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

[oyceter]

Just a warning, Hana Yori Dango has the hero nearly raping the heroine in the first few vols., which is why I haven't read the whole thing yet. Other than that, it's amazingly popular and everyone I know loves it, but that made me chuck the thing across the room, and I haven't picked it up since.

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to reply to this, but Livejournal keeps telling me it's a nonexistent comment.

[marfisa.livejournal.com]

Here's what I was trying to say before--hopefully this time Livejournal will post it.

That's kind of why I compared Hana Yori Dango to Hot Gimmick. Frankly, I don't recall any specific near-rape incidents from the first few volumes involving Tsukasa, if that's who you mean. (I wouldn't actually call him the hero at that point--that term doesn't seem particularly apropos to me even by volume 10 or so, and he's been rehabilitated a lot by that point.) I do seem to vaguely recall Tsukushi's rich rival who'd been in love with Tsukasa since kindergarten unsuccessfully setting Tsukushi up to be date-raped by her half-German buddy, or something of the sort (or am I confusing this with a similar scene in Peach Girl?). The incident where a non-F4 mob literally ties Tsukushi to a car with ropes and drags her behind it around the campus because she refuses to transfer out and stop contaminating Eitoku Academy with her insolently plebeian presence was more indelibly engraved on my mind. That struck me as unquestionably the worst thing that had happened to her so far, since in that case she really was subjected to enough physical harm before Tsukasa showed up--and, for his own twisted reasons, put a stop to it--that in real life she would probably have been dead, or at least severely injured. Tsukasa's punishing the perpetrators of this attack by suspending them from the roof of the school and offering to let whichever ones Tsukushi wanted fall to their deaths stuck in my mind pretty unforgettably, too.

The level of violence, general abusiveness, and in your face political incorrectness, etc., in Boys Over Flowers/Hana Yori Dango eventually subsides somewhat by about volume 6 or 7. But when I was reading the early volumes of both that and Hot Gimmick I found myself trying to decide which heroine was in a worse position--the one who was now the sort-of object of affection of a guy who seemed more than willing to get downright homicidal toward anyone who wasn't part of his chosen circle of intimates, but appeared to be attracted to her out of some sort of semi-masochistic, sister-substitute-seeking impulse (i.e., Tsukushi)? Or the one who had the obsessive attention of a guy who at that point appeared to be some kind of sadist incapable of expressing liking or attraction for anyone except by perverse actions like psychologically enslaving and tormenting them (i.e., the one in Hot Gimmick)? It was only by virtue of repeated strategic interruptions and other improbable plot contrivances created by the manga-ka that Ryoji didn't actually rape Hatsumi (or whatever her name is) himself during the period when he was forcing her to let him use her for practice while he was working up to losing his virginity.