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Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria review
Lots of people seem to only really read the first volume, which kind of disappointing because the first volume alone is really is only keyhole into the true beauty of the series. There are many reason as to why I think this series is my favorite, but to things (relatively) short, I'll just be focusing on the setting.
What I believe makes Utsuro no Hako outstanding is how perfectly the author executes the philosophical complexity of human nature with the environment the characters interact in. What makes this possible is how the author designed the functionality of a plot device called boxes. Boxes in the story allow the user to make any wish perfectly how they perceive it, including their doubt. This sort of concept gives the author the liberty to throw the characters into all sorts of creative scenarios without the reader feeling like the situation is unnatural. What has made many series appealing were their ability create arcs that could each function independently on their own, yet supplement the character development of the main cast in the overarching timeline. Consider a series like One Piece. Many enjoy the series because each arc provide an unique narrative, yet with each arc, you could see the more of the bigger storyline unfold. Same goes for Utsuro no Hako. Every volume or every few volumes will give you a engaging arc, but as you look at the bigger picture, you start to see how each of these arcs ties with the development of Kazuki and Maria. As for the actual settings, damn are they interesting. Not only do each of them work under a unique concept, the intellectual depth provides you with sense of thrill you rarely get from most series that rely on have action scenes or emotional trama. If you read all 7 volumes, I'm sure you will be able to appreciate the series's ability to drive your emotions and intellect.
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REAL review
I use MAL for keeping track of series I want to read/watch, so this will be my first(and probably only) review. I could right pages about REAL but I'll keep it somewhat brief.
If you are on the fence about reading this series, do it. No hesitation. If one person starts this series because of this post, then I have done my job. If you are expecting Slam Dunk or Vagabond, it's somewhat a mixture of the two, and somewhat something completely different. We may never get a completion to the story, and taking that into consideration, it's still one of the greatest STORIES I have ever read(and I've read my fair share). That's somewhat of an extreme opinion and I don't think it will resonate as personally with everyone as it did with me, but I'm positive anybody that gives it a shot will gain something of value from it. I think that's the highest praise anyone can give for a story. Story: 10 Riveting. Heartbreaking. Funny. Frustrating. Thought-Provoking. I have gone through almost every possible emotion through each sit-down. Essentially, the story resolves around 3 guys connected through basketball, or more specifically, wheelchair basketball. It's a balance of despair and hope, swirling through the pages as characters try to right their wrongs and find their place in the world after traumatic experiences. It's a pretty vague premise, but there are many subplots that really give the story its legs. Art: 8 Definitely not the best I've seen as it's spotty at times(Due to the author working on Vagabond at the time), but it really has it's own charm. I think Inoue is unrivaled in portraying movement in his panels. He's mastered the small details, and easily makes you forget you're looking at a still page. It's not just basketball scenes where his art shines either. He can portray emotion with shocking realism, and it greatly adds to the effect of whatever feeling he wants you to feel. And in my opinion, his character designs are perfect. It's the sweet balance between being able to tell people apart while also not making them too outlandish where that sense of realism is lost. Each character has their own unique set of features, not just in their face but in their body language as well, which is super impressive considering a lot of the cast is in a wheelchair. Characters: 10 The characters are the best part about this series, and that is saying a lot. You know a story is special when there're 3 main characters, and each are equally fleshed out with extreme care, depth and unique development. What's even crazier is that some of the best characters play supporting roles. Side characters are supposed to help the main characters grow, and they accomplish that flawlessly. However, countless of these characters receive just as much or even more growth that other story's MAIN cast gets. Everyone is a weirdo, an asshole or both, and yet, I can't help but root for them. Their flaws are so blatant, but you understand why they do what they do. They're given structure and as you watch these characters go through the ringer countless times, all you want to see is them come out on top. Enjoyment: 10 Through each of my numerous reads, my interest has not faltered even a little bit. I enjoy it as much as I did years ago. Overall: 10 It's less than 100 chapters, and still one of the most fleshed out pieces of work this medium has to offer. It's relatable on so many levels and mad me reflect in ways I never had before. In my honest opinion, a must read for everybody, not just anime/manga fans.
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Kafka review
I'll be quite straightforward with my review, since this manga doesn't have much apparent to analysis, any great plot device with which I may convince you to read this. All I can say is: go there, only one volume, enjoy the experience.
Kafka is a well knowng writter, but many times we forget that it has done anything apart from The Metamorphosis (No, not Henshin Emergence, the other one). The thing is that Kafka had some recurrent creative themes about bureaucracy, hunger and loneliness, with which he struggled during his life. And the Nishioka Brothers have the abitily to not only understand this themes in Kafka's work, but also give them a personal shape with their unique art style and take the immersion experience to a whole other level. So, if you enjoy your Kafka (or your Camus, I find their style quite similar), or if you only want to get immersed in some twisted imagination with odd art and a whole lot of subtext, this is for you. If you want to enjoy your time in a Saturday evening, then Kafka is quite the wrong read; I mean, c'mon, it doesn't even have characters technically. PS: If you can convince your friend and read the manga simultaneously, it will be good for discussing and sharing perspectives. And another thing: reading this while listening to some Tool albums is freaking insane
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Tajikarao review
When I picked this manga for rereading, I wondered why I didn’t remember anything about the plot, now I see – my expectations for the premise are bigger and more interesting than what the work actually delivers. It’s not a bad manga, but the lost potential and the occasional moments of greatness make its many flaws so much more disappointing.
Also I need to warn, that Tajikarao is unpublished and is stuck in the fan translation hell –the translation stopped at the beginning of the last, 4th, volume, the groups are inactive. I looked at the cover and, again, I thought, that it’d be good to read a story about a strange cult, lost in a distant village, told from the perspective of the cult people, with the main character from the city willingly donning the mask of the ancient deity – scary, obscene, chaotic and fiercely territorial. I mean, isn’t it cool? Soil flowing within blood, channeling the wish of the ancestors (including the kindly late aunt), nature turning hostile to the non-locals, lots of killing done in the name of living the same, doing the same, burying in the same place, marrying cousins as usually. …and then maybe some weird ritualistic sex… “Imma sold, the cover is great, gotta reread” – thought I. So is it like this? Well, yes and no. Yes: The story offers a couple of truly powerful moments. The twist with following the unusual side doesn’t disappear anywhere, the unfamiliar rituals and beliefs are interesting, the design of the god Tajikarao is great. Sexual symbolism is present, after all the god stone that governs the village and so many scenes in manga is shaped as a giant phallus (and also there’s a young pretty priestess taking part in sexually charged rituals). No: First of all, it’s, of course, not about a strange cult, it’s about Kyushu Shinto. And, unlike me, the author wasn’t focusing on a mad deified manbeast teaching people the old ways *si-i-gh*, but rather thought about “what it means to be Japanese”, and thus the manga is preachy. The opposition of the village and the city becomes black and white, and there’re occasional saccharine moments, when, for example, heartfelt dancing and singing of grannies turns hearts. No, the immediate writing isn’t bad, and I don’t have any qualms with the ideas that traditions and sacred places should be preserved, that modern life can be damaging for people’s spirits or that old people should be respected, but… I dunno, does a place make people moral? Or are Shinto kamis moral? Isn’t the special commune spirit of rural areas more or less proven make-believe? This results in other flaws. The characters aren’t complex (the villagers often are shown as a hive mind), and the need to bend the main character into accepting their ways makes his development forced. I can’t say that all the motives are used to their potential too – there’s this clever idea that the main character is tied to the deity through the hunger he once experienced, but it doesn’t become a coherent commentary on rural life, history or, frankly, the protagonist's psyche. Dancing grannies take too much time away from the amazing trance imagery or transformation scenes. There’re also some hiccups in logic and a couple of odd tropes. --------------- Do you learn more about Shinto? Well, if you've read plenty of manga, most likely not that much, but you may catch a couple of new details and references. The art also has its downsides, but it develops. At the beginning it’s a bit old-fashioned and cartoonish, but lately it becomes better, fits the mood more, though the regular characters' designs remain more simplistic than we're accustomed to now and sometimes facial features of the characters look off. The nature is drawn beautifully, the main character in the later stages look imposing, there’s an amazing gallery of the old and the ugly (no irony here, they’re very realistic and charismatic, also hard to draw). Several scenes easily reach the top seinen quality, so it’s hard to say why the rest doesn’t follow. The character that is drawn the worst is the local beauty, it looks like the artist isn’t experienced in drawing girls. Now, it seems like I beat this manga into mud… But it’s not that bad, it’s just that I am angry with it and expect many to feel the same. It could've easily been much better, it even stepped in the higher grounds of storytelling and art sometimes, why didn’t it stay there? In the end Tajikarao is a fine seinen, readable, unique, worth knowing and recommending for a thematic occasion, but for a number of reasons I don’t advice going out of your way to read it, unless you're particularly interested in its topics.
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Uwa-Koi review
This is a very interesting take on the so-called "harem genre" — where normally the protagonist has a large list of suitors that seemingly don't mind sharing, or can all remain friends despite the competition, this a rather gritty take on a more complex reality: the protagonist ever more gets sucked into repeated infidelity and sexual addiction until it consumes him and starts to endanger his reputation and life.
The members of the harem also feel more fleshed out than usual, and have more of a backstory, though it's not exceptionally detailed, they are often given a history and have interesting personality and sex outside of the protagonist as well. True to the harem genre: the protagonist feels relatively bland and lacks agency, though it's far from as extreme as is usual in the harem genre. The strength of this story apart from the dark, nihilistic characters is that it definitely feels like a clear progression: there is no ship tease that never concludes and there are no filler chapters; every chapter feels like it progresses the plot and that it ends on different dynamics between the characters than whereon it started. It feels like a very coherent, albeit surreal story that has a beginning, a progression, and an end. The characters are generally unlikeable, but interesting. The protagonist is somewhat meek and first portrayed as being strung alone and unwilling to hurt his childhood friend but later revealed to be far more duplicit: most of the other characters are sexually exploitative of others and generally arseholes, but often in their own way with their own histories. It features a lot of smut; it's one of those borderline pornographic comics where everything but genitals is generally shown as is common to this author.
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CROSS DAYS review
Cross Days was a fairly interesting side story surrounding the events and leading up to the conclusion of School Days, but also one that made me think twice about Makoto as a character. While Cross Days focused on fellow classmate Yuuki Ashikaga and his series of unfortunate (and sometimes comical) misunderstandings, in a subtle way it also gave the reader a different perspective on School Days main character Makoto Itou that radically changed the way I felt about him.
The true purpose of Cross Days, I felt, was to not simply tell a related side story to School Days, but give us a different perspective or a greater depth to the characters we knew and loved (or hated) from School Days. Even though his story has merit and entertainment in its own right, Yuuki Ashikaga’s true purpose in Cross Days is to uncover deeper moral issues of the School Days characters and observe and judge them from the reader’s point of view. He not only acts as the reader’s moral voice in the actions of all those involved, but also, oddly enough, becomes Makoto Itou’s conscience; something Makoto severely lacks and needs. The art work reflects the same level of creativity and flow from the original series. Moments of emotional expression are well drawn and panel flow was done in a manner that was easy enough to follow with few exceptions. My only real complaint would be the penultimate conclusion of the story in the final panel which can potentially lead to confusing the reader as the character is drawn in such a way that makes you question the identity of the person in question. This point, while still shocking once I realized who it was, frustrated me because I had to spend a few moments in complete confusion until I figured out who it was. Cross Days offers the reader a chance to see a side of Makoto they did not see in School Days. Yuuki’s comedy/tragedy of timing and misunderstandings is a pretext to a part of Makoto’s personality we did not witness from the main story line. While the primary love triangle story revolves around Yuuki Ashikaga, Kotonoha Katsura, and Roka Kitsuregawa the true purpose of Cross Days appears to provide the reader an opportunity to reexamine character personalities in School Days that were not fully explored in the primary story arc.
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Gakuen Tengoku review
This will be a spoiler free review after having read the entire manga.
Story - If you have read Love Hina you'll find the story of Gakuen Tengoku familiar. The problem is that the story here never really advance and in fact the manga seems unfinished. There are a lot of stupid situations that make you ask "what's the problem with those people" and "does police exist in this manga?". Nothing really exciting happens and there are a lot of things that are not developed whatsoever. An example would be the principal who is the cousin of the MC and she likes him, but this part of the story is there just for basically 3 things to happen over the course of the manga. The end is also very baaaaaaad. The manga at least has a light atmosphere so that's a plus in my eyes. The main character - This MC is the most useless character of all time. Seriously, he is so pathetic that it makes you angry with him. He is weak, dense, clueless, naive...the only thing he has going for him is the luck he gets for being the MC. For the most part of the manga, he is never the one making things happen. He tries to resolve things, but most of time his ideas are dumb and often things get resolve without him doing much. Overall - This manga could have been good, but without plot and with such stupid characters (most of the teachers and he MC) it makes it hard to call it good. The only thing i likde about this manga is the art which is good and the girls are all very cute. I would not recommend this manga to anyone simply because there are much better options out there ready to be read and since time is something finite i advise you to go look for something better.
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ITSUDATTE MY SANTA review
So there was once a time in which I reviewed a 2 episode OVA called Itsudatte My Santa. That manga was so bad that I was curious as to if the manga was as bad as the manga. I was surprised (although I guess I shouldn’t of been surprised) to find that the manga was based off of a one shot manga. I was even more confused as the second episode of the OVA was not in the one shot. It begs me to wonder just why a one shot could get 2 OVAs where as some of the better manga out there have no
anime and are at least 5 or 6 books long. Going back to the manga vs OVA story line, well…
How they thought that this would be a good manga to turn into an Anime is beyond me. The story does not have much to it, just a girl who is trying to make a guy happy on Christmas Eve because she is a Santa. The anime had the only thing that made the story at least kind of sweet… and notice I said Anime. In the anime, the main male characters parents, Santa, were helping children in a third world country during Christmas and that was why they weren’t around on his birthday. In the manga though… they just went on vacation because it was their anniversary. With that logic, I would feel jaded too if my parents didn’t care at all about my birthday and only went out on their anniversary. I understand Santa’s feelings there. He had a right to be pissed and sad on Christmas Eve if they did that every single year. Sure in the anime he had a right to be pissed but at least the parents had a noble cause. And now we come to the thorn in my side of this manga/anime, Mai. Mai is the strange Santa trying to make him feel better about himself but she ends up screwing things up for the most part. In the Anime, she could be at least somewhat useful as she could make things appear out of no where as long as it started with S. In the manga though… she can only make fish appear. WHY IS IT ONLY FISH? She is a santa in training right? So what would be a time that someone would want fish for Christmas? Unless she is the Santa for cats… but even then, why would she care so much about making a human happy? ‘So what of the Summer Beach trip and the strange rival in love that was so annoying in the Anime’ I hear you asking. They don’t happen. Plain and simple, they do not happen at all in the one shot. In fact, I don’t think anything from the second episode was ever in the manga except maybe the end. I don’t think I am spoiling much on that little fact but ya… the ending is the same I guess. This little revelation bothers me even more as I had to actually sit through that dumb episode. The artwork is standard Ken Akamatsu style with crisp lines, beautifully detailed hair, and nerdy looking men that look just the same as all his other nerdy men. His characters always seem to look the same to me in any of his manga which is both good and bad. Bad that I can’t tell two characters apart outside the manga and good because he does do a good job in drawing them. A while back I had seen a picture of him and when holding it up to a lot of his male characters, he looks a lot like them. The backgrounds are alright as well with beautiful details. He does a good job on all the art, it just seems like he doesn’t have that much range on the look of characters. So ya, this one shot isn’t all that good and I don’t feel as though it has anything new. The first episode of the anime was better then the manga in fact and I am so sorry that I am saying that.
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Dogeza de Tanondemita review
Dogeza de Tanondemita (I Tried Asking in Dogeza)
First of all, dogeza is not a language. Dogeza is an element of traditional Japanese etiquette, which involves kneeling directly on the ground and bowing to prostrate oneself while touching one's head to the floor. Dogeza is used to show respect to a person of a much higher status than you, it is also used as an apology. Dogeza came to Japan from China. In China dogeza was called "kowtow" and was used as in important act to show your respect to an Emperor of China and sometimes to some influential officials of China. I Tried Asking in Dogeza solves something, no man has ever managed to answer. Doge Suwaru, the main protagonist of the manga, in his treatise ‘How to Ask Girls Show Nudes’ comes to the conclusion that all you need to do to make girls show their nudes is to ask in dogeza. Surprisingly, asking in dogeza works wonders and all girls are ready to show any part of their body to Doge Suwaru. Jokes aside, I will only watch the anime adaption because of Sugita Tomokazu. Hopefully, he will make the anime somewhat funny.
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