younger's Blog

(This list doesn't cover manga I spontaneously pick up or catch up on whenever scanlations are released. The order will change because I'm fickle. I also added spoiler tags for each section since this page is getting long and unwieldy.)

*Souten no Ken
*20th/21st Century Boys
* Parasite
* Shiguiri
* Zetman
* Vinland Saga
* Akira (Currently reading)
* Jiraishin (On hold)
* Bakuman (On hold)
* Battle Angel Alita(On hold)
* Kamen Rider Spirits (Currently reading)
* Golgo 13 (Currently reading)
* Shin Angyo Onshi
* Sakigake!! Otokojuku
* Berserk
* Monster
* Vagabond
* Lone Wolf and Cub
* JoJo's Bizarre Adventures Part 4
* Banana Fish
* Blade of the Immortal
* Freesia
* Togari
* Mother Sarah
* Planetes

Thoughts on current reading: Akira


Thoughts on current reading: Golgo 13


Thoughts on current reading: Kamen Rider Spirits


Thoughts on current reading: Battle Angel Alita (On Hold)


Thoughts on current reading: Bakuman (On hold)


Thoughts on current reading: Jiraishin (On hold)


Thoughts on completed reading: Vinland Saga (Caught up with scanlations)


Thoughts on completed reading: Zetman (Caught up with scanlations)


Thoughts on completed reading: Shiguiri (caught up with scanlations)


Thoughts on completed reading: Parasyte


Thoughts on completed reading: 20th/21st Century Boys


Thoughts on completed reading: Souten no Ken (caught up with scanlations)

I've been kind of out of control with my manga-purchasing lately.



Okay, so after buying almost all 46 issues of the now-defunct Raijin Comics weekly magazine (think "Shonen Jump", except with Baki the Grappler, Souten no Ken, and a few other manly series that were never collected into volumes, and which will never be scanlated), I've moved onto other pastures.



I've been picking up, though I'm not sure why, the color editions of Fist of the North Star, released by raijin comics only a couple of years before I began getting into anime and manga. The coloring in these volumes isn't very good, and I much rather prefer the original artwork. Also, Delinquent-Manga is incredibly close to closing the scanlation gap entirely, rendering my purchasing of these books completely counter-productive. I'd probably be better off with the even-older Viz releases of HnK.



I've been holding off on reading Sanctuary, because it's fucking brilliant and I wanted to read it in person (ie, legally). It seems like finding all the volumes will take some time, so in my eternal haste I purchased it in individual comicbook form. That's 45 books which will be hitting my local post office very soon. I'll probably end up buying the volumes anyway, for collecting purposes. Still, I look forward to whipping out some Jack Daniels with a huge stack of comic books, and reading the afternoon away some lazy weekend.



I also bought the 6 volumes of Tough! that Viz released a while ago. Really looking forward to them, but it's immensely disappointing that the series is 42 volumes long, with nothing but slow scanlations on the way and these six out of print volumes.



This manga-craze of mine has even become meta, as I've purchased four books that are ABOUT manga: "Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics", "Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga", "Manga! Manga! : the World of Japanese Comics" and "Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the U.S." I'm really interested to learn more about the manga industry for adults in Japan, since it's never discussed in western fandom, and rarely scanlated.

Just chronicling my manic spending lately. Makes sense to bunch it together with my MAL profile, which chronicles my manic anime-watching ;)

Anime Relations: K-On!

Okay, so for the first time in my life, I watched an episode of a moe anime: K-ON.

How the fuck did this happen?



Well, I saw a random YouTube video with Danny Choo, in which he danced around Tokyo in a stormtrooper outfit, playing a guitar to what sounded like a decent rock-oriented jpop song. Soon after, the video began playing a "Japanese Alvin and the Chipmunks" song which I couldn't stand, so I looked up the first song on YouTube. Then I realized that it was the ending from K-ON, a show that gave me creepy moe vibes as I read about it. THe second song was the opening to this show.

I must confess, I'm still not sure what moe is. For as long as I've been into anime and manga (going on 5 years), I've had an intense dislike for the "cutesy" and lolita tendencies inherent to the field. It creeps me out quite frankly, and pedophiles are ranked up there with nazis and rapists in the "pass me the gun I'll do it myself" category. I only recently learned the word "moe", and wish I hadn't. It seems like moe is all about loving and caring about pre-pubescent anime characters, with an alleged "non-sexual" component, which leaves the person buying toys and posters and generally obsessing over the character's innocence.

I made the decision to watch the first episode, armed with an impatient tinge of curiosity. I don't socialize with anime/manga fans outside my computer, and I don't go to anime conventions, so I literally went into this episode with no clear idea what to expect from a "moe show".



Watching K-ON is exactly like watching Pikachu, a cutesy character from Pokemon, run around with his friends for 20 minutes. The characters are vapid, and the narrative relies on squeamish facial expressions and awkward body movements. I really didn't detect anything sexual about it, except for the ending, ironically enough. It featured all four protagonists topless, with one character "singing" through a frameset of coy, empty facial expressions. The voice actors used their normal "adult" voices, and sounded nothing like the young characters they voiced for the rest of the episode.



I literally have no idea on how to rate this show. It's "shit" the same way an episode of Blues Clues or Dora the Explorer is shit: it has nothing interesting for me that I can relate to, so I just don't care about it.

So yeah... I've seen 20 minutes of moe, and rather than working myself into a frothy rage, I just got bored. Not the reaction I was expecting. Turns out the 1100 pound gorilla of my fandom is an empty box of fluff.

I'm still completely stumped as to what the appeal to this sort of thing is, by the way. I understand moe even less than I did before, if that's possible.

I don't know why I keep doing this.

I'm reading a bunch of awesome, interesting stuff at the moment, all at the same time. I'm in the middle of Parasyte, Sanctuary (one of the best manga ever), and Garouden. Not to mention the manga I want to buy so that I can continue reading: Black Jack, Astro Boy, JJBA 3, Golgo 13, Skullman. Also, I have a stack of 40 issues of the weekly Raijin Comics magazine (manliest American manga anthology ever). To top it all off, I started re-reading my favorite manga, Shamo, last Friday.

So, with all that, why the hell did I start reading 20th Century Boys last night? Honest curiosity got the better of me, and I forged my way through the first couple of chapters. This manga didn't have me hooked from page one, but it sure as hell has me hooked now that I'm 20 chapters in. There's still nearly 230 chapters left, and if my experience reading Pluto is any indication, I'm going to end up loving every minute of it.