Recommended Anime/Manga?

[Raytrace]

Drop that and watch Shingeki no Kyojin / Attack on Titan instead. It's great.

I actually did consider that last night but I could only find episode 1 fansubbed?

EDIT -
It is on Crunchyroll subbed - I shall watch it

[KAI]

The finale of Blade Of The Immortal!!!
Fuck, I Feel so empty right now TT__TT

[CIT]

Just read the German vol. 29, which was released two days ago. I can't bring myself to read the final vol. on a computer screen. I've been following this series for the better part of 18 years, so it's more or less "the manga I got old with". Concluding the series needs to be a proper ceremonious event with a hard copy and some fine malt whiskey.

[Raytrace]

The finale of Blade Of The Immortal!!!
Fuck, I Feel so empty right now TT__TT

and on that page I just realised that loads of Blazing Transfer Student chapters I haven't read yet are done

[AweOfShe]

Drop that and watch Shingeki no Kyojin / Attack on Titan instead. It's great.

I concur. This series is pretty great. I shifted to the manga, since waiting for episodes turned into a pain.

[Skykid]

The finale of Blade Of The Immortal!!!
Fuck, I Feel so empty right now TT__TT

I'm still waiting on the graphic novels to be released. Can't jump the gun like that. Hope it's good, been well over a decade following this thing. (Not asking for a single spoiler here, don't even reply!)

[Domino]

Because I haven't been playing a lot of video games or been watching TV I been getting heavily into comics of all kinds.

There's this awesome bookstore where I live and this is their Manga section:



At least 1000s of US Manga releases and there's a lot more at the top of the bookshelf.

It's pretty much like you need to walk in to understand how much crap the store has. Pricing is pretty much half off cover price per book. Not too bad in the prices but for some titles you can get them for less on the internet.

From what I got from the store and reading:

Complete Lupin III US Manga Run
Trigun original Vol 1 + 2
Eat-Man Mid-90s Viz Vol 1 and 2
Silent Mobius Mid-90s Viz Vol 1-4

And Vol 3,5, and 10 of 2001 Nights!



Now I got to complete this set. Artwork is godly and I do like some Hard Science Fiction!

[drauch]

Good Crom, it's pictures like that that make me wish I sometimes lived in a bigger city. One bookcase could probably fit all the manga in this entire city.

[ancestral-knowledge]

very amusing comedy anime: shirokuma cafe (polar bear cafe)

check it out!

[KAI]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvmd3IKqAFA
Mhhhhhhh...

[CIT]

There's this awesome bookstore where I live and this is their Manga section:

I'll be in FL in fall. Where is this? Need to check it out.

[Edmond Dantes]

Man, if I happened on a manga shelf like that.... I'd explode from all the things I'd want to see if they have.

(although I'd prioritize and try to find Cyborg 009)

[KAI]

Ishinomori and Shimamoto fans, you must read Kamen Rider ZO, you will love it.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Picked up Vol. 2 of Triage X, Vol. 1 of both Btoom and Tiger & Bunny mangas fairly recently. Was a pleasant surprise to see Joker Jun's name on the Btoom manga side cover indeed. Yep, the ol' local Barnes & Noble bookstore sells manga but not as much as they used in the past...I see that they've got Vol. 25 & 26 of Gantz manga still shrinkwrapped for posterity (in Japan, it's Gantz Zero where the action's at these days).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Domino]

Good Crom, it's pictures like that that make me wish I sometimes lived in a bigger city. One bookcase could probably fit all the manga in this entire city.

I was shocked when I walked in and see how much manga the store has.

I'll be in FL in fall. Where is this? Need to check it out.

To answer this question the store is Chamblin Bookmine in Jacksonville, FL (the Westside part of town). Website is here. The Bookmine store I believe is one of the top ten bookstores in the country. Don't go to the Uptown location if you want manga (the Bookmine store is the place to be!). If you are into Western Comics across from the manga shelf is all the western comics trade paperbacks. The selection is huge just like the manga selection.

Man, if I happened on a manga shelf like that.... I'd explode from all the things I'd want to see if they have.

(although I'd prioritize and try to find Cyborg 009)

I didn't see Cyborg 009 on those shelves. The good news is that you can find some rare stuff hidden between the shelves so better start digging.

[KAI]

Watching Oniisama e... (lesbian badassery by Osamu Dezaki) and Please Save my Earth. Ahhh the 90's.

[EmperorIng]

I tricked my friends into watching M.D. Geist with me the other night.

Holy moly it was pretty damn great, in a terrible sort of way.

I will have to admit, though, that the soundtrack is incredibly kick-ass. Coupled with cool designs, good animation (at least in the first ep), and utter craziness, it was a good time, at least in retrospect.

[Domino]

I tricked my friends into watching M.D. Geist with me the other night.

Holy moly it was pretty damn great, in a terrible sort of way.

I will have to admit, though, that the soundtrack is incredibly kick-ass. Coupled with cool designs, good animation (at least in the first ep), and utter craziness, it was a good time, at least in retrospect.

I have the CD soundtracks of both MD Geist I and II and the DVDs. Now I wish I could get the MD Geist shirt that MD Geist creator Ohata wears.

Anyhoo I went back to the manga selection and pulled up this gem:



Done by Go Nagai for the American market. All color and awesomely detailed artwork. Story is crap. This is more like an artbook than anything else.

[EmperorIng]

I sort of want the DVDs myself, because I was genuinely entertained despite how incomprehensible MD Geist II is, and how bizarre and abrupt its ending is. The dub is hysterical. If I actually had any money right now, I'd probably pick up a few cheap anime dvds.

Go Nagai is always something. I still think my favorite Go Nagai piece is Black Lion, itself a completely what-the-fuck 40-minute OVA. I can only wonder what "Go Nagai for an American market" means. Heck, Devilman seems pretty American-focused to me!

[Raytrace]

Watching Oniisama e... (lesbian badassery by Osamu Dezaki) and Please Save my Earth. Ahhh the 90's.

is that by same artist as Versailles or is that face (the bottom right faces) just the classic 'romance' face?

[Raytrace]

I tricked my friends into watching M.D. Geist with me the other night.

Holy moly it was pretty damn great, in a terrible sort of way.

jesus that scene haha - not quite as badly amaze as Blacklion but gotta be up there, along with Mad Bull 34 and my personal favourite Cyber City Oedo 808 - although I actually full on/no irony like Cyber City Oedo 808 - art is beautiful.

[KAI]

is that by same artist as Versailles

Same team than Versalles, Ryoko Ikeda (original manga), Osamu Dezaki (Direction) and Akio Sugino (Character Design).

[Frenetic]

Naoki Urasawa's Happy! really grabbed me. I'm convinced he really does a lot of research and thinks deeply how to push and stretch conventional manga tropes, but still be faithful to them at the same time. Have fun tracing which character archetypes from Pluto, Monster, and 20th Century Boys had carried over from this lesser known series. I especially love the "evil" female characters...you just love to hate them! Read at your preferred scanlation site.

"The story is about a teenage heroine who embarks on a career as a professional tennis player to repay an enormous debt incurred by her brother to Yakuza loan sharks, with the threat that if she fails, they will force her into a life of prostitution at a soapland."

Cheers,
F

[Skykid]

^ Awesome, thanks for the recommend. After a short hiatus, I'm plowing through Planetes and the accompanying anime, but I'm always up for more Urawsawa what's that's done.

[BryanM]

Okay, I did another Manga Roulette kind of thing, so I've got some more reviews for you all.

In this set, Korea unfortunately underperformed compared to Japan. I have higher hopes for it in future roulettes, however.

Spoilers, I guess? Ah, who'm I kidding, you don't wanna ever read this clap-trap.



My Boyfriend is a Vampire

Ahhhhh... this one. This one....

For some reason, from the title, I had assumed there would be at least one female character. How young and naive I was.

Uh.. basically it's really, really, extraordinarily gay. In the opposite of a musclely Cho Aniki sort of way.

The protagonist is a super effeminate dude who, after becoming a vampire, also becomes a gurl. That reverts back to a boy. A boy full of newfound girly sexual feelings for men. Of whom he constantly agonizes over who to select. Before his uncontrollable sex-crazed girl form just runs down whoever.

For not really being in their target demographic, I read a frightful amount of this one before setting it aside.



The God of Highschool

Uh... I thought this one might have gods in it. That attend highschool. Lovecraftian gods maybe?

... really just trying to justify my choices here. I'm srsly wondering if the roulette would work better with a random number generator.

TGoH is a nonstop martial arts fighting shonen thing with magical Personas and fuck I hate it. Maybe without the personas, some of the appeal would have worked on me, but frankly the gay vampire manga is better. Which isn't saying much.

The most entertaining part about it is how idiosyncratic stories are. In this one, the ultimate, evil, martial art (taekwondo) was developed in North Korea. The ultimate, good, even betterest martial art (also taekwondo) was developed in South Korea.

As a footnote, I haven't had good exposure to Korean media. I hear their soaps are good, but it's hard to shake off D-Wars or that the best things I've seen from there were Volcano High and Rebirth.



High School DxD

Your typical cuddly demons+shonen fights+haremu. Not really exceptional, but hits all the checkboxes for what you expect from this sort of thing. Which means of course it's got a blockbuster anime adaption deal that'll get axed after one or two series. Life on the savanna marches on.



Addicted to Curry

It doesn't have endless tiresome battles - just frequent curry-cooking battles. The protagonist is the stock Lovable Pervert That Would Be In Federal Pound-You-In-The-Ass Prison In Real Life guy.

I of course read it to the end. Because it has boobs in it. I am truly an empty shell of a human being.

One feature I like about it is I strongly get the vibe the only reason this thing exists is because its writer wanted to advertise his favorite curry recipes.



Pantsu+Vampire

This is the one where the TV version is 10 minutes of staring at women wearing underwear from super stalker voyeur camera angles. Amusing to me was to hear how, when it aired in Japan, on the TV, they had to censor the pantsu with copious, unrealistic numbers of bats.

A lot of Internet People were very vocal about how "different" the two versions are. Had to investigate. Cliffnotes:

* More shonen battles in the manga.
* The hero actually participates in fights. Since he's more than just a potato here, it's slightly more feasible all these women he's unworthy of would want to put their vaginas inside of him.
* Some things make slightly more logical sense. The animu refused to have more than 2 interconnected episodes in a row. To the point of cutting many large centerpieces of a scenario.
* The characters are slightly dialed down a notch. By this I mean they're not always 100% ONE TRAIT ONE NOTE ALL THE TIME MAX VOLUME. It's more like 80% of the time.
* The main character comes across as slightly less of a horrible dick.

That said, I especially feel for the pitiable succubus character even moreso here. A real stage 5 clinger, despite all the road signs screaming give it up. This stuff is unhealthy to expose kids to: Spreading the disease of oneitis.

But in the end, I don't think it's terribly improved from the anime version. Filler is the death of many an animu, but this is the type of thing to get hit by it the least.


Coming up on Roulette Abridged:

Reviews of probably some of the abridged series's's I've seen already.
Tonnura San Manga
The World God Only Knows (It's not my fault it's in my tabs already somehow I have no power over this)
Some day in the distant future when it's localized, the Fujiko Mine spy thingy
Hopefully things more horrible than I imagined could ever exist but haven't selected yet

[Skykid]

Finished Planetes



Beautiful work. No other way to describe it. One of the most uplifting and unique sci-fi manga I've ever read. Full of life and positivity, it's as funny as it is thoughtful and inspiring. I'm only about four eps into the anime now and it's picking up, although I can't see it really managing to equal the manga's depth, since this is the work of an individual author through and through.

If you've not read it, do so. One very interesting thing to note: I don't think I've ever seen an artist's style become so drastically refined from the first chapter to the last. It's common for manga styles to mature over the course of a long work - even Otomo became far more dynamic along the way - but the only thing tying Planetes opening and ending styles together is the underlying warmth that Yukimura brings to everything. By around chapter 3, the art begins to go at light speed and doesn't relent. Interesting.

[Raytrace]

Drop that and watch Shingeki no Kyojin / Attack on Titan instead. It's great.

OK I agree - it IS incredible, im on episode 3 now, I usually don't like that type of setting either, but Attack On Titan is brilliant.

I'm actually watching THREE things which are on in Japan atm, which is pretty rare for me:

Attack On Titan
ace

Majestic Prince
very good - kinda Nadesico feel of it...

Valvrave
utter pure wtf - but enjoyable.

[xbl0x180]

Plans fell through on buying a place. It looks as if I will be RENTING a smaller joint for more money! Hahah. So, for sure, I can only stock on the most essential for this year: Versailles No Bara and Space Adventure Cobra.

I'm really tempted to get that Urasawa stuff, but not only will I NOT have more money... more importantly, I will NOT have the space for it. FML

[Domino]

Plans fell through on buying a place. It looks as if I will be RENTING a smaller joint for more money! Hahah. So, for sure, I can only stock on the most essential for this year: Versailles No Bara and Space Adventure Cobra.

I'm really tempted to get that Urasawa stuff, but not only will I NOT have more money... more importantly, I will NOT have the space for it. FML

It shouldn't cost too much to get both series. Part I is out for Roses of Versailles for $29.99 at Right Stuff and Part II is coming our shortly for the same price.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Watched Streets of Fire with my mom last night and realised that Sunabouzu (Desert Punk) refers to it in more ways than one. So the nineteen-eighties' violent family entertainment (Red Dawn and such) must have had a major influence on Usune Masatoshi. Not just Gun Frontier and Hokuto no Ken, then.