What manga are you reading right now?

[Azathoth]

haha holy shit new Punpun is absolutely off the hook. if this manga doesn't end with the revelation that it all takes place in the Evaverse I don't know what I'll do

[Fireball]

haha holy shit new Punpun is absolutely off the hook. if this manga doesn't end with the revelation that it all takes place in the Evaverse I don't know what I'll do

That was some dark shit. Got a good chuckle out of the vibrator package though.

[Azathoth]

Yeah, every time I think the misery's about to get too shlocky Asano reminds me why I love him with little details like that. Of course it's a vibrator.

[Oz]

I just finished re-reading Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and was reminded of why it was (and still is) one of the most vivid reading experiences I've ever had and that it's clearly Miyazaki's magnum opus. So overwhelming.

[pat457]

Currently stuck at Bakuman and Joshiraku.

[Redtophat]

Well, I started reading the Attack on Titan manga. The art isn't the greatest but the writing seems decent so far, the story really reminds me of Xenoblade.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

I'm working on GANTZ right now. It's the creepiest thing this side of Serial Experiments Lain. Of course, sometimes it feels like porn. At that point, I go off and watch Eva until I feel better.

[TehDonutKing]

I went to buy Hellsing volume 4, but it was out of stock. So, i got the Azumanga Daioh omnibus instead. In other words, i went for this, but got this.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

I just finished reading the Omnibus of One Missed Call 1+2. The art was lacking, and the story was slightly convoluted. All in all, it wasn't worth the 14 bucks that I shelled out for it. I was looking for Mirai no Nikki, but apparently that's a light novel and I can't buy it in the U.S.

[riffraff11235]

Just started reading Rozen Maiden again.

[robersora]

Not currently reading, but O-M-G... xxxholic will resume in March!! Can't wait for it! xxxholic was one of the few Manga I actually enjoyed!

[Redtophat]

I think i'm gonna finish the Golden Age arc and continue on in Berserk, I don't even know why I put it on hold, it's so damn good.

[Merridian]

Last night I read through Wolf Guy, partly out of boredom, but partly also due to threads of /a/ getting replies like "the rape turned me off halfway through," which only piqued my curiosity more. The art work is probably its best asset, and it's used pretty effectively--even if the eyes end up looking kind of strange when there are those moments of SHOCK and AWE. I can't get over how Yuuki Yogo can draw such irresistible women, though, which probably lends credence to the reasoning behind some of /a/'s disgruntled userbase when the rape finally hits the narrative like a tsunami. Seriously, Ryuuko's one of the hottest psychopathic babes around, and despite her eccentricities, she isn't one all that ungrounded from reality, either. In a story about a werewolf in contemporary Japan, that's kind of impressive.

That said, the story was all kinds of "what the fuck am I reading" pretty much from page one. The first quarter of the story is basically ANGST ANGST ANGST and NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME and FILTHY HUMANS deviantart type bullshit, which I kept thinking I'd drop after every chapter. But part of me, mainly the part that wanted to see these characters get horribly brutalized beyond hope of repair, kept going. This perseverance did not go unrewarded; the second quarter of the series actually started to get funnier, in some senses (the whole context of the student council trying to make a difference in a world so grandiosely overridden by gang violence), yet at the same time, a lot darker in a this-hits-unsettingly-close-to-home (nasty school shooting). And then, as if to scream that all of this realism DOESN'T MATTER, it turns into some sort of grim shonen-esque wild ride of clashing egos, beginning with the son of a yakuza using a grenade launcher to blast away part of the school again before slipping more gears. An ogre is made out of a sympathetic character. There's some sort of "what the fuck am I reading" battle on a suspension bridge. And the protagonist, as angsty as he is, seems to stop bitching about FILTHY HUMANS for a little while, instead turning his focus to the I CAN'T LOVE ANYONE BECAUSE I'M A LONE WOLF blend of faggotry.

And then the rape begins, and contrary to what I was expecting, it wasn't very glorious at all. I knew which character would get it--well, assumed accurately, at least--and I knew that it would probably last most of the second half, but still... unlike most semi-uselessly cast female seinen love interests, Aoshika managed to be a pretty sympathetic and fairly loveable case. I could see why /a/nons could get squeamish about her treatment for some fifty chapters, give or take.

Of course, it wasn't quite as bad as it could have been, because the whole reason she was in the situation to begin with was because of the mostly unrelateable and seemingly incompetent wolf guy protagonist, whose search for her was appropriately desperate but seemed to lack the weight it should have carried mainly because he was never written such that the audience had much reason to care about him. He redeems himself somewhat by the end of the comic, but this is mostly due, I think, to the contrast provided by the nemesis that hounded him and started the nonstop basement rape festival rather than any specific change in Inugami's character. At the end, he's still bitching about being a LONE WOLF and bitching about FILTHY HUMANS like some kind of wangsty goth kid. The only things that kept me reading was, despite all of this--and it probably had something to do with the artwork--I did want to see Aoshika get some sort of happy ending, or at the very least, liberation from her rape dungeon, and I also wanted to see the fucking annoyingly retarded villain get his just deserts.

Well, Aoshika at least got rescued, and even though the antagonist was FINALLY killed off, it was done in a retarded and totally unsatisfying method, I think, so it felt kind of hollow after the kinds of abuse that both Inugami and Aoshika endured. I'm not sure what it is about boss fights, but I often find myself getting really bored when many of them seem to follow a similar pattern; the concept of an individualist idealism fighting heroically against impossible odds for something s/he treasures isn't a bad concept per se, and it's one I usually like to read, especially when the villain is a bad-to-the-bone, utterly insane wackjob freak that deserves to be put down like a rabid dog, but the way the final climactic fight between these guys plays out leaves something to be desired.

Overall, it was a fun read, but not one I can recommend terribly highly unless you want to see gorgeous babes with broken personalities (which is half the appeal, admittedly), graphic violence, and raperaperaperaperaperape for an evening or two.

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

I'm re-reading the original Yu-Gi-Oh! manga. Afterwards, I'll leaf through my Dualist collection before moving onto R! and Millenium World. I can't stand the GX arc or anything after that, so the foray stops there.

[Squigsquasher]

Just received Omnibus 1 of the Cardcaptor Sakura manga. I loves me some Cardcaptor Sakura!

It's also, ironically, the first time I've ever read manga, and even more ironically, it's the manga that the first anime I ever watched was based on (I watched Cardcaptor Sakura when I was little, and I'm actually rewatching the series, only this time in Japanese with subs).

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

Just received Omnibus 1 of the Cardcaptor Sakura manga. I loves me some Cardcaptor Sakura!

Wow, that brings back memories. Cardcaptor Sakura was the first untranslated Manga I ever read.

[Squigsquasher]

Wow, that brings back memories. Cardcaptor Sakura was the first untranslated Manga I ever read.

Ah, this is translated (it's the Dark Horse translation) but fortunately it is the right way round, right to left. Pretty well translated as well.

[riffraff11235]

Wow, that brings back memories. Cardcaptor Sakura was the first untranslated Manga I ever read.

...As in you read it in Japanese?

[Nuclear Lunchbox]

...As in you read it in Japanese?

Yup, back before my life schedule decided that I didn't need to take Japanese anymore. Knowing what little Japanese I did was awesome.

[The Imperialist]

Gunka no Baltzer (Baltzar)
軍靴のバルツァー
(lit: Baltzr of the Jackboots /military boots)

A very shounen, interesting take, and introduction in military reforms. More specifically the Prussian military reforms and the dawn of 20th century warfare, in the form of a military instructor from fantasy Prussia to a generic slightly backward kingdom and its officer candidate school.