This spoiler contains a bunch of bullshit about myself as well as my views on manga and my taste in general.
Notice how I try to impose my personal taste onto you. Try not to misinterpret any sense of arrogant self-righteousness as actual "advice" or else you may turn into a pretentious, conceited elitist such as myself. It's best that you avoid it, hence the spoilers.
I highly prefer manga to anime as I feel that manga offers more room for artistic expression and originality. There's also an astounding number of manga in comparison to anime so there's always something good to read. Many manga will never be adapted into an anime because they simply aren't able to sufficiently capture the intent and feeling of the manga. This is one thing I dislike about manga to anime adaptations; Akira is a prime example of this. The movie Akira is praised as a revolutionary title, and it was, but the story itself was completely unintelligible. That's the problem with trying to adapt a 6 volume epic into an hour and half movie.
I love the Gekiga style of manga that was prominent throughout the seventies. It is very dark, serious and mature storytelling which really appeals to me. Notable titles include Yoshihiro Tatsumi's manga.
The real about me:
Outside of my activities pertaining to the anime culture I enjoy running and exercising in general. It helps clear my mind and can be rather calming given the right setting. Or perhaps I just use it as an excuse to distance myself from others. What am I trying to run away from? My future? My fate? My family? My friends? Myself?
Whatever it is, it won't go away by running.
To anyone who cares:
I'm trying not to be as active on this site as I used to. It's a very bad habit of mine; not just MAL but the internet in general. I tend to waste time doing trivial things which hinder myself from moving forward and accomplishing actual worth-while endeavors. So don't be surprised if I don't reply immediately. If you must contact me I highly suggest you do so via my MSN which can be found at the top of the page.
Ah, thanks. It makes the process of reading much more carefree- and even bettered since I'm a fan of short story collections of all sorts and the künstlerroman is a favourite genre of mine.
I' starting off with the giant tome of A Drifting Life, but I'm interested in the focus of the manga' materal: does it explore more the development of his interest in manga, sense as a writer/artist, ideas as a mangaka, &c. or is it a more broad reflection on his life and development as an individual as a whole against society, derision, &c. (similar to Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)?
"Believers" caught me by surprise, since I absolutely loathed "Asatte Dance" by the same author, as well as a number of his one-shots. It was as similarly unexpected as the creator of the retarded "Ping Pong Club" penning the excellent seinen "Himizu".
I guess certain manga authors fail badly at "light-hearted ribald comedy", but are spectacular when it comes to dark seinen.
When I started watching Akagi, I looked up the rules for the modern Japanese variant 15-20 minutes online. They're quite intricate and confusing, but I got the main gist down, and it aided my enjoyment of the series. Many moments and scenes flew over my head, though, but they were depicted in a manner that was still exciting for the uninitiated.
And yeah, I've been very slow about reading JoJo. Partly it's because I like the series so much I want to read the chapters when I will enjoy them the most! Araki is super talented and innovative, and every time I read his works, I think to myself; man, THIS is what manga should be all about, telling innovative science fiction and fantasy stories. However, he is one of the few guys doing this.
Instead, most manga have devolved into content-less, boring looks at high school. Lame.
The current season (in fact, all of 2009) looks very grim. I watched a bit of Toradora last year because of morbid curiosity. Awful decision. It's a show that I watched at X4 speed, and still, its pacing was too boring and slow, with nothing occurring.
FMA: Brotherhood is a shitty reproduction of the excellent original, based on what I have seen of the first 9 episodes. The repeats are the same thing, except worse in every way, with needless, unfunny chibi scenes, and even worse animation. The one original episode was shockingly bad.
However, Bleach is okay. If not for the long plot arcs with little occurring, it would be a legitimately high-quality, long-running show, almost on the level of a Detective Conan for action. As it is, it's still decent, albeit nothing special.
And yeah, no problem. That was a lot of things to bring up, but they're fun to discuss.
Why hello there. I've been considering buying some of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's work, but I haven't really an idea where to start, so I was hoping someone who's axquainted with his bibliography could help me.
Hey, way slow on the uptake here, but I just wanted to thank you for figuring out that that one-shot I was trying to remember about a month back was called Island. I figured it was something simple like that (complicated titles are actually the easiest to remember, now that I think of it...). Anyway, thanks for the help.
I have a relative visiting USA, so I asked him to buy some manga for me. "Check the stores for anything Osamu Tezuka and see what you can find."
In the end he found some volumes of Phoenix, Apollo's Song and Black Jack and I asked him to buy them all :D I'll just order the missing volumes off Amazon.
After all, I'm just getting back to manga in like... 2 years. I have decided to read some of the roots of modern manga since I haven't watched many anime classics. Black Jack is the one I'm most interested in because it's said to be a great inspiration to Mushishi. Buddha has published in my country, so I may be able to get it here with relative ease. My friend is going to lend me Adolf.
Yeah Mushishi is definitely at my top favorite anime of all time. I haven't gotten around to reading the manga yet though, probably will soon. I added you because you are so close by. What part of Charlotte do you live in?
When did you add me as an Admin to the philosophy club? I just noticed it. By the way, would you mind doing a review for next week's featured in The Tokusyu Manga Club on anything that's on the list. I'm fed up with having three weeks without a proper review and I don't have much time.
I plan to get the Akira manga re-release myself (I actually already got volume 6 for $7 at a used book store and the thing barely looks touched, so I'm already 1/6th the way there for cheaper!), but I was a bit surprised it was the Akira movie and not manga. And I'm also more or less annoyed that they'd only have you read Phoenix volume 1, the whole things connects in subtle ways between the stories that you'd never see with just the first volume (not to mention that if we were to read just 1 volume of it, I think it should be either Future, Karma, Resurrection, or Sun), but hey, still seems like an easy class of awesome.
OMG! My school has a class where the required reading list include Phoenix vol 1, Buddha vol 1, Nana vol 1, Ranma 1/2 vol 1, and Nodame Cantabille vol 1! And no one told me about this! Now I can't get in this semester, class is full, but maaaan, just wait a few semesters!
You're also required to watch Akira and a bunch of other anime movies. And play video games. My college is officially awesome.
The thing is, I spent ages trying to track down Phoenix vol 1 (finally got it at Otakon) and when I went to the bookstore to return a book today, I decided to snoop the classes books, and there were like 20 copies of Phoenix vol 1! I was soooo mad! It was that easy to obtain the whole time (my only question is where are they getting those Phoenix vol 1? Those thing are damn difficult to find!)
