December posting: recs for starting out in manga

[oyceter]

For wychwood, who asked, "What would you recommend as a good starting point for someone interested in reading some manga? Coming from a Western comics background, mostly superheroes, some indies etc."

First, yay! I'm always glad when more people are thinking of getting into manga! So the following have what I tend to think of when I think about superhero comics; namely, a large cast of characters, a lot of plot, and a lot of action.

Manga by Urasawa Naoki, especially 20th Century Boys. 20th Century Boys is definitely my favorite of his works, even though it's not necessarily the most comprehensible... it's got hidden bases and shounen/boys' manga tropes and time skips and a ragtag group of people fighting against large forces, and it's incredibly fun. Monster is also good, although it's more of a thriller, and Pluto is Urasawa's take on a famous episode from Tezuka Osamu's Astro Boy. Pluto is very SF, with the protagonist for most of it being a police robot. These are actually the only three series of his I've read, and all of them are finished, which is nice.

Claymore by Yagi Norihiro is the rare shounen manga that has a nearly all female cast. The Claymores of the manga are basically a monster-human hybrid created to fight monsters, kind of like Slayers. It's a pretty dark series, with a lot of gore, but I find the worldbuilding really cool, especially as a kind of very, very twisted version of Buffy in which the Watchers are totally evil. I haven't caught up with it for a while, so I'm not sure how the past few volumes have been, and it is an unfinished series.

Fullmetal Alchemist by Arakawa Hiromu is really good. It's about two brothers, one of whom is a disembodied spirit residing in a suit of armor and the other being an alchemist who's lost an arm and a leg. All the body part loss happened when they were very young and tried to bring their mother back to life via alchemy, and the story starts with them trying to find a way to get Al's body back. I also haven't finished reading this, although the series is finished. I love this for the scope of the worldbuilding and the way it doesn't flinch from consequences of actions, and it actually talks about things like state militarization and genocide in a not-stupid way.

7 Seeds by Tamura Yumi is a post-apocalyptic story about the few survivors of humanity. It unfortunately hasn't been licensed, but it's being scanlated if you're okay with that. This is my new favorite series! Tamura is amazing at juggling a huge cast of characters, and this has a Hunger Games-esque part with teens getting pitted against each other, survival against giant insects, stories of what happens to people right before the apocalypse hits, and zany hijinks. It is the BEST. There are so many awesome characters, and Tamura regularly breaks my heart.

Okay, this is not an action manga whatsoever, but it's probably a pretty good gen thing if you aren't opposed to cute kids. Kiyohiko Azuma's Yotsuba& is a slice-of-life manga based on the exploits of 5-year-old Yotsuba, who does stuff like paint her hands blue or get confused by air conditioner. I find it incredibly charming without being twee, and it's one of the things I always read when I'm down because it invariably cheers me up.

Comments

[king_touchy]

Fullmetal Alchemist is amazing. I'm also very fond of Monster by Naoki Urasawa. From the wiki: "The story revolves around Kenzō Tenma, a Japanese surgeon living in Germany whose life enters turmoil after getting himself involved with Johan Liebert, one of his former patients who is revealed to be a dangerous psychopath."

It's like The Fugitive, a doctor on the run to prove his innocence, except the doctor is a Japanese man living in Dusseldorf, and the story takes place from 1986 into the '90s.

[oyceter]

It's always hard to pick among all the Urasawa series; he's so good! I think a lot of it depends on the genres you're drawn to.

[skygiants]

WHAT EXCELLENT RECOMMENDATIONS. I second all of them 100%.

[ursamajor]

Okay, 7 Seeds sounds *totally* up my alley, which has been all post-apocalyptic YA all the time lately, um. By scanlated, I take it that the place to find it in English for now would be something like mangareader dot net? Or is there a more "canonical" home for it, like the website of whomever is doing the scanlation?

(It has been a very "welcome to manga" Christmas for me; a giant box of books from moving-away friends showed up on my porch yesterday, and English copies of Not Love But Delicious Foods, Stargazing Dog, and Oishinbo: Japanese Cuisine were included. :) )

[oyceter]

YES READ 7 SEEDS YES READ IT!

ahem I got really sucked into it a couple of months ago and there are so few people to talk to re: the series!!! Especially since discussion gets really spoilery really fast!

I think I just got it off of Manga Traders, so I'm not sure if there's one team doing all the scanlations...

(Ooooo, I love food manga so much! Haven't read Oishinbo yet, but really loved Not Love But Delicious Foods.)

[lnhammer]

There's been four scanlation groups involved: a couple chapters were done by one group then dropped, and the series was picked up by a second which, alas, eventually died. They passed the torch (including several volumes of raws and scripts) to a third group, but in the interregnum a fourth started work. This fourth has been keeping ahead of the third, so Manga Traders has their versions -- which is a pity, as the third group does IMHO a slightly better job.

Why no, I am not nerdy trivia man. Why do you ask?

---L.

[vass]

Thanks for this. I'm just getting into manga too, and Fullmetal Alchemist is actually the first one I tried. I've read three volumes, and you just reminded me to put the fourth on reserve at the library.

[oyceter]

Yay, glad it was helpful!

[lnhammer]

One series I regularly recommend along with Fullmetal Alchemist is Kekkaishi, which doesn't have the political scope but does do the shonen magical adventure without being stupid about it -- including having good strong female characters. (Not coincidentally, both are by women.) In this case, the magic is based on traditional Japanese folklore rather than European alchemy.

---L.

[oyceter]

Oooo, I haven't tried Kekkaishi yet, thanks for the rec.

[lnhammer]

I suspect you'll like it. It applies a western fantasy sensibility to developing the magic system, systematically expanding the uses, and their implications, of cubical force fields, while sticking to Japanese lore for the characters and antagonists. Tokine, the girl next door, is awesome -- almost as awesome as Yoshimori's mother. There is, incidentally, remarkably little fanservice: in the first 20 volumes, there's exactly one bath scene plus a chorus line of tengu dressed as samba dancers (which almost makes sense in context).

The anime isn't bad, either, fwiw -- pretty faithful to the tone and plotting of the original, but stopping with the heartbreaking spoilers of volume 12, a third of the way through the manga.

Also, the mangaka loooooves architecture, especially elaborate traditional Japanese castles. And cubes. And three-point perspective. But especially castles.

---L.

[wychwood]

Thank you! This all sounds really good - "Pluto" in particular definitely sounds relevant to my interests :)

[oyceter]

Yay, hope you enjoy!