I just finished reading supergod.
It has some real potential, but ultimately it's awful.
I just finished reading supergod.
It has some real potential, but ultimately it's awful.
I finished Arigatou by Naoki Yamamoto recently. It was a strange blend of dark/serious subject matter and humorous execution.
Synopsis: A depressing story about how a Japanese family's life goes wrong: an immoral protagonist, her sister who was gang raped before, her alcoholic mother who later devoted her life to a cult, and her father who lost favor with his company… full of sexual content and highly violent.
Genres: Comedy, Slice of Life, Ecchi
I had previously read Believers by the same author years ago. I hear Believers is getting a live action film adaptation soon.
It being by the same guy as Believers makes me interested. I didn't think that was great by any means but I'm interested in seeing more by him possibly.
It being by the same guy as Believers makes me interested. I didn't think that was great by any means but I'm interested in seeing more by him possibly.
He certainly has a unique approach to storytelling that makes you curious to pick up some of his work. And the fact that they are not big in terms of chapter count means that you can go for a quick read and not invest too much time in something you may or may not like.
For what it's worth, I caught up with World Trigger recently. S1 in manga, S2 and S2 where the quality took a huge spike in anime form.
And I have to say that if the author did not have the health complications, this series could have easily been one of the best concurrent jump series.
There's some serious depth and skill in the writing and the set-up/matches that make this series pretty unique and extremely well done.
Highly recommend.
I'm currently reading My Hero Academia, and it has quickly become one of my favorite manga, up there with One Piece and Fairy Tail. Not sure what I will be reading after I finish it, but well, that is decision I am yet to make.
I'm most of the way through Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou. It's pretty great. Completely different than I was expecting. I was expecting something more subdued but it's a pretty silly comedy romcom series. With the comedy mostly consisting of sex jokes. Though even then the characters are pretty good. I'm also catching up as much as I can with GochiUsa and Kill Me Baby, which are two 4koma manga I've been meaning to read for forever. In general I've been going through my to read list starting with shorter series and going to longer series. I'm at the past 10 volumes part and getting kind of intimidated seeing the volume count get past 20 and into the 30s.
Still waiting for some of the manga I'm following to end to pick up more ongoing series. GoshiUsa and Kill Me Baby are ongoing though I guess. Neither are caught up with their translations though I don't think. Plus I've been attempting to read some manga in Japanese and have a sizable to read list for that too. With regards to that I finished Pani Poni's manga in Japanese. I think it's better than the anime for the most part. I'd seen comments about how the manga's chapters are short and disconnected but it has quite a few somewhat long arcs. Though I guess those comments are because those arcs are in the part of the manga that hasn't been translated yet.
I bought (for quiet some money) Liar Game, to reread it again in physical form.
Still a series i deeply enjoy, Squid Game meets Kaiji with some psychological games to overcome from rounf to round.
Can people cooperate and be trusted, while the main characters get some cool anatagonists to go against.
I finished Arigatou by Naoki Yamamoto recently. It was a strange blend of dark/serious subject matter and humorous execution.
I just started reading this and I'm in the middle of volume 2. It is very strange in that it could be a somewhat normal comedy manga but because of the author it has gratuitous content in it. It is funny though. I think I also like the art here more than Believers, though this came earlier.
I also moved onto reading Gingitsune in Japanese. I'm almost caught up with what raws I can find and plan on buying the last few volumes to finish it. I'm really glad I'm able to read this series since it hasn't been lucky with people translating it. It deals so much with how people who are in contact with the spiritual world have to balance that interaction with living their normal lives as humans. Now that I think about it, Natsume's Book of Friends deals with similar things. Though Gingitsune does it through religions (specifically Shinto) and Natsume does it through youkai. I think I like Gingitsune's execution better too. It's a shame I wasn't able to be caught up with the series while it was running, but at the same time I'm glad it was able to finish since there was a period where the mangaka went on hiatus for more than a year.
Decided to check on Ruri Dragon to see what all the fuss was about. At first glance it was not the kind of manga that I would like (I really dislike the "girl doing scawy halloween claw-hand" manga trope that was on the single image you would always see when someone mentioned this manga), but since there's only 6 chapters out, I figured it wouldn't kill me to check on it.
And, well, I don't know what it is about it, but I can totally see why it became so popular in so little time. Every chapter is so damn pleasant to read. The final page of chapter 4 was so wholesome I even teared up a bit.
About to finish the manga Kouya ni Kemono Doukokusu and have some thoughts on it.
Really did not expect too much from it at first. It suffers from something that isn't uncommon in manga where the cover art looks nothing like the manga itself. Based on the cover art and the synopsis I thought it would be some kind of b-movie type horror series with human animal hybrid monsters. And honestly it might give that off at the start. But the mangaka is absolutely obsessed with ancient central American history and culture and it's really cool to see all that he puts into the series in that regard. Specifically the Mayan are a big part of the series and a large chunk of the series takes place in the Yucatan and there are many indigenous characters of that region. The series often feels partially like something you'd see on the History channel, with a lot of cool information about the Mayans and other related civilizations. There are even differently shaped speech bubbles to denote when characters are speaking Japanese, Spanish, and Mayan. And it's hilarious that the central characters (including the main antagonist) are essentially intellectuals that spend a lot of time talking about complex topics of Mayan anthropology and such, among other things.
And that's not even considering how good the action in the series is and that the art is fantastic. This might be one of the series that has improved the most for me over its run time. This series must have been a nightmare to translate too, with the kinds of topics it covers, and the person translating it has really good notes pages at the end of chapters. The name of the series is also impossible for me to remember
I've recently finished Beck in like two nights and because there's little to no discussion about the series anywhere, I'll write my thoughts here.
I have no experience with music or music industry except for the few times I've listened to 80-90s rock for no reason whatsoever than to humour my friends but this series make me want to go deeper into the genre.
Other than that, it is pretty realistic other than the fact that the main character hard carried his band and himself to worldwide popularity because of a naturally gifted voice that he did not work for. I don't know how often top-tier singers do voice training but I do wish that they showed more of him actually doing voice training (maybe Rock is an exception). He does work very hard though. Be it via the guitar or the numerous labour jobs he undertake(which is a highlight and a grim window to the reality of chasing your dream) so it does feel somewhat deserved. Characters make stupid decisions befitting their age and the era when the series takes place. There's an emphasis on Violence, particularly American Violence, and a lot of guns. I was expecting some smoking and cigarettes but it never came up which was interesting. The subplot with the violence/guns didn't felt like it aged well either but it's...there, I guess.
My favourite part of this was unexpectedly the romance. A lot of people hated it but I loved it because of how grounded it is (relatively speaking compared to other series) and both characters in said romance steals the show everytime they turn up. I couldn't really get invested in most of the other bands and even Beck other members because except for a few, they were all surprisingly vanilla.
I walked away impressed but cynical (it is fiction after all, it's close to a zero chance of that actually happening irl) and a few stuff felt very muddled/convulted but overall it was good.
I was glued to the romance which was really fucking weird considering how much I ignored aspects of that in other series that deals with a passion/craft. But that has more to do with me never ever having picked up a guitar or being involved in the music industry and less of the work not blaring how fun making music is to your face.
Read 357 chapters of Bleach, finding a lot of the post-Soul Society content an exercise in disposability. It's a shame I can't find all the old fan scanlations, since there's something missing from the experience when all the big memeable moments have different word choices.
caught up to houseki no kuni, what a masterpiece possibly the greatest ending of any manga. ichikawa's a genius
Of the 5 manga I consider to be my absolute favorites, 1 had already ended when I read it (Shin Amhaengeosa), 2 are ongoing (JoJo and One Piece), and 1 is complicated (Berserk), meaning Land of the Lustrous was the first of them to reach its natural end while I was following it.
I had to delay reading the final chapter because I wanted to reread the whole thing before it, and it was curious how much knowing the final development Phos went through also changed my entire perspective on everything, as if Phos' perspective determined how I felt about all those events that before, on my first read, made me so angry or sad... which I suppose is a testament to how masterfully Ichikawa conveyed her feelings and message.