Category: Manga
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From manga to anime: Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
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Read More →: From manga to anime: Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is probably the best anime of the Winter season, so let’s review what we can of its manga and learn a bit more about how a certain mangaka came to live out the dreams of his lively characters.
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The swirling nothingness: Shuzo Oshimi’s vampire manga Happiness
Read More →: The swirling nothingness: Shuzo Oshimi’s vampire manga HappinessShuzo Oshimi’s Happiness is a beautiful clusterfuck that I can’t get enough of, but let’s get one thing clear: there’s absolutely nothing happy about Happiness. It all begins when high-schooler Okazaki is bitten by the vampire Nora. She grants him two choices: either live like her, or die. Really, he has no choice.
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Existential sci-fi manga! Identity & control in Toward the Terra
Read More →: Existential sci-fi manga! Identity & control in Toward the TerraSet in the infinite blackness of space, where single lives are like grains of sand thrown to the wind, Keiko Takemiya’s Toward the Terra unfolds.
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Rin's labyrinth
Read More →: Rin's labyrinth“If you were stronger, I don’t know how this would have ended. But I know one thing. That woman would be dead. Those who gain power must pay a price, something in exchange. If you seek to be stronger than others you may have to lose what you value above all else. Remember this well.”…
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And Punpun is just fine, today.
Read More →: And Punpun is just fine, today.I spent two days reading up to the latest releases of Oyasumi Punpun. I spent two days kicking myself for not reading Inio Asano’s longest-running work sooner; assuming it would be inferior to the tight, refined narratives of his one shots. I spent two days crying over the fact that no-one picked up the English-language…
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The shrinking of Attack on Titan
Read More →: The shrinking of Attack on TitanBack in 2011, I wrote two posts about the manga series Attack on Titan (Shingeki no Kyojin) and since then, it’s only grown in popularity, and in addition to a live-action movie, now has an anime series starting in April, too. I can’t wait to see how it turns out, but in the meantime, I…
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Japanese punk
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Read More →: Japanese punkLately, I’ve felt a little empty. Waiting for something to spark a little inspiration in me. So, as I often do, I ended-up on YouTube, listening to music, when The Blue Hearts appeared with their song, Linda Linda. It’s a Japanese punk-rock song that you’ll have heard before if you’ve seen the film Linda Linda…
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The Flowers of Evil
Read More →: The Flowers of EvilFirst, imagine an alternate version of FLCL, where Naoto hooks up with the loose-canon Mamimi and revels in her pyromania, falling ever deeper into her psychosis, burning away their boring world together. This is The Flowers of Evil (Aku no Hana,) a manga series (and soon to be anime) that begins like any of the…
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Say I love you or they won’t want you; sexual capital in Sukitte Ii Na Yo
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Read More →: Say I love you or they won’t want you; sexual capital in Sukitte Ii Na YoI read quite a bit of shoujo manga. As such, I was quite pleased to see that Sukitte Ii Na Yo received an anime adaption this fall. It’s an interesting one, because, while stubbornly about teenagers’ romantic involvements, it really isn’t. If you’re watching Sukitte Ii Na Yo, or if you’ve written it off as ‘just another shoujo show’,…
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Wanderlust girls: The manga of Tsuruta Kenji
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Read More →: Wanderlust girls: The manga of Tsuruta KenjiHave you ever travelled, my friends? Have you ever packed your bags, left home, returning months later? Or not at all? With a nervousness that travels from the soles of your feet to the soles of your feet to the whites of your eyes, borded a plane, feeling as if every atom in your body…
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Taiyo Matsumoto’s new manga, Sunny: melancholy and wonderful
Read More →: Taiyo Matsumoto’s new manga, Sunny: melancholy and wonderfulI’ve long been a fan of Taiyo Matsumoto, a guy who for years has ranked amongst my favourite mangaka. Hopefully you’ll know him as the author of Tekkonkinkreet (Black & White,) or GoGo Monster, or perhaps even Ping Pong? If not, you really should, because he’s a genius.
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Liking Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse? See also…
Read More →: Liking Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse? See also…Earth’s invaded, humanity’s out-matched and Japan’s moe legions are our first line of defence. Would you feel confident?
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Out of print: First world problems
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Read More →: Out of print: First world problemsLast night I started learning French. Why? Because I want to read manga. This all started earlier in the year, when I noticed how a lot of English-translated anime and manga were going out of print. And when stuff goes out of print, it either gets expensive (often ridiculously so) or just totally disappears. I…
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Don't forget the side characters
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Read More →: Don't forget the side charactersIn alot of ways, what keeps a longer manga engaging isn’t its main characters, but the side characters. Though our initial emotional investments as readers are in the main characters, the supporting cast and their links with those main characters are what keeps the story fresh.
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We offer up our heart's blood: Courage and spirit in Shingeki no Kyojin
Read More →: We offer up our heart's blood: Courage and spirit in Shingeki no KyojinSince writing my first post on the manga series Shingeki no Kyojin (the official English title is apparently Attack on Titan,) it’s been licensed for an English-language release by Kodansha USA, whilst a Japanese live-action movie has also been announced for 2013. With the inevitably small film-budget it’ll receive, I’m not convinced it’ll look good…
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Eaten by giants!!
Read More →: Eaten by giants!!I started reading Shingeki no Kyojin because ‘giants attacking mankind’s last city’ sounded really cool.
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Yankee-kun to Megane-chan and the world of shounen manga apprentices
Read More →: Yankee-kun to Megane-chan and the world of shounen manga apprenticesI’ve always found the idea of an apprentice palatable. The idea of learning directly from a ‘master’ on real-world projects is, to me, a better way of doing things. Over my years in university I can’t count how many lazy students (including the lazy student in the mirror) I’ve met who slack off simply because…
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Feel like being scared?
Read More →: Feel like being scared?I’ve been going through a lull in blogging lately. Although I’ve been trying hard (and succeeding, surprisingly!) to keep up with a certain trio of currently airing series, I’ve also been feeling quite passive, too. Even still, the desire to trudge on with this whole writing thing has never left me, so, thank you if…
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I need a job so I wanna be a mangaka writer
Read More →: I need a job so I wanna be a mangaka writerDragon Ball Z, Slam Dunk, Bleach, Hajime no Ippo. Most shonen series are based on physical activities like sports or fighting. Surprisingly, the general shonen formula can also work well with a non-physical activity. In Bakuman, J.C. Staff and NHK successfully tell a shonen-style story about two aspiring manga creators. The result is an interesting show…
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Seeing the forest through the trees with Sailor Moon
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Read More →: Seeing the forest through the trees with Sailor MoonIf you haven’t done yourself the favour of reading the original Sailor Moon manga, I suggest you drop whatever stigmas or preconceptions you have of the series and find yourself a copy. Naturally, it suffers from the cliches it helped to establish: baddies-of-the-moment, elaborately named attacks, and a penchant for all the bad parts of…
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“Next time, let me see a Matsuri Special.”
Read More →: “Next time, let me see a Matsuri Special.”Something about the transience of adolescence never fails to inspire. More often than not we wake up, 20, fully grown, and confused as to how we got there. For this reason, mangaka like Kamio Youko are a particularly rare breed. Time and time again, she manages to lushly recreate both the frame of mind and…
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Eden in name only
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/ MangaRead More →: Eden in name onlyHiroki Endo calling his manga ‘Eden‘ is a hint. Eden is supposed to be a paradise on Earth, but Endo‘s version is more like Hell. It’s sarcasm on his part, I think, because this is a contrary and brutal series, where anything that’s good is crushed and anything that’s innocent is (often literally) raped. For…
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The tide of violence
Read More →: The tide of violenceI’ve read only 26 chapters of Vinland Saga so far but its quality is such that I have to admit it’s already one of my favourites. Thorfinn is the main character, an Icelandic warrior joined with a band of Viking mercenaries sailing the seas of Europe and sacking the villages and cities of Norman France…
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The harsh beauty of Tsutomu Nihei's Biomega
Read More →: The harsh beauty of Tsutomu Nihei's BiomegaHappy new year, everyone! Time sure flies and it’s now looking likely that this blog will live to see it’s fourth anniversary on the 4th of March, which is just… surreal! This time of year also provides me with the rare opportunity to immerse in some new worlds of fiction. Last year I fell under…
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Island manga: an isolated town enclosed by huge, unscalable walls…
Read More →: Island manga: an isolated town enclosed by huge, unscalable walls…The island is an isolated town enclosed by huge, unscalable walls, where the outside world is a mystery that no-one even has laid eyes on for 400 years. As its culture dies a slow death, the town’s people have forgotten how to read and write, but the children still dream of escaping, wondering what they…
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Devilishly delicious horror: Devilman manga review
Read More →: Devilishly delicious horror: Devilman manga reviewMy damned savoir and his demented smile lurked forth from the shadows. His name was none other than Go Nagai and his bloody offering was Devilman. And it was perfect. Perfectly and utterly disturbing.
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When bunny boilers attack
Read More →: When bunny boilers attackAhh, my saviour is the weekend! I know my last post wasn’t exactly beaming with enthusiasm for all things animated, but with two more weeks under my belt, the gloom has lifted and I’m now tucking into tasty helpings of spring stuff on an almost daily basis. Surprisingly, there’s a lot of new series I’m…
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Spiralling into insanity, looking at Junji Ito’s horror manga Uzumaki
Read More →: Spiralling into insanity, looking at Junji Ito’s horror manga UzumakiI’ve been reading a lot of manga lately. In the past, I’d go through brief fits of reading the stuff, but it always felt temporary, like a fling while my romance with anime hit the buffers. This time, it’s totally different; I’m ready to devour as much as I can find. By and large, anime…
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Creepy horror manga? The Enigma of Amigara Fault is the answer
Read More →: Creepy horror manga? The Enigma of Amigara Fault is the answerHalloween is fast approaching and it’s time to indulge in some frightful Japanese horror. Sadly, it’s not a genre that translates well to anime and manga, but having recently discovered the abnormal works of manga-ka Junji Ito, there may well be hope for us yet. This time I’m talking about the claustrophobic “Enigma of Amigara…