Recommended Anime/Manga?

[kitten]

^Physical print for that, btw: "S-so, they planted a black man's heart in my body. Why would they do such a thing!?"

Not quite verbatim, but that's almost exact. A little different, lol.

i'm tempted at this point to grab a raw scan and embark on N-WORD NO NAZO.

i've actually been picking up some tezuka off of yahoo auctions! probably won't see it for a month or two, but i've picking some up with cool covers or within my special interests. you know, like... cats... werewolves. i learned that "VAMPIRE" (a manga about werewolves <_<) got a tv show that actually seems extremely fucking cool. check out this absolutely batshit transformation that i gif'd



some time ago, i think like 3 or 4 years back, it came to public knowledge that some artwork had been uncovered in a drawer or something in the tezuka household that had just been left shut for years. the drawings were pretty smutty depictions of a girl turning into a snake, a mouse girl i think also, some other shit. pretty fucking tame. it was immediately sold to the west (popularly, retweeted all the time, something that continues to come up as i talk to people about tezuka) as though "oh ho ho! tezuka was a cheeky little guy, huh? turns out he had a secret interest." and it's like. if you have read tezuka, at all, i don't think this interest is "secret." it's not even close to "secret." it's like, the most obvious thing on planet fucking earth lol. it is present in everything i've read so far, even MW. while that one lacks any supernatural element, the central character is a man who more than does drag, but actually fully convinces people he's a woman up to and including having sex with him.





duke togo's very embarrassed to realize here that he's actually in his heaven

and then there's shit *like this* (mute it alert). the idea that his status as a weirdo pervert (i'm pro weirdo pervert, ftr) was a secret is one of the most preposterous things i've ever heard, and it continues to grow more and more preposterous with every single thing i read. how could someone not know? how could anyone?

anyway, here are some more cool manga covers for japanese editions:





these were unbelievably dirt cheap (i mean, not so much after i have to pay shipping and fees, for me, but in general if you're living in japan you can basically just ask someone for ten kilos of tezuka comic and get it for a tenner). they have special compilations of stories with certain themes (the second one is cats!). i am so happy to be getting some of these. even though i'm illiterate, i'm sure tezuka's ghost won't mind if i just enjoy the pictures....

i've also been working my way through the 2003 tetsuwan atom show. it's REALLY good, and one of the most faithful "post-tezuka tezuka things" for manner of how much humor it retains. it's directed by my boy chiaki konaka's brother, and they collaborated on things once in a while. the budget is fucking obscene. when this shit came out over here, though, 4kids (i think it was?) totally fucked it. they had actually been collaborating for an english release to be simultaneous to finally get westerners into "astro boy," but then they let idiots handle things and it got botched so badly they aired episodes out of order, changed plots with rewrites, etc. deeply offensive. it only really recently got a fan translation for the actual, original text despite being a tremendously critically lauded work in japan. here's a couple gifs from that -



uran's expressions are off the fucking chart! i love her! THIS is how you do tezuka! a tezuka character can jump from every emotion in the human range of expression in a single page, the characters should be lively, exuberant.



pluto ;___;7

i also also also re-watched an old OVA that i enjoyed, the first of the hi no tori ovas (directed by rintaro) focusing on the "karma" portion of the comic (god damn you tezuka, why did you DIE? you didn't finish your work!). no gifs at the moment, but it's an hour long and jawdroppingly gorgeous throughout. a little too austere, but pretty damn hard-hitting and a solid watch. sadly, i haven't made gifs for that one, i might still get around to it and append a couple in here. i make gifs all the time for a small viewing party of friends i have hung out with for years. essentially forum "effort posting" to like a super small handful of people. it's really fun. i don't have time to start full-time posting on a forum i think ever again, but rest assured i'm still out there enjoying myself and continuing to appreciate and share appreciation of wonderful things.

[Udderdude]

I just watched the new Bastard adaption that's on Netflix. It's pretty bonkers, even more so than the OVA (I'm assuming it's a more faithful adaption than the OVA was). I was surprised at the amount of gratuitous T&A on display .. lol

[drauch]

I wonder if someone on Oz's team was an OG Tezuka fan? *SAX STING*

Lolllll. Man, I miss Oz.

kitten: Yeah, there's quite a bit where Tezuka does that I've noticed as well. Even outside his three big sexy adult movies, Bagi is all about a sexy cat woman. I almost wonder too if it wasn't so much a furry thing (even though it's evident there's a lot, but the dude did love drawing sex--man after my own heart), but his early influences. So much of early comics in the 40s was "funny animals" stuff with anthropomorphic animals doing probably not-very-funny shit. I may be completely off, but it kinda makes sense as he also was obsessed with Disney. It just came to my mind thinking back on some other artists like R. Crumb specifically mentioning those growing up, and Yoshihiro Tatsumi complaining that all comics before gekiga were for kids. Dunno! But I love it regardless.

I want that cat one, too. Shame about the shipping. I got fucked so hard on it recently that it soured me for a bit (6000 yen for 9000 yen figure). There's some decent raw sites out there and torrents, but yeah, I'd much rather own the physical stuff, too.

And good to hear about Bastard!!(!) I didn't realize it was out and haven't been watching squat lately. The week has been planned

[Steamflogger Boss]

I don't really read manga much but the anime of Gundam Origin was phenomenal so I'm not surprised the manga is good.

I've been on a good run lately with anime. Dear Brother, Rascal Does Not Dream Of Bunny Girl Senpai (Bakemonogatari light). For lighter stuff Kekkaishi, SGT Frog and Cat's Eye (Tsukasa Hojo always entertains me).

[kitten]

I don't really read manga much but the anime of Gundam Origin was phenomenal so I'm not surprised the manga is good.

if you're not familiar, and it's very likely you're not because they're coy about it if you don't look directly into it, the ova series only adapts the "prequel" content that is in the manga, which is less than a quarter of the overall content (and drops in to add to already existing changes somewhere about a quarter into the manga). parts of the story get significant rewrites and a lot of characterizations for classic characters change, a few events happen really significantly different. while everything ends in just about the same place as first gundam, how you get there really matters a lot, and some characters are in very different emotional places, lines along their spiritual progress and development, etc. there's some follow-up content that's pretty fun, too.



the tone of the ova's is a bit off and the 3d... really sucks. it really sucks to the point i had this bizarre fear that the mecha fights in the comic would be awful (they are, of course, actually breathtakingly gorgeous), which put me off reading it for a while. a really superstitious, paranoid fear looking back on it, but sweet fuck that shit looked so bad it put the fear of god in me. no joke, i still get flashbacks to the shit in the first ova, in particular, where everything is moving around so fast and seemingly 100% without any morphing of the models in any frames that it is not only difficult to parse but looks so bad that it casts serious aspersions on whether you'll be able to have faith in any given gundam thing to ever look good again. there is no way that YAS got to direct that as he wanted to (he didn't even get to direct the ova's, just did some supervision iirc) and i'm sure he sat there with that extraordinarily humble look on his face as he asserted that it looked like ass. or maybe he just shut up because he already realized with the terms he'd hesitantly set with the producers would mean things like this. it is really, really interesting how much he decided he wanted to work on gundam again and how much his doing that (after years away, entirely, and many more from animating) meant that he knew there would be endless squabbling with executives wanting to stifle any creative control to a man who has repeatedly proven to be a stellar creator.



those fights in the first ova have outright become what i use to set the tone for what i will accept before getting insulted. those ridiculous spins the models make, the absolute disregard for so many key fundamentals of proper animation, eugh. thank GOD the fights in cucuruz doan's island look beautiful despite the continued use of 3D for them. you can 100% tell he directed those if you're familiar with them - the palettes, the key frames, the angles, the dramatic emphasis... all 100% obviously his touch. plenty of traditional animation in the smoke billowing, the eruptions of gas and light, the dust kicking up as things move around, etc. that movie is thoroughly gorgeous. his character designs also properly shine through whereas i always thought they looked good but just a little weird in the origin ovas.

i took a couple of gifs of cucuruz doan's island to give you a little teaser into its quality. they introduce a really interesting organic mobile suit (extremely wild canonical implications for early UC especially) that i think you're going to like:





anyway, right, the origin. there's a few differences in what it presents, too. in particular, they seemed to want to make char more sinister. i don't quite understand why they did this and if it was their own decision or yas'. i could believe yas suggested it, but at the same time it doesn't really fit well into the manga that he would have - in cold blood - just straight-up assassinated that classmate that hands him the mask (though maybe even if yas suggested it, it isn't meant to connect, it's just a surprise thing for the animation if you've already read the manga). it doesn't really make sense, especially given some of the things he says in the sayla confrontation in the manga on TEXAS COLONY. that raid scene, all-in-all, is super embellished in the ovas for... i guesssss pacing reasons? the thing that makes me the most mad is how the ovas end with "TO CONTINUE THIS EPIC STORY, GO BUY THE BLU-RAYS FOR MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM AND PAY FOR THAT SHIT AGAIN." i cannot imagine how many people, particularly westerners who don't read manga, were deluded into seriously thinking that somehow despite all these wildly serious character changes that this was ever meant to just immediately follow into first gundam. insane. i was deluded, at the time, and more than confused lol. i knew the manga existed but thought it was just this content being adapted. it is chillingly sinister how pernicious the people who control media properties born from love and hard work are. gundam is in a constant battle between becoming everything it stands against and having an exciting new property remind you starkly of what's good in life and the horrors of the world.



iirc, yas expressed desire at adapting all of the origin manga, but has repeatedly declined because of refusal to give him more creative control. the guy is... seriously getting up there, i don't know how much he has left in him. everything that he does at this point feels like not just frosting, but entire additional cakes upon the already existing cake. i'm really eternally grateful for his continued service in entertainment. i promise i'm not just buying more model kits and idly thinking about how cool war is but that you're actually selling me, a non-christian, on the passion of christ, yas. whatever change you have wanted to instigate in the human mind to be more compassionate is really and truly being communicated in your work to anyone receptive. i don't want to make the guy out to be a god, he's just a really hard-working person and with more than a few faults (and he certainly sees himself as such), but he's a wellspring in times like these. i've already recommended his adaptation of kaze to ki no uta's early chapters, but i also really heavily recommend venus wars, if you haven't seen it. superb shit.

(left to right, from his jesus manga. infuriating to me this wasn't flipped and the scans are twenty centuries old but i think it was a christian group who weren't even huge yas fans or something)

(i love how he consistently depicts the disciples as idiots)

the origin is a whopping 23 volumes, 24 if you count the bonus material added together. or, preferably 12 hardcover special editions that are very, very nice - glossy paper stock for fully gorgeous yas color explosions, you seriously get dozens of breathtaking full-color paintings per volumes. the chalky but smooth exterior texture makes it a firm and comfortable grip in your reading hand, but it's obnoxiously hard to get without smushed spines because the way books are shipped these days is an actual affront to god. i really recommend buying those, preferably in-store so that you're able to inspect the condition, first. localization is spot-on, though some of the text boxes are... i think they could have maybe set the text a little better. more of a nitpick than a condemnation, it's still quite readable and superbly written.



one thing i have to say, though! if you don't like the kids, you are maybe going to be deeply frustrated at certain parts and how much the comic relief and little drops of humanism are eked out by their smiling faces. but you're also wrong. that's right, i'm going to say this to everyone here and you can fight me if you want: if you don't like katz, kikka (especially kikka, yas really fucking loves drawing her and she's such a primordially, platonically-exact, happy blobshape that if you're not smiling every time she's in a panel, i'm not sure you experience happiness), and letz, you don't actually like what mobile suit gundam is actually about. every seriously great gundam work is about children and the hope for future generations... which is part of why despite liking war in the pocket a lot, i can't bring myself to "love it." it's cruel and hilarious and cynical but it is obviously deliberately trying to be anti-gundam and i think that's not as hard or clever to present as gundam and more than a little bit questionably mean to stick to poor tomino-san (who i love to pieces but is - in stark contrast to yas' too-much-humility becoming a hubris of its own - a bit of an insecure retard whose feelings you should be more considerate of when working with his ideas) in the first work he wasn't involved with.

I want that cat one, too. Shame about the shipping. I got fucked so hard on it recently that it soured me for a bit (6000 yen for 9000 yen figure).

to really take advantage of import services, you've got to be willing to do them in bundles and then to sometimes get really assertive in messages about consolidating your boxes into one shipment in addition to selecting options to do that. tell them to take things out of their shipping containers, waive the insurance checks to do this, etc. you can save a lot, but you also have to first be willing to... spend a lot. there's a couple other cat covers, if you're interested, i was unable to determine if these are both consolidated in that one hardback or not but felt they'd be worth it just for the cover illustrations, either way.

[kitten]

I almost wonder too if it wasn't so much a furry thing

he was certainly obsessed with disney, but "disney being his influences" and "being a sex pervert interested in this stuff" may not be opposed ideas, but rather the exact same thing (at least for him and many). you'd be shocked to discover how many cartoonists find their own drawings attractive or find cartoon porn attractive. the beetle bailey dipshit did fucking tijuana bibles for his comic, which blows my mind and is always on the tip of my tongue ever since i found this out years back.

as someone actually into this shit, as someone who has been someone actually into this shit for the better part of my life and with an incredible amount of experience in participation in or observation of communities participating in weird shit (not to downplay my perversion or predilections or really self-deprecate - i'm into extraordinarily peculiar things but even more platonically interested in people, their sexuality, and the formation of non-standard sexual identity. i have always independently looked at porn, pornographers, and psychology regarding these things in and outside my wheelhouse of interest, maybe even more outside than in), i can guarantee you beyond any shadow of a doubt he was certainly into transformation, animal-people, and seemingly even just animals. "yes, in a sex way." not to say i think he fucked dogs or would ever hurt an animal, but there is way too much overt and deeply obvious signaling that this guy maybe looked at lions and thought some things about those lions.



i'd seriously wager he's also erotically invested in incest, age gap and age regression (the man helped pioneer the visual language of both loli and shota artwork and there are undeniable erotic overtones to much of his cartooning of children), all of the letters in bdsm but not what we think of as "bdsm," torture, noncon, okama (as well as just anything under the umbrella of "trans" - many people into transformation get a start with gender transformation) and probably a dozen other things i could think of if i sat here a little bit longer or knew a bit more of his work. i have postulated recently that if he were alive, today, he'd be a weirdly ignored artist on pixiv or furaffinity with a completely insane output who is helplessly unable to catch on because of his uncanny inability to hide his open love for these things. i don't think he kept secret porn stashes (though apparently he also did that a little bit) of uncanny perversity, but he was obviously repressing a lot given the historical environment and his extreme transparency.

i think that all of these things listed above are considered obscene taboo, but the human mind is drawn to them in ways society will never acknowledge because so much of civilization is centered around shame and abasement. this is kind of funny, because our obsession with shame and abasement is exactly why it is so thoroughly fetishized. even the most vanilla of vanilla weirdos have fantasies about the nature of non-sexual romantic intimacy that i would consider "perverted" in that they are completely unattainable and have substantial tendency toward maladaptive repression and a lack of examination. we're all extremely weird. your hardworking christian neighbor with a nuclear family who goes to church twice a week has a fetish for that lifestyle, which i would unironically and with severe emphasis posit as perverted and immoral. that level of actual giving and receiving control over a human life is profoundly more devious than jacking off to the idea that two things society doesn't want to fall in love could fall in love. not to say i can't forgive it, but that they often cannot forgive masturbation fantasy and try to move it to the recesses of the world to push it off a cliff is certainly more a sign of their obvious damnation than those they persecute.



if you're interested in the development of the "funny animal fandom," i really suggest looking into omaha the cat dancer, which i'm pretty sure i have recommended on this forum at one time or another. harlan ellison of all people gave it a glowing review, and that man is nothing if not regarded as one of the most excellent critics of our time (and an excellent writer of his own). frank miller did fanart collected in an anthology that was published to raise money when one of the people making it was in a car accident. it's a comic that is deeply central to the beginning of "furries" and deeply socially conscientious and progressive. came at a time when sex in comics was heavily reviled and it really pushed labels. reed waller is still alive (if i remember correctly) but i think became a recluse or has totally retired from the scene, kate wurley (the writer) and her husband (the writer who took up after she died to complete the comic) are both sadly passed.

looking back further than that, you might want to even look at old "vootie!" zines. that shit was basically ground zero as a branch of the sci fi fandom, and where taral wayne posited to reed waller to put more sex in his comics (which began omaha in the "weird sex" publication in the late seventies). wayne had a stroke but is still active on furaffinity and will respond to journal comments and private messaging. i've thought about commissioning him for a really long time and i think he recovered enough to be taking them again. his art is phenomenal, but only about as good as tezuka at a 100th the speed of output ('only,' as if that isn't still something more than considerably admirable, i jest a little). i've been meaning to actually read and collect his comics about his character saara mar and look into beatrix for a long time. he's a little bit cranky and stubborn and old on his FA, but i think i would be, too, if i got nominated for a hugo eleven fucking times and never got it and then faded undeservedly into obscurity despite being that talented. he's a great guy and i love his porn. it is seriously a shame how much erotic artists get buried.

[drauch]

Leaving work now and will read more later, but haha way ahead of you, I've already read and loved Omaha years ago

[Steamflogger Boss]

So I started K-on! and I can't stop watching it. It's kind of like the anime equivalent of gorging on chocolate lol. Couldn't quantify why but I loved Azumanga Daioh and am loving this on a similar level while not really enjoying many other entries in this genre.

[mycophobia]

k-on owns

[Steamflogger Boss]

k-on owns

The absolute coziest. Needed it after some meat grinder type stuff.

[evil_ash_xero]

I'm interested in reading some "new for me" manga. My absolute favorite is Akira, and I do like Domu as well. I LOVED the first 20 plus volumes of Berserk. That got me to try some other
books. I ended up reading Nausicaa, which I thought was great. And now I'm reading Blade of the Immortal. A little slow at points, but I'm really enjoying it, so far.

So, is there anything else that would be up my alley, looking at what I have enjoyed? I tried Ghost in the Shell, back when I was younger, and couldn't get into it. I also gave Lone Wolf and Cub a shot when I was younger, and found it to get too repetitive, despite of it's book to book quality. A lot of manga is just not up
my alley, just at first glance. Demon Slayer (I think that's what it's called) is huge, but I find the art to be pretty lacking. The art in One Punch Man looks really good, but it doesn't seem like the more mature manga, that I have enjoyed thus far. Please don't recommend One Piece.

Something serious/dark. Sci Fi/Fantasy... etc. Hook me up.
I know a lot about comics, but manga is kind of mysterious to me.

Also, I have Covid now, so am kind of stuck in the house. Need some entertainment.

[kitten]

Something serious/dark. Sci Fi/Fantasy... etc. Hook me up.
I know a lot about comics, but manga is kind of mysterious to me.

Also, I have Covid now, so am kind of stuck in the house. Need some entertainment.

i have not read this one, but given what you've said about what you like and what people esteem to be the best in that "variety of manga" (gritty seinen?), gantz might be at what you'd like to consider at the top of your list. to my understanding, it would be somewhere between akira and berserk, tonally.

people also heavily mention stuff like vinland saga, vagabond, and pluto along with the names you dropped as being in a similar realm of quality. out of these, i'm really only heavily interested in pluto, but i'd like to inevitably get around to each, some day. i think these are all currently in print for affordable prices, too, if you're looking for shelf-stuffers.

- - - - - -

should mention, i was in my books-a-million yesterday, and they had from volume 6 to a little upwards of "ASTRO BOY," the terrible dark horse one with that small paper and horribly framed, smaller print on the comic. they have an omnibus that is, i think, currently in print, but these volumes were OLD. i checked and they seemed to be from 2002, not just yellowed paper around the edges but fully yellowed pages, too. twenty years i think they've been on this books-a-millions' shelves.......

the lack of in-print tezuka is kind of depressing :/ hate so much that if i want to read tetsuwan atom it's either unofficial stuff online or a terrible, ancient, left-to-right in the world's most uncomfortable-to-read omnibus by dark horse. there's thankfully a good mountain of stuff by a few other publishers, but trying to get blackjack at the moment is a big pain, too. feels like a lot of his major things are tied up with publishers doing them serious injustice.

[BIL]

Something serious/dark. Sci Fi/Fantasy... etc. Hook me up.
I know a lot about comics, but manga is kind of mysterious to me.

Also, I have Covid now, so am kind of stuck in the house. Need some entertainment.

Tsutomu Nihei's BLAME! ("Blam") might work for you. A sort of post-apocalyptic dungeon crawl, depressive and oblique yet ultra-stylish.



Gets pretty surreal, nice technopocalyptic vibe. Is Earth even worth resurrecting? Perhaps you'd better Let Mom Sleep.



Its prequel BioMega has much of the same sleek designs and reality-upending charm, punctuated by sharp blasts of cybernetic ultraviolence - I didn't finish it (was ongoing at the time), but enjoyed what I saw. I should get back to that, actually...

EDIT: Oh, I see Blam got a 2017 CG anime movie. Seems it covers one particular arc from the manga, makes sense... it's a fairly long read. Seems pretty well-regarded by fans.

Gantz is indeed pretty good fun. A bit more on the shonen side of things, with lots of camaraderie and raunch in a deliberately videogamey premise featuring ever more terrifying stages and bosses. I binged it one summer, didn't mind at all. I would avoid the anime and live action adaptations - they're surprisingly watchable, but none of them cover more than a fraction or so of the manga and will ultimately blueball invested watchers.

[Durandal]

should mention, i was in my books-a-million yesterday, and they had from volume 6 to a little upwards of "ASTRO BOY," the terrible dark horse one with that small paper and horribly framed, smaller print on the comic. they have an omnibus that is, i think, currently in print, but these volumes were OLD. i checked and they seemed to be from 2002, not just yellowed paper around the edges but fully yellowed pages, too. twenty years i think they've been on this books-a-millions' shelves.......

the lack of in-print tezuka is kind of depressing :/ hate so much that if i want to read tetsuwan atom it's either unofficial stuff online or a terrible, ancient, left-to-right in the world's most uncomfortable-to-read omnibus by dark horse. there's thankfully a good mountain of stuff by a few other publishers, but trying to get blackjack at the moment is a big pain, too. feels like a lot of his major things are tied up with publishers doing them serious injustice.

This seems to be the case for practically all manga before the early 00's that wasn't a massive international hit in some way. Unless you're blessed enough to speak French/Spanish/Italian, who for some reason do get all of that good shit. Seven Seas Publishing have been pulling 'em over to English territories (I have the Devilman Omnibus set, which I definitely recommend), albeit slowly. Unless there's an upcoming anime adaptation of a classic (such as in SPRIGGAN's case), it doesn't seem like there's much animo to bring stuff over. I want my Getter Robo and Hyouge Mono already

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is slated to come out in a neat deluxe English omnibus next month, so there's that to look forwards to.

[kitten]

can't believe i didn't think to recommend blame, thanks for having me covered, BIL

This seems to be the case for practically all manga before the early 00's that wasn't a massive international hit in some way. Unless you're blessed enough to speak French/Spanish/Italian, who for some reason do get all of that good shit.

i've become really aware of how much better editions are in that territory and it's very infuriating. they're often better than the japanese editions, even! ;__;

Seven Seas Publishing have been pulling 'em over to English territories (I have the Devilman Omnibus set, which I definitely recommend), albeit slowly. Unless there's an upcoming anime adaptation of a classic (such as in SPRIGGAN's case), it doesn't seem like there's much animo to bring stuff over. I want my Getter Robo and Hyouge Mono already

seven seas feels like they'll publish just about anything - i think they've historically had some issues with quality - poor paper, needing thicker ink, mediocre binding, etc. - but they've been stepping up their game a lot, lately. i have all the currently available volumes of girl from the other side (i love nagano edit: lmao i meant nagabe, it's okay i love nagano, too) and they're seriously offensively poor quality... but they're putting out a hardcover omnibus series that i imagine is going to rectify a lot of the issues i have. i've had to stan some of their recent releases to friends, i think their overall quality is much higher these days and it's worth supporting how much stuff they manage to get out. i just placed an order for the second volume of that devilman manga, yesterday C:

they apparently criminally underpay translators (who doesn't, sadly), though, and there was that ridiculous issue just recently regarding 'i think i turned my childhood friend into a girl'. no idea if you heard about this, but... trying to sum it up... the localizer had a cultural agenda that regarded changing pronouns and characterizations of the central character in such a way that blatantly overwrote the authorial intent. i'm not actually into "gender manga" at all, really, but i have a few friends who are and one of them caught wind of this and shared (we all believe the author's intent should have been maintained, obviously).

it got bad enough that they had to make a tweet about revising the text and printing corrected volumes. i usually think their localization is pretty solid, but there is extremely little supervision and i'm sure there's more out there lurking under the radar where they've seriously diddled things a bit and it just isn't enough to rattle the hornet's nest. i'm sure you can imagine, without looking into this at all, exactly what arguments took place and how much bad faith there was from everybody. wouldn't have been any issues if it had just been accurately localized :S hate to see culture war bullshit hit manga, feels like one of the places where you can mostly avoid that and still enjoy risque media in peace.

YKK is my partner's favorite manga and i've never read it, we've been hyped for this release for a while because i'm going to finally read it for myself!! i'm really, really excited for that one. also, i've been wanting to read getter robo forever - have you bothered with scanlations or anything on that one? ishikawa's death has always kept me from diving in, same reason i haven't read tezuka's hi no tori. i still want to get around to both of them, but it hurts.

[BIL]

can't believe i didn't think to recommend blame, thanks for having me covered, BIL

I figured it slipped your mind, it's such a letter-perfect fit for ash's request. ^__^ Actually I wonder if ash has read it, it was pretty well-liked around here a decade or so back. I read it after wondering what CIT's avatar at the time (a mugshot of Killy & co) was.

I might give that CG movie a look tonight. At the time, I think there was just a teaser trailer for an OAV that never materialised. I'm kinda hyped about BioMega now too. That sense of following a lone wanderer through a thoroughly alien future Earth, with a revolving cast of sometimes upsettingly dispatched acquaintances and just one or two constant supports... in a sense, both are what Berserk was for a while, before that manga got into the shonen-via-seinen mode Miura remained in for the rest of his career.

i've actually been picking up some tezuka off of yahoo auctions! probably won't see it for a month or two, but i've picking some up with cool covers or within my special interests. you know, like... cats... werewolves. i learned that "VAMPIRE" (a manga about werewolves <_<) got a tv show that actually seems extremely fucking cool. check out this absolutely batshit transformation that i gif'd

Oh wuuut! Missed out on this earlier - amazing stuff. I wonder if that was any influence on Akio and co at IREM. Granted both American Werewolf in London and The Howling had turned in their own iconic scenes by the 80s. Still, unmistakable resemblance at any rate, both the pose, and the transformation into not a grotesque man/beast hybrid but a sleek white Shirookami.

Ninja Spirit aka Saigo no Nindou ending spoilers:

Spoiler

(sadly, Hamster were forced to tone down the blistering 30hz strobe of the PCB, which is intense enough to turn epileptics into werewolves IRL... RIP also Salamander's st2 Seizurebot™, who's now more of a "hey, quit playing with the brightness knob" bot - weird how they didn't do the same with VS Castlevania's Rosary! Only the best tangents here )

Agony and ecstasy, essential counterbalance in any good vampire transformation sequence. Werewolf, I mean.

[kitten]

oh, holy fucking shit, i didn't even think about that! good catch, that's almost certainly got to be the direct inspiration. a friend of mine has been trying to get me to read tezuka's vampire and i've got good reason to believe it'll likely be my favorite. it's sadly never gotten a localization, i imagine it might have something to do with the rights being tied up in the old tv show or something strange. i'm probably going to end up going unofficial, for this one. it might be the best appearance of tezuka's recurring character "rock," who is the series' villainous protagonist. ever since i saw him in metropolis, i was an instant fan of the character. wish i had a gif on hand, that movie kinda sucks but it is gorgeous and rock gets some of the best character animation.

[evil_ash_xero]

Thanks BIL and Kitten for the recommendations. I'll have a look at those, when I am done with BotI.
Blame looks pretty awesome, from the art. Looking into it a bit, it is pronounced "Blam", rather than "Blame". So weird.

Is Hellsing any good? I saw some deluxe editions of it, from Dark Horse. Just wondered. The art was a little clean for my liking, but it didn't look bad.

[kitten]

it's... very ostentatiously edgy, but kind of fun. i read several volumes a billion years back before it finished being published. at the time it was being published, i was at the exact age that something like this was the coolest imaginable thing in the entire world.



this panel used to hit the rounds all over the internet back like (i think literally?) twenty years ago. nothing like vampire nazis eating live babies. remember back when it took something this tame to shock someone to the core on the internet? lol, that era didn't last all that long!

you should read hellsing if:

1. a girl with big tits using a comically enormous sniper rifle at all ranges is extremely exciting to you
2. nazi catboy shota is one of your precise fascinations
3. you think the victor to any given fight should be who can morph their countenance into a more ridiculous, arrogant, sinister smile
3. you love za-load, jesus krei

the old anime was written by chiaki konaka, who i like to prop up all the time, but goes off the rails because the manga was nowhere near finished, at the time. i think that clip i linked is from the old one. if you'd rather, you can just watch the ovas for this one, i think, i've heard they're really excellently adapted. there's no communication with the divine through sheer, freakish dedication to the craft like you'll get in blame!, berserk, and akira, though. hellsing is thoroughly stupid and - to my understanding - never becomes much more than stupid. not to say there's anything necessarily wrong with that, but i think part of the immortal appeal of those three is that even when the author fails or falls short on their rationalizing, the art never stops short of trying to punch ten tiers above the emotional, spiritual, and/or intellectual weight class of the text. there's nothing really transcendent or miraculous about helling, it's just "wow, fucked up" and "cooooool."

(i want to recommend gundam: the origin, which i've spent the last couple of pages talking about, but not sure it's what you're looking for, exactly - if you've not, check out a couple of my posts on the last page if you're at all interested in that. it's a very mature, collected story which lacks the edge of any of these, but doesn't lack for the thrill and exhilaration of fantastical violence, seeking of profound meaning, or solid storytelling and pacing that i'm sure you're interested in)

[Udderdude]

Hellsing Ultimate was entertainingly ridiculous. That's about all I can say.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Kittttten I highly recommend Dear Brother. I need someone to share this with lmao.

[drauch]

Dear Brother is rad. I need to finish it, but it's been long enough I should probably restart when I do. I love all the Dezaki I've seen thus far. I funded it back when Anime-sols half-assed attempted to translate and localize a lot of cool stuff. Only a handful made it, but some of it wound up getting picked up by Discotek later on, so all is good.

I wish Seven Seas did more older stuff, but I understand, market and all that. They release a crap load of stuff, but most of it doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. Was really surprised to see Kamen Rider.

VIZ is getting better, I'll give them that. They're still too afraid of taking a risk, but at least they're putting back in print Jojo (and everything else other than the 3rd arc), and Maison Ikkoku. And of course Fist of the North Star, which I think got like 3-4 volumes from another company like two decades ago. They better finish it, dammit. You'd think with Naruto and One Piece and whatever other extremely successful shit they own they could do whatever they want, but I know that's wishful thinking in a perfect world that loved older manga.

Dark Horse as well. I was shocked to see them reprint What's Michael. Of course now it looks like it's OOP, or about there. Comics in general they've just basically all but given up on with old stuff. It's just constant licensed show digital shit or art books anymore. Same with Titan and IDW, not that they ever cared much about manga, but they had a good Euro comics run for a while, which they seem to have pretty much abandoned. Titan let some Enki Bilal go under, but it looks like they did renew some of it just the other month, so good on them. Getting off track though.

Speaking of off track, oh wow, another post by me ranting about old shit and people not caring. Move right along.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Dear Brother is rad. I need to finish it, but it's been long enough I should probably restart when I do. I love all the Dezaki I've seen thus far. I funded it back when Anime-sols half-assed attempted to translate and localize a lot of cool stuff. Only a handful made it, but some of it wound up getting picked up by Discotek later on, so all is good.

If you are planning to get the bluray, it's a pretty limited time deal with the license so just a heads up on that.

And yeah it's just so good like holy shit.

[kitten]

Kittttten I highly recommend Dear Brother. I need someone to share this with lmao.

manga or anime? i haven't actually read anything by ikeda, though i think i have the first volume of that big rose of versailles hardback upstairs. maybe i should get on that or something...

i was talking about year 24 group mangaka and their various influences with someone, recently, and they started getting really particularly unhinged toward me regarding björn andrésen (the kid from death in venice) and his having been made into an idol by people. ikeda was a big fan of death in venice and of björn's look, and he wound up being maybe the most influential person to the imagery of shojo mangaka (the most influential film probably still 'les amitiés particulières,' tho) and particularly ikeda. bishounen wouldn't exist as we know it without this kid. apparently in "the most beautiful boy in the world," a film made regarding björn's horribly sad life that seems to be kind of a pretentious mess of its own variety of odious exploitation, he confronts ikeda and asks why she drew him at one point, which seems... insanely misguided.

i haven't seen the scene, but i asked another friend about it who watched it (who was a little bit less sucked into the misery porn vortex angle than this other person) and she described it as a bit hilarious. now-old boy beauty approaches frail old mangaka and hounds her for having been inspired by his beauty when she was young. what are you supposed to say, here? "sorry, i didn't realize you were getting turbo-raped, you looked good on a movie poster?" the person who was being a bit unhinged toward me (herself a fujoshi pornographer who draws anime teen boys, making her severe aggression toward the people that never even touched björn but just liked how he looked many years ago all the stranger) then mentioned that björn was in midsommar, and i immediately guessed he was the old dude who got his face smashed as some sort of cathartic thing about unresolved trauma regarding his idolization (i was right).

very bizarre interaction. she was trying to guide me into being as obscenely mad as she was at the formation of shojo manga, but it just wasn't working. this person was - no doubt - attracted to the boy for the same reason ikeda was, i guess just trying to feel morally superior. one of those "evil pedophiles are absolutely everywhere but definitely not me" types. drives me nuts how common these types are when discussing any of this shit, now lol.

while we're recommending each other things on this track, have you ever seen summer vacation 1999? film remake of heart of thomas using all-teen girls to portray all-teen boys? it's pretty interesting.

[evil_ash_xero]

Sounds like Hellsing may not be up my alley.

[kitten]

I was shocked to see them reprint What's Michael.

i ran into a hilarious accident where i was looking up a gundam mechanical designer and mangaka (whose stuff is extremely school, he's maybe most famous for directing dragon's heaven - he paid out of pocket for the models in the opening which was agonizing for him because he barely had room to store them lol) with the exact same name as the author for this. i remember reporting to a small group i was in "this guy apparently did... japan's garfield?" there's a wiki page on the gundam wiki that erroneously links to the wrong makoto kobayashi's page that got me on that trail. what's funnier, the same thing happened with them and their bank accounts, even. iirc they're both born in the same area and one wound up accessing the others' funds on accident, once. wild.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Kittttten I highly recommend Dear Brother. I need someone to share this with lmao.

manga or anime? i haven't actually read anything by ikeda, though i think i have the first volume of that big rose of versailles hardback upstairs. maybe i should get on that or something...

i was talking about year 24 group mangaka and their various influences with someone, recently, and they started getting really particularly unhinged toward me regarding björn andrésen (the kid from death in venice) and his having been made into an idol by people. ikeda was a big fan of death in venice and of björn's look, and he wound up being maybe the most influential person to the imagery of shojo mangaka (the most influential film probably still 'les amitiés particulières,' tho) and particularly ikeda. bishounen wouldn't exist as we know it without this kid. apparently in "the most beautiful boy in the world," a film made regarding björn's horribly sad life that seems to be kind of a pretentious mess of its own variety of odious exploitation, he confronts ikeda and asks why she drew him at one point, which seems... insanely misguided.

i haven't seen the scene, but i asked another friend about it who watched it (who was a little bit less sucked into the misery porn vortex angle than this other person) and she described it as a bit hilarious. now-old boy beauty approaches frail old mangaka and hounds her for having been inspired by his beauty when she was young. what are you supposed to say, here? "sorry, i didn't realize you were getting turbo-raped, you looked good on a movie poster?" the person who was being a bit unhinged toward me (herself a fujoshi pornographer who draws anime teen boys, making her severe aggression toward the people that never even touched björn but just liked how he looked many years ago all the stranger) then mentioned that björn was in midsommar, and i immediately guessed he was the old dude who got his face smashed as some sort of cathartic thing about unresolved trauma regarding his idolization (i was right).

very bizarre interaction. she was trying to guide me into being as obscenely mad as she was at the formation of shojo manga, but it just wasn't working. this person was - no doubt - attracted to the boy for the same reason ikeda was, i guess just trying to feel morally superior. one of those "evil pedophiles are absolutely everywhere but definitely not me" types. drives me nuts how common these types are when discussing any of this shit, now lol.

while we're recommending each other things on this track, have you ever seen summer vacation 1999? film remake of heart of thomas using all-teen girls to portray all-teen boys? it's pretty interesting.

Either really. The manga is more tragic though. Rose of Versailles is really good too of course.

That story is nuts. I had to look up björn andrésen and uh

An anime I can safely not recommend is Isuca. I bought it without really looking into it and it's basically a degree or two of separation from h. I just wanted to watch a girl shoot demons with a bow but there is

Spoiler

not only tiddy every episode but constant awkward sexual type situations. Crotch on face, "accidental" kisses, one of the girls calls the self insert mc master and licks him etc The most jarring thing has been the panty stuff. I'm used to panty shots of course but they often end up soaked in this series. And it's uh...not from water.

I'm not 100% opposed to ecchi but this doesn't really have redeeming qualities lol.

[drauch]

I was shocked to see them reprint What's Michael.

i ran into a hilarious accident where i was looking up a gundam mechanical designer and mangaka (whose stuff is extremely school, he's maybe most famous for directing dragon's heaven - he paid out of pocket for the models in the opening which was agonizing for him because he barely had room to store them lol) with the exact same name as the author for this. i remember reporting to a small group i was in "this guy apparently did... japan's garfield?" there's a wiki page on the gundam wiki that erroneously links to the wrong makoto kobayashi's page that got me on that trail. what's funnier, the same thing happened with them and their bank accounts, even. iirc they're both born in the same area and one wound up accessing the others' funds on accident, once. wild.

I do really like Dragon's Heaven, but never made the realization. Always thought that beginning was so rad. Wacky, thanks for sharing.

[BIL]

Sounds like Hellsing may not be up my alley.

Totally forgot to mention, Shigurui might also be worth a look.



Uberviolent samurai tragedy in the "zankoku jidaigeki" polemic tradition. Follows a pair of low-born prodigies; one a sly rogue driven by a fierce disgust of his station, the other a quietly efficient cog in the feudal machine. An ill-starred, transformatively blistering feud leaves both men far from where they began, a staggering trail of carnage in their wake, yet no less in thrall to a system pithily called "A handful of sadists leading an army of masochists."

As is ZJ tradition, it's a glimpse of an epoch frequently as gorgeous to behold as it is awful to contemplate; most of the really troubling material is far removed from the gruesome, yet at least formally martial violence of the samurai caste, taking place at the hands of the untouchable ruling class. Neither science-fiction, nor fantasy, but the darkness surrounding its tale of mutually annihilative vengeance is so comfily absolute, it'd be a shame not to recommend.



There's also a healthily scintillating bushido fetishism to enjoy here, the mangaka demonstrating reverence for a nice set of boobs and a steel-banded pair of decapitation-driving glutes alike. Conversely, duels are authentically short and catastrophic, typically seeing blade bite bone in a couple of terrifyingly skilled exchanges, if that. The handful of extended clashes dotting the story rely heavily on the sheer gravity of two absolute killing forces intersecting, lyrical phantasmagorias bringing the titular "Frenzy of Death" all but humming off the page, ghastly contingencies flittering through the combatants' precariously intact skulls.



The 12ep anime adaptation is tricky to recommend. On one hand, it's glacially slow-moving - almost hallucinatorily so, at points. You'll know within one ep if you can tolerate its long, sun-bleached, cicada-chorused shots. On the other, it's absolutely by design, with a floorboard-rumbling soundtrack, shatteringly hard-hitting animation, and an unmistakable sense of total, uncompromising artistic control.

Being into bone-judderingly heavy oldschool doom metal / stoner rock and the like, I quite dig the effect; it pairs great with the ruinous swordplay and punishing air of feudal cruelty alike. It also makes sense, given the brief span of manga chapters covered. It was kinda comical restarting the story from chapter 1, as is my wont, and wincing slightly at the expectation of a similarly grinding pace, only for the anime's chapters to sail past in an evening. I suggest just reading the better-paced and far more substantial manga - the anime is an infamous blueballer ala Berserk '97 - then revisiting the anime if you dig it. Personally, while I know it'd probably never happen, I'd happily watch a full adapation in this same head-swimmingly heavy style.

The manga is technically an expanded adaptation of a storyline from Japanese author Norio Nanjo's Suruga-jō Gozen Jiai (1983), which having written this post, I see has a fan-made EN translation now (it's been available in French and Spanish for many years now). Yoink! I'll have to read this when my eyes are less fucked. All this said, the manga is a thoroughly complete experience entirely as-is.

[Udderdude]

Oh yeah, I read that one years ago. Good stuff. The anime is on my watch list. lol