Osamu Tezuka is known for being the “father of manga.” He’s famous for creating manga such as Astro Boy and Ribon no Kishi. One of his lesser known works, however, is a manga about the life of Buddha.
Category: Manga
Another one of the manga that I got from Broccoli Books was “Kamui.” I seem to have procured quite a bit of manga (and a backlog!), so I thought that I better start reading! Here’s my review of Kamui Volume 1.
Yoki Koto Kiku is a fairly new manga by the one and only Koge-Donbo. Koge-Donbo’s work is usually known for being super saccharine sweet. She did Di Gi Charat and Pita Ten, which are both totally awesome. Yoki Koto Kiku is somewhat of a departure for Koge-Donbo, but only a slight one.
I wrote earlier about the differences between the School Rumble manga in both Japanese and English. Well, I finally finished the first volume after about two months! It wasn’t like I was in a real rush…
As I explained before, I took a unique approach to reading School Rumble. Basically, I took the Japanese language manga, tried reading it, and whenever I got stuck on something I used the English version to figure out what it said. I also used the English version to confirm stuff that I thought I understood.
I only had the patience to read about one chapter every day, and I didn’t read every day. This is the reason why it took me so long. Sure, I could’ve just read the English version in an hour, but what’s the fun in that? I learned a few kanji and vocab words, so I’d say it was worth it.
Between translating School Rumble manga, watching a ton of anime and programming websites, I found some time to just chill out with Yotsuba&! the manga. Yotsuba&! Volume 2 continues the adventures of the super naive green haired kid, Yotsuba.
whenever I can’t find an appropriate picture on danbooru, I just use this…
One of the topics that we discussed in the Anime Nano Podcast was the demographic labels that are affixed to certain anime and manga. The four main groups are Shoujo, Shonen, Josei and Seinen. Shoujo is meant for young girls, while Shonen is meant for young boys. Josei and Seinen are aimed towards older women and men, respectively.
The interesting part about these labels is that unlike other genre labels, they don’t really describe the content of the stories, but the target demographic. Mecha anime will have mecha in them, and mahou shoujo will have magical girls. Naruto is a shonen anime/manga, but it’s labeled as such because it appears in Shonen Jump, a magazine for young boys.
I found these insanely cute 4koma at danbooru. They feature everyone’s favorite character, LOL Fang-tan! Also making an appearance: Kyon-kun, Nagatocchi, Mikuru, and a giant block of smoked cheese.
The key to these 4koma are the meticulously engineered punchlines. They all consist of “nyoro~n.” The more of these that I read, the more convinced I am that Fang-tan needs her own spinoff anime. Enjoy!
So a few months ago, I got an order from yesasia.com which consisted of yummy manga goodness. Among all of these manga was one called “Hayate Cross Blade.” Unluckily for me, the manga didn’t include any furigana, so I couldn’t read it (I’m kinda bad at kanji)! Just recently, a scanslation group released the first chapter of Hayate Cross Blade, so I was able to use that as a sort of script to read my manga.
So during my last Amazon.com manga shopping spree, I decided to pick up the Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo manga. I had seen the anime when it was being subbed, and I thought it was hilarious! Sadly, whenever I show it to anyone, they’re all, “WTF?” I think only my cousin found it somewhat amusing. Living a life without cable, I still can’t watch the Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo anime, so I’m stuck reading the manga.
Around March of this year, while on a trip, I happened upon the import manga section at a Borders book store. For some reason, I don’t think that the Borders near my house has any import manga… Anyway, I bought the first two volumes of School Rumble, and they sat on my bookshelf for about 3 months.
Actually, I got through the first three or so chapters using my three years of college level Japanese, and this handy online dictionary! Still a bit too slow for my tastes, though. It took like, 5 minutes per page!
About a week or so ago, I got my Amazon.com order full of manga goodness! This included the first volume of the English translated School Rumble manga. I thought I’d compare the two since they’ve got quite a few differences (besides the obvious language difference).