Just a little random post, not really related to manga at all, but about this blog.

So I was looking at my most viewed posts on this blog, and the top two most viewed posts were my reviews of Fruits Basket (Furuba) and Death Note, which I was not very surprised about, mostly because these are really popular manga. If you’re wondering, as of the time I’m writing this, Fruits Basket has had a total of 25549 views, and Death Note has 13738 views. So Fruits Basket has almost twice the number of views of Death Note. Maybe my demographic is mostly female?

Anyway, I was a bit surprised at the number #3 spot, Aishiteruze Baby, mostly because while I knew that it was licensed and a lot of people knew about it, I didn’t expect it to be as popular as say,Ichigo 100% (#4), Alice 19th (#5) Absolute Boyfriend (#7),  Hana Kimi (#8) and Kare Kano (#10).

Another surprise was Ichigo Channel, at  number 6, which isn’t even licensed…. although it was scanlated by a big name scanlator (now defunct) Shoujomagic, which might have boosted its popularity.

The last puzzle was that the number 9 spot went to that where I showed a new manga Blazer Drive (which I accidentally posted and referred to as Blaze Driver, my bad). Like, I didn’t even say much about it. I haven’t even read it myself Maybe I will later…

Anyway, I’ll be posting stuff after my last exam hopefully, and you won’t have to look at this kinda crap anymore

So, I recently joined the cult following of a certain novel/manga/anime franchise monster that is Suzumiya Haruhi… which admittingly, is a little bit late, considering the original light novel came out in 2003… but no matter.

The point is, it took publishing companies six years to realize this phenomenon and finally start publishing the light novel in English, despite the light novel being the source of the already English-licensed anime and manga. So now the light novel is being published by Little Brown Books and Yen Press, with two volumes out, the Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi (on which the anime and manga are mostly based on) and the Sigh of Suzumiya Haruhi.

I have obtained these volumes, and will be commencing the second one after doing some studying for finals. Let me tell you a little bit about the first volume, though.

The first volume of this manga is probably the most well-known, and is undoubtedly the main plot for the anime and manga series which both go by the same name; “The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi”.

The story is told from the perspective of a very cynical guy who is simply referred to as Kyon, no last name. Obviously, this is merely his nickname, but the author never does reveal to us what his real name actually is. Kyon is your ordinary high school freshman. On his first day of school, everyone is told to introduce themselves, which would seem rather uneventful, until the girl who sits behind him introduces herself:

“Haruhi Suzumiya. From East Middle school. I have no interest in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens, time travelers, sliders, or espers here, come join me. That is all.”

Later, Haruhi establishes the SOS Brigade after Kyon unwittingly inspires her to do so. Kyon is forced to join this crazy club and meets Mikuru Asahina, Yuki Nagato and Koizumi Itsuki, all of whom are not as ordinary as they appear.

So for those who have watched the anime, much of the narration comes directly from the first light novel, as well as the majority of the plot. Some of the episodes however, are condensed from the plotlines of the other novels. There’s also a manga, but I have yet to read it; it’s not really progressing in scanlation, and I would rather read the light novels anyway.

For those of you who want a preview of it before you buy, Baka-Tsuki has translations of the novels (in fact, they’re further along than the publishing companies). Although, I’m old fashioned that when I read novels, I’d rather them be hard copies. Perhaps I’ll check out Spice and Wolf next, we’ll see ^^

Stay tuned!

Taking a break from studying for exams, I decided to write a short (so much for short…) rant about one of my manga pet peeves… the #1 implies that I may do this more than once. Yep.It’s not going to be a completely well-written post, since it is a rant with me just spilling my guts out on this topic, but here it goes.

So today I’ll be addressing the issue of weak, pathetic, indecisive, stupid heroines, which unfortunately plagues many shoujo manga. It’s really too bad, because most shoujo manga is written by women, and I don’t understand why they would make their female leads completely cliche.

I’m sure you’ve seen these types of protaganists everywhere, even outside of manga. You know, the “damsels in distress” who can’t do anything but wait quietly for their prince charming/fairy godmother etc. to come and rescue them for danger. They have almost no redeeming traits, except for their “unrivaled beauty”.

Unfortunately, in manga, they try to make these “damsels in distress” seem more “real”. So, instead of being quiet, demure beauties waiting for their prince to come… we get these annoying, unusually energetic, loud-mouthed, average-looking girls crying out for someone to save them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that these girls should not have the spunk manga heroines do, in fact, I really like spunky, or edgy female leads: I mean, look at Hikari Hanazono from Special A, Sunako Nakahara from the Wallflower (Perfect Girl Evolution, or whatever name it goes by these days), and Haruhi Fujioka from Ouran High School Host Club. They are some of my favourite female leads with an edge.

But let’s look at the origin of these whiny female leads we often see (forgive me if it’s not the first of its kind, but it’s the first I’ve come across with the oldest date): Fushigi Yuugi.

Now I’m probably going to have some Yuu Watase fans screaming at me how this is a classic and blah blah blah … but let’s look at Miaka, our protaganist:

She’s very whiny, loud, isn’t smart academically or street-wise, is a complete glutton, has a complete one-track mind (I mean, come on. You’d leave everyone behind for your fantasy hero? Jeez) and has to be saved by her Celestial Warriors because she’s always getting raped (one of the plot points is that she can’t do whatever she’s supposed to do if she’s not virgin or something like that). Looks are subjective, maybe you might think she’s drop-dead gorgeous, but as far as manga females go, she’s pretty average. Don’t ask me to pull out examples, please, it’s been years since I’ve read the manga, and quite frankly, I’m not ready to traumatize myself reading through it again. So, you can either take my word for it, or read it and see for yourself.

So, have you read part of it yet? Does she make you want to tear your hair out? But wait! There’s more! For some reason, all of her Celestial Warriors are head over heels in love with her. That’s right. The character that is probably the most despised manga/anime character has her own frickin’ harem. We don’t know why anyone would fall for such an airhead, but they do. Good lord. Is there no justice in the world?

As zettaikareshii14 on Manga updates says: “The only thing that keeps me reading this series is ’cause I love it when Miaka gets severely injured.” Which I’ll say is a little awkward… but it really shows how much people have come to hate her.

Of course, since for some reason, this was a hugely popular manga at its time, it spawned a huge number of shoujo manga just like it.

Another trait that gets on my nerves about these girls is indecisiveness. While Miaka pretty much stuck to one guy named Tamahome, there’s also these girls who just can’t tell a guy to shove off… so they end up toying with other guys’ feelings who think they might have a chance with them.

Let’s look now at Hot Gimmick, another manga that pisses me off to no end. Our female lead is caught buying a pregnancy test for her sister, and this guy finds out. She doesn’t want him to tell, so he says she has to be his slave in return. First of all, why does it matter whether he tells? It’s about her sister, not her. Second, we find out two chapters later that her sister isn’t even pregnant. And yet, she still continues to be his slave. What’s the point? O_O

Now, when I say that she’s his slave… this isn’t like any other “slave” position, where the girl does the guy’s homework, and other menial tasks at school. This is a very abusive relationship: she gets raped, yelled at, is expected to attend to his every need in and outside of school… and in spite of all this, plus the fact that her initial reason for becoming his slave isn’t really applicable anymore… She just takes it all in stride. In fact, she even loves him. Along the way, she toys with her adopted brother’s feelings, who is always there to help her out every time she gets into a major conflict with this first guy, but the brother’s always duped for the abusive “master”. I believe there’s another guy who gets played as well, although I can’t quite remember.

And in the end? She’s dating the jerk. I mean, what?! There’s no character development, she’s still the meek little girl she was in the beginning and lets him push her around. And you know why there’s still people who enjoy this manga, despite all this? Because the male lead and others are “stunningly attractive”, and because of “all the drama”. Personally, drama that is caused by sexually and physically abusing a mindless twit who can’t even stand up for herself still doesn’t redeem this story. And honestly, “because the guy is hot” ? I don’t care if the guy is disgusting or  Duke Devlin according to Little Kuriboh, if he rapes someone, it doesn’t make the fact that he just raped a girl any more tolerable. Goodness.

Anyway… that’s all from me. I should really go study. Perhaps I should follow up this after exams with a Manga Pet Peeves #2: Hot guys raping girls are a-okay: Shinjo Mayu’s smut manga.

Kyousuke and Sopra

So, one of my new favourite manga Tena on S String (obviously, FMA’s still number one, but this definitely is up there) also happens to be a manga I’m proofreading for Manga-Heaven along with spOt. Let me introduce you to the main character of Tena on S String, Kyousuke Hibiki.

Kyousuke is a recent graduate of a music academy. While he was attending, he often had to work very hard to pay for his education, while many others who attended the academy had more than adequate financial support. Even after he graduates, it seems like his poverty radiates from him, whereever he goes. When he graduated, he managed to find affordable housing in an apartment, where he teaches piano. Even though he is mainly a piano instructor though, he tries to compose as well, although none of his creations have been particularly successful. In one chapter, he also plays the violin.

Kyousuke is a character of many extremes, and is noted to have an “erratic personality”. He can be a complete doormat, especially when Tena orders him around, but is also subject to random bouts of what he calls his “straight man act”, but does a complete 180 shortly afterward. This is also shown in a most recent chapter, where he watches Kabuki theater with Arun, a French aristocrat who also happens to be a tuner (and Tena’s rival, but he doesn’t know that) : He knows she’s lying about “being an ordinary tourist” by the way she acts, and accuses her of such, but this immediately dissolves and he tells her that he won’t question her anymore.

As someone who has been single for his whole life, he has a knack for doing household chores, such as taking care of Tena’s unique wardrobe, cleaning, grocery shopping and making notably delicious dango (a Japanese sweet).

For the most part however, he seems like a laidback, considerate guy, which is probably why …. well, find out what I mean by reading the manga ^^

EDIT: Tena on S String has been recently licensed by Yen Press, so go out and buy it!

This is a manga I read a while back… correction, this was by a Korean guy, so this is technically a Manhwa. It’s a fighting manga, so I doubt it’ll appear very appealing to the female crowd… even the guys in the manga aren’t pretty enough to make it that worth while.

I usually like taking a break from the Japanese stuff and reading some Korean stuff because it usually has some refreshing styles and stories. However…

Waste of my life. So bad that I give it a rating worse than Fushigi Yuugi.

This had a lot of promise: two guys, who seemingly have no relation to each other: one is a bad-ass street fighter Tuji Kang, the other is the top student of a prestigious high school, Woo-soo Choi. When Woo-soo gets into the middle of a situation where Tuji’s involved, they both get hit by a truck, and a scientist drags them, unconscious, to be an experiment of a teleportation device. However, it ends up switching the minds of the two people instead of them switching places…

I’m a big fan of body swaps, especially in the way that they did it: polar opposites. but after that, it just went downhill.

The hilarity of the nerd died down, and he pretty much becomes indistinguishable from the Tuji, the fighter, minus the punk attitude plus the masochistic attitude. The original Tuji just becomes a whiny punk.

They have no resolution to the fact that “Hey. they’re still in the opposite bodies”. What happens to Woo-soo’s reputation as top student? What about the scientists? What happens to the relationships with the girls? What the heck is up with the random plot twist the the academy of hell? Why are these guys so obsessed with beating each other up? How come they haven’t suffered from all the blood loss, bruising, and concussions from fighting too much?

There is a distinct lack of originality in the fight scenes. They are the epitome of shounen cliche: the good guys always have some random power-up that allow them to beat up guys that are supposed to have godly strength… the “standing up unconscious” was used twice… or the other guy gets pummelled…

Another thing: all this reference to “he’s a monster”… and all the sexist comments about women were kind of infuriating: that the dojo girl will never become the master because she’s a female, the passive and weak girls, the b*****s who “only like strong guys…. terrible.

The author lost his focus, and diverted to create a “wtf” ending. the characters are mainly static, except for the main character, who goes through pitiful “character development”… which hardly qualifies.

Don’t waste your time with this one. 4/10… failing grade. And that’s harsh, coming from me.

My goodness, has it been a while since I’ve wrote something. I was at camp for the summer, and was settling into my new school, the University of Waterloo. I just got this shiny new laptop into place, and thought, “Hey, why not write something on the blog?”.

I guess I’ll write about this new series I found called Stigmata. It’s a finished series, unfortunately only available for buying in Japan, so if you want to read it, you’re going to have to download it illegally *cough*. It was scanlated quite well by Cireus Scanlations, which is how I picked it up, because they do some good series there.

If you have read Angel Sanctuary by Kaori Yuki, I really think you’ll like this series. Well. I did, anyway. It’s about angels and demons and all that fancy-shmancy stuff too. Also. If you have read The Mortal Instruments series (City of Bones/Ashes/Glass), you will find that the main male character of Stigmata bears somewhat of a resemblance to the Shadow Hunters.

Anyway. The story takes place in an alternate world, where they have some sort of theocracy I guess. We start at the end of a Holy War, in which all sorts of chaos and demons wreaking havoc over the world. So, the Vatican, who are the people in charge, and also happen to be the head of the Catholic Church decides that “Ignorance is Bliss” and hides all information about the Holy War and the very existence of demons and the Stigmata, the acclaimed heros in the battle, who have an unbelievable amount of power and are given holy marks by God.

So ten years later, an organization formed by the Vatican, called RADEM, are making sure that the information they have stays secret: they exterminate demons and make sure that the general public is unaware of their operations. All the members of RADEM are priests, monks and nuns.

The story follows one of these nuns, Sister Rose, who is sent on a mission by RADEM to find someone named Father Gabriel Iota. However, she accidentally runs over a nameless shephard boy, and she is now suddenly indebted to him for nearly killing him.

I think if I said anymore, I would be giving away some important key points. The art is actually quite nice, and I found it to be quite interesting. It’s also not nearly as depressing as Angel Sanctuary, so you don’t have to find yourself stopping to take a breather because you might go slit your wrists because of it… (not that it ever happened to me… o.o) The only downside is that it may be a little hard to follow in places; you’ll see what I mean later.

I would probably give this series a 9/10. Now, I should actually get back to my homework. o.o

So I just read the most recent chapter of bleach, chapter 254.

Man these shounen jump manga-ka are milking their mangas for all their worth, aren’t they? Since Bleach is so popular already, they’ve decided to make the plot move as slow as humanly possible to prolong it.

Let’s sum up the chapter (spoilers ahead):

Ulquiorra discovers his “heart”. (how cheesy. Tite ruined a perfectly good character)
Renji, Rukia and Sado meet Yammi. He grows on them. a bit of new info about the espada emerges.
Halibel is about to finish Hitsugaya off.

So in a smaller nutshell, there are three scenes from three fights.

What the hell?! That was incredibly lame. And Ichigo gets so many power-ups that it’s stupid.

I almost want to give up on this manga. Perhaps I shall put it on hold for a few months until the chapters accumulate so that I can, you know, actually see a fight sequence from start to end.

Grr.

P.S. Kudos to anyone who can tell me what manga/anime my header is from.  If you know, comment below.

If any of you are Liar Game fans, and read the manga on the internet, perhaps you’ve heard about the “dispute” between Null and Project Liar Game.

“Dispute” is in quotes for a reason. Neither of the groups were in a fight. It was more like a war between leechers devoted to Null and leechers devoted to Project Liar Game. Oh, and the leechers who just wanted fast releases.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m a leecher too. I even leech for Liar Game.

But it seems that none of this drama would have happened if the “fans” hadn’t been waging this huge war.

It started with some devoted Null fans complaining to Project Liar Game (PLG), accusing them of “stealing” Null’s project. Then, some of the other fans started defending PLG, saying that PLG releases faster and that project-stealing isn’t that bad, after all, both groups are technically “stealing” from the manga-ka themselves.

While I’m sure that both groups of people started with good intentions, it eventually became a Null hate-fest and incurred discussions about why Null sucks and why PLG should continue Liar Game by themselves.

Of course, I’m not speaking about the entire population of people who commented on PLG’s website either.

Here’s my opinion: Some people have in their heads that scanlation groups are in it to please the readers, and that in order to “remain competitive”, they have to go faster.

In some groups, this is true. With at least 5 different groups on Shounen Jump mangas like Bleach and Naruto, if you’re not the first to release, your release probably will never get read, because online readers and fans will go for the fastest releases. Even I do. I don’t bother with HQ for SJ series simply cuz I don’t like them enough to want HQ scans. Not to say that some of those groups don’t do good jobs.

But for many high quality groups, such as Null and other “old-timer” groups, they don’t scanlate to appease peoples of the intarwebz. They scanlate because they like manga.

Scanlating manga is not a business, as many people would like to believe. It’s not a competition to see who can get the most downloads, the most views on your website, or the most traffic on your forum, although I won’t lie: as a scanlator myself, it is motivating to see people thank you for your work or see that people are actually looking at, or at least downloading what you’ve worked on.

Above all, the world of scanlation is a community. The origins of scanlating came from people who said, “Hey, I’ve got this manga in Japanese, do you want help me translate it so that we can read it?”

Some other people think that “without us fans, you wouldn’t be scanlating”, as if they were the whole reason for it. In some groups, this is true. But for the most part, scanlators would keep doing the thing they do, even if the only people who read the scans are themselves.

In the aftermath of it all, the translator for PLG has joined Null so that they can work together on Liar Game and that translator may work on another manga by the same author called “One outs”, which I’m quite excited for.

Anyway, that’s my rambling. Feel free to disagree with me, that’s just my opinion. But no flames about any of the groups, spam or just general messages of hate with no good reason. This is not for anyone to hate on any of the groups, but rather a discussion about the scanlation community in general. I just used the Liar Game issue as an example.

Tena

Okay, once again, shamelessly pushing manga from groups I work with This one’s called Tena on S String, which features this absolutely adorable little girl (who’s actually 15 o.O). No, I don’t have a loli fetish, before anyone asks.

In this manga, everyone has what is called a “Soul Score”. it’s basically the music of one’s life, ie song = life. When the song ends, you die. Sometimes some of the notes get discordant, so these people called “tuners” will come and fix those notes.

It was a discordant note that allowed Hibiki, a recent graduate of a music school, to see the Soul Scores of others (which usually only the “tuners” can see).

How did this happen? Well, he gets hit by a car. When he comes to, he can hear and actually see all these musical phrases wrapped around people and such.

So in jumps Tena, the girl in the picture. She is a “tuner” and she is the one who attempts to help Hibiki by removing and “tuning” the discordant note.

Oh, and did I mention, she wants to make him his pet?

Only one chapter of it is out right now; I must say that I enjoyed it very much. I mean, who wouldn’t want to read about a character like Tena? As an avid musician and music lover, I really took to this manga, so when Souldrake suggested starting this manga at Manga-Heaven, I jumped on the chance to proofread this stuff. It’s quite good! I suggest you give it a try; just go to their site and there is a direct download over there. Actually, we just found out that the manga is licensed, so downloads are available through IRC only.

Let me know what you think of it!

So, I suppose I could do another review…This time I’m going into the world of ecchi (well, sort of. The ecchi is actually kinda mild in this one).

As the title suggests, the manga is called DHA, written by Yuuki Rin and illustrated by Tanimura Marika. I guess the way I found this manga was through one of the scanlation groups I work with called Manga-Heaven, who scanlated this series. Unfortunately, this manga is not available in English except through scanlations.

So, our protaganist is Ai Shiratori, a girl (which is a little different than most ecchi, where the main character is a guy), who is very much in love with a boy named Hikaru, who is the purest boy you’ll ever meet. Seriously, it’s like he hasn’t reached puberty yet, no hormones, and well, angelic is the best word I can use to describe him.

Ai finds out one day from one of the archangels that Hikaru is in great danger: The seven sins (if you don’t read FMA: Greed, Gluttony, Lust, Wrath, Pride, Sloth and Envy) are trying to corrupt him with each of their “sin” in order to reincarnate Lucifer himself.

So, in order to save Hikaru from his impending doom, Ai has to…

Have sex with him.

“What?!” you yelp. “I thought you said that the ecchi was mild here!”

Without giving away the plot, just trust me when I say it is. This isn’t a hentai.

The art is cute, I will say that. The sins aren’t even all that scary-looking, and it does look quite shoujo-like. Personally, I thought that the plot would have worked better if the manga was at least three times as long (it’s only three volumes), but the length allows for a short, quick read if you’re looking for one. It has the ecchi that I think guys would like (don’t take me up on that though, I’m not a guy) but has that aspect of romance that is suitable for a female audience as well.

So, if you decide to read it, hopefully you’ll like it! If I have time later, maybe I’ll write about something seinen or maybe a manhwa.