The Shrine

Ever since HXH went into a hiatus and Twin Heroes 2 ended I ran out of the best and the worst manga I was reading, so now I'm in some kind of manga purgatory where nothing is ever good but nothing is spectucularly bad like Twin Heroes 2 or even a Prince of Tennis level where each week you've to look forward to how much lower the bar can be set. It's an indication of sad times when the manga I'm most looking forward to is Naruto. Here's what I'm currently reading, which you may or may not care...

Naruto - This gets the nod for the best manga (that I read) right now simply because it is making an effort to make something happen. Sure everything still revolves around fancy eye power or having even more clones, but at least every week it looks like something is actually happening. Presumably at the end of the Pain arc something is irrecovably changed one way or another. The fighting stuff actually looks decent too.

One Piece - How can OP loses to Naruto? Because nothing is happening in OP right now. I'm pretty convinced the whole Amazon Lily arc is just going to be unmitiigated disaster but the damage has somehow spread beyond just the arc itself. You have more pointless fighting with people who totally ignore any previously established power levels. Right now I think Luffy should have died about 100 times since the Amazon Lily arc but his death defying thing is so common now it's like it's not even worth being mentioned.

Bleach - Nothing ever happens here. At the start someone joked that their plan to hold Aizen for 'a short while' will probably last 1 real life year. Well it seems like that's wrong since 'a short while' obviously means more than 1 real life year. Bleach has mastered the art of consuming space without actually saying anything. The whole thing is just pure emptiness. It's not even good or bad. You read next week's manga and it'd be same as the one before: nothing actually happened.

Eyeshield 21 - The biggest highlight of ES21 was that there was a guy named Mr. Don with the title 'The man who controls everything'. But I can't find his picture and caption in a way small enough to put in the avatar screen. I'm pretty sure the president of the USA depicted in ES21 was supposed to be Obama, and he's a white guy in ES21. I think that also sums up how much the author knows about US and American Football in general.

I watched the Superbowl and realized like what's depicted in ES21 doesn't even make sense even if you had those super powers. If you had people who are as powerful as guys in Prince of Tennis or Captain Tsubasa the way they play tennis/soccer might actually make sense. But you'd never play American Football like the way they do in ES21 even if you got people who can go light speed (and actually beyond light speed now). The whole notion that you always got to run through this mythical defender, standing still, with some kind of super duper running technique is totally dumb. There's no way one defender staying still can stop a running back going at light speed. You'll simply just veer off another direction to start with. It's almost like guys in ES21 exert a zone of control that you cannot run around no matter.

Silent Sinners in Blue - This is a perfect example of start out with some kind of IP with a decent following and then completely ruining it in every way possible. I think the writer of this must have some kind of moon rabbit fetish because the whole story right now is about how moon rabbits totally own the #1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7th most powerful/popular character in the Touhou universe. Maybe the moon rabbit cult is bigger than I thought.

Fate Stay Night - On the opposite spectrum we have a good example of taking some kind of IP and making it better. It's not even clear to me why Typemoon would allow someone to change their story like the way the manga did, but it's way better than the original ever presented since the parallel universe approach in dating sims just doesn't even work in dating sims let alone something that's supposed to be coherent. The change to the story is needed to give characters like Archer and Ilya meaning since even in the original version their appearance are totally Deus Ex Machina.

The removal of Saber and Shirou from the spotlight now turns the story in the hands of Rin and Archer, the realist of the Fate universe as opposed to Shirou 'justice conquers all' Emiya. I always liked the Fate universe when Rin and Archer are in charge. They are fairly powerful character who gets no miracles to bail them out of a sticky situation, and both are prepared to resort to drastic measures to protect the world's peace instead of just yelling "Justice will prevail!" and get a 100X powerup like Shirou Emiya.

New mangas to read? BUTOFCOURSE!!!

Katekyo Hitman Reborn! --
Ok...it took every ounce of effort in my being to get past the first 100 episodes of this manga. The beginning is tireing, boring, annoying and repetitive...oh so repetitive. I thought I was going to effing kill someone if nothing happened. However, as the story progresses, it seems, so too does this mangas ability to captivate me. I was bummed when I caught up to the most recent episode because I now have to wait a week or two before anything new comes out. Definately checkitout though.

Air Gear! --
Ok fine...who wants to read a comic about kids rollerblading? I didn't...but it's cool...up until their stupid OBAMA thing came into play. However, recent development in the manga suggests it was just a shameless plug and we've seen the last of the new President in the episodes to come. Anyway, definately checkitout as well...killer babies kinda cool.

Rave --
I am currently reading this series...but I don't know how I feel about it yet. I haven't decided if I'm going to follow it once I've caught up the mangas.

Immortal Regis --
The last one I'm going to suggest. I don't think this one is weekly...could be monthly or bi-weekly...I'm too scewed up in my days of the week to remember when the last time I read this manga was. It's cool...there's nothing really to talk about. The series hasn't delved too far into anything yet as it is still young. But...there's definit potential for sucking one in.

AAAAAAAAAANYWAY...PAYCE!

Umm, hello?

I'm under the inklings of thought that this may be a pal of mine. I could be wrong and this could be someone else, but I heard word that he was into your crazy manga and I sent him a link to this post. Be gentle with him.

I follow half mainstream and half obscure stuff. I have never heard of any of the manga mentioned above but Chinese titles rarely resemble what their original Japanese title is. For example Eyeshield 21 is The Masked Light Speed Guy 21 so it is entirely possible I actually have at least heard of what he's talking but just not realizing it.

That reminds me, I also follow The Ravages of Time. It is consistently above average but the author has no talent drawing the 1 on 1 fights. Each time there's a 1 on 1 you need to read the caption to figure out who actually won.

I tried to watch the Air Gear anime, but it was pretty awful. Also, I found the fate stay/night was an awful series too. It was just the main character yelling "SABER!" (or SAYBA! if you wanna get all phonetic on me) for 20 minutes. I understand a good anime does not a manga make, but I had an excruciatingly hard time finishing fate stay/night, and I haven't been able to crack the 5th episode of air gear.

appologies all around...no posting etiquette. It has been a few years since I've joined a forum. I...am me. Yus the link you sent was clicked and commented on. Air Gear Anime = terrible (you can tell because they only made 16 episodes before it was cancelled I think) Air Gear Manga = good. Not great...but the characters are really well developped...and the artwork is effing phenomenal. It's the same author as Tenjou Tenge (which is also a decent manga to read if you're into fighters).

The Fate anime just sucked period because it tried to present the story like a dating sim. It's like 1/3rd was Saber's Arc, 1/3rd was Rin's arc, and 1/3rd was Sakura's arc, and they ended the story on Saber's arc. But for some reason Shirou Emiya stayed as the main character even though he's only the main character in Saber's arc. Archer was sort of the shadow main character but since they follow Saber's arc to the lettter he just died very early and they left you with some way too ambigious hint as to what his significance is (only one other guy calls Ilya the same way he does).

The manga was much better because it simply rearranged the stuff in a meaningful way that no longer resemble the original, but the original material is too incoherent to begin with so that's not a bad thing. Sometimes you got to blow a lot of things up to make a transition between medium, and this is a case where it's absolutely needed.

all these books pale in comparison to battling the spiders from mars......DANNY DUOSHADE I LOVE YOU!

I have no idea what the current America scene is like, but the Japanese manga front has been pretty garbage for a long time especially with OP sucking in the last 3 months.

twains.revenge wrote:Air Gear! --
Ok fine...who wants to read a comic about kids rollerblading? I didn't...but it's cool...up until their stupid OBAMA thing came into play. However, recent development in the manga suggests it was just a shameless plug and we've seen the last of the new President in the episodes to come. Anyway, definately checkitout as well...killer babies kinda cool.

Wow, stole that from Spiderman, or visa-versa. Either way, Obama issues of comics is a stupid idea. You got any cover art? I'd like to see how similar they are.

Also, I tried to watch the series, but it was an anime ABOUT ROLLERBLADING, so I got bored quickly.

Also, welcome. You've got mail.

Yay, somebody else that can dissect Don's posts with me.

http://www.onemanga.com/Air_Gear/156/12-13/

This is just a link to one of the pages of one episode...but the artwork is really nice. I reallly like his sti-zyle. lmao! Faaaaaak.

...I hate real life interjections that make no sense. SUPAHLAME!

twains.revenge wrote:appologies all around...no posting etiquette. It has been a few years since I've joined a forum. I...am me.

Well, hello then. I'm Zeus, the resident old guy. A good generation (ie. 5 years; if you go to high school at different times, there's basically a generation gap) older than everyone else here.....and the only one who insists on quality in the entertainment he chooses to consume :-)

We don't get too many noobs here without be referred to by someone else. Out of sheer curiousity, did you find this place on your own or do you know one of our current regulars?

Zeus wrote:We don't get too many noobs here without be referred to by someone else. Out of sheer curiousity, did you find this place on your own or do you know one of our current regulars?

bovine wrote:I'm under the inklings of thought that this may be a pal of mine. I could be wrong and this could be someone else, but I heard word that he was into your crazy manga and I sent him a link to this post. Be gentle with him.

As Zeus said, he's old, which means his short term memory is going.

...bovine...bovine told me to come here. I don't browse forums anymore mainly because I get addicted to them...AAAAAAANYWAY...quality entertainment? ERGO PROXY. yes...yessssssss!

Yeah, I really dig Ergo Proxy. One of the more original series out there, without being too complicated for its own good, and mostly with a serious tone about it.

I wish the anime series had a full 26-episode season. There was enough material there to complete a season, but they had to cram it into 13 episodes. Some of the explanation had to be found online.

Also, which one was the Obama episode on Air Gear?

Air gear with obama or I should say "jon omaha" are all the latest episodes. If you backtrack from the latest back maybe 5 and move forward from there you'll see...dumbdumbdumb.