POST AND/OR TALK ABOUT YOUR MANGA AND ANIME (Read 249 times)

[Mokou]

I haven't posted in a long time, but I'm still here and thought I would post something new. c:


Haven't read these yet, but these are generally what I plan to read this year, along with gathering more manga in general.

Hard to find the first volumes of certain series, but they've been backordered so they will come, eventually...

FEEL FREE TO RECOMMEND OR POST ANYTHING THAT INTERESTS YOU~~

[Aeon]

yo, you were the one that made the "to any guests that come here i guess" thread that got us all here, i've gotta thank you for that. and a veteran and a newcomer popping up in the same day? lucky stuff

is that an alice in wonderland manga adaptation? looks nice. can't be easy to turn classic literature into manga, explains why it's the lengthiest-looking thing you've got there
araki's manga theory book is pretty cool, haven't read much of it since the only copy i've got access to is my sister's.

i don't have too much physical manga, just a bunch of random stuff i've gathered over some years.

we both have a bit of girls' last tour. it's probably the only thing i've got here that i haven't read fully, actually. in no small part because i was only able to pick up volumes one and six.

still, it can be kind of fun to read like that too. i know a long time ago i could only get random volumes of the BONE series, and instead of figuring out what would happen next time i tried to piece everything together to figure out what was in the middle. at least i've read tsukumizu's touhou doujins

i know i've also got some forbidden scrollery somewhere, couldn't find it for the shot. a shame because they are really nice-looking books.
i promise, the "my monster secret" isn't as stupid as the title sounds. chalk that up to weird localization from the og title 実は私は

and uh. don't worry about the stuff on the left. didn't have any other extra shelf space for games

[lazulum]

Whoa, there's a blast from the past. I don't think we ever chatted much back in the day but I remember seeing your colorful name around way back when. Good to see you again!



Girl's Last Tour makes for relaxing reads, similar reason why I like Aria although they present very different worlds and are pretty different in some nice ways too.

Aeon
That's a good catalogue there, a lot of classics

[Aeon]

yo everybody rocking girls' last tour, nice. aside from that though i can't say i recognize much of the non-touhou on your shelf. do you have some of the aria manga too? since the anime has at least a few seasons i imagine it would be expensive to try to get the whole series though

[lazulum]

Aeon
Others on the shelf:
> 魔法使いの嫁 -- I believe this is called Magus Bride in Englsih
> 機動戦士ガンダムアグレッサー -- This is Gundam Aggressor. Only read the first volume so far. I generally like it. It's certainly different in many ways.
> Groundless -- This is a very violent adult's manga (adult as in rated "M"). Stories change by volume but generally depict a soldier in a series of very difficult situations.
> Break Blade -- This one requires a long description. Maybe an acquired taste is the best way to describe it. It's about sorcerors who pilot giant robots made out of rocks, except for the protagonist who is the "unsorceror" piloting what is essentially witchcraft (an unearthed robot that is what we would typically think of when we hear "robot").
> あまんちゅ -- From Amano, creator of Aria
> [far right, small black ones] That's Jojo

About Aria, I am glad that you asked haha

[Aeon]

i hope the two and a half week delay is not a problem because i have to say how cool that aria collection is. the gold on the side looks super nice, especially against the more blue parts of the cover. is the undine complete ceremony box an anthology of sorts? from the name, it sounds like it could be something in-universe like how part of the gensokyo chronicle is in some of the touhou print works.

and about the other ones you mentioned, break blade sounds pretty cool. i really have no experience with gundam or mech stuff but a non-magic user fighting among magic users is a premise i like, since it really makes the protagonist act on their own. there's a lot of things where the protagonist can almost be a non-character if taken away from the people around them, so it's nice to see

[TSUN]

lazulum
Cool that you read manga in Japanese. That's an incredibly obvious & trivial part of living in Japan, but it just stood out to me.

Can't say much about the manga themselves, since I've read pretty much none of the stuff anyone's posted.

Anyway, here's most of my collection.

THOUGHTS ON EACH THING

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
A one-volume adaptation of Majora's Mask. "Rushed" is an understatement. It still holds a special place in my heart as the first manga I owned.

Manga In Theory And Practice
Haven't read it fully, since I wanna read Jojo first.

Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
Amazing movie & sequel to the TV show. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is series of high highs and low lows, but this movie makes it all worth it. It's a meditation on the mundane and the magical that manages a shift from fantastical highschool shenanigans to a slow, poignant character study. If I had to rewatch every episode of Endless 8 to rewatch this, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

AIR
A mixed bag. It's a slice of life show with supernatural elements that tries really hard to make you cry. Though it's scattered and overambitious for a 12-episode series, the final two episodes basically save the show with a heartrending yet bittersweet story about family and finding true happiness that ties everythinng together. Just for the final arc, I look back at this series with fondness and respect.

A Silent Voice
Breathtaking in all forms. Even though I read the manga first, I still kinda prefer the movie. The manga's epilogue drags a bit, and there's a melodramatic screaming match every few chapters. The movie tones those down. Though there are a few great scenes that got left out of the movie.

Wadanohara
Based on the game by Deep-Sea Prisoner (she also made this manga adaptation). This book is "The Complete Collection," but it stops about 2/3 through the story. The last stretch is probably never gonna get translated, because of... content.

Yotsuba&!

Perfection. A comfy slice of life. Haven't read it all yet.

Not sure if the post or images are too big. At least, the images look absolutely massive in this little post-writer thing.

[Aeon]

woah, manga theory and practice is popular here, too.
i actually recognize most of what you've got even if i haven't read or watched any of it at all. except for wadanohara but just the game and not the manga. it's got a super nice-looking cover, even the translated title looks good. funamusea is super cool about translation so maybe she'll release something else i'll be able to get. i imagine commercial releases for her are few and far between though, because of content

ah, everybody says the endless eight sucks but it can't be so bad. something something time loop but you can sit back and make some notes on the divergence between episodes, yeah? sounds kinda cool, i think

i don't own any of them, but i've read some of the zelda manga before. i think ocarina of time and four swords. the ocarina one was pretty succinct, just like it seems the majora one is, but i remember the four swords manga being kinda neat, and not following the game's story at all. there are actually a fair amount of nintendo-sponsored manga that are rather interesting in that there was basically no oversight so the mangaka could just make whatever they wanted within the universe. fire emblem and zelda in particular have a decent amount, and most of the ones i've read of those have been pretty legit

AIR probably has some messy flow because it was originally a visual novel. didn't actually know it had an anime until now. would you say to take a chance on the original or just go for the anime? i've kept it in the "will investigate to see if its cool" pool for a while.

oh yeah, and i found a bit more of my manga. check it

two rather elegant forbidden scrolleries from barnes and noble, and one genuine japanese volume of wild and horned hermit. i don't really have any extra commentary since, you know, it's touhou, aside from the pretty cool comparison you can get between this WaHH and azuma aya's newer artstyle. if you went through the entire series, you could probably see it change slowly but seeing this right after reading the latest chapter of her sanae minimanga is a pretty drastic change. for some reason only these touhou manga were hidden in the back of a closet with some other miscellaneous books, luckily they didn't suffer any damages

[TSUN]

Aeon

From someone who has watched every episode of Endless Eight: It's not worth it. Besides episodes 1, 2, and 8, every episode is incredibly blandly produced, and the differences between them are too minor to be interesting. Hey look this scene is happening in a different location but it's the exact same scene as last episode, hey look this character says "you should bring your bike" instead of "definitely bring your bike", hey look Haruhi's wearing a shirt with a giant '69' on the chest. They never have any meaning beyond "neat i guess." And that's not even getting into how much it destroys the show's pacing & momentum. I still do recommend Haruhi Suzumiya... sorta. High highs and low lows.

Yeah, the manga of the 2D Zelda games seem cool. Problem is that Majora's Mask is the most story-heavy Zelda game out of them all. It's a melancholic slow burn where you spend most of your time getting to know all the people in this dense world, see them live their lives and react to the incoming apocalypse, and maybe even help them a little. Less than an hour into the game and the manga's almost halfway done, so it rushes through the next 30 hours at sonic speed.

Though I haven't played the VN, I'd say go for the anime. It's way less of a time investment, the final arc is probably told way differently in the VN, and aside from the PSP port, every English version of the VN is 18+.

Kinda a shame that Forbidden Scrollery is the only English released manga. Though it kinda makes sense; from what I've heard, it's the most accessible for new fans.

[spongelevator]

I did not have anything to contribute in this thread until haruhi
and I just have to say as well
endless eight suuuucks
I saw all of it first time and rewatch and I say all the debates about how it works "because it makes you feel how yuki does" are just straight up dumb because they aired the same episode 7+1 times
also all differences are already documented so the only reason to look for them is if you are already watching it or enjoy cereal box scavenger hunts

8/8 would watch again but in the LN (I read it 6 years ago and don't have books anymore so I may be remembering wrong) I remember wanting to see what endless eight would be like in the original and it was uuh
20 pages or so at best and almost entirely insignificant
I suppose it could be argued it's a way to make the anime different and more than an incomplete animated version of the LN (in the worst way possible) but endless eight (and I guess second season as a whole because endless eight is more than half of it) makes haruhi "that one show"

someday in the rain best episode season 3 and sasaki never

[TSUN]

Endless Eight is even worse when you know why it exists. There's a video by youtuber Red Bard that explains it. Apparently Season 2 was supposed to have the Disappearance arc for like 8 episodes, but they decided to make it into a movie. But they still had to have 14 episodes in the season, so.................

You know what does the "deliberately long boring part that makes the viewer feel empathy for Yuki" thing WAY better than Endless Eight ever could? Someday in the Rain, the reading scene.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Vauge Minor Spoilers}One shot of Yuki reading a book alone in the club room while you hear everyone outside having a grand ol' time, for nearly 4 minutes straight. You wanna join everyone else in the fun, but you can't because you're forced to stay in this boring empty room for what feels like an eternity. Not only is it like Evangelion's elevator scene on steroids, but it subtly sets up Disappearance so goddamn well. After the movie, hindsight turns the most boring nonsense "oh look they ran outta budget" scene ever into a genius moment of insight & empathy for the feelings of a character that seems to have none. Honestly, it's in my top 3 favorite scenes of the show.

And it didn't have to repeat the same goshdarn episode 8 frickin times to do it!!

Honestly though, the movie-making arc was really bad too. It's like a checklist of everything viewers wouldn't wanna see after Endless Eight.

SPOILER: Click to show

{Rant}Season 1 had so many cool stylistic things that made the show stand out, but this arc seems to adapt the LN word for word. So nearly every scene is just characters standing around talking about mundane things without much in the way of interesting directing, visual storytelling, or music. Haruhi, already the definition of ambivalence, acts so horrible here that it makes me wonder why I ever found her fun to watch. The plot is super mundane & drawn out (seriously they could've done this in 2 episodes, 3 tops). And if you watched in broadcast order first, where the movie they're filming is the first episode, then this arc becomes Explaining The Joke: The Movie: The Game: The Anime Arc.

It's a really good show I promise. I highly recommend it if you can get past some really bad parts.

[spongelevator]

man it had been so long I didn't remember the contents of each season so I went and looked and

there is a whopping one good episode in season 2
the sigh was the second in the LN series so I probably ended up thinking "oh that must have been in season 1"
but nah they just put 8 filler episodes to replace where the disappearance would have been and then gave a pretty funny but not anything special 5 episodes of the sigh 
at least we got mikuru beam right that means it's good season and all is forgiven 
actually was that even in those 5 episodes or was it just in the episode showing the completed movie

I think in my mind I mashed together season 1 and 2 as one whole both because there's all the watch orders and also because season 2 is so lackluster compared to 1
before checking I could have sworn that spaceship game was a season 2 thing and that the sigh was only one episode but man it was not lol

someday in the rain always felt like a break from all the wacky stuff in the series in a way that is both incredibly uninteresting and also very watchable for some reason
the most slice of life thing I have ever seen, an unexciting portion of normal
and also yeah yuki continues to sit alone except this time they really drill it into your head with the only movement being I think her putting a book on the shelf once and now you feel it too don't you

I would also recommend series still I think it's interesting in a strange way
it feels very 2008

light novels are also worth it but last time I checked (2 years ago maybe) the rampage and surprise were like 60 bucks and the dissociation was maybe 200 so getting them physically is probably very difficult unless it has changed since then
I managed to get all around sale price other than the dissociation back in 2015 after checking kinokuniya and book off at least four times each but I have no idea where any of books went and last time I went to a kinokuniya I don't think I saw anything more than the manga

also it appears there is a volume 12 released in both japanese and english now (not the second half of surprise like in japanese release) called "the intuition of haruhi suzumiya"
I dunno what that is but maybe it will be good

[Aeon]

damn i guess endless eight is not as decent as i was hoping. gotta take the word from the experts. man maybe they just were in super crunch mode and decided they had to do it to fit the schedule. also i had no idea it was actually called endless eight, thought that was just a nickname for it
overall would you guys say to go for the anime or the original first

[spongelevator]

I saw anime first and then read ln
I'd say probably better to watch the anime first to see if you enjoy show and it's also pretty short because it adapts maybe 1/3 the LN and endless eight makes it a 17+7 episode show
also there are a bunch of orders to watch it kinda like with monogatari or whatever other shows
release order is probably the good one or else you are gonna have to click through very many episodes for no good reason other than having the vacation episodes be watchable without anything in between

if you have the time for it I would recommend endless eight experience
it is quite awful

remember the phone


also unrelated but stone ocean anime has been announced
very good

[Aeon]

spoke to tsun on discord and he said the same thing, even about watching in release order. guess my path is set whenever the time comes to check haruhi out

and stone ocean yooo
i didn't see the announcement but i heard about it afterwards. i haven't read it in a super long time so it will be pretty cool if it's by the same guys who did vento aureo. and then steel ball run? maybe? at this rate the animators will finish jojolion before araki does