|
I'll make Qualia my next one to read then.
|
#
?
Aug 27, 2014 22:43
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 08:14 |
|
|
I'll be splitting up my sampler packs into individual recommendations, both for easier reading so it's not huge chunks sparsely, and also so I can mention things as I finish them. Parasyte(8 volumes available at Amazon) - Action, Drama, Horror, Manga, Psychological, School Life, Sci-fi Parasyte is a gruesomely violent horror/drama from the mid-90's about parasitic creatures who appear one day and infest many humans by burrowing into their ear canal and entering their brain. From there they replace the head of their victim and proceed to devour humans as they learn about earth and society. While very intelligent and immensely powerful, they have no emotions and exist solely to keep themselves alive at the expense of all others. The story follows Shinichi Izumi, whose right arm was infested by a parasite that failed to enter his brain. As time goes on, he learns to get along with the parasite and begins investigating the hundreds of horrifically grotesque murders happening all over the place as the other parasites begin feeding and learning how to hunt humans without being caught. This series is a really interesting read, with many strong characters and extremely tense moments. The parasites themselves are terrifying nightmare creatures, looking normal one moment and turning into a variety of biological weaponry the next. It's not a super long series at only 8 volumes, and it's pretty strong throughout. The struggles of Izumi and Migi(his parasite) are very well portrayed, as is the way Izumi changes over the course of the series. You can read it at Kissmanga since I don't recommend things to folks blindly, but if you read the first few chapters and enjoy it, please buy the actual books, they're pretty cheap on Amazon though some seem to be out of stock and have absurd prices from secondary sellers. Captain Invictus fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Oct 1, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2014 09:53
|
|
|
I read this in my spare time when I worked at a bookstore and one thing that stuck out to me was actually the letters they would print that people wrote the author. Some really doom and gloom stuff as well as just some weirdos. Parasyte itself was also pretty good and I might re-read it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2014 11:33
|
|
|
Yeah, Parasyte was so good, it's the one series I actually bought and read every issue for, all ten volumes.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2014 16:03
|
|
|
Parasyte is one of my favorite mangas as well; I'm glad to find out it wasn't just me who was a fan of it.Captain Invictus posted:The story follows Shinichi Izumi, ... Izumi and Migi Was there a translation that eventually used their actual names? I read Parasyte back when Tokyopop was publishing it and the translation was pretty solid... except they renamed almost everyone to have American names. And then Migi became Lefty.  Also, if anyone is too lazy to read it (read it you dummies), an anime adaption begins next week. Trailer looks like it captured the manga pretty well.
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2014 16:31
|
|
|
Last weekend I grabbed an old manga from my bookshelf that I hadn't read for 10 years. Gunsmith Cats is an action-packed manga by Kenichi Sonoda about a young gunsmith named Rally Vincent who works as a bounty hunter on her free time. She owns a gun shop and is a crack shot with almost any kind of firearm. She's also a serious car nut and loves 1970s muscle cars. She has a best friend/sidekick named May Hopkins who's an explosive expert. Edit: Batoto has some Spanish scanlations of the first chapters if someone wants to have a look-see. Don't know about the quality of the translation since I don't speak the language. (Sorry about the bad quality of the pics. It's an old manga, I couldn't find any English scans and I only have a camera myself.) (These are original English prints by Dark Horse from the late 90s, so they are flipped and read left to right)   The series is based in Chicago and the girls have frequent run-ins with the mob. The series author Kenichi Sonoda has mentioned old action movies such as The French Connection and Blues Brothers as influence and the manga does have a lot of really intense gunfights and car chases. Sonoda himself loves guns and muscle cars and while everything else is drawn in a somewhat simple style, the guns and the cars are very detailed and there's frequently all kinds of trivia about them sprinkled in the manga.   The series is well paced and the action rarely lets up. Reading this flipped bothered me a bit since it felt like the story was based in the UK what with the traffic and the cars' steering wheels being on the wrong side. Luckily Dark Horse has put out a revised edition with unflipped pages and I'm seriously considering buying it. If you're interested, and happen to stumble upon the original print run here's the order of the original volumes since Dark Horse didn't bother with numbering those days: Bonnie and Clyde, Misfire, The Return of Gray, Goldie Versus Misty, Bad Trip, Bean Bandit, Kidnapped, Mister V, Misty's Run. The re-relases are big omnibus editions, they're numbered and there's four of them. Gunsmith Cats is a hell of a good read if you're looking for something with a lot of action and not so much existential pondering and sulking. There's quite a bit of nudity at times, but I wouldn't still classify it as an ecchi series. It's about as ecchi as, say, Bride's Story, although the series are very different in other respects. Some time after the original series ended, Sonoda returned to the theme and drew Gunsmith Cats: Burst. It spans five volumes and it's pretty much direct continuation of the original series, but isn't nearly as good. It's still got intense car chases and ridiculous gunplay, but somehow it all reads like a fan fiction. The characters seem a bit off and there's some stupid otaku pandering thrown in that really seems out of place. The translation is also stilted and kind of bad. The original series was translated by Dana Lewis and Toren Smith and while it was wordy, it had a lot of flavor and gave personality to the characters. The Burst translation was done by Studio Cutie and it's just weird and stilted at best and horrible speedsubbed garbage at worst. I counted at least two occasions where a character declared they could care less if _______ and they weren't the only crimes against English language. For some reason two of the extra chapters in the end of the final volume of the original series were reprinted and retranslated by Studio Cutie and added to the beginning of Burst vol. 1. Here's a direct comparison: Original translation (flipped, read left to right)  Studio Cutie translation (unflipped, right to left)  Rally and detective Coleman are old friends who trust each other a lot. The original translation reflects that, while the new one is completely sterile and robotic. Anyway, if you like unrelenting action, guns and fast cars, Gunsmith Cats is the series for you. Consider reading Burst if you've finished the original series and still want more. Just don't expect it to be as good. There's also an OVA called Gunsmith Cats: Bulletproof, but it's very mediocre. It really isn't worth hunting down which is a shame. If a decent animation studio got on the case, Gunsmith Cats anime could be really good. Maybe that will happen someday. Laputanmachine fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Oct 2, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2014 20:27
|
|
|
Parasyte is loving awesome and I highly recommend it. Especially if you liked "I Am a Hero" this story is very much in the same vein. I keep hearing rumors they are making this into an anime but I've not seen anything concrete. I do know they are adapting it into 2 live action movies last year so I'm very much looking forward to that.
|
|
#
?
Oct 2, 2014 23:44
|
|
|
Here, have something more concrete. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2gXna-wRvY
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 00:03
|
|
|
May is the sole reason I don't recommend Gunsmith Cats to people. Everything else about the series is great, but she has always been one of my least favorite anime characters. Everything about her is just creepy.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2014 09:23
|
|
|
Baron Snow posted:Here, have something more concrete. Thanks! I hope Crunchyroll gets this because I am super pumped! I'm concerned it's only 24 episodes though considering the manga is 64 chapters.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2014 00:03
|
|
|
Thread continues to deliver. Loved Parasyte, ordering the series. Great characters, writing, humor, horror, and concepts. Feel like some plots didn't get resolved super completely, the final conflict wasn't what I wanted, and the scale of the story never got as large as I wanted, but it was super well done and the story has stuck with me since finishing it a few days ago.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2014 05:51
|
|
|
I have to agree on certain points, (parasyte ending spoilers)I feel the DBZ character-looking Final Boss was out of place in this series, but I also feel that actually killing him was handled with the proper amount of gravitas and moral struggle that I enjoyed the series for beforehand. I also feel like the final chapter was literally just to finish off the escaped killer dude because the author forgot about him and wanted to tie up loose ends, but it resulted in a ~happy end~ which I'm okay with. Overall, the ending to Parasyte wasn't flawless, but I'm okay with it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2014 10:00
|
|
|
Parasyte ending stuff: My memory is a bit fuzzy because I read it years ago, but i remember being annoyed by that moral stuggle. It's a killer monster that ate a ton of people, stop crying about its right to exist and kill it. But apart from that I don't have any issues with it, it's a good read.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2014 10:52
|
|
|
Figured I would poke my head in to say god drat, I Am A Hero is good. Welp back to reading.  edit: It's so good that I think I'm somehow gonna manage to shotgun the whole series in one sitting. I most certainly intended that pun.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2014 05:14
|
|
|
You're in luck, there's a new volume out that has yet to be translated, so there will be even more to read soon enough.
|
|
#
?
Oct 11, 2014 09:33
|
|
|
Well, I'm all caught up on I Am A Hero and it is nothing short of fantastic. Gonna be starting Parasyte soon at this thread's recommendation. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 13, 2014 00:55
|
|
|
 A Serious Time(Majime na Jikan) - Tragedy, supernatural, seinen Kazusa, a popular high school girl, was walking across the street one day when she was struck and killed by a car whose driver had died at the wheel. They awaken in the same world but as spirits, surrounded by other people who have passed away in the area. As ghosts, they are unable to interact with the human world in any way, though sometimes through intense emotions from ghosts, supernaturally-inclined humans can sense them slightly. Spirits can either descend into loathing and hatred of their former life and unfair death and become a black, miasmic spirit doomed to eventually disappear, or attain enlightenment and leave this world, losing their spiritual bodies and disappearing; to heaven, the netherworld, or simply vanishing altogether, nobody knows. The story follows Kazusa as she comes to terms with her terrible death, witnessing the impact on her friends and family, and her attempts to do good even in death. This story is short and to the point, a mere 9 chapters long, but it's a well-told tale of sudden tragedy, trauma, acceptance, and moving on. It's a short but emotional read, I highly recommend it, especially if you've experienced similar tragedy in your life. By the end I felt very...peaceful. A wonderful read.
|
|
#
?
Oct 17, 2014 09:59
|
|
|
Figured I would pop back in and say I read all of Boys on the Run that has been translated so far and have really enjoyed it. I really recommend anyone else that is in here gives it a good look. It is a bit misogynistic at times in characterization though, so if you really can't accept that in any of your reading then you might not enjoy it as much. Really becoming a fan of Kengo Hanazawa, I've gone through Hero and Boys, and am about to start reading Ressentiment because I like his work that much. I think I may have actually enjoyed Boys on the Run even more than Hero, honestly. It is even more humanistic than the characterisation given in Hero, the one thing I thought about Hero that put it so much higher than all of the other manga I had looked at before. Gonna say tho, Cap, you might want to change where you link Ressentiment to in the OP. You link it to bato, where every physical page gets its own digital page, which is just bothersome to read through, however, the whole thing seems to be on your usual suggested reading site, Kissmanga here. Scrolling through is just so much easier to read than clicking through when pages are so high resolution that you would probably have to scroll to see them all. e; i also read hinamatsuri which I really enjoyed Another Person fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Oct 18, 2014 |
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2014 22:26
|
|
|
I linked it to Batoto because the ordering on Kissmanga is hosed up and when I hit "next" it put me like 12 chapters ahead and spoiled something for me. That's my biggest beef with KM, the ordering on chapters can get super hosed depending on how the chapter is named.
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2014 22:52
|
|
|
Oh, never noticed that. Thanks for the warning tho, I will keep it in mind when reading!
|
|
#
?
Oct 18, 2014 23:20
|
|
|
I feel like there should be at least one of the good psychological mindgame mangas on the list. Like Death Note or Liar Game.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2014 06:51
|
|
|
I have not read either, but I was spoiled on DN and also heard it shits the bed about halfway through. Liar game I can't speak for. And if you feel something deserves to be in a list of quality series, feel free to make a recommendation using the same style of description in the OP! Example image, link to buy/read, genres, summary and your personal thoughts on it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2014 08:32
|
|
|
Captain Invictus posted:I have not read either, but I was spoiled on DN and also heard it shits the bed about halfway through. Liar game I can't speak for. Death Note had the classic problem of not being allowed to end when the creators wanted to end it, be told that relatively close to when they wanted to end it, and kind of had to scramble and poo poo out a plot to keep it going. Its second half is pretty weak because of it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2014 09:26
|
|
|
Yeah the problem Death Note had is that it got popular. Like, way popular. And becoming way popular means that you have to keep it going because otherwise, y'know, it ends. There's a specific moment where you can tell the comic is ABOUT to come to a logical close, but it just doesn't for some reason and from then on it feels kinda disingenuous. The actual ending is still pretty good regardless despite how drawn out the series became, not to spoil anything of course.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2014 09:31
|
|
|
Never read past the first 2/3rds of Death Note, but the first half is still great. Reread it a few years ago and still enjoyed it. Liars Game always looked rad.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2014 13:13
|
|
|
Yeah, I quite enjoyed Death Note until the halfway point, and then it plummeted in quality. It kept going past the point when it should've ended and that was a big problem, but I also feel like the plotting got too dumb. Yeah, the series with the potato chip scene got too dumb for me.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2014 14:38
|
|
|
Dias posted:Yeah, I quite enjoyed Death Note until the halfway point, and then it plummeted in quality. It kept going past the point when it should've ended and that was a big problem, but I also feel like the plotting got too dumb. Yeah, the series with the potato chip scene got too dumb for me. Death Note is amazing because of dumb scenes like that. Yeah, I don't think anyone is going to disagree that it went on for too long, but it's still worth reading/watching as there's a lot of insane creativity and plotting going on.
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2014 14:44
|
|
|
Is there a wiki or anything that says where/when/how it was supposed to end?
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2014 15:26
|
|
|
Dr. MonkeyThunder posted:Is there a wiki or anything that says where/when/how it was supposed to end?
|
|
#
?
Oct 21, 2014 15:39
|
|
|
Dr. MonkeyThunder posted:Is there a wiki or anything that says where/when/how it was supposed to end? There's no need for a wiki on that, you hit one point, and you just kind of know that was where it was supposed to end.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2014 07:19
|
|
|
Anora posted:There's no need for a wiki on that, you hit one point, and you just kind of know that was where it was supposed to end. If you really need to know where it should have ended, you can watch the live action movie adaptations. They actually ends where they should, and have a completely different twist that's also pretty interesting.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2014 18:34
|
|
|
Captain Invictus posted:May is the sole reason I don't recommend Gunsmith Cats to people. Everything else about the series is great, but she has always been one of my least favorite anime characters. Everything about her is just creepy. Thankfully the OVA exists with none of the creepy poo poo from the manga. It's just a good, fun '70s cop show style series.
|
|
#
?
Oct 22, 2014 22:42
|
|
|
Suben posted:Thankfully the OVA exists with none of the creepy poo poo from the manga. It's just a good, fun '70s cop show style series. Unfortunately it also has very little of the ridiculous gunplay and car chases. It's just bland. The manga is one hell of a ride in good old action movie style. Only Black Lagoon comes close to being as good, and the anime adaptation on that one was also good and had the right sort of drive. I get the feeling May is some sort of remnant from a possible early prototype/proof of concept series with a lot more sex and fan service. I know there was a series called Rolling Bean, starring Bean Bandit, the professional getaway driver who's also in GSC and Rally was his assistant in that one. But I haven't seen/read it so I don't know how fanservicey it is. I get why people don't like May, but saying she ruins the series is a bit much.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2014 00:09
|
|
|
I didn't say she ruined it, I say she's the reason I don't recommend GSC to random people. If she wasn't in it I absolutely would recommend it to more average folks.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2014 00:47
|
|
|
Begemot posted:If you really need to know where it should have ended, you can watch the live action movie adaptations. They actually ends where they should, and have a completely different twist that's also pretty interesting. Good to know, I was planning to get around to those one of these days anyway. I have a pretty good idea of when it should have ended but for anyone that hasn't read it's sake, I don't even want to risk spoiler tagged guesses. Laputanmachine posted:I know there was a series called Rolling Bean, starring Bean Bandit, the professional getaway driver who's also in GSC and Rally was his assistant in that one. But I haven't seen/read it so I don't know how fanservicey it is. I have the DVD of "Bean Bandit" but haven't watched it in a while. I don't remember any real fan service but it would still be rated a hard R if it was live action. Since Bean is the main character it's more about the cars than the guns but it is still a mix of the two, sometimes with one verses the other. Plot wise? The Transporter series owes it money. Those that read Gunsmith Cats know that Bandit does what he does to earn enough money to create the ultimate car. In this movie he already has it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2014 05:13
|
|
|
I've come to recommend another of my favorite ongoing series. Truthism(Jitsu Wa Watashi Wa) - Comedy, romance, high school hijinks, supernatural, fantasy Truthism is a somewhat new high school romcom/harem series by Masuda Eiji, and seems to be their first major work to run for more than five volumes. It follows a cast of weirdos in high school, including a vampire, an alien, a demon, a werewolf, and other supernatural creatures-turned-highschoolers. The takes on these characters are fantastic, and the humor is great. Vampires don't disintegrate when exposed to sunlight for example, they just get really, really bad tans. Fanservice is next to nonexistent as well which is a plus(outside of one character whose entire MO is fanservice, and yet it's somehow not offensive). It follows Kuromine Asahi, a Tenchi-esque bland male protagonist(at first) who is unable to lie. He has a crush on the attractive, albeit quiet and stoic, Shiragami Youko. One day, he walks in on her alone in the classroom stretching her huge wings and discovers she's, GASP, A VAMPIRE! If her father finds out her secret has been revealed to anyone, he'll force her to leave school. So Asahi has to keep her secret. Sounds like a pretty generic plot, right? It very quickly devolves into just ridiculous situations with more and more silly and dumb characters. Every single character in this series is amazing, it's really impressive how consistently funny it has managed to be for something that seemed to start out as a standard supernatural romcom. It's in my top five favorite ongoings right now and there's as of this post 49 chapters translated(out of about 80 released). All the characters are adorable and dumb, not just the girls. The humor is really strong for a manga, which I tend not to find very funny most of the time. Also, the faces in it are amaaaaaaaazing.      
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2014 06:39
|
|
|
Never really been into manga, but due to this thread I started reading I am a Hero and Teppu, really liking both so far. Thanks for making this thread.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2014 04:38
|
|
|
Manga are just comics. The only problem is when we end up touching the different cultural tolerances for creepy poo poo.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2014 13:29
|
|
|
Some of them are also not translated that well, which can be a barrier to enjoyment.
|
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2014 17:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 24, 2024 08:14 |
|
|
If I had a nickel for every time I've seen "hurry up and X!" or "It can't be helped" I'd probably have enough change to fill a sock to beat up the translators with.
|
|
#
?
Nov 1, 2014 17:25
|
|