Details vs. Flow In Manga Panels

Edited by The Davoo

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Ghost in the Shell – Franchise Overview

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Digibro Never Shuts Up Episode 5

This episode came out so well, I didn’t even have to edit it! Tonight, Brandon Tolentino joins me for a cultural exchange. He introduces me to the world of American comics, and I introduce him to the world of anime and manga! The irony that he’s Asian isn’t lost on me!

The whole episode is very focused, so I didn’t write a program (sorry ak). There is a point around 20 mins in where I spend 10 minutes talking about Akira though, so if that gets boring, just skip to 30 minutes in. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did!

It’s Not My Fault That I’m Not Popular!

I was attracted to this manga by my love of dark circles under the eyes of girls; but make no mistake: Kuroki Tomoko isn’t cute. If she were, this manga wouldn’t work. Sure, she’s probably attractive to some of us who read this, but that’s a statement about us in itself—that like her, we’re so desperate, we’d go for a girl like her. That’s the kind of person Tomoko is—she knows which boys are cute, but she’s so desperate that when she thinks someone might be interested in her, no matter what they look like, “it could probably work.”

This brand of relatable comedy makes the manga stand out in a world where, after the popularity of stuff like Welcome to the NHK and Genshiken, and then other things like Nogizaka Haruka and Ore no Imouto, stories about otaku and loners have become way too common and, for me, boring.

How To Make Your Physical-Copy Doujinshi Readable Without Learning Moon

[Also works with any Japanese manga, but doujinshi tend to be the ones that get bought in Japanese by people who don’t know Japanese.]

If you’re like me (god help you), then you like owning doujinshi—preferably ones that’ve been scanslated—but you can’t read Japanese, and it bothers you that you can’t actually read your physical copies of those doujinshi. Today I’ll be sharing my solution to this problem, which probably isn’t the best nor the most professional (and might be the most time-consuming), but anyone and their grandma can do it.

Manga Pages: Yumekui Merry chapters 1–3

Until I’ve passed the anime’s plot, I won’t be able to read Ushiki Yoshitaka‘s Yumekui Merry without thinking about its adaption. The anime disappointed me quite a bit, to the point that I ragequit near the end (I do plan to finish it sometime, though). The manga makes me happy and sad because it doesn’t suffer the same problems as the anime, which means it also shows how the anime could’ve been better.

Manga Pages: Soul Eater Not! chapter 1

I’m not dead! I’ll be slowing down, though; I was on a manga binge when I started this blog, doing a post every three days, so I’ll be cutting back significantly with two posts a month—still better than dead, right?

Ookubo Atsushi‘s Soul Eater is one of my favorite manga, but it’s no secret that it’s gone downhill since entering the third major arc. Anime Kritik theorized that Ookubo had generally stopped caring about his story, and before he could take another breath, Soul Eater Not! had been announced.

Way of the Reader: Magazines vs. Tankouban in the West

Like most American manga fans, I was introduced to the medium through tankouban; and also like most of them, the only other way I can read manga is through scanslations. Reading manga this way, one usually goes unaware of the magazines that series come from. This leads to an interesting difference in the way that manga is consumed as a whole, and it’s a difference I’m becoming familiar with as I progress in manga fandom.

 

Jump SQ!

 

Manga Pages: Franken Fran chapter 43

Alright! New Fran! Kigitsu Katsuhisa‘s Franken Fran is my favorite currently-running manga, and even though I said I don’t plan on blogging anything release-by-release, I’ll gladly post on Fran every month just for fun—forgive me if I don’t have much to say about it.

What a cute protagonista!

Art-chitecture: Taboo-Tattoo chapter one

These past 4 days, I’ve been searching unsuccessfully for new manga to read. I like action series with cute girls, so I looked for works in that vein, but time and again I was confronted by failures in illustrating action. Finally, I stumbled across Taboo-Tattoo by Shinjirou, an exciting new series that works to show exactly where all of the others failed.

 

I'll be using this fight from the first chapter as my sample.