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Nov. 9th, 2010 11:39 amI have been reading a reasonable amount of manga and comics recently! (This year's list has already more than doubled last year's, which more than doubled 2008's. If this trend continues, by the time the year 2020 comes around I will be reading approximately enough volumes of graphic stuff that if it was piled up in a row it would reach the moon.)
20th Century Boys, Volume 11: ( Probably crypic spoilery comments! )
Ouran High School Host Club, Volumes 4-8: I think mostly what I have gotten out of these volumes - aside from a ton of enjoyment, obviously, because, I mean, it's Ouran - is that Kyouya was clearly the animator's favorite. They devoted whole extended episodes to Kyouya's Adventures In the Shopping Mall and Kyouya's Dramatic Backstory with Tamaki, both of which I was surprised to see did not actually get as much attention in the manga! I mean I am not really complaining about the animators' partiality, seeing as Kyouya is also totally my favorite. I did love the author's note where Bisco Hatori cheerfully explains that she and her assistants spend a lot of time imagining Kyouya in undignified situations to cheer themselves up. Kyouya trips and falls! HILARIOUS. Kyouya forgets his cell phone at home! THE FUNNIEST THING. I find this excellent and may adopt this method of entertaining myself in dull situations myself.
Conversely, Mori makes me laugh even more in the manga than he did in the anime. HE THOUGHT HE WAS THE MORAL ONE, GUYS. And when he's sleepy he gets bizarrely talkative! <3Mori<3 I also always forget how much I love the Kasanoda arc until I see it and then I start giggling all over again. I am pretty sure I was getting looks on the subway due to cackling.
I am almost halfway through the manga now! STRANGE TO THINK. And have covered I think just about everything that was animated, so it should be mostly new territory from here.
After School Nightmare, Volume 1: I grabbed this because I was in the library and running out of stuff to read on the subway for that day, and it was the first first-volume I saw that I remembered having vaguely heard of. I. Okay! So Mashiro is a boy from the waist up and a girl from the waist down, but NOBODY KNOWS and everyone thinks he's a boy, and he identifies as a boy and wants to be a boy except that now he's getting his period and everything's awkward. Then a mysterious teacher pulls him aside and tells him now he has to attend NIGHTMARE CLASS after school if he wants to graduate, in which everyone looks like their true (often-creepy; one's a pile of twisting hands, another a girl without a face or a heart) selves and compete against each other for self-knowledge, or something, which often involves painful dream-death. Kureha, one of the other girls in the class who's suffered lots of serious trauma, likes Mashiro because he's only half a boy and therefore doesn't trigger her issues; Mashiro is all "I WILL PROTECT YOU KUREHA," and they start dating. Except Sou, our resident playboy jerkface, has a creepy obsession with Mashiro and has therefore decided to make him be a girl by . . . making out with him? Mashiro DOES NOT APPROVE. (Neither Mashiro or Sou seem to consider the possibility that that just might make Sou or Mashiro dudes who make out with dudes, but this is I guess understandable as they are gender-confused Japanese teenagers.)
Basically I have no idea how I feel about any of this . . . but I may have to read more volumes to find out???
Bayou, Volume 1: Not actually manga! Also: GORGEOUS. Bayou (originally a webcomic) is the first volume of a story by Jeremy Love, set in Mississippi in 1933. Monsters live in the bayou, but only Lee, a sharecropper's daughter, knows it - and that's only because she's the one who had to go fish out Billy's body after he was lynched. But when Lee's white friend Lily gets taken by one of the monsters, and Lee's father is blamed, she has to venture into the bayou anyway to bring her back before it's too late.
The world of the bayou is incredibly rich and detailed and creepy, and, in the best tradition of Worlds Underground, most creepy of all in the way the dynamics below echo and grimly parody the dynamics above. But what really makes the story is fierce, determined, brave Lee; I'd follow her anywhere.
20th Century Boys, Volume 11: ( Probably crypic spoilery comments! )
Ouran High School Host Club, Volumes 4-8: I think mostly what I have gotten out of these volumes - aside from a ton of enjoyment, obviously, because, I mean, it's Ouran - is that Kyouya was clearly the animator's favorite. They devoted whole extended episodes to Kyouya's Adventures In the Shopping Mall and Kyouya's Dramatic Backstory with Tamaki, both of which I was surprised to see did not actually get as much attention in the manga! I mean I am not really complaining about the animators' partiality, seeing as Kyouya is also totally my favorite. I did love the author's note where Bisco Hatori cheerfully explains that she and her assistants spend a lot of time imagining Kyouya in undignified situations to cheer themselves up. Kyouya trips and falls! HILARIOUS. Kyouya forgets his cell phone at home! THE FUNNIEST THING. I find this excellent and may adopt this method of entertaining myself in dull situations myself.
Conversely, Mori makes me laugh even more in the manga than he did in the anime. HE THOUGHT HE WAS THE MORAL ONE, GUYS. And when he's sleepy he gets bizarrely talkative! <3Mori<3 I also always forget how much I love the Kasanoda arc until I see it and then I start giggling all over again. I am pretty sure I was getting looks on the subway due to cackling.
I am almost halfway through the manga now! STRANGE TO THINK. And have covered I think just about everything that was animated, so it should be mostly new territory from here.
After School Nightmare, Volume 1: I grabbed this because I was in the library and running out of stuff to read on the subway for that day, and it was the first first-volume I saw that I remembered having vaguely heard of. I. Okay! So Mashiro is a boy from the waist up and a girl from the waist down, but NOBODY KNOWS and everyone thinks he's a boy, and he identifies as a boy and wants to be a boy except that now he's getting his period and everything's awkward. Then a mysterious teacher pulls him aside and tells him now he has to attend NIGHTMARE CLASS after school if he wants to graduate, in which everyone looks like their true (often-creepy; one's a pile of twisting hands, another a girl without a face or a heart) selves and compete against each other for self-knowledge, or something, which often involves painful dream-death. Kureha, one of the other girls in the class who's suffered lots of serious trauma, likes Mashiro because he's only half a boy and therefore doesn't trigger her issues; Mashiro is all "I WILL PROTECT YOU KUREHA," and they start dating. Except Sou, our resident playboy jerkface, has a creepy obsession with Mashiro and has therefore decided to make him be a girl by . . . making out with him? Mashiro DOES NOT APPROVE. (Neither Mashiro or Sou seem to consider the possibility that that just might make Sou or Mashiro dudes who make out with dudes, but this is I guess understandable as they are gender-confused Japanese teenagers.)
Basically I have no idea how I feel about any of this . . . but I may have to read more volumes to find out???
Bayou, Volume 1: Not actually manga! Also: GORGEOUS. Bayou (originally a webcomic) is the first volume of a story by Jeremy Love, set in Mississippi in 1933. Monsters live in the bayou, but only Lee, a sharecropper's daughter, knows it - and that's only because she's the one who had to go fish out Billy's body after he was lynched. But when Lee's white friend Lily gets taken by one of the monsters, and Lee's father is blamed, she has to venture into the bayou anyway to bring her back before it's too late.
The world of the bayou is incredibly rich and detailed and creepy, and, in the best tradition of Worlds Underground, most creepy of all in the way the dynamics below echo and grimly parody the dynamics above. But what really makes the story is fierce, determined, brave Lee; I'd follow her anywhere.
