Manga Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2024, Week 38]
Manga Questions, Recommendations, and Discussion Thread [2024, Week 38]
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).
I caught up with both Nan Hao & Shang Feng and The Saga of Tanya the Evil.
There's not much to write about the former, it's fun and I'm waiting for more. As for the latter, I have some more thoughts about the series. I like Tanya over all - it's not perfect but the issues I have aren't serious enough to affect my enjoyment in any significant way. They still exist though.
Writing wise it's pretty good. The fact story is happening in a discount version of the real world started to bother me a bit but more in a "this feels a bit lazy" kind of way (even if it makes sense). The more serious problem is the amount of plot armor encasing the main cast - there were multiple instance of important characters surviving attacks that pretty much pulverize anyone else. Things like that are fine in small doses but there's a too much of it here.
I also really like the historical chapters - parts set 40 years after the war, shown from a perspective of journalists trying to figure out the less known parts of the war, specifically things related to our main character and her exploits. Seeing them stumble over military secrets, people unwilling to talk in detail and dealing with the fog of history is super interesting.
Art is great! There are some fantastic spreads of chaos and destruction and a great back and forth between the normal art and "animal cartoon" segments. This makes it all the more jarring whenever backgrounds (or even whole panels) consist of photos with some filters thrown on top of them - these parts throw any art cohesion out of the window and just look bad compared to everything else. I understand why, I'm just not a fan of how they're used.
All in all, despite some minor issues I look forward to the rest of the story. It's a fun if uneven ride and I think I prefer the anime version a little more (Aoi Yuki helps a lot in that regard).
Sorry for the wall of text, I needed to dump this stuff out of my head to function properly.
the amount of plot armor encasing the main cast
This is one of those things that you can't unsee in a series once you notice it. For years, I have enjoyed playing the Dynasty Warriors games (ever since DW3). Those games are similar in the way that it will often have some kind of scenario in which a whole army is wiped out in some trap or ambush, but the general character leading that army comes out just fine, ready to fight another day.
Totally, I had the same issue with Attack on Titan as well. I understand that having a regular cast makes things easier but, as you said, once you notice it that's that. At least both series are fun enough things like this aren't enough to destroy the experience.
I am going to only talk about two series this week. One of them I mentioned last week as well, so I will start with that one.
Last week I recommended this series when I was only 5 chapters in. This week, I just finished volume 4 (chapter 24). My recommendation from last week holds up 100%. I have been really enjoying this series. It is such a nice, comfy, adult romance. In addition to the main pair, there is an interesting cast of side characters that I genuinely am invested in their stories as well.
One of the things I have really appreciated about this series is that, even though the main couple are in a lesbian relationship, it has literally never been a point of drama, or even commented on by any character in the series. It just feels perfectly natural and is accepted by everybody else in-universe, including older characters like parents and grandparents. I just really appreciate that the author didn't try to inject drama into an otherwise chill series in that way.
This has been on my to-read ever since the first season of the anime wrapped up. I finally dove in this past week and started working through it. I just finished up the second volume and have been enjoying it so far. Even just reading this far, I definitely sympathize with the complaints that @MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz and others had in the discussion threads for the anime. The artwork is really good, and that was not really translated to the animation at all.
Story-wise, the adaptation was pretty faithful so far. I have just gotten to the tournament arc in the story where the cast of characters begins to expand quite a bit though, so I am expecting that there might be more exposition that was cut for time in the anime through this section.
Meta:
Looks like Photon has started recognizing words in square brackets as tags, so I'm now inclined to use them.
My only complaint is with the way some tags are spelt.
Presumably,
DISCis short fordiscussion. If this is the case, can we just use the full spelling? TheWeek 38tag takes up 8 characters, which is not far offdiscussion's 10 characters.Arguments supporting my complaint: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/72593
Alright, I updated the sidebar a bit to reflect the new meta. Specifically,
- I changed up the tags a bit to match what I use on !anime@ani.social. Specifically, the previous tags were [ART] and [NEWS] and now they are [Art] and [News].
- I decided to leave the [RT!] tag since it is abbreviating multiple words, so the capitalization makes sense.
- I decided to deprecate and remove the [SL] tag since I don't think it has ever been used once in this community and was simply carried over from reddit.
Unrelated to tags, I also refreshed the related communities list.
Thanks for the work.
I propose replacing [RT!] with another tag. Right now, it's being used by to recommend people to read a manga. IMO it can be more general-purposed, and be used to tag posts in which people are asking for recommendations as well.
Also, "Read This!" doesn't make as much sense for anime, if we want a consistent tag for both communities.
The most straightforward replacement is [Recommendation], but it's long and a pain in the ass to type. Gotta check a thesaurus.
TIL tags are a thing in photon. That is super cool actually.
Happy to hear from others what their thoughts are on this.
Currently there is no requirement for tags in this community (so feel free to switch things up). The [DISC] convention has simply been carried over from the manga subreddit. For a while when I started this community, I was making all my posts without the [DISC] tag to try to effect change. However, it never really caught on and everybody else kept using [DISC], so I switched back. I don't see any reason that we have to keep the same convention as reddit, but there is always a lot of inertia in trying to change a community's culture.
The only issue I can think of is that in the world of super long light novel adaptation titles, you might run into character limits with the longer title that a different tag would have. I have run into character limits for a couple of series in the past and have had to edit down a title or two.
Look mom, I'm on
TVa screenshot!I've been using [DISC] as a carry on from reddit but I don't mind either way. I'll be happy to switch to whatever community decides on. Lets just put it in tag list on the sidebar when that happens.
Speaking of the sidebar - we already have shortened tags listed there. While they aren't particularly common at the moment should we also change how they're written? It would be nice if we kept things consistent. Something to think about @wjs018@ani.social.
If this is the case, can we just use the full spelling?
Ugh. After nearly ten years on /r/manga it's hard to change my habits. I understand why you would want that, but I'll fight your ways until the end of my days. 😝
Notable out of all I have read, I would say:
Nothing fancy, really. The premise is almost the same: girl isekai'd and showing off her cooking skills. The first one is way more comedy than the second, but I probably appreciate it a little less since the second one is more serious.
Regardless, some of the panels are pure comedy gold:
These sound great. If you told my teenage self that one of my favorite genres of media was going to be cooking when I got older, I would have thought that I was super lame. However, I now do a ton of cooking and I am a big fan of the genre.
That panel is basically the manga version of the Community meme:
Completed
Instant Regret - extremely short, at just a few chapters long (and just a few pages per chapter); well-received by this community too; highly recommend you to binge this if you haven't already done so
Picked-up
Monster Mira's Second Form Is Way Too Cute
Pretty much most readers' reaction:
That was definitely my reaction to Monster Mira. I also thought it was really cute that the evil doctor made Mira cute just because he didn't want her to get hurt anymore.