Manga Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2024, Week 37]
Manga Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2024, Week 37]
Another week in the books. Let's chat about manga in the general discussion thread! Feel free to use this thread for questions, comments, recommendations, etc.
Like normal, please be careful with spoilers. I wrote a guide about spoilers in case you need a refresher on how to handle them (also linked in the sidebar).
- DanDaDan - Decided to give this a try since the anime releases soon. Wow! That was some wild stuff. Lots of really beautiful double-page spreads, and good art in general. I really look forward to seeing this get animated.
- Blue Box - This is another one with an upcoming anime adaptation. It's an okay romance, but I think Kaguya-sama: Love is War and Skip and Loafer spoiled me. I put a bit of thought into what sets those apart, and I think the biggest part is seeing the perspectives of both sides of the relationship. I also like the art in those two just a little more. Blue Box has some serious same-face-syndrome between the two biggest female characters. I can only tell them apart by their hair! Overall it's pretty good though, and I'm only about 60 chapters in so maybe it improves.
- Witch Hat Atolier - Wow. The art in this one is incredible. I'm only 7 chapters in, and it's slow-going since I'm reading it in Japanese, but this is easily one of the most beautiful manga I've ever seen. I think it's even better-looking than DanDaDan.
- Boox Page - This one isn't a manga, but this week I picked up an e-reader. Wow. It's a huuuuge improvement over reading on my phone! The good: it runs Android, so I can install apps like Manga Plus to read manga conveniently, legally, and for free. I was also able to install some big Japanese manga apps like コミックDAYS using a VPN + the Aurora store. The 7" screen doesn't sound that much bigger than my 6" phone screen, but since it's almost precisely the same aspect ratio as a manga the difference is actually much much larger. Battery life is great of course, since it uses an e-paper display. Speaking of the e-paper display, it looks great, most of the time. It's a bit of a downer not having colored chapter covers but it maps the color to grayscale fairly well, even though it doesn't support a ton of different gray levels. The bad: it's stuck on Android 11, so I had to spoof another device to get my favorite offline Japanese-English dictionary (Yomiwa) installed. Fortunately none of the other apps I tried had any issues. Speaking of apps I tried, I installed 7 different manga reading apps developed by various US and JPN publishers. None of them supported the page turns buttons, and none of them had a setting to disable animations. E-paper displays do not like animations, and turning pages feels clunky as a result. I also tried one community-made manga app, Mihon. It supports my page turn buttons just fine and also allows me to disable animations. Very frustrating that once again buying media from the official source gives a worse experience than piracy would. The ugly: thankfully there isn't anything that falls into this category. Overall it's been a pretty good experience!
Make sure to check out !dandadan@ani.social where @GordonFreeman@ani.social posts manga chapter discussion threads and artwork. I imagine that activity over there will ramp up during the show's run as well.
About Witch Hat Atelier, I am cautiously letting myself get excited about the anime coming up next year. I haven't read the manga source, but both Gigguk and Mother's Basement recently put out episodes talking about how fantastic the manga is; comparable to Frieren or Dungeon Meshi.
Yeah, those videos are part of what made me want to read the manga. So far everything that Geoff has said about it has been completely true. Hard to say if I can say the same for Garnt, but that's likely just because he spent more time talking about the magic system and I'm only 7 chapters in.
Boox Page
I have the Boox Leaf and yeah, it's great. I mainly use it with Mihon and Bookwalker. I buy my manga volumes mainly on Kobo's webshop now and put them on my Komga server to read with Mihon's Komga extension.
Regarding the page turn button, if yours is anything like mine, it's just a volume rocker to Android. So, if the other apps don't support turning pages using the volume buttons, then yeah, it won't work.
E-Ink displays are clunky, but once you get over that, it's a much better experience then a phone or tablet imo.
Regarding the page turn button, if yours is anything like mine, it’s just a volume rocker to Android
It actually is configurable on the Boox page! You can set it to be a volume rocker, turn page buttons, or for scrolling. I guess I haven't tried setting it to scrolling to switch pages, but I doubt that would work either.
Would be nice to see a more advanced configuration utility like the steam deck has; there's no reason I shouldn't be able to push the button to simulate a swipe!
Witch Hat Atelier is not only a manga or a story for me. It's pure and unadulterated art. I absolutely love it.
It seems MangaPlus has started doing Oneshot translations. Cool stuff, but the translation of these seem off... It flows poorly (I had to double take so many sentences) and there are some weird quirks. It feels very MTL'y. No translator is credited so it probably is MTL. Sorry, "AI". Sad to see this is what my subscription money is going to.
Unfortunately, I expect this to happen more and more going forward. I suspect that the popular, long-running series will warrant the higher-quality, dedicated translators. However, the long tail of other series will start to be consumed by lightly edited MTL.
God I hope not. The latest oneshot was already hard to follow because of it. I'm all for officially reading, but this is insulting.
Four series I wanted to mention this week. Three that are excellent (so far) and one that is very much not excellent.
I picked up this series and have been enjoying it a lot (only ~5 chapters in). It is a pretty chill SOL focusing on a woman that breaks up with her girlfriend and moves out to a new place, but doesn't realize initially that her new landlord actually lives in the new place as a roommate. I absolutely plan on continuing this series. It has finished publishing, but the scanlations are still ongoing.
Discovered this series after it was posted in this community this past week and have immensely enjoyed it. It reminds me a lot of Horimiya, but so far has had a bit more focus on the younger siblings and less on the high school classmates. I fully expect this to be a super sweet series and I don't really want anything else from it.
I also picked up this series during the past week. It only has 4 chapters translated so far, but it has an anime adaptation announced for next year, so I thought I would check it out. I am happy to report that I am a fan and am looking forward to both more chapters as well as the upcoming anime.
Yes, that is a hell of a title. And honestly, that is what caught my eye when I saw this series in the recent updates list. In case you're from a non-metric part of the world, 160 km/h is ~100 mph, which is about as fast as a professional baseball pitcher throws fastballs. The part of his skill that is exceptional other than the speed is that he can throw potion bottles with pinpoint precision through the battlefield, directly into the mouths of his allies so that they can consume potions without the use of their hands.
This series is absolutely ridiculous, but not really in an inventive and fun way. Just in a way that you have probably seen any number of times in bad versions of this story before. The MC is kicked out of his party (well, survives attempted murder), starts a new party with the FMC and they are now super OP while the previous party falls apart and turns to crime. If you feel like you have seen a story like that before, you likely have.
Monthly in the Garden with My Landlord...the scanlations are still ongoing.
There's actually an official translation for this from Yen Press. I have the 1st volume of this in my backlog on Kobo (well, Komga, but you know, bought on Kobo), but haven't gotten to it yet.
Thanks for the info. I'll definitely check it out. I am sure that if a publisher ever saw this, they would lose it, but I find that discovering things is much easier on Mangadex than through the official apps/stores (probably because it is all in one place). Then, I will forget to follow up and look for the official TL.
Picked up
The Story of a Succubus Who Came to the Human World - looks like it's inspired by the succubus manga in My Dress-up Darling (or got referenced in it); real cute and wholesome
Making Progress on Yuri Before the Deadline - yet another yuri manga; nothing special, but I enjoyed it
yuri deadline spoiler
the way they got into a relationship was unexpectedly fast, to the point of it being a tonal shift; not that I dislike it though
Rock is a Lady's Modesty - the main characters' names are clearly inspired by Kaguya-sama; seeing how it goes
Delusional Teacher - teacher projects her perverted thoughts onto her students; funny enough for me
My Goddess Spurs Me On - more cute lesbians
Drawing: The Greatest Mangaka Becomes a Skilled "Martial Artist" in Another World - standard isekai; meh
Gal Can’t Be Kind to Otaku!? - yet another nerdy guy and flashy girl romcom, but this one differentiates itself by: 1. having two girls 2. one of said girls is a closet nerd
OtaGal spoiler
All progress so far hints at a threesome ending, which is nice
Dropped
Inaho-kun Is Supposed to Be a Fake Sweetheart - another trap romcom; humor / character / plot don't click for me
You inspired me to get caught up on Delusional Teacher. When I read the beginning of it a while back, I was worried that I would get tired of the joke as it kept going. However, I think that even though sensei remains absolutely hopeless, there is enough going on with the students' character development that it has remained interesting.
Gal Can’t Be Kind to Otaku!?
Based on the title alone, I thought you were talking about a different series I had read in the past, The Story of an Otaku and a Gyaru Falling in Love. Your recommendation looks more interesting than the series I had read.
Dropped
Inaho-kun Is Supposed to Be a Fake Sweetheart - another trap romcom; humor / character / plot don't click for me
Too late for me.
I've been on a holiday trip last week which means I finally had some time to dig into my backlog a bit. Here's some brief thoughts on what I managed to get into:
- Yotsuba And! / Yotsuba to! - I've been reading it on and off but had to put it down due to lack of time. I just went through the remaining 2/3rds of the series and caught up completely. It's an extremely adorable story and I love it with all of my being. It also made me look at myself and do some light self-discovery which is nice. Can't wait for more.
- Gyaru Cooking / Gal Gohan - I wasn't really feeling this one until chapters 13-14, when Fujiwara makes her first appearance (Nagisa's addition was even better). I think it was a decent series over all but didn't really resonate with me so I finished it more due to inertia rather than being seriously pulled in by the story. I never really got fully on board with Miku or Shinji as characters and only few of the gal jokes worked for me. I also wasn't too hot on the ending but eh, it went about as I expected.
- Nan Hao & Shang Feng - I've read a few random chapters of this one before but always planned to go back from the start some other time - well, the time has come. It's not all gold but even the mediocre chapters are pretty good and when a joke lands, it lands hard. It's an extremely stupid series, I love it! Mostly anyway... One thing I do not care for is the amount of sponsored chapters - I despise ads in general so calling this annoying would be an understatement. Can't have everything, I guess.
- The Saga of Tanya the Evil / Youjo Senki - I started this one shortly after the show ended, not sure why I stopped but whatever the reason I did it early enough that I forgot pretty much everything about this adaptation except for the goofy animal representation of all the countries. I like this version quite a lot, it captures both the humor and brutality of the story in a great way and provides some additional info about what's going on both in Tanya's head and behind the scenes. I want to read the original light novel as well someday though that will have to wait.
I'm still catching up with the latter two but I'm pretty happy with the results, especially since I spent most of my time resting away from the screen for a change. There's still A LOT of stuff to go through but any dent in a backlog is progress.
Yotsubato
Glad to see this one getting some attention! Lots of people (myself included) got into it because it's often recommended as a first manga for Japanese learners, but then I discovered that it's genuinely really funny! It really felt like the mangaka understood the chaos small children bring to the table.
Nan Hao & Shang Feng
Those sponsored segments were truly bizarre! I totally agree though, when those jokes hit they really hit. Lots of great visual gags.
I also learned about Yotsuba to when looking for something to practice with (still haven't touched the Japanese version ironically enough) but yeah, it's a great series even as a normal read. Quickly ended up among my favorites.
Nan Hao & Shang Feng feels like looking at my friends from school at times. I don't think their adventures were that crazy but many chapters made me go "yeah, that looks familiar". Is there anything similar from the female perspective? I'd be curious to see how that compares to real life experiences.
Yotsuba and Nan Hao are two series that I have always kind of been aware of, but haven't yet taken the dive to start reading. About the sponsored chapters, are they explicitly presented as an ad? A recent series that I have been following has some pretty obvious Cup Noodles product placement (it is officially licensed I believe) is "Wait 3 Minutes, Mugi-senpai".
Gyaru Cooking looks like it might be a prequel to Renge to Naruto just based on the cover. I haven't read it, but it looks like fun.
Yeah, sponsored chapters are completely explicit about what they are (here is an example if you'd like to check one). It's not a huge percentage of the overall series but it's something I'm rather allergic to and had to mention.
Bit late, but of notice I managed to finish (meaning: I remembered it existed) Gensou Gourmet.
It's an isekai SoL/food oriented story. The art is gorgeous, the fantasy food is to drool for, and the characters are very likeable.