ruining that guy's life, but it doesn't make for a good thriller because the kid's a damn gary stu whose conviction doesn't waver. This sudden insanity in a can happens more than you'd think, more than I'd like. In general, good guys are heroic because they feel it's right, and all the bad guys are evil because they're deranged in some way or form. The amount of torture they inflict on others goes well beyond the trauma I mentioned before, and both sides of the coin end up feeling fairly homogenous. This brand of horror is not particularly psychological or at least doesn't feel well executed in that regard, and although one blurb compared Umezu to Poe I don't think that's warranted. Another problem I have with him is that his work feels both too long and yet not dense enough. I honestly can't put my finger on it, but I often felt that reading something else would be a better use of my time, not because I disliked it but because it was... inefficient? Like it didn't pack enough of a punch to justify its hundreds or thousands of pages, unlike other authors. Weird stuff.
Soshite, some reviews, although shortened given how much the above applies to them.
Orochi, 1969-70 (tales of obsession)
Orochi is the least fantastic of his works, at least in the sense that they revolve around non-magical human beings in regular locations with no sci-fi or monsters at play either. Mostly. The title is its MC's name, an unexplained observer-sometimes-intervening entity that wanders the earth and decides to stick around any time a person's life piques her interest. She's not all-knowing or all-powerful, and this becomes more important later on when the tables are turned on her.
Many stories have to do with people becoming obsessed, fixated on something, you follow them and observe where this strange drive takes them. People make mistakes or do purposefully bad things, and these bring negative consequences for everyone. Lots of tragedies and things being bad from the outset. Orochi commonly comments on the events unfolding while nobody notices her, her interventions range from pushing someone away from an incoming train to blowing stuff up by pointing her finger at it.
The last story, Blood, has some remarkably good background art, seriously. Sadly, I can't say any of the stories stuck out to me, so I don't recommend it.Drifting Classroom, 1972-74 (SUPPOSEDLY his best work, I disagree)
Frankly, I disliked it a fair bit, and I find quite odd since it's been described by many people as their favorites. One reviewer spoke of this one as Umezu's magnum opus, but... eh, no, definitely not. In short, the two things I most dislike about Umezu (bad characters and random magic) are here at its worst, the art and horror are certainly not at his best, and the plot is a jumbled mess of pure nonsense. In long...
It's a carnival of non-stop slaughter through whatever means possible, but it's barely gory while the killings are sudden and senseless. Whether it's a teacher suddenly killing all of his colleagues out of the blue, a kid whose imagination creates an invulnerable Carboniferous lobster and a killer swarm, or the fucking bubonic plague manifesting out of nowhere, there's not a whole lot of thematic consistency. It's one of those stories where people just start killing each other as soon as something bad happens, and a lot of it is due to kids being stupid, but simultaneously smart enough to build a ballista and sophisticated pit traps from scratch in like an hour, correctly identify a kid's sickness as said bubonic plague, make an electric generator out of some bicycles lying around, and carry out an appendix operation with whisky and a utility knife (to be fair, the last one is probably the part that aged the best, impromptu surgery will forever be fucked up). It's... it's dumb, that's what it is.
So the general situation and threats are nonsensical, what about the characters? Kinda crap, the people dying in droves across the constant slew of casualties are simply unimportant and there isn't any nuance to anyone's behavior, it's always retardedly extreme impulsiveness against reasonable responses from the MC and his crew. People snapping and unexpectedly harming others around them (or everyone I trust turning against me) was for a long time a great fear of mine, but when everyone is acting like an utter retard the experience is quite different. It's also not horrifying when a no-name rando gets crushed by Godzilla, it's just another dead guy, which isn't helped by the threats being so haphazard.
It has piles of dead children, true, but its fatalities are so frequent and individually so fleeting that it doesn't compare well to the terrible moments of Made in Abyss, Dark Gathering, or even Umezu's later Left Hand of God, you'll see it both happens more frequently and passes by more quickly while not having any gore, whose end result just isn't very gruesome. There are five pages of people being set on fire yet they kind of shrug it off. After that one kid is stabbed and other shot, but who cares about them? I lmao'd at the part where some girls decide to step on a boy's ween as a scare tactic.
Since it's not very horrifying, let's talk about the moral dilemmas so common to these survival situations: just about anything that could generate internal conflict is resolved by a third party or otherwise out of the protagonist's control. Said protagonist, Shou Takamatsu, is always steadfast and righteous with pretty much zero flaws. He's the only consistently rational and useful student, divorced from the madness to a frightening degree. With no saving graces, I must say that the plot is pretty fucking retarded overall, it introduces too many things that barely make sense and the ending is oddly anticlimactic with its happiness assured by multiple deus ex machinas, psychic time travelling bullshit and all that.
It's got over two thousand pages and yet everything seems rushed, there's too much stuff going on while doing too little with it, it's unfocused and at odds with itself. The supernatural seems to detract from the natural, as magical occurrences simply override or cancel whatever is going on every five minutes with no rhyme or reason and the kids' capabilities make no sense. Lord of the Flies was written a couple decades prior as a response to the childishly optimistic Coral Island, while Umezu's is childishly pessimistic. It's not good survival, it's not good psychology, and it's not good horror. I can see why people protested against its publication back in the day, but today? It's ridiculous, in a bad way.Baptism, 1974-76 (evil lolidom)
Once more we find the mother as evil, that's neat, but the real kicker is its titular baptism. The first volume is from the perspective of an actress who wants to restore her beauty, and after the ritual's success it shifts to the point of view of a different person. From then on, it's the story of a nine year old girl going yandere over his teacher, and OH BOY it's been goddamn HALF A CENTURY and I cannot believe how ahead of the game this fucker was. What makes it interesting is that it's from an age prior to the codification (and fetishization) to hell and back of both the seductress loli and the yan, it really is from a different time. One of the twists in terms of Umezu's own tropes is in the disbelief, which rather than being pointed towards a well-meaning child it's the child that weaponizes it as part of her plan and directs it towards the wife. The hiding in plain sight applies to the MC too, rather than the antagonist. Admittedly, it managed to go well beyond what I expected.
If I were to recommend it I'd do so as a fun read about an evil loli doing evil loli things where the triumph of evil is terribly enjoyable, although it only doesn't hold that many surprises for a modern reader and the ending is dogshit.God's Left Hand, Devil's Right Hand, 1986-88 (ultraviolent)
One of his later works, here he's and at his most brutal and graphic, goriest and gruesome. Once more the story consists of a kid running into repeated supernatural encounters, episodes, but this time the MC ends up being a lot more relevant previous powerless children. In a sense, he develops more than those who came before him.
The first volume, with the story of Rusted Scissors, this is the one that's really fucked up, easily the ugliest things Umezu ever drew and that I enjoyed the most. Plot is the usual oh we found a weird artifact in a strange place, now this cursed item is bringing calamity upon us, but the calamity is fucking god-tier. The first thing you see, literally the second page, is these scissors coming out of a child's eyes, tearing them from the inside and going not just through her eyes but ripping outwards through her skull as well, violently waking her up and screaming and bleeding all over the bed. That's the first thing that happens. Gold, pure gold.
The weakest story I believe is the next one where some kids decide to kill their teacher for the sake of "seeing her true form" post-mortem and of course there are supernatural consequences to this but it's kinda ehh. Tongue of the Spider Queen is much better (do like me a good swarm), the story of the serial killer writing stories for his bedridden daughter is great, and the longest one, Shadow of the Departed, has spirits that only the MC can see condemning people to death where they end up running into a big fish devouring others much like in Dark Gathering or Mieruko, especially in its ending fights, it's pretty cool, pretty cool.
There's not much of a point to talking about the plot or whatever, and still there's nothing to the characters really, it's the gore that matters. Rusted Scissors does this best, if I'd recommend the book it'd be only because of that first story. Truly brutal stuff.He's got several other famous works left, Cat Eyed Boy, Makoto-chan (comedy), My Name is Shingo (sci-fi), Fourteen, and less famous ones like 母呼ぶ声 that apparently further contributed to shoujo, but honestly I think I'm good. Fourteen in particular is FOUR FUCKING THOUSAND PAGES LONG and goofy as hell, the first arc is about the accidental rise of genius man-hybrid Chicken George and his quest to bring about the retribution of nature before this future's humanity has destroyed the world in full. In the next arc, a world crisis occurs when babies start being born
green. Someone described it as a manga where all possible apocalypses happen, and with its length I don't doubt it.
Dude had a damn long career and drew so much damn stuff. A titan for sure.
No.122412
>>122380>Some little kid has his dad get run over by a superstar so he spends several years laser-focused on hating, pursuing and ruining that guy's life, but it doesn't make for a good thriller because the kid's a damn gary stu whose conviction doesn't waverIsn't a Gary Stu someone idealized and perfect? This kind of obsession is usually a cautionary tale about moving on and living your own life or something. I guess it depends on how it's done, but since you're talking about horror I'm guessing it doesn't turn out well. Maybe a Gary Stu in this genre is someone that does a bunch of terrible things.
>where the triumph of evil is terribly enjoyableNo...
>The first thing you see, literally the second page, is these scissors coming out of...NO!
Okay, yeah I had to stop. I read it and tried to be neutral but I can't.
Anyway, I'm reading through the Undead Unluck manga, but so far it's just the stuff that's been in the anime. The anime seems like it included nearly everything, but maybe that will change soon. I really don't know if I'll keep going once I reach the anime end, since it's so cool to see stuff for the first time in anime form with David Production and they said there will be an announcement in August...
Anyway... POMF!
No.122413
>>122412>Maybe a Gary Stu in this genre is someone that does a bunch of terrible things.I'm using it to mean someone who breezes through all difficulties with ease, without any obstacles giving him trouble, uncontested. He wins, he earns a total victory, walks away happily and does move on. There is no punishment for what he's done or the people he has hurt. He simply wins.
>Undead Unluck mangaIt's very nice how Andy is drawn, with his expressions and... solid? Solid look.
I spoiled myself on purpose and know that some really cool stuff happens, I think you'll like it quite a bit.
No.122821
Came across two gimmick 4komas recently:
>Wakarasero! Namaikitsune-sama>Ichiyo is worshipped at a shrine as a fox divinity. But she is in fact a cheeky goth loli osan kitsune who gets carried away very easily. But is it really okay for a goddess to be so rude? A comedy about teaching her a lesson.>Zenra.zip￥nudist lolis meditating on nudismThe former is alright, it's yuri meta all the way and the beginning isn't great but it gets better after they introduce more characters and you get interactions like the loner chuuni teaching the tanuki idol how to be popular on the internet (zenzen dame). Art is okay-ish. Zenra kinda sucks, shame how he made something so boring and repetitive from that kind of premise. I don't recommend either, pic is all you really need.
>>122508Checked it out, I laughed when she ripped through the sweater while trying to put it on. Girl suffers a lot, and her expressions match this.
No.123150
>Start a manga
>Never finish
Why do I keep doing it? Can someone explain?
No.123151
How does one download currently running manga? I'd like to read locally without internet. It seems like this was simpler 10+ years ago.
No.123156
File:03.png (1.01 MB,1127x1600)
>>123150who quot
But that's pretty normal since some manga keeps publishing forever, frequently goes on hiatus, takes long to get translations, etc. You shouldn't care too much about 'completing' them like you do with anime.
>>123151Either download stuff directly from mangadex with:
https://github.com/mansuf/mangadex-downloader or use nyaa or some private tracker like ab. You will constantly run into seeding issues with the former though.
No.123165
>>123155why is she drinking from amogus
No.123260
God DAMN akebi is so fat!
No.123264
>>123257>>123258>>123259Wait, this isn't Akebi! Who the hell is Fuko??
No.123265
>>123261The head in the bottom panel looks like somebody erased the real head and sketched in a new one.
No.123322
akebi stealer