Manga General

[Reverend Moon Immortal]

@Reverend_Moon Holy Land is a cool manga that will inspire you to work out and learn martial arts. Has some realistic and pseudo-realistic advice for real street fights. I don’t believe I’ve read his other work.

Reading this reminded me of the punch practice scene, at the time I was really inspired to do something similar. I think this quality does make it worth recommending, thanks @BillyONare for helping me reach a judgement. (Excluding Destroy and Revolution, the other two are Reminiscent of it(holyland), but their main focus is survival; they lack an urban setting)

[BillyONare]

I’ll try reading Usogui. I remember attempting to a couple years ago, but the scan was bad and the translation was horrible.

[anthony]

Survival (SAITO Takao)
(When ever my hands would get cold in winter I would remember this scene)

A tale of surviving(as the title suggests) a catastrophe that completely annihilates Japan and the rest of the world. Not only does the manga provide interesting survival tips intended with the average concrete-jungle dweller in mind to survive the real jungle, but also demonstrates the tenacity and grit that are needed to survive in a world destroyed.

The boys quest to find his family is consumed by a loneliness that is only relieved by brief encounters with fellow survivors. Many of the encounters are marked with misfortune, but the boy’s will to survive and find his family triumph over the tragedy of the world that envelopes many along his path.

If you are in the mood for heroic triumphs over nature and circumstance guided by a(mostly) unwavering will then this is just the manga for you.

I read all of this recently and had a very good time. Thanks for the recommendation. First thing I'll get out here, I didn't recognise the name of the author, but thought the thing looked really nice and was put together to a very high standard. Then about halfway through I looked him up.



It's the Golgo 13 guy. Which makes perfect sense after a moment's thought. Both works I believe are appealing to the same baseline fascination, which is an alternative world of high stakes and danger balanced out by constant opportunities to leverage ones self against obstacles and overcome. The survival story and the crime story I believe have the same root, which is a desire to be transported into a world of more immediate and direct problems and solutions. Both Survival and Golgo 13 are relatively grounded works, they enjoy employing a decently informed standard of realism. This is cool because it makes the action coherent and satisfying to follow. But it's not the appeal. The evolution of this kind of story is of course isekai, where the rules change from something resembling reality to something resembling video games, but the key appeal is still there. An alternate world with problem-solving processes we can recognise and follow.

Sorry I got interrupted while writing this post an hour ago so my line of thought is disrupted. I enjoy and recommend both manga.

[Guest]

Recommending World Is Mine. It's a story about two violent criminals tracing a destructive path through Japan and in parallel, a giant bear doing the same. It may sound strange but it works fantastically as a story. I think the primary quality of the manga is how human it's characters are. I've always felt that to some extent, Japanese media portrays humanity in a far truer light than (modern) Western media. In anime and manga, even if the main characters of the series are insanely different to ordinary people, there's a deep spark of humanity inside them that feels much more real than the plastic portrayals of characters in Western media. Getting back on track, I feel that Arai is a master of making humans out of the inhumane. The main characters are deeply twisted people and they have peculiar and particular neuroses which affect major and minor parts of their personality, and this is depicted in such a consistent way that they basically assert themselves in the world as real beings. It's a truly brilliant manga, and the characterization is second to none.

[anthony]

Sorry about neglecting this thread. I think it's very valuable to have a pile of interesting recommendations and little reviews from people you consider worth listening to. The longer this thread gets the more options you all have.

So... what have I looked at lately. Bio-Meat is a favourite, you know I like monsters and such. I've looked at a few zombie manga over time and one of them I really liked.



The one I liked was Not Fort of Apocalypse. This manga is shit. Do not read it. It's a stupid story about nothing that abandons its own premise almost immediately and becomes a retarded shitshow about nothing that seems embarrassed about its own existence and rushes to an end like it just wants to get out of your way. Bizarrely bad story. It looks fine enough. The artist and writer seem to collaborate beyond this, which seems like a waste of visual talent to me. Nothing outstanding or too remarkable, but I can at least say the guy drawing this can do his job to a professional standard.



Next one I didn't care too much for; 'I AM A HERO'. In which a man who looks like the chigyu meme with a bunch of neurotic inwardly directed complexes mentally tortures himself during the apocalyptic breakdown of society. I can't call this one incompetent. It's being what it's intended to be. I can't fault the realisation. But I could only read so much of this before losing interest. It's a giant nerd sperging out and hating himself refracted through the apocalypse. Will his life find resolution, order, and meaning through these new circumstances (like all neurotic spirals of self recrimination, no. This goes nowhere slowly as far as I can tell. But maybe you'll enjoy the ride more than I did).

Okay so what did I like?



I've looked around, and it really does peak here.

If you've heard of this, you probably heard of the anime. And you probably heard that it's completely fucking retarded.



And maybe you saw this image/scene.

Is it retarded? Yes and no. It's very "retarded" in the sense that its appealing to some very base tastes in crudely simple and direct way. So simple that it doesn't offend or bother me. There are girls in this thing and they have big retarded colourful hair and giant tits and short skirts. They are constantly finding themselves in bizarre poses and states of semi-undress. This is not a surprise this thing springs on you. It's the selling point. So if you're looking you have no good reason to be offended.

Now why I am offended, is that the selling point of this thing is the girls, and they do so little let you know how much serious work went into it beyond that. If I'm interested in the other parts, how will I know to look here? I knew about this manga for years before I read it and I feel stupid for putting it off now. Because it's great.

This manga is not really "retarded". It has a wide and stable base appeal in retardation. It has the half naked girls in distress on the cover. Under that it's an autistic survival story in the vein of Saito's Survival and Bio-Meat made by a man who clearly adores George Romero's work, has seen and thought about a mountain of horror/survival media, and wants to make what we might call a fan work in that vein, but with what strikes me as a healthy respect for the past works and driving vision of his own to make it work. He's not playing on or riffing on past works, he's just working in a field with history. He's not a fan in the sense his work is a retarded fawning orbiting work that only makes sense and has any appeal if you're a retarded faggot fan of the original works. He's a fan in the sense he clearly likes and appreciates certain pieces of old media a lot and is trying to capture and channel what he liked in them.

A truly retarded work we might say is something like 'The Walking Dead' (which also started as a comic and got a tv show), in which nothing that happens makes much sense, events are devoid of any kind of material gravity and stuff just happens like a retarded soap opera. I get the impression this manga's creator (Daisuke Sato) really hates that stuff in horror media, and really loves things like Romero's social breakdown and resistance sequences.

Compare:




"The entire US Military all died at once because they just did. Fuck you this is just stuff we have to get out of the way to get to our frontier soap opera story."




While George Romero wants to show you exactly what's going on and why this situation is complicated. Sorry about the gorey thumbnail. The latter scene is far more interesting. You can actually follow the action. A situation is unfolding. Events lead into each other. Far more cinematic and far more pleasing to an autistic male mind. Do you understand what I mean when I say I believe Sato hated the former kind of scene and loved the latter? Highschool of the Dead is like a Romero film. Character-driven, but it doesn't compromise its action to put its characters where it needs them. The challenge is in creating coherent action that facilitates a character-story. And that's something I believe he did incredibly well. Better than any other post-romero "zombie" media I can think of.

I don't really like saying "zombie" like it's a genre or goal, but it's a broadly similar field in intentions. I understand different works have different goals, so I can't call every other work inferior. But what this work is doing is very interesting and not actually that common. And I think it's probably what a lot of "zombie" people really love and want out of this stuff but can't pin down.

So how is the thing? It's a methodical action and horror story about teenagers surviving a sort of George Romero scenario in which the dead are rising and eating people and they have to think, deal with each other and other people, and fight to survive. The manga looks very visually extreme in a few key elements. It's very violent, the women/girls are all designed in a very over the top way, but I wouldn't call it overwhelming. "Extreme" is the word. Amplified by the full-colour release, which I read. There's also a black and white run if you prefer that. Or the anime of course (also in colour, of course). Look at the detail on these guns. There were clearly fans working on this.



I happened to get the colour release when I looked it up and read it. Why not? Something different. Feels like an appropriate match for how the characters look. But if you prefer typical manga style here's how that looks.



I enjoy messing with my media and perhaps disrespecting creative intentions now and then for a more interesting time. If you're interested choose for yourself what looks more interesting and readable.




And if you're an anime person, the whole thing is on youtube for whatever reason. Have fun. You can check that very easily and the dub is kind of amusing.

Now, the anime was just 26 episodes of tv but was able to cover most of the story. It was able to do that because... the author died after 7 volumes. And they discontinued the series.

This manga had a great run, it was like a more fleshed out and expanded opening to a George Romero zombie movie that didn't have to fuss with film budgets and shooting difficulties. But it's clear that what we got was only a kind of extended opening act and there was far more ambition beyond there. Large plotlines set up, characters established but yet to act, the fate of the world up in the air. There was a world of this stuff waiting to be told. And then the author had a heart attack.

It's sad stuff. I think this work can at best be a cult classic now, but if it was really allowed to come into its prime I think it could have become a global shaper of culture quite easily. 

While looking into this stuff to get my images for this post I found another zombie manga. This one completed. Don't know if it looks promising but it's something to do. Maybe I'll report back soon with my thoughts on Infection.



Promising first page if you ask me.

[anthony]

While looking into this stuff to get my images for this post I found another zombie manga. This one completed. Don't know if it looks promising but it's something to do. Maybe I'll report back soon with my thoughts on Infection.



Promising first page if you ask me.

Update. This is kind of awful but it's passing time while I don't feel like doing much else and I always enjoy watching third worlders argue in the comments under these things.



Also the translator joke pages are funny so far when they've done them. I enjoy these details a work picks up as it passes through the internet fan presentation filter.

This work is far more genuinely base than Highschool of the dead. It's trashy, unoriginal, ugly, pointless, but occasionally funny. Maybe I'm getting dumber or stranger, I laugh at Japanese humour more now. There's a running joke of a girl who had her skirt torn off by a zombie at the start. She couldn't find satisfying replacement clothing so she's walking around with her ass exposed. I'm finding that really funny. The guys making this clearly like drawing girls' asses. Whatever, people are into what they're into. They've also drawn some of the most grotesquely ugly zombies I've ever seen. Not in an interesting way, feels more like abusing disgust reactions for extreme shock value. Like something they only intended to do to make an impact at the start but now they're stuck with it. I'm meant to be having simple fun apparently, but we also have to look at that now. Feels kind of absurd to say a horror monster is too ugly and unpleasant to look at, but it's where we're at. I don't really think I'm meant to be scared or revolted by this thing, so it just seems like a glaring weakness in the work that they introduced to get one shocking page.

With those two above points I probably make this sound a lot more interesting than it actually is. Above all else it somehow manages to be really boring. I quit at chapter 16. This thing can't hold my attention at all.

Also today I remembered something else. Bucket List of the Dead. This is stupid and boring, but successful.



Has an anime and a live action tv adaptation. Neither interest me. It's just a kind of novel nothing story about a miserable wagecuck who starts enjoying life after the world ends and goes on a retarded shonen adventure in a largely emptied out Japan. I don't see too much of interest that can come out in this premise.

And that's it for zombie manga. Actually I remembered one more. Shit.

There's a Resident Evil tie-in manga that's actually halfway interesting. most of the more game-connected ones are bad. The western oriented ones are particularly awful.



Someone got paid to draw this. Look at Leon's body. Just look at all of it. American Pop Media is almost incomprehensibly bad.

But anyway, there's a Japanese manga that's a kind of loose prequel to Resident Evil 6 called Resident Evil: The Marhawa Desire. It's about weird zombie stuff happening in Southeast Asia. I read the whole thing, which is more than I can say for a lot of stuff.



Compare the design and execution here to the above. Incredible. America might as well not have a comics industry. Anyway this particular story is very straight in a way that I like. it's a horror mystery story that escalates towards action and weirder and more extreme events. Barely connected to Resident Evil. Just a weird, solid horror story. The strangeness of the premise and the miscellaneous asia setting bring to mind eccentric Italian horror in a good way. It feels more like Fulci's Zombi 3 than Resident Evil. There are more resident evil manga and comics beyond this. The ones that more directly tie into the games bore me. The western ones are comically bad. A couple of weirder looking manga I haven't read may be of interest.

Okay now I think I'm done with zombie manga.

[Guest]

I quite liked High school of the dead as well.

[anthony]

I often think about how little there is to recommend in relation to 'zombies' considering how big a cultural sensation they supposedly were. As an addendum to my last thing, zombie manga and awful western ones, let me post about a western comic in here for some further compare and contrast. Don't worry, there's a real manga recommendation I have for you all soon too.

No. We are not going to talk about 'The Walking Dead'. That's so big a phenomena it deserves its own thread eventually. What we're going to look at is Image Comics' '68.



Pop culture zombies are old. Night of the Living Dead came out in the 60s. 1968 specifically. '68 is a period story. The living dead are rising all over the planet to raise hell and consume the living. American soldiers fighting the Vietnam War are now caught in this, as are their loved ones back home. This is a comic about zombies attacking GIs in the Jungle, and Civil Rights Activists in America. Yes, that is kind of retarded and kind of shallow, but what the hell else do American comics have to show for the last 20 years?



As far as comic media goes it's readable. I am not viscerally repulsed by how it looks. It's in colour, and perhaps lacks in fine detail and distinct character compared to what we expect from great manga, a kind of better leaning stock American comic look. This is fine to me. It's at the very least holding its own on this front. The lack of fine attention to detail kind of hurts in finer military details especially. Guns look kind of like forms of guns. But I also found the characters rather lacking. The stock American comic look is really bad for conveying any kind of feeling. The affected pseudo-realism is boring. Faces are too full of incidental detail to become clear and usable expressions like the interchangeable character-masks of manga. I just never found myself really grabbed by the particular look of any particular thing or character while reading this.

What this does have, are ideas and scenarios that are interesting enough to carry it along.



These covers are the closest we get to interesting, but most are some variation on 60s thing if he zombie. The most striking image in the whole thing is 'Jungle Jim'. Don't you want to see what this guy is up to? He's HUNK of the Jungle. That's fucking awesome.



How do you like this establishing shot of a Firebase? Sure, this is no Miura. There's no insane detail we can marvel at. The colours don't do much for the presentation. It's a page that just gets the job done. But it really adequately convey the idea of a firebase. And aren't these things just cool and fascinating? They have so much going on, and the possibilities that get running in my head looking at this place make me want to keep reading.



As for the writing, and presentation of action and character interactions scene by scene, again, fine. Page layouts are stock. It's a western comic, what else could we expect? Writing is solid genre shit. Which for a western comic means actually pretty good. If this were some random bullshit movie I wouldn't really think anything of it either way.

Stock is the word all over. '68 is a work perfectly adequate in its assembly. Meaning it lives or dies on its scenario or premise. And again, the premise is going back to the original zombie era of 1968 and actually having some fun with it. Zombies in the jungle. GIs fighting zombies. Zombies attacking Jane Fonda. Zombies attacking quaint 1968 George Romero towns. If I'm in the right kind of mood that gets a look. That passes some time when i don't feel like I can do anything worthwhile.

They made a solid number of these things. Some of the guys could draw pretty well. Some look more like the shit kind of western comic art. Some of these guys have pretty novel ideas, some feel like reading filler arcs in a story with no main arc. Okay actually hold that thought, I'm going to look at the credit pages of each part of this. Yeah, they all have the same writer, while he's worked with three different guys doing the main visual work. One of them produced work I consider consistently bad, the other main one is fine, while the guy who drew the Bullitt cover I consider actually good.

Kind of surreal how the look of a story is treated as incidental. You have a writer and he gets an artist to do the art for however long, then some other guy comes in and the thing just looks different now. But of course the writing in something like this is incidental too. So I suppose that's how we get here.

A few characters keep coming up over time, and there's a broad trajectory of a plot that can be traced over the many stories, but this isn't really that kind of a work. They're just doing stuff, then they get a deal to do more so a couple more stories come, and they just keep adding on if they get the chance, and eventually they couldn't anymore. The writer apparently hasn't done too much else, so shame for him I guess. This stuff isn't incomplete, it just stopped.



Here's what America has to show against the selection offered by Japan. '68 is pretty much a collection of printed B-movies of about the spread in quality you'd expect from a bunch of B-movies. Only on account of the state of western comics being so catastrophically bad on the whole do I remember this thing at all.

America has '68, and it has The Walking Dead. That's the one we really ought to talk about at length, but it's so much more than a comic so it really goes beyond the scope of this thread. Look forward to The Walking Dead Thread. Consider this post an assurance that that's coming. That and all the other stuff I owe you.

[Sakana]

I’ll try reading Usogui. I remember attempting to a couple years ago, but the scan was bad and the translation was horrible.

Usogui was re-scanned by a very autistic detail-oriented group (example of this: they spent hours working on a single SFX in a panel due to it being a clue for a plot twist later in the arc). I’d recommend rereading it if you haven’t already.

For those of you who don’t know much about Usogui, it’s a gambling manga about Ubermenschen trying to take control of the world through controlling a secret organization that regulates illegal gambling. I think Toshio Sato, the author of the series, is attempting to discuss how gambling is an abstraction of violence (you see a very similar mindset to battles and gambles in the series; they exist as clashes of wills which often run parallel to and influence the outcomes of each other). I’d say you should read it, if for nothing else just for the art.