What manga are you reading now?

Aion said:
When I glanced over the picture thread, I noticed your picture. You kind of look like the Brum comic guy... Then again, you also looked like the Geordie guy on Youtube who showed off all 100 or so books of his manga collection. At least he was proud of owning Death Note...
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I think it's "generic long haired loser look" for those of us who want to look a bit different, but at the same time have no sense of style and buy our clothes from Matalan.

I might be bothered if it didn't also happen to be Satoshi Kon's look as well.
 
Aion said:
ilmaestro said:
Dude, just take a trip into Birmingham city center and have a look in Nostalgia and FP.
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It's a rather long trip there and back with no car, no idea where I'm going and a terrible memory. :p Are there a lot of 'buy one, get one free!' offers in those stores in Brum, involving decent books?
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Nostalgia usually has something like 3-for-2 or 3-for-£15, and both Nostalgia and FP can have some random cheap stuff in my experience. Plus, it's more fun browsing books on an actual shelf imo. Only a train ride away!
 
Read the first volume of FMA. I liked it but felt the events were structured far better in the first anime. The manga simply opens up with three different missions, where as the anime mixed two of the mussions in with early story elements. In the anime the train hijacking story was used by Mustang as a way for Edward to be allowed to sit the State Alchemist exams, and the mission at the mines was given to Edward as his first proper mission. Seeing the same events occur just as ordinary missions, with no build-up in the manga took away from the experience a little.

It was still very good, just not up to the standard I expected. I didn't think the original anime changed so much early on, and for the better. I want to order more FMA volumes to read more before continuing with the failure of an adaptation that's currently airing, but TBD are taking forever to send my Claymore books. I'm not willing to spend more money with them now they have no CS until I'm happy with my Claymore order.
 
Aion, trust me, (although I'm sure you won't :D) the manga of FMA is far superior. I'm currently reading through it for the third time as I had a couple of the latest books to catch up on and thought I might as well read it all while I was at it, and it every time it amazes me how well the story is held together even when it looks like the series has completely lost its way.
 
Whether it holds a candle to the anime or not, I'm looking forward to reading the manga. The art is lovely, there's lots of humour and, of course, there's the dark quest Ed and Al have to restore what they lost for trying to revive the dead. No matter how the story differs, I'm sure it'll make for a great read, and an interesting one if I don't watch too much of the anime before getting into the manga.

Is it close to the ending yet, with something like 19 books released in English?

Once/if the Claymore books arrive, I'll order volumes 2-9. Then, when I'm done with Claymore for the time being, I'll switch to FMA. I'll then post my report. :D
 
Aion said:
Is it close to the ending yet, with something like 19 books released in English?
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There have been 22 Japanese volumes so far, with at least enough for another one from what's been serialized so far. I have no idea how many more chapters are left to be written, though, and haven't read volumes 20-22 yet so don't know how close it "feels" to being finished.
 
I wanted to like MPD Psycho but it's so gratuitously and sadistically violent, particularly towards women, that I just can't. The plot is all over the place as well.

Anyway, I finished up volume 15 of GTO. It was pretty good, although the arm wrestling match went on a bit. Two things about Tohru Fujisawa: he packs more words onto a page than any other mangaka ever, and he draws gorgeous women. Most of those in GTO are supposed to be 14 years old, but I ain't buying it.

I also read the first volume of Hiroki Endo's Tanpenshu (literally "short stories") and that was fantastic. Judging by the content of both this and Eden, not to mention the afterwords, the guy's clearly disturbed. But it makes for good, thought-provoking stories, so every cloud and all that.
 
ilmaestro said:
Aion said:
Is it close to the ending yet, with something like 19 books released in English?
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There have been 22 Japanese volumes so far, with at least enough for another one from what's been serialized so far. I have no idea how many more chapters are left to be written, though, and haven't read volumes 20-22 yet so don't know how close it "feels" to being finished.
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A few people suspect it will finish soon enough, but i personally couldn't say. I've read all the chapters released so far and if it where to end soon, i expect it will do so after its reached 100 chapters, not before. So i'd say anything after 5 more chapters(5 months).

On topic: I've read the majority of D Gray-man and have to say i'm thoroughly enjoying it. Also read all the chapters for History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi, one of which i wasn't sure about at first but found myself engrossed in.
 
Arbalest said:
ilmaestro said:
Aion said:
Is it close to the ending yet, with something like 19 books released in English?
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There have been 22 Japanese volumes so far, with at least enough for another one from what's been serialized so far. I have no idea how many more chapters are left to be written, though, and haven't read volumes 20-22 yet so don't know how close it "feels" to being finished.
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A few people suspect it will finish soon enough, but i personally couldn't say. I've read all the chapters released so far and if it where to end soon, i expect it will do so after its reached 100 chapters, not before. So i'd say anything after 5 more chapters(5 months).
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Yeah, right after I posted that I read the remaining volumes, as soon as I got back to it I thought "oh yeah, this does feel like we're moving into the end game" and then the inner jacket foreword to volume 21 says "This volume is the beginning of the final chapter (of sorts) of the series". Once again, the series manages to make another series of great, dramatic twists just when I thought that Mustang's attempt to overthrow Bradley was looking less and less plausible again, and then almost looked like it was going to be too easy ^^; Olivier has been probably my favorite "new" character as the series has gone on. For some reason it started to remind me (in terms of tone and atmosphere) of a very grand medieval fantasy epic in the vein of A Song of Ice and Fire once the story moved North, really gave a lot more fidelity to the world that has been built up so far, a feeling I didn't get when the story was moving between places before..
 
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Reading Astro Boy now (working my through the first five volumes). It's good to see where Tezuka started and most of the stories are fun, if a little simplistic and childish.
 
Claymore: 4-6

I re-read most of volume 3 and then moved onto reading some of my new volumes. I managed to get through quite a lot in one sitting.

The Teresa arc was as brilliant ever - I didn't want it to end. I felt it became a little rushed after Teresa killed humans, with some serious panel skipping occurring immeditatly after, and I wasn't keen how the finishing blows weren't shown during the 1 vs 4 battle, but I still loved it overall.

The head removal scene wasn't quite as powerful in the manga as it was in the anime, the lack of sound really taking away of it. I can't wait for my volume 1 DVDs to arrive next month. :)

Also, like I remembered, the Clare section - the present of the Claymore story - has improved a hell of a lot since the Teresa flashback. The 'boss' battles against the awakened beings are far, far, FAR more entertaining than the fights against the 'too weak' yoma at the start, and the post-Teresa section is the point where the high ranking Claymores and other good characters get introduced. Good ****.

I'll probably finish reading all 12 of my books by tomorrow.
 
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Aion said:
Claymore: 4-6

I re-read most of volume 3 and then moved onto reading some of my new volumes. I managed to get through quite a lot in one sitting.

The Teresa arc was as brilliant ever - I didn't want it to end. I felt it became a little rushed after Teresa killed humans, with some serious panel skipping occurring immeditatly after, and I wasn't keen how the finishing blows weren't shown during the 1 vs 4 battle, but I still loved it overall.

The head removal scene wasn't quite as powerful in the manga as it was in the anime, the lack of sound really taking away of it. I can't wait for my volume 1 DVDs to arrive next month. :)

Also, like I remembered, the Clare section - the present of the Claymore story - has improved a hell of a lot since the Teresa flashback. The 'boss' battles against the awakened beings are far, far, FAR more entertaining than the fights against the 'too weak' yoma at the start, and the post-Teresa section is the point where the high ranking Claymores and other good characters get introduced. Good ****.

I'll probably finish reading all 12 of my books by tomorrow.
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I've seen the first volume of the anime and I must confess it's been a long time since an anime got me this excited.

I'll try to get the manga this weekend and I already have the DVD on pre-order.
 
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You got excited over the first volume, when it only starts to get really good from episode five onwards?

The anime goes bad towards the end - the last two episodes - because Madhouse went for a filler ending. There are supposed to be other changes Madhouse made before the ending but Madhouse were very faithful up until the seventh volume at least.

I'm going to start reading volume seven just now. Once I get to volume ten I'll decide if I should order 13-14.
 
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