Sakura of DOOM

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.

It's over! Wah! Though I was briefly confused despite rilina already having told me that a 21st Century Boys existed, and I couldn't really figure out if it was over or not. I blame the Japanese publisher. Usually there is a handy-dandy "Complete" kanji on the spine for completed series, and it wasn't on vol. 22, and when it listed the publishers' series, it didn't mark 20th Century Boys as complete.

Anyway.

( Series-destroying spoilers! )

I think my reactions to all the plot developments and twists in these five volumes (how did I read five volumes last night? I was going to stop at one, I swear...) can be summed up as: OMGWTFBBQSQUEE!!!!!!!!

I'd also like to note that this is the good kind of "OMGWTFBBQ?!" as opposed to the bad kind, which seems to be showing up on nearly all entries on the S3 finale of BSG (I don't even watch the show and I've noticied!).

( Spoilers like you wouldn't believe )

This is amazingly addictive. Usually I read manga in spurts; read one or two, forget about it for a month, read another three, forget about it for a month, rinse and repeat. I suspect that I will end up blazing through this in a couple of days.

Also, I though the first three volumes were cracktastic, but wow! Clearly the series will only get exponentially more cracktastic as it goes on.

( Spoilers )