Manga recs

[rachelmanija]

So, I recall that Comic Con frequently has dealers selling manga at reduced rates like 25% off. I see an opportunity to reduce the enormous amount I spend on manga. Other than Rurouni Kenshin, Blade of the Immortal, and Hikaru no Go, what series should I buy up that I don't already have? I have only read Her Majesty's Dog from Go!Comi, but I LOVED it and am interested in checking out their other series.

Off the top of my head, I already have all or most of what's been released of Fruits Basket, Naruto, X/1999. X-Day, Wish, Planetes, Saiyuki, Saiyuki Reload, Death Note, Planet Ladder, Demon Diary, Gravitation, Fullmetal Alchemist, Bleach, Chobits, Clover, Alice 19th, Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden, Mars, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, Paradise Kiss, Nana, His Majesty's Dog, Legal Drug, Dragon Head, DramaCon, Scott Pilgrim, Eternal Sabbath, and Absolute Boyfriend.

I have some of, but have not yet started reading or have only gotten a little way into Crimson Hero, Angel Sanctuary, Hana-Kimi, Beck, Tramps Like Us, Please Save My Earth, Monster, Ceres: Celestial Legend, and Hot Gimmick (I blame Mely for the last.)

I burned out on Fushigi Yuugi and Trigun.

The underage-looking kiddies in Shinobu Kokoro freaked me out, though I liked the snow spirit story.

Based on this, what should I stock up on?

Comments

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

I second Kare Kano, MeruPuri, Genshiken, Aishiteruze Baby, Telepathic Wanderers, Cantarella, Crossroads, Cipher, and Love Roma.


One of the guys in the TokyoPop booth at the New York Comic-Con was recommending Sorcerers and Secretaries (I think the author is Amy Kim Gantner) to people who liked Dramacon, and vice versa. I liked S & S (which is actually about a secretary/college student who's secretly writing a fantasy novel about a sorcerer betrayed by his dragonlike friend; meanwhile, the student/secretary's bookstore clerk ex-neighbor keeps trying to date her, but she thinks he's just a player--because that's how his cold-hearted buddy taught him to act in order to get girls), although I didn't think it was quite as good as Dramacon.


Incidentally, Dramacon writer/artist Svetlana Chmakova also does webcomics--"Chasing Rainbows" on Girlamatic (www.girlamatic.com) and "Night Silver" at Wirepop (www.wirepop.com). These are both pay sites, but I think you can still read something like the first 20 pages of "Night Silver" (which is an often tongue in cheek fantasy about the world's most inept young wannabe sorceress, among other things) for free on Wirepop. The latest installment of each comic is also free, but in the case of these two series (and a lot of the others, such as the slashy OniKimono on Wirepop), that basically just means the latest page. Chmakova also does the "Adventures of CG" comic in the teen magazine *CosmoGirl*. This is actually pretty interesting--the American title character starts out as an exchange student in Japan. You can read at least some of the earlier installments of "The Adventures of CG" on the *CosmoGirl* website. (Keep looking--the comics archive was pretty difficult to find the last time I checked out their site.)


In terms of OEL/global manga, I also liked Jen Lee Quick's Off*Beat, although it's more of a gay-themed teen psychological novel in manga form than the classic shonen ai-type romance the original PR would lead one to believe. Rachel Hartman's "Amy Unbounded" minicomics and "Belondweg Blossoming," the trade paperback which collects the latest story arc of them, aren't manga, but they're definitely worth a look anyway. "Amy Unbounded" is basically a rather cheerful fantasy about a ten-year-old medieval girl who discovers that her mother used to be an Amazon warrior from a foreign land and the nice bespectacled scholar who's doing a study of local folklore is a dragon in disguise. Hartman also does a webcomic, "The Name of the Toad," on Girlamatic. This strip is a sort of post-modern fractured fairy tale (complete with disapproving monkish narrator) about the adventures of Pau-Henoa, the wacky part-rabbit trickster god occasionally alluded to in "Amy Unbounded."


The Del Rey Manga Othello is about a girl with multiple personalities. She's usually a wimp who lets everyone else walk all over her, but when pushed too far, an alternate personality named Nana (which actually kind of reminds me of a more extreme version of Nana O. the punk rocker in the manga Nana--this may or may not be a coincidence on the manga-ka's part) takes over and kicks her tormentors' butts. It's a little like having both Nanas from Yazawa's Nana rolled into one person, except that the Othello heroine's meek baseline personality is much more of a submissive doormat than the rather high-maintenance-ly ditzy demon lord-invoking Nana K./Hachi.


I also like Guru Guru Pon Chan, an earlier manga by the Othello manga-ka, which is about a female dog who turns into a human girl when she licks a special bone invented by her wannabe mad scientist owner. (He was trying to create an invention which would enable dogs to talk.) Ponta the dog turned teenage girl falls in love with the Rei Kashino-lookalike teenage neighbor who saved her from being hit by a car when she was a puppy--and, amazingly, he eventually starts to feel the same way about her, even though by that time he knows that she's really a transformed Golden Retriever. (Manga, thy name is crack.)