Nothing too interesting in manga these days
PostPosted:Thu Mar 29, 2012 1:36 am
Until New Prince of Tennis comes out sometime next week, all I got is Kuroko's Basketball holding down the fort. The Shonen Big 3 (OP, Bleach, Naruto) is currently in some kind of totally generic drag-a-thon limbo where it cannot be classified as good or bad. It's like some kind of manga purgatory until the next really good or really bad manga comes along.
Kuroko's Basketball, aka Ronja Rondo is my hero meets World of Warcraft, the story of the basketball point guard who cannot shoot. No doubt inspired by the real life success of Ronja Rondo guarding LeBron James, now Kuroko, the skinny guard who cannot shoot, is going to guard some center who ran through 3 guys and smashed the rim. I'm going with 50% chance that he draws an offensive foul (which is what happened when Ronja Rondo guarded LeBron), or that he'll use a new powerful cooldown that debuffs the enemy accuracy, though most of the boss characters seem to be immune to such effects (the last boss guy was immune to accuracy debuff, his 'zone' buff had precedence over debuffs). He also hasn't used his equivalent of Bloodlust (Mass Teleport, team cannot benefit from multiple Mass Teleports in the same game). And yes this is supposed to be basketball. In terms of craziness it's actually right around middle of pack, but Kuroko's Basket really broke new ground by applying MMORPG concepts to the sports genre. For example in the caption when the bad guy goes on the offense it actually says, "The boss awakens." They also enrage too, though no fire on the ground has been observed yet.
I went back and read One Outs and this gets my vote for the most ridiculous sports manga ever. It is crazy precisely because it claims to be real. It's not even just the fact that the main character is a pitcher who pitches a 70 MPH fastball that nobody can hit. Although you'd think major leaguers can hit a 70 MPH pitch even if it defied laws of physics if it's always the same pitch, but the real crazy part is that apparently this guy is leading a bunch of scrubs to the world series by promising them they'll get a lot of money if they win. The New York Yankees would like to have their money back if promising to overpaid a bunch of scrubs can get you the pennent. One Outs fail the Goku test, that is, a sports manga can always thought of as reasonable if you ask the question: "Can Goku pull this off?" If he can, it's still within the realm of possibility. However, not even Goku can manage his way with a bunch of scrubs to a pennent. This is also why I consider Last Inning more ridiculous than New Prince of Tennis, because again not even Goku can manage his way to a title by recruiting just a great catcher. One Outs also has one of the craziest quote ever when the enemy's team ace was asked to pitch on short rest, he replied, "I won't be in optimal shape tomorrow, but at least they won't score any runs." So are people supposed to score negative runs if he had full rest? It's up there with Saruno in Mr. Fullswing's "Baseball starts at the bottom of 9th and 3 outs" except that's supposed to be a joke and this is supposed to be serious. The strategy the main character's team used to beat their rival in the final series was to give up 150 runs in one game and apparently this makes the enemy too tired from hitting all these home runs and then they won the next 4 games. I mean seriously, it'd make more sense if they hired assassins to take out the enemy team.
On another note, I went to Kinokuniya Bookstore and they're still selling Neon Genesis Evangelion artbooks after 10 or whatever years it's been since the series ended. I almost bought one too, but I already bought 5 other ones (3XFate, Megaman, and Pixiv yearly album) so it'll have to wait for the next time. The Megaman artbook is in English (though there's basically no text, it's just art) and features art from around the world and is actually pretty good. I bought the Saber's special for Fate even though I hate Saber, because whoever drew her can really draw.
I also picked up Saint Seiya: Lost Canvas volume 22, which is the only volume out of the series I own. It took me like a few months to find it because apparently a lot of people thought exactly the same thing I did: Partita in her black armor on the back cover is just super cute. No, seriously, even if you know nothing about the series, it's worth buying a volume without having any idea what the heck is going on for the back cover, so volume 22 has been out of stock for a long time. Partita's story reads like something out of Metal Gear Solid and I'm not sure if she's a Triple or Quadruple Agent. Her whole presence is like some kind of self-satire on how ridiculous the world of Saint Seiya is. I mean you start with Tenma telling everyone how his mother was a great person blah blah blah and then she showed up looking more like Tenma's obligatory big sister romantic interest in a dating sim game (Partita is 22, Tenma is 15). It's interesting to note that she reverses the trend of the impossibly young female characters (i.e. Sasha/Saori is supposed to be 14, but looks more like 19), since she's 22 and looks more like 16.
For no apparent reason Hades apparently decided to revive someone he literally has no idea who she is and assigned her the Guardian of the Stars title. She's supposed to be the Owl of the 108 Demon Stars and then we found out she's really not part of the 108 Demon Stars but nobody besides Pandora, who does the housekeeping for the bad guys, actually knows who all the 108 Demon Stars are, so the whole conversation probably went like this:
Partita: "Lord Hades, I am the Owl of the 108 Demon Stars but I inexplicably died. Please bring me back so I can serve you again."
Hades: "I didn't know Owl was one of the 108 Demon Stars but then we do have this guy called the Frog, so I probably just forgot to recruit one of my 108 Demon Stars, so okay."
And of course since she's basically the strongest non major God/non Godslaying character the question is how did the heck did she ever get killed by some random grunts under Hades's command. I assume she's supposed to be the equivalent of a Valkyrie even though it's the wrong mythology.
Kuroko's Basketball, aka Ronja Rondo is my hero meets World of Warcraft, the story of the basketball point guard who cannot shoot. No doubt inspired by the real life success of Ronja Rondo guarding LeBron James, now Kuroko, the skinny guard who cannot shoot, is going to guard some center who ran through 3 guys and smashed the rim. I'm going with 50% chance that he draws an offensive foul (which is what happened when Ronja Rondo guarded LeBron), or that he'll use a new powerful cooldown that debuffs the enemy accuracy, though most of the boss characters seem to be immune to such effects (the last boss guy was immune to accuracy debuff, his 'zone' buff had precedence over debuffs). He also hasn't used his equivalent of Bloodlust (Mass Teleport, team cannot benefit from multiple Mass Teleports in the same game). And yes this is supposed to be basketball. In terms of craziness it's actually right around middle of pack, but Kuroko's Basket really broke new ground by applying MMORPG concepts to the sports genre. For example in the caption when the bad guy goes on the offense it actually says, "The boss awakens." They also enrage too, though no fire on the ground has been observed yet.
I went back and read One Outs and this gets my vote for the most ridiculous sports manga ever. It is crazy precisely because it claims to be real. It's not even just the fact that the main character is a pitcher who pitches a 70 MPH fastball that nobody can hit. Although you'd think major leaguers can hit a 70 MPH pitch even if it defied laws of physics if it's always the same pitch, but the real crazy part is that apparently this guy is leading a bunch of scrubs to the world series by promising them they'll get a lot of money if they win. The New York Yankees would like to have their money back if promising to overpaid a bunch of scrubs can get you the pennent. One Outs fail the Goku test, that is, a sports manga can always thought of as reasonable if you ask the question: "Can Goku pull this off?" If he can, it's still within the realm of possibility. However, not even Goku can manage his way with a bunch of scrubs to a pennent. This is also why I consider Last Inning more ridiculous than New Prince of Tennis, because again not even Goku can manage his way to a title by recruiting just a great catcher. One Outs also has one of the craziest quote ever when the enemy's team ace was asked to pitch on short rest, he replied, "I won't be in optimal shape tomorrow, but at least they won't score any runs." So are people supposed to score negative runs if he had full rest? It's up there with Saruno in Mr. Fullswing's "Baseball starts at the bottom of 9th and 3 outs" except that's supposed to be a joke and this is supposed to be serious. The strategy the main character's team used to beat their rival in the final series was to give up 150 runs in one game and apparently this makes the enemy too tired from hitting all these home runs and then they won the next 4 games. I mean seriously, it'd make more sense if they hired assassins to take out the enemy team.
On another note, I went to Kinokuniya Bookstore and they're still selling Neon Genesis Evangelion artbooks after 10 or whatever years it's been since the series ended. I almost bought one too, but I already bought 5 other ones (3XFate, Megaman, and Pixiv yearly album) so it'll have to wait for the next time. The Megaman artbook is in English (though there's basically no text, it's just art) and features art from around the world and is actually pretty good. I bought the Saber's special for Fate even though I hate Saber, because whoever drew her can really draw.
I also picked up Saint Seiya: Lost Canvas volume 22, which is the only volume out of the series I own. It took me like a few months to find it because apparently a lot of people thought exactly the same thing I did: Partita in her black armor on the back cover is just super cute. No, seriously, even if you know nothing about the series, it's worth buying a volume without having any idea what the heck is going on for the back cover, so volume 22 has been out of stock for a long time. Partita's story reads like something out of Metal Gear Solid and I'm not sure if she's a Triple or Quadruple Agent. Her whole presence is like some kind of self-satire on how ridiculous the world of Saint Seiya is. I mean you start with Tenma telling everyone how his mother was a great person blah blah blah and then she showed up looking more like Tenma's obligatory big sister romantic interest in a dating sim game (Partita is 22, Tenma is 15). It's interesting to note that she reverses the trend of the impossibly young female characters (i.e. Sasha/Saori is supposed to be 14, but looks more like 19), since she's 22 and looks more like 16.
For no apparent reason Hades apparently decided to revive someone he literally has no idea who she is and assigned her the Guardian of the Stars title. She's supposed to be the Owl of the 108 Demon Stars and then we found out she's really not part of the 108 Demon Stars but nobody besides Pandora, who does the housekeeping for the bad guys, actually knows who all the 108 Demon Stars are, so the whole conversation probably went like this:
Partita: "Lord Hades, I am the Owl of the 108 Demon Stars but I inexplicably died. Please bring me back so I can serve you again."
Hades: "I didn't know Owl was one of the 108 Demon Stars but then we do have this guy called the Frog, so I probably just forgot to recruit one of my 108 Demon Stars, so okay."
And of course since she's basically the strongest non major God/non Godslaying character the question is how did the heck did she ever get killed by some random grunts under Hades's command. I assume she's supposed to be the equivalent of a Valkyrie even though it's the wrong mythology.