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Can I shill Souboutei Must Be Destroyed...? Full disclosure: I'm the one translating it, but it's also a manga I'm a huge fanboy of. I mean, that's why I'm translating it. Souboutei Must Be Destroyed [link] [thread link]  Years ago, two young boys encountered something horrifying inside a haunted mansion called Souboutei. Now, those boys are the prime minister and defense minister of Japan respectively, and they use their authority to order an airstrike on the mansion. Of course, the house is unscathed, but this event jettisons our main character into the plot by obliterating his apartment which just so happened to be next-door to the haunted mansion. And another character, a young boy named Rokurou, has a horrific experience inside Souboutei just before the bombing, which results in his father's death and inspires him to vow revenge against the house. Meanwhile, a plane crashes, containing a child who went missing 45 years ago and has the mysterious ability to turn his arms into drills. Also, inexplicably, he has a single-minded hatred for Souboutei. And that's only chapter 1. It's ostensibly an action series like Kazuhiro Fujita's most famous prior works (Ushio and Tora and Karakuri Circus), but it also borrows heavily from horror, plus practically every other genre you can think of. It seriously juggles a staggering amount of genres in a plot that somehow remains entirely cohesive. And speaking of cohesion, the author truly had the entire series planned out from the start. Vitally important plot points are foreshadowed over a hundred chapters in advance, and dramatic parallels are formed all the time with things you'd long since forgotten about. Also, as you might guess from the title, the series is also quite impressively laser-focused. There isn't a single chapter that's not geared toward defeating this one titular enemy. I highly recommend this manga for an unendingly unique experience that never lets up for a second. Note: it's not a completed series, though it should be finishing in the next year probably. I release new chapters in English every Wednesday, one day after the Japanese release, with the help of a fan group.
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May 20, 2020 21:56
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 01:28 |
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MonsieurChoc posted:Thanks for recommanding this, I'd never hear dof it and it owns so much. hey no problem man! actually i should be the one thanking you for reading it, since ive kinda made it my life's mission to get people reading this series lmao
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May 23, 2020 08:08
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Kestral posted:Started reading Souboutei Must Be Destroyed, and I'm struggling with it. Concept is great, and whenever it goes into full horror mode the art is great too, but Takoha is just terrible and Kurenai's not much better. I'm finding myself clicking through pages while only skimming them whenever they're the focus. I'm on Vol 1 Ch 6 - should I continue, or is this just not for me? Yo, I'm the translator and original recommender of the series in this thread. Sooo, you could say I'm one of Souboutei's biggest supporters, haha. I generally tell people to give it 2 chapters and if they're not into it then the series isn't for them. That's because it personally took me until chapter 2 before getting hooked (specifically, the scene with Seiichi). I'm the kind of person who really hates saying things like "it gets better", because beginnings are a vitally important part of telling a narrative and establishing what the storytelling will be like. I've often dismissed series after the first couple pages simply because I hated how the author chose to begin the story [tangent] Mainly when there's some hackneyed 'in medias res' hook that's only there to catch people's attention flipping through the magazine and narratively only serves to (usually) spoil the ending of chapter 1 and ruin any sense of pacing. Please for the love of god start your story at the beginning of the story. Okay sorry, just had to get that out of my system. [/tangent]. And so based on that, I'd *normally* tell you that Souboutei's probably just not your kind of series. However. The main things I'm considering when I ask people to give it a 2nd chapter even if they may not be hooked by the first, are stuff like art style and plot pacing. Because the style definitely takes some getting used to for some people (though I personally adore it). And the pacing of chapter 1 is very disjointed, whereas chapter 2 introduces a more grounded pacing that's more in line with the rest of the series. Your issues are very different though. In fact, you seem to be greatly enjoying the aspects that usually drive people away! So I'm going to respond to your specific issues, and tl;dr my recommendation is that you keep reading. About Takoha, I've certainly heard valid criticism of his character but none that actually address so far early in the series (which is essentially prologue still).Thinking back, I don't really remember how I thought about Takoha when I first read volume 1. Of course I'm not sure why you think he's "terrible" but I can certainly guess at several reasons which I'd find perfectly valid. Everything else aside, Takoha is surely supposed[ to be likable, so there's no doubt the author has failed with you in some way. That being said, characters *do* get development, and you're still in the part of the story where pieces are being set up. And establishing Takoha as more than a reader surrogate is the *last* thing on the author's agenda right now, lol. I can say with certainty that the draw of the series for me was never Takoha's character. And it still isn't (though I do like him). Yet, it's still one of my favorite manga. As for Kurenai, similar things apply. I'm fairly sure you're not expected to be very invested in her, beyond the intrigue of being an exorcist who intends to destroy Souboutei. Plus she gives insight into Rokurou's background and adds intrigue to *his* narrative arc simply by existing. Drawing from my own experience again, I'm fairly sure I wasn't interested in Kurenai as a *person* until a couple volumes in. I *was* interested in her as a narrative element, but yeah. Also, Seiichi and Rokurou are very much main characters on an equal level to Takoha and Kurenai, so if you like those two then you already like half of the main cast. So my conclusion is this: you seem to be enjoying parts of the story that will continue to be in the forefront, and your issues are things that, while they may not stop being issues completely, should not meaningfully impact your enjoyment of the story. There is a LOT more to the story than the characters of Takoha and Kurenai.
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Aug 15, 2020 03:13
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Rigged Death Trap posted:e2: Lol at the sass the team gave you though lmao those credits pages were so funny. our group leader explains it on the self-congratulations page when we caught up to the raws, but i'll say it with more detail here: that was all some very justified payback for me being having really high expectations of them when they first recruited me (because they wanted the series to get a proper scanlation rather than being solo-scanned by me, lol). at the time, i was really soured by my experience in the previous scan group because they took several months to release each chapter, which is the reason i quit to solo-scan in the first place. also, by then my buffer of completed scripts was already 45 chapters and counting. so I basically entered Death Toll with a whole slew of strict requirements regarding pacing, and pretty much told them outright that i didn't think they'd be able to do it as fast as i wanted (which i now realize came off terribly rude and insulting, but i really want to emphasize how poorly the project had been handled in my last group). the main concerns for me were cleaning and redrawing. because Souboutei, as i'd learned in the previous scan group, is particularly difficult in those areas. the reason it's hard to clean is that the art frequently uses an "ink splatter" sort of effect which can make it very difficult to remove dust from scanned pages while preserving the ink that's intended to be there. and redraws are difficult because the manga frequently uses floating text on top of art, usually on stuff like linework which can't just be clone-stamped. however, Death Toll quickly proved to me that their redrawers very much know what they're doing and considered Souboutei to be, in fact, relatively easy to work on. though there were still concerns about speed due to the sheer *number* of redraws needed in some chapters, it was soon evident that they could easily meet my initial expectations. then fast forward to more recently, and the group had continued to improve their workflow so well that i was finally behind on scripts for the first time. so they took the opportunity to lambaste me endlessly for it in revenge for my earlier actions, lmao.
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Aug 17, 2020 05:42
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McKilligan posted:I've been thoroughly enjoying this but the image hosting is just making GBS threads the bed for me lately. Chapters 60 onward routinely fail to load :/ Interestingly, Fujita has said he has been inspired by Monkey Punch's art, particularly in the way he drawn shoulders. And I can really see that in Takoha.
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Oct 21, 2020 21:56
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 01:28 |
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thetoughestbean posted:I love Ushio & Tora
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Apr 27, 2021 20:48
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