Category: Manga Experiment

Memories of Emanon – February 24 – 1967 – Afternoon: This is a manga that is just one volume long, and it has a bit of a weird chapter layout. It consists out of three parts. The first parts has chapters named after times of the day and the others don’t. Plus, there are a number of pages in the first part that are a bit of a prologue. I especially like how the chapters titles are basically a way to show the time. From what I can gather from the chapter titles, this is a romance series. Part 1 is about the couple meeting, and part 2 and 3 are about memories. I’m not sure yet what that means, because the start is pretty vague on that. The first chapter shows the couple meeting each other on some sort of ship. It uses a lot of non-verbal communication, which I like and the art is good as well, plus there was some strange symbolism during the prologue. It definitely has potential to be a good short romance.

The Music of Marie – Ch.05-06: Whoa, talk about a cliff-hanger here at the end of two episodes of build-up. These two chapters were all about the culture of the world that this plays in, and it again has so many ideas in it, ranging from how people live to how the rituals of marriage are different in different countries. The designs still are really good, especially that plane that Pipi (the female lead) got for her birthday.

Shingeki no Kyojin – Ch.04-05: All this talk about chapter four piqued my curiosity, and yes. That was definitely unexpected and really bold from the authors to do, and I feel like I’m warming up more and more to this series. It’s still not the type that I can read for hours (which is also why I again just checked out two chapters this time), but what this show does really well is show the utter despair in which the characters are, combined with the art for the giants.

A Million-Pound Love – Ch.04: This is the final story of Reiko Shimizu’s collection of short stories, about an assassin that is sent on a job to kill some rich guy, but who falls in love with his daughter. After reading more manga for the past month, it still really surprises me how much stuff she can actually put into just one page. The panels are all very small and the lay-out between them just keeps changing. In terms of the story, it had the most questionable content compared to the other three stories of A Million-Pound Love, but the twists at the end were still very good.

Hotel – Ch.04: Wow. I think I understand now why this manga by Boichi was recommended to me. Here this story starts out similarly to the second chapter with a sick girl who turns out to be pregnant, and from there on it changes… oh boy, it changes. This one took me completely by surprise and I spent about a minute with my mouth open. Good stuff. Hotel would make a fantastic anime with the right people working on it, by the way.

Shingeki no Kyojin – Ch.02-03: One thing that I did notice now that I’m checking out multiple chapters at a time is that with some series, I find it very difficult to remain interested. Before starting these chapters I told myself to read up till chapter 4, but during chapter 3 I already noticed that I was trying to force myself through it. The art for all of the giants in this manga is really impressive, and the creators made this interesting world where they’re basically running humanity into extinction, but I dunno: I don’t really get the same urge to check out what comes next. I know it’s all build-up, but at this point none of the characters really stands out as interesting.

Coelacanth – Ch.02-03: And this one did manage to keep my attention, and I wonder why. I mean, it’s not the best I’ve read during this experiment, and it suffered here and there from being too vague with its dialogue (something I’ve been noticing with a number of other shoujo manga as well), but still: its murder mystery half turned out to be a little darker than expected with hints of pedophilia for more things to come, and the romance half felt surprisingly dark.

That alone however probably isn’t enough to really get my attention, so what did this episode have as well? I guess that it kept me guessing: these two chapters were being really vague in where they actually wanted to go to, and the twists kept it fresh. Oh, and the dialogue that was clear was very straight to the point, and very un-shoujo like, for something with so many shoujo elements.

A Lollipop or a Bullet – Ch.04-06: This manga really has a knack for drama: it loves the saying “a picture says more than a thousand words”, and it loves to casually hint to the disturbing stories of its characters. Only very few panels actually show the darkness of this story. On top of that, the faces in this manga are also really expressive: they show exactly how the characters feel.

Dengeki Daisy – Ch.01: In the preparation of next season’s surprisingly huge batch of shoujo romances, I ended up checking a critically acclaimed shoujo manga: Dengeki Daisy. Unlike the other shoujo I’ve checked out for this experiment, this one was fairly typical in its set-up: it’s just a school life story and nothing beyond that, with a mysterious guy watching over the lead female. This however did feel rather refreshing for a shoujo romance, in that both the guy and the girl had a personality, the drawings were dynamic and energetic and it could be funny when it wanted to. Still, what worries me is that the build-up to the good parts is going to be too long again.

Takemitsu Zamurai – Ch.01: This one is a samurai story, with a very distinctive art style. Everything looks crude and messy, but there is actually movement between the panels. The story and set-up don’t say much yet after only the first chapter, and it mostly dealt with an eccentric ronin who moved into a new village with a lot of hints at murder, but it did give a good description of how these people lived, including small details like the focus on a kid’s hands or an octopus salesman.

Suiiki – Ch.01: From the author of Mushishi, here is a story about a girl who enters this strangely nostalgic dream-world, filled with slice of life. I really like the background art for this one: it is crude at points and looks a lot like rough pencil sketches, but in those sketches the artist stuffed a ton of details. Beyond that, this was just a really charming chapter. Great characterization and very down to earth and believable characters.

The Music of Marie – Ch.02-04: Whereas the first episode served as the introduction of the general world and concepts of the Music of Marie, these chapters go more in-depth with their introductions. Settings based on Christianity are nothing new, but this still has something that I haven’t seen before. For one there is the creativity with which everything has been created, but the author really managed to create his own culture and religious folklore.

I am a Hero – Ch.02: This chapter was a bit hard to get through (which is also why I didn’t feel like checking out more chapters). It lost that interesting appeal of the first chapter and instead of that we get philosophical debates about manga. It was definitely building up to something, but it wasn’t really being interesting in the process, though the facial expressions still were pretty good.

A Lollipop or a Bullet – Ch.02-03: Whoa! This one really hit me; this was really well written. On one hand, the characters feel so real and down to earth and the dialogue has this focus on detail that gives the characters a ton of characters. And on the other hand it just keeps letting a ton of very heavy issues slide past. These chapters really got dark in their themes, yet it keeps this same light slice of life tone. That combination… oh boy. Talk about conveying emotions.

Hito Hitori Futari Ch.06-13: This was the first time in this project in which I got the “Just… one… more chapter…”-syndrome, as evidenced by the large amount of chapters I just went through in one sitting. The thing with this series is that it has so much heart, and these eight chapters yet again moved the story into a different direction, and this has turned into a really interesting premise. Later on a villain was introduced, and even though his characterization is not as good as Riyon and the President (also, this guy is definitely inspired by L), he actually needs to fully understand his victims for his powers to work, making this perfect for a character-study such as this one. On the downside, this was also the first time I managed to spot recycled frames. The non-recycled frames were still very expressive, though. Also, with this, I have reached all of the chapters that have been scanlated so far. AND DAMN THAT CLIFF-HANGER!

This week I’m going to leave the series I usually check out for what they are for now, focusing on some first impressions from the stuff that everyone has been recommending for the past month.

The Lives of Eccentrics – ch.01-02: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is getting a new anime. Now, I am not going to check out that behemoth of a manga for this, but its author did write a bunch of short stories, compiled together in The Lives of Eccentrics. The first two chapters are this extreme look on the life of baseball player Ty Cobb, who is seen as one of the most legendary players of all time. Think of a recollection of the most hot blooded chapters of his life (and this guy was violent). It’s a good character-study, and it definitely has the kind of passion in it that makes me curious what Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure will be about. Again though: baseball scenes seem to miss something if they don’t move.

Skyhigh – ch.01: This one is by the same author of Hito Hitori Futari, and you can definitely see the similarities in both the art style and themes. This series too focuses on a depiction of the afterlife, only this time it’s straight up horror, and this first chapter immediately delved into the disturbing images and scenes. Overall, I think I prefer Hito Hitori over this: it had more charm and personality, while this was trying to go for the shock factor a bit too much too fast.

Coelacanth – ch.01: This one’s a mystery story. For the largest part of this chapter, I didn’t really know where it wanted to go: it had this story here about this dead teacher, but the main characters didn’t really seem to be related to it. After that though, it went into a completely different direction that made much more sense, but it at the same time used a lot of commonly used tropes, while the first half had that much less. Most of this first chapter was building up. It did that nicely for the female lead and did well in showing her state of mind. Plus, there is that sheep.

Olimpos – ch.01: As the title might suggest, this is about the Greek gods. In particular, it’s a shoujo-esque story that bishifies a few gods, like Apollo and puts a random Christian Japanese guy in the middle of it. His role in it is rather questionable, but this opening chapter did have a bit of a weird premise, in which this guy actually had to try and convince a God to cooperate. The second half of the chapter did quite well and put some emotions into it, although it still was a bit too angsty for my tastes. There may be a good explanation for this, though.

Sheet no Sukima (Oneshot): This week, I’m checking out lots of different chapters on a whim, based only on your recommendations over the past weeks. This one was among them. It’s about the sexual relationship between a worker and her boss. Imagine the worker as the female version of those horny male leads of fanservice shows, only she actually dives straight into sex. This… definitely was something different. But, to be honest, this was quite hilarious. The mind of the author was very clearly in the gutter, but the jokes were very well delivered and this actually played with its mood quite effectively, being hilarious one page, then completely neutral the next, to actually quite dark near the end.

Kare no Satsujin Keikaku (Oneshot): Okay, so I failed to get through Bokura no, but Mohiro Kitoh also wrote a bunch of short stories. This is one about a Light-esque high school boy who wants to kill someone. This isn’t like Death Note where it turns into a cat and mouse game, but he definitely is brilliant, and this short story details the steps he takes to achieve his goals in nice detail. Nice ending as well.

+Anima – Ch.01: This one is a bit longer than the others I’ve checked out this week (currently there are already 10 volumes out), and it’s a shounen-esque adventure story with main characters who can transform into half-animals. It’s got themes of oppression and cross-dressing in it. This one is pretty whimsical, with the usual spunky lead character and more serious side-character, but it has potential. They’ve got a nice chemistry together, but I do wonder how long it will take before this series will get anywhere.

The Music of Marie – Ch.01: My purpose of this week is to check out as many different first chapters as possible, to continue with the ones I like best next weeks. So far, The Music of Marie is the one I like best of this bunch, due to the detail it provides on its setting, in just its first chapter. It’s both creative and well fleshed out. The main character has an interesting ability and the characters so far are colorful, yet believable.

Shingeki no Kyojin – Ch.01: The one who recommended this put a note next to it, saying “giant killing”. Silly me thought that that meant that this was a sports series in the same vein as Giant Killing, instead of… killing actual giants. The art in this one is really weird: one panel it’s really good, and the other it’s really bad. What bothered me the most was the speed-lines it abused during random panels. The setting for this one has potential, although the main character is waaaay too naive for his own good.

I am a Hero – Ch.01: Here is one that kept returning on the lists people recommended to me, and I can see why: this one is really well drawn. It’s not the individual drawings that impressed me, but rather how every panel shows the main character from a different angle and with a different facial expression, and all of them are well-drawn. I have no idea what this is about because it’s just 40 pages of a guy sitting in his room, but I like that idea a lot.

A Lollipop or a Bullet – Ch.01: The title of this one contains two things that are completely different from each other, and that also characterizes the contents of this first chapter: it starts off in a perfectly normal setting, about an ordinary schoolgirl who wants to join the military. And then, wham: mermaids! It’s a bit of a weird mix, and eventually this showed its colors as a coming of age story, but the author did create a very good introduction chapter here that served its purpose in making me curious by using vague but meaningful foreshadowing.

Ludwig Revolution – Ch.01: With all these seinen manga, I wanted some change of pace and check out more shoujo-series, whose style I really enjoyed so far. Finding some good recommendations was difficult though, especially since I didn’t want to go with manga versions of anime I had already seen (Please Save My Earth and Amatsuki indeed are brilliant, but with this experiment I really want to check out new stuff). My eye then fell on 7 Seeds, but that one is way too damn long right now (22 volumes!). My eye then fell on Ludwig Revolution, a manga that aims to perverse famous fairy tales. This first chapter was about Snow White, and it changes around roles, while also being faithful to the original story by the Grimm Brothers on other points. Especially that Prince was hilarious, and I like a lot how detailed the art is; together with the dialogue it told a very good standalone story and the flow between panels may not have been as good as with Shimizu Reiko’s stories, it still felt engaging. It’s all quite dark for a shoujo-series, but that definitely gives it extra charm.

Iguana no Musume (Oneshot): This is a very weird one-shot, about a girl who is born as an Iguana. We actually get to see the first thirty years of her life and how she grows up. What really struck me was her relationship with her mother that deals with things as favoritism and parental abuse. It was quite emotional and well done, and also had a pretty great ending.

Haruyuki Bus – Ch.01: This manga is supposed to be a collection of the essence of shoujo manga, but I didn’t really like it. This first chapter suffered from a lack of dialogue: people hardly said anything meaningful besides three-word sentences, and it all felt disjointed because of this. On top of that, the story is just too average: there was nothing special about it, it’s just another shoujo romance, and not a good one at that.

Apologies, last week I was a bit too busy to catch up with everything so I didn’t have the time for this one. I’ll continue with it this week, though. For this week, I’m going to be checking out multiple chapters for some series. I don’t want to do this for first chapters though, because I want to be able to gather as many first impressions as possible with this, since this experiment is really meant for me to figure out my taste in manga.

Hito Hitori Futari – ch.03-ch.05: This one still has my attention, and for the first time this week, the art also managed to captivate me. It was the point where the main character was struggling with the president’s inner demons and when that… thing just showed up. The art for that was just intense. Beyond that, I’m really liking this series’ interpretation of common tropes as guardian spirits. These things are nothing new, but Hito Hitori Futari gives a fresh new interpretation to them.

Hotel – ch.02-ch.03: These are two more science fiction stories, with actual people in them. The first is a story about a guy who marries a girl way younger than him, and then she dies in a hospital. I didn’t really like this one. I missed context, and it was too much like another “let’s feel sorry for a cute dying girl” with little to add on top of it, despite the nice artwork. Chapter 03 though… oh boy, what the hell did I just read? This is science fiction, taken to the absurd. It’s like a complete parody of the first chapter, and I admire the creativity it had.

A Million-pound Love – ch02-2, ch-03-1, ch-03.2: These chapters I tried to read without listening to music. I’m not sure, but I had a bit of a harder time focusing. In any case the second half about the story of the flying people was a bit fuzzy. I noticed that with other manga as well in that the dialogue doesn’t really flow right and that there are a lot of gaps in the narrative. The twist at the end was good, though.

Chapter 3 tells about an ignorant 14-year-old kid who in four years grows into a brilliant physicist who on his own manages to build an entire spaceship that humanity can use to colonize other planets. Yeah, I found that really hard to buy when I first read it, but at the end of things, this turned out to be a brilliant story. It shows just how much a character can change over the course of four years depending on the circumstances, and it plays wonderfully with this. It’s so laid out that everything comes together at the final acts. This is a bit longer than the other one-shots I tried so far (80 pages), but it uses all of them really well, combined with Reiko Shimizu’s excellent ability to portray emotions and show as much as possible on a single page. Despite how hard it is to buy at times, this contained the best characters in this experiment so far.

I am a Piano (Oneshot): A really really short one-shot (only 9 pages!). And this one was a bit too short for my tastes, especially compared to the other one-shots I’ve tackled during this experiment. It’s definitely based on a nice idea, but it just lacks detail and context due to things moving so far: characters are introduced in one panel and then disappear in the next again. Neat use of colors, though.

This week I’m gong to continue with the manga I liked best from last week, plus I’m touch upon some of the recommendations you’ve all given me. I seriously never expected such a massive amount though, so obviously I’m only going to check out a limited number, in particular, I hope you can understand that I’m absolutely never going to check out One Piece. I know it’s supposed to be awesome and all, but it’s just way too goddamn long.

Hito Hitori Futari – ch.02: Second chapter is completely different here, I like that. This was a look at the state of mind of a prime minister who failed in his mission. He spoke very little in this episode, but the art in this episode showed very well how depressed he felt, and even though we were never told why he screwed up, it was quite an interesting chapter to read.

A Fairytale Judas ch.01: This is the second story of Shimizu Reiko’s “A Million Pound Love”-anthology, and it’s the first of two chapters in this story about a movie critic who takes care of a flying boy. Seriously, again what amazed me was the creativity in this story, and it really reminded me of the problem I have with a lot of shoujo nowadays: instead of going for this creativity, they all go for the same premises with the same looking shallow bishies. This however had characters who felt real. Again there has been a ton of characterization put in just 30 pages and it again plays around a lot with your expectations by slowly revealing new things about the characters and their personalities (for example it took about 10 pages for us to find out the gender of one of the characters). Perhaps not as good as A Million-Pound love, but there’s still a chapter remaining in this one.

Hotel – ch.01: Hotel is another collection of one-shots, this time by Boichi. This again is science fiction, but taken to the extreme as it shows the mindset of an AI Tower that is tasked with the protection of life’s DNA after humanity had died. “Interesting” is probably the best way to describe this, especially how much time actually passed in this one-shot. However, to really be engaging, 40 pages is a bit too short, as things moved a bit too fast at times to get a good grip of the mindset of the tower here. Also, one thing I noticed: music in manga doesn’t work for me at all. I’m not sure what the authors are going for, but just seeing a bunch of random notes along with lyrics has like it’s opposite effect because in most casts, I’m reading manga while listening to random music. There is no way I’m going to be able to recall the exact right song that the author had in mind here.

Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer – ch.01: And now for something completely different: a shounen action series where a strange lizard gives a random guy some random powers, complete with a bunch of random panty-shots. Out of this one, the only thing that caught my attention a bit were some of the jokes around the lizard, but other than that it was a simple introduction and nothing more. Unlike with anime, where I can vaguely guess whether or not a show will have potential from its first episode, here with this manga, I have no clue on what hints to pick up on to predict whether it’s going to be fun, or just completely boring. The pacing flowed well enough, but neither the “average joe”-main guy nor the “princess” lead female really caught my attention.

One of the difficulties with this blog is trying to please everyone. When I released the poll I secretly hoped that there would be one item that stood out in terms of amount of votes, but right now there seem to be a lot of people who want me to blog two extra series, cover manga and write recommendation posts. I can’t do all of those at the same time.

Okay, so I think I know what I’m going to do now: cover manga and whenever I feel like it and have enough time write some sort of Studio spotlight. The focus will remain on the manga though. this season is relatively small, so good enough for such an experiment. I am really new to manga though, so I still have no idea what my taste is in terms of mangas. I’m also not going to burn myself out by trying to tackle complete series that take forever to finish. I want first want to experiment a bit, as accessible as possible.

So for now, I’m going to pick a bunch of first chapters of manga that seem interesting and are fairly recent so that they don’t have many chapters yet, and I’ll continue covering them if they catch my attention enough. I guess that for the format, I’ll use the same short blurbs I use for last season’s Kaleidoscope.

Hito Hitori Futari – ch.01: This was the first manga that caught my attention and so far I like this first chapter a lot. It’s got this interesting take on reincarnation, and the lead character is this spirit who is waiting to be reincarnated. It has created this world in which these spirits are actually educated while they wait for sometimes even years in order to be born again. And even then this manga goes into a different direction by punishing the lead character for her behavior by making her a guardian spirit who does nothing but sit around a person from start to finish. There are a lot of neat ideas into just this one chapter here.

Phantom Syndrome (Oneshot): This is a manhua one-shot I randomly checked out. It seemed to have won an award, and the scanlator really seemed to like it so I gave it a try. Focusing around a girl who misses a finger, it’s the kind of story that feels really vague and confusing when you start it, but at the end things come together. It’s a cute little romance, and the twist at the end was well done, but there were a few things that didn’t fit well. The actions of the guy in the story in particular could have been better explained. Also I feel that this was a victim of a bad translation. No offense to the scanlator, but the story is already hard enough to follow without those stiff and half-broken sentences.

Mix – ch.01: Mix is Mitsuru Adachi’s next work, meant as a spiritual successor to Touch, taking place 26 years after that series. I can see that he shuffled around the different character roles in order to make this similar, yet still different from his other works, with this time there being a lot of twins, and no hints of romance yet. I’m not going to keep up with this, for a few simple reasons though: first of all, this is bound to get an anime anyway; second of all, Touch took bloody ages to get going, and for this experiment I want to follow series that immediately catch my attention, and this episode just didn’t catch my attention enough, plus the baseball throwing scenes just miss something when they’re not animated. I only want to know why the two main characters are brothers and yet not twins. Very subtle there, Adachi.

Inherit the Stars – ch.01: This is hard sci-fi, but what caught my attention about it is how it intends to combine the first ventures of humans into space, together with the human race of 50 thousand years ago, and I’m interested in how they’re going to do it. This first chapter was mostly set-up and introduction to a number characters, some of which are very easily ticked off. If anything the characterization seems to be the weakest part of this manga so far, as very little time was spent on it and the characters are rather one-sided.

A Million Pound Love- ch.01: When I started this experiment, I figured that people would start to recommend me things. I never expected that there would be so many though. With this I’m going to especially take care to not get overwhelmed by them, so I’m not going to touch upon them just yet, and at least for this first week trust my own judgment in finding stuff. The above manga I all found thanks to Mangahelpers, with the exception of Mix of which I knew it just recently started. However, I also got thinking started thinking:out of all the anime series adapted from manga that I have watched the past years, which manga author and concept impressed me the most? And with that, two names stood out: Mohiro Kitoh (Bokura no, Narutaru) and Shimizu Reiko (Himitsu). My attempt to check out Bokura no completely failed a few years ago, as I got stuck at chapter 33 or something, but I did want to try this out once more, in a bit more accessible way. Luckily, Shimizu Reiko wrote a collection of one-shots with A Million Pound Love that are very easy to get into. So what if it’s from 1984?

After checking out the first chapter (which also seems to be the most noteworthy of the anthology it’s compiled in), I must say: this really was the first time in this experiment that I really was drawn in. The four manga above were nice and interesting, but I always felt like I was looking at a bunch of pictures with a bit of text here and there. Here I was really swayed along with the story, which is a really strange romance with a lot of heart put into it, containing some great twists. The panels were drawn beautifully, and the way the text boxes were lined out was much more dynamic than the four other manga listed above. Like Himitsu, this was just chock full of creativity and it subverted a ton of cliches. It did adhere to a few jarring cliches as well though, so it’s not entirely perfect, but if this is what manga can do, then I’m definitely going to continue this experiment.

NB. Dear god, how many romance manga are there anyway? While I was browsing through the different manga, I was really surprised how many shows there were that seemed like carbon copies of each other. Not to mention the bizarre fanservice titles. The worst I found beyond the incest ones is a show about keeping a young vampire girl as a pet…