Manga! Message Board

hey guys! i know i'm not the only one on librarything who *loves* manga. so... what's your favorite? i think my favorite is genshiken, but i also love azumanga daioh and yotsuba&!.

Quietly joining (I have no thoughts on the subject at the moment).

Favs of the moment:
Lone Wolf and Cub (and everything Koike/Kojima)
2001 Nights
Planetes
Beck

Hello everyone! Joining on the run this morning. My favorite manga (and my first) is sailor moon.

Hi Everyone!! I'm just joining up this morning as well! I'm currently reading:
Azumanga Daioh
Death Note
and
Nodame Cantabile

Hi everyone! :) Haven't read that many manga yet, but am currently reading Meitantei Conan or Salapoliisi Conan as it's known here in Finland and also Inuyasha. Yaoi/shonen-ai is my guilty pleasure and am reading Fake, Love Mode, Passion and Embracing Love at the moment. :)

Hello everyone! Ghost in the Shell and Oh My Goddess! are what got me started in manga and they are still favorites. Recently I started reading Fruits Basket.

There's surely a whole world of manga I haven't read yet, but of what I have read, my absolutely favourites are Kentaro Miura's Berserk, Tite Kubo's Bleach, Hikaru no Go, and Makoto Yukimura's Planetes.

My current favorite is Death Note.

Anyone want to recommend some western-produced manga? There seems to be a lot of it being produced of late... any of it good?

yikes! sorry about the previous blank message! there's no way i can possibly list all my favorites, but right now i'm really loving nana, ouran host club, and hana kimi. i will forever be a fruits basket and ranma fan too. but i guess i should stop because the list could go on and on and on.... =)

Try My Cat Loki, it is one of the few EOL manga titles I do own. The art and story are both great!

Manga-influenced Western comics: the stuff Tokyopop's been throwing at the market hasn't caught me, save for Dramacon--which may only work for you if you've gone to anime or sf conventions before. (It's kind of the North American Comic Party if you need an example.)

Oni's been publishing comics that are manga-influenced for quite some time now--check out Blue Monday, Love as a Foreign Language and Scott Pilgrim for some good reads.

Favorites? Hmm...
Berserk, Gantz, Yakitate!! Japan, Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind... Oh, and 20th Century Boys. Started so slow that I almost gave up during the first volume, but am glad that I didn't - it picks up the pace soon enough, and doesn't show signs of slowing down so far... -_-;

Oh wow. My number one favourite would have to be Takeshi Konomi's lovely Prince of Tennis ... Other favourites are Ouran High School Host Club, Hot Gimmick and Tramps Like Us.

I really want to get my hands on Return to Labyrinth... anyone know if it's any good?

Yeesh, I haven't even heard of some of these titles! ^_^;;

My favorite (currently. It tends to flip-flop a lot) is Chrono Crusade. I loved the ending :)

Some others are Dragon Knights (despite the fact that it just DOESN'T WANT TO END), Meru Puri, and Alice 19th. And a decent Western-manga comic is Bizenghast the plot's kind of iffy, but the art is prudy :3

moonsoar-
Return to the Labyrinth has gotten mixed reviews from what I have seen. Just be aware that the front cover is done by a different artist then the inside of the book.

Sorry about that last post, I dropped my coffee and the computer fritzed!!!
Ok, lets try this again.... This week I am loving XXXholic, Megatokoyo and King of Hell.
At 10.00 US Dollars a pop, I can't read all that I would like to.

rayechu-
Well, mixed reviews are better than all bad reviews. It leaves me with SOME hope. ;) It's rather disappointing that the front cover is done by a different artist - the cover is positively beautiful!

I'd have a hard time picking a favorite. Of those I can think of off the top of my head, it's probably a weird mish-mash of Inu Yasha, Mars, Oh My Goddess, Alice 19th, and Fullmetal Alchemist. Oooh, wait. Cowboy Bebop. That's a favorite of mine, too! I will stop now before I list every one I've enjoyed. :-)

It's really hard for me to pick a single favorite manga title. In fact, I don't think I really can. However, I am currently loving Eyeshield 21 and From Far Away. They're on two very different ends of the spectrum from each other, but that's okay. Red River is another one of my favorites, as is Black Cat.

moonsoar,

Return to Labyrinth is a fun read, but I think you definitely need familiarity with the movie Labyrinth in order to get full enjoyment from it. The interior art is decent and pretty easy to follow, but the character designs waver a bit in places.

I will be picking up the other books in the trilogy as they come out, and I'm looking forward to the upcoming release of the Dark Crystal graphic novels (set 100 years before the movie; there's a preview in the back of Return to Labyrinth).

There's definitely no way that I could pick one favorite, but right now my top ten is (in no particular order): Ouran High School Host Club, From Far Away, Hot Gimmick, Red River, Basara, Fullmetal Alchemist, Rebirth, Hana-Kimi, Kekkaishi, and Sensual Phrase. These are all titles that I'll pick up the newest volume for as soon as it's out. As you can tell, I'm a sucker for shoujo.

I'm loving Death Note at the moment. I just bought the first Blade of the Immortal; I hope it's good!

I've got Blade of the Immortal up to volume 18. I get the impression it was better at the beginning; right now it seems a bit, er, stuck.

Current favorites: Berserk, Bleach, Death Note, Evangelion, Eyeshield 21, Hellsing, Monster (Naoki Urasawa's), Rurouni Kenshin, Trigun Maximum.

If I had to pick just one, it would be Death Note.

To be honest my favourites change from week to week :) but the ones that i'd recommend are xxxholic, Bleach, Ouran High School Host Club, Tramps Like Us, Antique Bakery, One Piece and Kekkaishi.
though they're manhwa i'd also recommend, Angel Diary and Threads of Time

I'm not very well versed in manga although I'm familiar with many of the titles because of my anime obsession. However I've become completely sucked in to Swan which I think is just beautiful and fascinating. The ballet world is so interesting and I think it does a really surprisingly good job of portraying the art of dance on paper.

Are there any more classic 70's type manga that someone can recommend? I really love that style.

My favorite manga series are Fruits Basket, Kare Kano, Nodame Cantabile, Love Roma, Genshiken, and xXxHolic.

Followup to msg. 29, re older shoujo manga: Not that many 1970s and 1980s titles are available in English. CMX bothered to at least pick up three of them; From Eroica with Love has a similar style, as well as Moon Child. Eroica started around the same time as Swan. Moon Child is from the late 1980s, IIRC.

If you're lucky enough to find these used, you may be interested in A, A prime and Four Shojo Stories. The latter is incredibly hard to find, but it's got some very interesting sf and fantasy shorts.

My favourite manga at the moment are Fruits Basket, Fushigi Yugi Genbu Kaiden, Hunter x Hunter and Absolute Boyfriend. I'd pretty much read any manga by Yuu Watase , there are other manga I like but those above are the ones I'd pick first if I saw new volumes

bunnygirl: I just located A,A prime at Amazon and I'm going to give that a try. I loved the Moto Hagio interview in Comics Journal last year and the short piece they included blew me away. Thanks for the recommendation!

My 6yo just picked up a couple of cine-manga Avatar: The Last Airbender books, at her school book fair. She really liked the manga style, and wants more.
I have some Cardcaptor Sakura for her to read, but I also am looking for more recommendations on good manga for a 6yo girl. Should I just stick to Clamp, for now?

Be careful with CLAMP. Some of their stuff is not at all appropriate for a child. Cardcaptor Sakura is, of course, but avoid things like X.

eta: Tokyo Babylon is a bit cute at first, but gets extremely violent and depressing later on. ^^; Legal Drug is also a not-for-kids CLAMP series (and on indefinite hiatus, anyway, much like X c.c). Clover, likewise, I would steer clear of for such a young child--depressing. Chobits has some very distinct sexual overtones. RG Veda is another one with violence and death all over the place. CLAMP does a lot of really dark stuff!

I don't tend to read anything child-appropriate, but I can sure help point out things to avoid. If I like it, it will probably traumatise her. ;)

Dream Saga is cute. I read the first 4 volumes and there's nothing really inappropriate for a six-year-old, although it may be a bit scary for her. She may also like Corrector Yui but that may be a bit hard to find.

The only other CLAMP works I'd recommend for her would be CLAMP School Detectives and perhaps Angelic Layer.

All these series are finished.

Man of Many Faces/20 Mensou ni Onegai is another one from the CLAMP School universe, and is fairly child-friendly, IMO. It's a romance, but also a comedy and is rated all-ages by TokyoPop.

Yotsuba! is an excellent title that should be good for younger children.

According to my listing of publisher recommended ages you could try these:

Tokyo Mew Mew
BB Explosion by Yasue Imai
Baron: The Cat Returns
Castle in the Sky
Di Gi Charat
My Neighbor Totoro
Kiki's Delivery Service
What's Michael These are anthologies and you probably want to screen each one, just in case. Kobayashi definately knows cats and cat lovers.
Wedding Peach

Out of print:
Magical Pokemon Adventures IIRC this series was written for girls.
Miracle Girls
Saint Tail
Sailor Moon You may want to preview this one.

I would seriously recommend NOT exposing a six year old to the manga version of Sailor Moon. It can get fairly violent, quite depressing, and sometimes a bit on the sexual side.

It has been a long time since I read Sailor Moon, and I vaguely recalled what you're saying. I didn't think that the first few books were that bad, but it is probably better not to start something that can't be finshed.

Um, I have the first (German) volume of "What's Michael", and one of the stories was about shooting an erotica or porn video. Could be that they removed it from the US version. I'd definitely say you should have a good look at it first.

If that's true, then I really need to get my memory updated. All I recall are the apt cat protrayals.

Re: Opinicus (message 34)

I'd definitely be careful with CLAMP titles. It seems that a lot of their all-ages friendly series are going OOP in English.

Some other titles you might want to look into are Ultra Maniac (Viz), Hikaru no Go (Viz), and +ANIMA by Natsumi Mukai (Tokyopop). I'll also second recommendations for Yotsuba& (ADV) and Corrector Yui (Tokyopop, OOP).

Trollsdotter, I've heard all kinds of things about anime and manga getting "censored" in the US, so it wouldn't surprise me if that bit had been left out :)

Trollsdotter-
I would agree with lohengrin that Sailor Moon isn't appropriate for that young of a child. Also the books are now out of print and due to some binding problems (at least with my copies) the pages are very likely to fall out in chunks.

I can't believe I forgot about Angelic Layer-which we have available on Anime On Demand, and we watch Tokyo Mew Mew--we really love it, I can't believe I didn't think of that! I read everything my kids do, to make sure it's appropriate, and then so we can talk about plot, characters etc.
I've seen Wedding Peach at the bookstore, and My Neighbor Totoro--but only on Bento Boxes, and was wondering if that was from Manga or a Show. I'll be sure to check that out! I could never get into Sailor Moon when my older daughter watched it, she really wasn't that into it either.
Thanks!! :-)

Akira

I have started on 20th Century Boys, and looks promising. Same with Death Note.

I love Azumanga Daioh, Yotsubato!, Fruits Basket and Inuyasha.

Edit: Fixed it, probably. Please feel free to check any copies of Blade of the Immortal that you have, and make sure they are not still combined improperly. I THINK I got all the different editions of volume 8/The Gathering together and no longer combined with volume 1, etc. But you never know.

I'm shocked to say I'm just the second person to say Akira, which is just as impressive as the anime. It's absolutely extraordinary.

I also love love love Uzumaki by Junji Ito. It's very high-concept existential horror.

Just signed in!
Now we are three to say Akira.
I also would say Black Lagoon, Great Teacher Onizuka, Rose Hip Rose, Planetes and of course Oh! My Goddess and Shadow Lady.

mvrdrk was very kind to send me some of her mangas so I can get a taste of what's happening in the genre.

When I read manga as a kid in Japan, it didn't bother me that all the characters looked like Caucasians with their huge, sparkly eyes and straight, long noses. Now living in America and an adult, I wonder if the Japanese continue to draw the Asian characters with Caucasian features because America/the Allies were the victors of WWII. If I had a daughter, with dark, almond-shaped eyes like mine, I'd hate for her to read mangas and grow up wishing her eyes were bigger like Caucasians. I know a good story is a good story, but I wonder if generations of Japanese girls are growing up to dislike their Asian features? The Chinese manga mvrdrk sent me look have Asian features.

I think it's a misconception that they all look western.

Talk to the Japanese, they will tell you they all look Japanese, except for those rare cases where a character is meant to look like a specific race. Even hair color isn't an indication except when a point is made of it.

It may be human nature, especially in societies which are relatively 'homogenous' in appearance, that no matter how the characters are drawn, they match the people you're used to seeing.

It's especially hard with the sometimes very abstract line drawings as in manga. Especially in manga targeted at girls, it's not uncommon that hair style is the only way to tell one character from another. I think one of the hallmarks of HK comics is a much stronger realism in character faces. (Then again, there is one HK artist who draws eyebrows like fuzzy catepillars with a violent upswinging hook on the end. Those eyebrows have a life of their own ...)

mvrdrk-thank you for the mangas in Japanese. I see how good a tool they are for learning language--for a child or for adults who are studying foreign languages!

>54 mvrdrk: You are right. To the Japanese they do look Japanese. I say this because when I read manga as a child, I identified with the characters, so I obviously did not think of the characters as having Caucasian characteristics.

It's interesting that the flow of the panels is much more fluid than American comics--no ordained squares that march on in a predictable fashion, but the entire page is a work of art. Very nice.

Yes, I too like the flow of panels. I think it's very different from American and European comics.

I've found that manga marketed at girls are different from manga marketed at boys in some very broad brush ways, I'll be interested to see if you get that impression too. The flow of the panels is one difference, manga marketed at girls is less grid oriented than manga marketed at boys.

I've gotten used to the huge sparkly eye character designs and they no longer bother me. You'll find designs become less exaggerated as you get away from manga marketed to kids.