Daily Manga Thoughts 2: The Return

BrainBlow said:
DMT: Okay so this is pretty wild!
Control is a creepy Korean horror manhwa that's like Invasion of the body snatchers meets I Am A Hero. Unsettling psychological horror stuff, right?
Thing is, it's a prequel! A prequel to BURNING EFFECT!
As you can probably guess from just the thumbnails, those are wildly different series! It's insane! Both the art and story are almost completely different in every significant way!

More authors should do this stuff!
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So, coming back to this one...
Now it's very clear that Control is a prequel and the backstory of a specific character in Burning Effect.
Unfortunately this means a previously alluded to rape in a Burning Effect flashback became very much real and revealed in Control. Yikes.

Though it's kinda funny how it feels like the artstyle of Control is slowly turning into something resembling that of Burning Effect.
 
Gens said:
DMT:

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/in...-wins-tsugi-ni-kuru-manga-2020-awards/.163084

Good to see Undead Unluck get more attention. It really deserves it.
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Sick! Wicked sick!

And I have now found out that Jump has another gem:
Hard-Boiled Cop & Dolphin.
It's the new comedy action series (in that order) by the author of Beelzebub. This is some of the best absurdist and meta comedy I've seen in Jump specifically since Gintama, and the series has an uncanny ability to predict my mental responses. I comment on something seemingly weird or absurd, and the very next panel seems to have been one step ahead.
And the series is just bonkers in a good way, and even the "straight man" in the comedy is himself an absurd person, which is often hard to pull off the balance on.
Seriously, don't sleep on this!


Also, the fucking references...
 
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DMT: ...Was Tezuka always as fucked up as he got in Ode To Kirihito? I mean I just know him for stuff like Astro Boy and the like, but that thing...yeesh. Super dark, and got pretty racist before I finally gave up. Damn.
 
(moving this over here from the Unpopular Anime Opinions thread bc I really just wanted to ramble on about manga magazine audiences a little more)

Akishima said:
Oh good, it's not just me then. I did a search of my watched shows by the different target demographic tags, and seinen was just so...random.
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Seinen really is like the miscellaneous tag. Really, demographic labels aren't genres, they're just target audience indicators even if works tend to have a lot in common bc target audience, but seinen especially is very much like "it's aimed at adults, I guess?".

Right now in Kodansha's Morning Two magazine, which is definitely a seinen mag, there's Witch Hat Atelier (pretty safely all-audiences fantasy story), Heaven's Design Team (fun educational story), something called Anata wa Bun-chan no Koi which appears to feature a love triangle with a ghost, Amane Gymnasium which has some very creepy-looking dolls that do not make me want to investigate further, Nora to Zasshou which is about a police investigator who encounters a runaway teenage girl, and the Cells at Work spinoff about women's bodies (probably also fun and educational). There is no common thread beyond running in the same magazine, not themes, not tone, not art styles.

(Plus sometimes titles aimed at women get moved to seinen magazines because the publishers think they'll appeal to a broader audience - 10 Dance is 100% without a doubt a bl and started out in a bl mag, but moved publishers and now runs in a seinen mag without changing anything about it.)

Other seinen magazines do cater more obviously towards a certain audience of young men - e.g., there's gravure models on the cover - and probably what they publish has more shared aspects than the broader-reaching mags, but yeah, trying to figure out what ties seinen together beyond magazine is definitely headache-inducing. Even trying to work out josei beyond "is in a josei mag" is complicated, though it's at least more likely to have romance and female-centric stories.

I appreciate that AP goes by the magazine when applying demographic labels because it does get complicated really quick and going by feel can lead to a lot of arguments.
 
daisicles said:
(moving this over here from the Unpopular Anime Opinions thread bc I really just wanted to ramble on about manga magazine audiences a little more)



Seinen really is like the miscellaneous tag. Really, demographic labels aren't genres, they're just target audience indicators even if works tend to have a lot in common bc target audience, but seinen especially is very much like "it's aimed at adults, I guess?".

Right now in Kodansha's Morning Two magazine, which is definitely a seinen mag, there's Witch Hat Atelier (pretty safely all-audiences fantasy story), Heaven's Design Team (fun educational story), something called Anata wa Bun-chan no Koi which appears to feature a love triangle with a ghost, Amane Gymnasium which has some very creepy-looking dolls that do not make me want to investigate further, Nora to Zasshou which is about a police investigator who encounters a runaway teenage girl, and the Cells at Work spinoff about women's bodies (probably also fun and educational). There is no common thread beyond running in the same magazine, not themes, not tone, not art styles.

(Plus sometimes titles aimed at women get moved to seinen magazines because the publishers think they'll appeal to a broader audience - 10 Dance is 100% without a doubt a bl and started out in a bl mag, but moved publishers and now runs in a seinen mag without changing anything about it.)

Other seinen magazines do cater more obviously towards a certain audience of young men - e.g., there's gravure models on the cover - and probably what they publish has more shared aspects than the broader-reaching mags, but yeah, trying to figure out what ties seinen together beyond magazine is definitely headache-inducing. Even trying to work out josei beyond "is in a josei mag" is complicated, though it's at least more likely to have romance and female-centric stories.

I appreciate that AP goes by the magazine when applying demographic labels because it does get complicated really quick and going by feel can lead to a lot of arguments.
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With such an eclectic mix of titles, makes you wonder why they even bother to label the magazines at all. Seems like it would limit the audience more than necessary, but I suppose a lot of labeling has to do with how they market the magazine.

I gravitate to the same type of stories regardless of the target audience, so that just makes it even more obvious that it's just an arbitrary label put on magazines to attract more of a certain readership.
 
Akishima said:
With such an eclectic mix of titles, makes you wonder why they even bother to label the magazines at all. Seems like it would limit the audience more than necessary, but I suppose a lot of labeling has to do with how they market the magazine.

I gravitate to the same type of stories regardless of the target audience, so that just makes it even more obvious that it's just an arbitrary label put on magazines to attract more of a certain readership.
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Demographic labels are useful outside marketing to a certain extent but mostly, I think, for setting expectations for what a given title is probably not gonna be, if that makes sense. Like, knowing that What Did You Eat Yesterday? runs in a seinen magazine and has always run in a seinen magazine means the odds are pretty good that it's not going to end up like Fumi Yoshinaga's bl manga. And of course there are magazines that consciously strive for broader audiences beyond demographic - Manga Erotics F ran everything from Ristorante Paradiso to Lychee Light Club to Sweet Blue Flowers because it was more of an artsy alternative publication.

But really, as I've grown more familiar with specific publishers and specific magazines, I've found that information is a whole lot more indicative of what I'm apt to like than just a demographic label. They know what kind of readers they're looking to attract more specifically. It's harder to do that with anime, unfortunately, since there's less diversity in what gets animated, but for manga, I'm well aware of where my favorites are coming from.
 
DMT:

And as something that comes as no surprise, Time Paradox Ghost Writer joins the U19 club.
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The serious was on a steep decline past chapter 1 so it's not that sad to see it go at this point. But 14 chapters? Embarassing.
 
DMT:

Going back to art styles and demographics and stuff, Sublime just announced they licensed Dousei Yankee Akamatsu Seven, which is drawn by an artist who normally does shounen and seinen. And boy is his art in sharp contrast to the usual bl art, which isn't nearly as same-y as, say, yuri art but still usually falls within a certain set of boundaries unless it's a more deliberately alternative style. But this art isn't alternative, it's just not bl, and that's kinda cool and kinda weird at the same time.

I like when we get titles that are a bit different.
 
DMT: Started reading Toritan: Birds of a Feather- I totally took a gamble on this cuz the story sounded interesting and the art looked cute, so I don't really know what I'm getting into.
However, I have to say it doesn't make a good first impression with getting the species of the birds wrong right of the bat. I know this is bl, but really? I'm not even a bird person, but anybody can tell at a glance that those are barn swallows (or some similar bird) that makes mud nests under eaves, not sparrows, and it's ticked me off. I hope this was a lazy translator error and isn't a mistake on the author's part because that is just inexcusable.
 
DMT:

After Requiem of the Rose King got its anime announcement, I figured I'd finally pick up the first vol... and somehow I now have the first four vols? And am hooked on this very, very loose adaptation of some Shakespeare history plays? Bc apparently all I ever wanted was a dramatic vaguely Shakespearean shoujo manga with the ghost of Joan of Arc? I've heard a lot of people's mixed feelings about more recent chapters, but for now I'm here for it all.
 
daisicles said:
DMT:

After Requiem of the Rose King got its anime announcement, I figured I'd finally pick up the first vol... and somehow I now have the first four vols? And am hooked on this very, very loose adaptation of some Shakespeare history plays? Bc apparently all I ever wanted was a dramatic vaguely Shakespearean shoujo manga with the ghost of Joan of Arc? I've heard a lot of people's mixed feelings about more recent chapters, but for now I'm here for it all.
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Good to hear- I keep wondering if I should pick up a volume. Also, I hadn't heard about an anime, but now I'm excited!
 
DMT: Helck was amazingly good! Top tier shounen focused even more on a character's emotional situation than it does battles and power levels! You know how the best superman stories are primarily themed around his human emotions, moral integrity and the immense weight of responsibility more than just how he'll physically overcome enemies? That's basically this entire manga. And it's great at it!

Both of the main leads are great, and their relationship's development is frankly outstanding for a shounen, particularly in how the characters don't want to bone! You can actually do that between unrelated adult male and female MCs in shounen?? Whoa!
But in all seriousness the development is great!
And the female lead, Vamirio, is basically a tohou boss at high difficulty in both looks and ability! I love her!

Something the series does a shitload of, which I now realize I'm a total slut for, is canon omake segments! Holy shit, it's like the magic recipe for making me love the cast so much more, including minor characters I can't even remember the names of!
More series need to do this! It's such a cheap yet effective way of making the cast and world come alive so mucg more!

And oh boy, the series is actually getting a SEQUEL! WOOOOO!!
 
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