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rushthatspeaks... and it only took me until February to get to this entry. I'm including in this discussion things read in 2004 but not necessarily published in 2004, and I'm not including things which I read for the first time in English last year if I had previously read and understood them in another language (which is why the Saiyuki manga isn't on here, as I read it in Japanese with some English notes in 2002).
I read a lot of manga last year, in three languages (English, Japanese, and French). Most of it was at least worth reading, and I tended not to finish the stuff that wasn't. So I've decided to do a top-ten list, which I'll talk about in detail, and then mention afterwards some titles of things I also liked, without much discussion. If you haven't heard of something I liked and want to know more about it, ask and I'll be happy to write it up later. I am also going to steal Melymbrosia's apt and precise threat, which communicates my precise sentiments: Spoil me for things I haven't read, and I will kill you with my brain.
1. Death Note (through issue 53)
Language: English
Availability: scanslations over Bittorrents
Description: I really want to tell you as little about this as possible, since it's one of the few manga I've ever read which achieves genuine suspense. I found myself unable to predict what was going to happen next most of the time, and I still can't. I feel that the surprises of this manga should be allowed to unfold precisely as the mangaka intended. However, I will say that it is drawn wonderfully by the artist who gave us Hikaru no Go, and that it is hands-down the most intelligent manga I have ever read, and contains the most intelligent characters. Its principal pair are locked in a game of cat-and-mouse at a genius level, and it's never clear just who is the cat and who is the mouse. It is philosophically interesting, genuinely wrenching, and achieves both high tragedy and black humor, sometimes on the same page. Don't go into this one looking for a light read, but do read it. It was far and away the best title of 2004.
Note: I have absolutely no idea when this will be licensed, since it runs in Japan in Shonen Jump magazine, an anthology usually known for action-packed fighting and sports stories. Death Note is neither, and is part of an attempt by Shonen Jump Japan to change its image to appeal to more mature readers. However, Viz Comics in the US has first-refusal on all Shonen Jump titles, since Viz in fact puts out the US version of Shonen Jump. Viz is maintaining the US magazine using the original preteen-boy aesthetic (going so far as to take out Rurouni Kenshin for age-level reasons, even though Kenshin was part of the US magazine's starting lineup), and Death Note is decidedly aimed at an audience older than Viz would prefer. We may see Viz license Death Note and put it out in graphic novel format only, but so far they seem to have been unable to decide on a course of action, wanting neither to license the property nor to let it out of their hands. However, the manga is fairly readily available in a decent online fan translation; try Bittorrents.
It is genuinely worth the effort of tracking down the scanslations. I will try to post a link within the next couple of days, but I don't have the address of our most recent source, so I need to consult with the housemates.
2. Petshop of Horrors
Language: English
Availability: all ten volumes are available from Tokyopop
Description: Count D runs a mysterious petshop in Chinatown, which sells extremely rare and unusual animals-- animals which may, in fact, even be supernatural, given the peculiar things that happen to the Count's customers. Detective Leon Orcot is desperately searching for some way to arrest the Count and bring him to justice, but it's not going very smoothly...
Petshop has been one of my favorite titles since I saw the two-episode OAV, which I also highly recommend. The manga has an anthology-style setup, focusing on stand-alone stories with vague connecting threads of plot, until the last several volumes, which tie the whole thing together in an extremely satisfying way. Some of the stand-alone stories are horror, but most of them are not; I would call them weird tales, or tales of the inexplicable. Many of these attain the tight plotting, interesting character development, and twist endings of the best of O. Henry, but they also work as mood pieces, melancholy, lonely, tragic, or startlingly redemptive. There are one or two individual chapters which do not explain enough to be comprehensible, or which fail to work in other ways, but overall these are some of the best short stories out there. I have nothing but good to say about the underlying plot, too, and the whole thing is made even more delightful by some of the most delicate and beautiful art I have ever seen in manga. Count D says that he sells love and dreams, and the art is certainly dreamlike. The love... depends on your point of view.
3. Angel Sanctuary (through volume 5)
Language: English
Availability: volumes 1-5 available from Viz; 6 should be out very soon
Note: I have read more than five volumes of this, both in French and in scanslations, but I want to restrict my remarks to the portions that are most easily available to everyone.
Description: Setsuna Mudo, an Ordinary Japanese High School Student (TM), discovers that he is the reincarnation of the angel Alexiel, who was one of the leaders years and years ago in a great war in Heaven, and that there are many, many people from many, many factions who would like to wake Alexiel, kill Alexiel, hurt Alexiel, cause Alexiel to take over the world, sleep with Alexiel, or, in at least one rather confused case, all of the above (hopefully not simultaneously, but I wouldn't bet on it). However, all of this pales to him in comparison with his most pressing problem: being in love with his sister.
I have determined after long and careful study that the extremely complicated plot and cosmology of this series do, in fact, make sense, but that it doesn't particularly matter; this is a character piece in many ways, and I like many of the characters. I like Setsuna's best friend, Kira, who has cool down to a science, and I like the cross-dressing demons; I like the insane blind angel and the various damned henchmen. I also really enjoy what the series does with gender: Alexiel is female, Setsuna is male, they are the same person, and that's all there is to it. The art has moments of great beauty, although it also has moments wherein I can't tell the characters apart, and the dialogue has some magnificent single lines. This is the classic example of a series which should not be as good as it is, especially considering all the cliches it drags in, but it has a rock-solid core of quality lurking under all the smoke and feathers.
4. Planetes (all but the last volume)
Language: English
Availability: 1-4.1 available from Tokyopop, and I think 4.2 is out although I don't have it yet (and do not ask me about the volume numbering system-- I have no idea)
Description: Gritty, existentialist sci-fi about a group of people who collect and dispose of trash that is floating in Earth orbit, and about the ambitions of one of them to be an astronaut on the first manned flight to Jupiter, and about the politics of dealing with space and with the territorial implications of space flight. The title means 'wandering stars' and is a technical term from ancient astrology referring not simply to the planets, but also to the seasonal motion of the stars across the sky, and the influence of both planets and stars on those being born on the surface of the earth. The editors get brownie points from me forever and ever for putting this title in a correct Russian font on the inside front covers.
Planetes reminds me of John M. Ford or of the very best of Heinlein, and is a title that should be more widely known in the science fiction community than it is. It's one of those rare stories that manages to have very funny things (there's a chapter focusing primarily on smoking that is simply a thing of beauty) while at the same time not flinching from the darker voids of the human soul (this is a manga that can get away with quoting the poetry of Kenji Miyazawa, with all of the connotations of life and death and oblivion that go with the poetry). I will be very interested to see how it resolves.
There is a Planetes anime, by the way, which has been licensed, although I don't know by whom. It is also very good, but is really a different series with characters who resemble but are not identical to their manga counterparts. Actually, the Planetes anime has one or two of the funniest episodes of anime I've ever seen, and it is lighthearted in a way that the manga simply isn't-- well worth a look, for it maintains the sense of wonder while leaving out only a little of the philosophical speculation. I still like the manga better, though.
5. Tactics (volume 1)
Language: English
Availability: volume one is out from ADV Manga; no release date yet for more
Description: Kantarou Ichinomiya has always been able to see youkai and household spirits, and make friends with them; he's also always had the ambition to find and befriend a certain legendary demon-eating goblin. Tactics is the story of what happens after Kantarou finds and unseals this goblin, names him Haruka, and brings him to live in his house.
I think that someone, somewhere, had a checklist of my specific buttons for manga, the things which make me, personally, jump up and down and go all fangirly and frightening, and for Tactics said person took this list and used every single thing on it, in order. Gorgeous bishounen with wings who doesn't look like all the other gorgeous bishounen with wings out there? Check. Scheming masterminding manipulative bastard who doesn't actually hurt anybody? Check. Gratuitous totally innocent yet somehow suggestive bondage? Hints of shounen-ai? Incredibly esoteric and accurate references to Japanese folklore? Latin used in the text? Check, check, check, and check. And to top it all off, it's intelligently written, very well translated, and funny as hell. No signs of plot yet, but I don't think they're necessary. It gets by very well as an episodic, character-based comedy with a very subtle maybe-romance.
I wrote my![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yuletide fic in this fandom, and it was a joy to work with. I wish this manga were getting more attention, because I think a lot of people would really enjoy it. There is an anime, which is a bit more well known, but the anime is not as funny, not as sweet, and suffers from a Gratuitous Little Girl. ADV should be pushing this one more; it's a treasure.
6. Hellsing (through volume 5)
Language: English
Description: The Hellsing organization is an order of Protestant knights under the control of the Queen of England. They kill vampires. Their head, Sir Integra Wingates Hellsing, has a vampire of her very own. His name is Alucard.
I love the Hellsing anime dearly. It's one of the things I watch when I'm feeling really depressed, because Alucard makes everything better. He's an ur-vampire, a force of nature who is essentially invincible, and he exists in bondage to and friendship with Integra in a relationship that is surprising and yet somehow inevitable. I was going to like the manga unless it was essentially different from the anime, and it isn't. It's got everything good about Hellsing, as well as, in volume five, a plot twist that made me bounce in sheer delight with the combination of my loves of vampire coolness and aerospace engineering.
That said, this title isn't for everyone. It's probably the goriest thing I read on a regular basis, and I've seen it categorized before as splatterpunk. The art is in a style that can be somewhat off-putting (although it can also be very beautiful), and the general levels of crudeness, vulgarity, and nastiness are pretty high. If you can't deal with a fairly graphic, fairly regular major body count, don't read Hellsing. It strains my capacities on occasion. Alucard is a killer, when Integra tells him to be. He eats people, when allowed to do so. There are other monsters. I find the characters-- Alucard and some of the most kick-ass women in anime and manga-- to be entirely worth it, but I know that others may not feel the same way. If you didn't like the anime, don't read the manga, either; they are really very similar. However, I do recommend either to anyone who has even the slightest enjoyment of horror series, since Hellsing is the finest one of those I've yet encountered.
And hey, German teleporting werewolves. What's not to love?
7. Ghost in the Shell: Man-Machine Interface
Language: English
Availability: now in trade paperback-- Dark Horse, I think, but I'm not positive
Description: Following the first Ghost in the Shell movie, Major Motoko Kusanagi transcended every prior definition of humanity and vanished into the Internet. Man-Machine Interface is the story of what happens next, as Kusanagi comes into her own as the first fully realized intelligence of cyberspace.
MMI is fascinating because it attempts, as part of its narrative structure, to simulate the thought processes of its central character, and those thought processes are innately other. It's one of the few comics I've seen that genuinely reaches for the alien, and it does it in a unique way. Because Kusanagi is in and of the Net, she is in many senses omnipresent. She leaps from cyborg body to cyborg body as her whims and goals demand, sometimes simultaneously existing in seven or eight places at once. Her computerized mind keeps track of more variables than the human mind can, and does so infallibly. Consequently, I have no idea what actually happens in the plot of MMI. Kusanagi is so consistently engaged in so many activities that it is not possible to keep track unless you use a spreadsheet. Every action of hers, no matter how inexplicable, does have a motivation if traced back far enough, but a lot of it has to be really carefully traced.
Therefore, I have no idea what happens to Kusanagi in the series—but, through observation of the incredible number of strands of information she deals with and the ways she processes them, I'm starting to have an idea of what it might be like to interact with a being like her. I'm starting to be able to imagine what a Net intelligence could do. And that's the rare thing about the manga: it can suggest, plausibly, an intelligence much greater and much different from our own, yet based in it.
In addition, I like Kusanagi; I like the human personalities she puts on and drops; I like the gentle humor which rings through the series, mostly coming from her. (For example, Ghost in the Shell, as a franchise, is famous for its fanservice; when asked why she usually wears micromini skirts or goes naked, Kusanagi answers, smiling, that there is a decided difference in how quickly hostiles are able to respond to her when she's undressed, and quotes an average increase in response time per inch of skirt missing.) Man-Machine Interface is a puzzle, but it's a puzzle worth investing effort in.
8. Excel Saga (through volume 9)
Language: English
Availability: through nine available from Viz
Description: Insert the song 'Pinky and the Brain' here. ACROSS, an organization with an acronym so long I can't remember it, is trying to take over the world. Well, actually, it isn't. The world would be a bit ambitious. What if something went wrong? It's going to start with the city of Fukuoka first, and work up. Unfortunately, even though it has a genuine megalomaniac mastermind, the bishounen-as-all-get-out Il Palazzo, it also has Excel, the title character. Frankly, they may never take over a building.
The anime was mad and deranged and hilarious, with a few surprising kicks in the teeth and a couple of moments of being horribly offensive. The manga is mad and deranged and hilarious, but in a totally different way. In addition to parodying every Japanese cultural reference that no one here has ever heard of (but that the poor translators have very kindly footnoted in the twenty-to-thirty page cultural note section in the back), the Excel Saga manga shows signs of, well, character development. And overarching plot. And stuff that happens actually meaning something. And a core of very, very black humor, if indeed it is humor at all. This is very confusing, but I could get used to it.
In addition, I live in the not-unreasonable hope of Menchi, the cute mascot, someday gaining access to automatic weaponry. Because that would be both just and beautiful.
9. Gravitation (through volume 9)
Language: English
Availability: through nine from Tokyopop
Description: Shindou Shuuichi is in a rock band; Yuki Eiri is a novelist; there is yaoi and angst and sweetness and madness.
Other people have talked about this manga much more coherently than I feel myself capable of managing-- it's not a manga especially productive of coherency-- and I really don't want to be redundant. I direct you especially to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
coffee_and_ink, who feels about the same way I do on the subject.
10. Rurouni Kenshin (through volume 11)
Language: English
Availability: through 11 from Viz
Description: Himura Kenshin is a wandering samurai, trying to atone for his past as the famous assassin the Hitokiri Battousai in the Meiji Revolution.
Kenshin is one of the classic samurai anime, and, although I would not call it *the* classic samurai manga (that would be Lone Wolf and Cub), it's pretty good. The manga has better dialogue, tighter plotting, fewer digressions, and more character development than the TV series; on the other hand, it doesn't have as much of the cheerful good humor that makes parts of Kenshin TV brilliant comedy. It suffers from unrealistic secondary villains, but there's enough moral ambiguity, historical trivia, and pretty art here to make anyone happy. The translation's pretty good too, and comes with some notes on the historical background, although the more you know about the factions and personalities of the Bakumatsu, the better the manga will be.
In addition, the manga is really the portion of Kenshin that I can recommend unreservedly. I love the first two OAVs (out in the US under the title Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal), but I think they're helped a great deal by a knowledge of who Kenshin is and who the other historical personalities wandering around are, and so I tend not to give them to people without a short and probably boring lecture on Japanese history and the life story of Himura Kenshin, which is infodump that I feel should not be necessary if something stands well by itself. The third OAV is unwatchable and that's all there is to it, and the TV series has a lot of filler of extremely uneven quantity, causing me to advise people to watch very specific arcs and leave it at that. But the manga—it's all good, and it's all worth reading. It's decidedly the place to start if you want to become involved with the whole multimedia hodge-podge that is Kenshin, and it's some of the best of the lot.
I also liked, (in no particular order): XXXholic, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Flame of Recca, Yuu Yuu Hakusho, Fake (guiltily and with aggravation), Crescent Moon, Shin Shunkaden/The Legend of Chun Hyang, Gohou Drug/Lawful Drug, Diabolo, Lament of the Lamb, W Juliet, Tramps Like Us (with deep reservations), Here Is Greenwood, Vampire Game, and From Eroica With Love. I admit that the Fruits Basket manga is utterly brilliant, but am reserving judgement until it ends due to fear of the mangaka's capacity to be evil, and I have not yet read the Yami no Matsuei manga, out of a kind of self-defense against my housemates' obsession. I would like to read Please Save My Earth but have not yet managed to track it down or borrow it fromgallian (would you like to temporarily swap it for Crescent Moon?).
This year I'm looking forward to RG Veda, Hunter X Hunter, and more of just about everything on my top-ten list; I've also already greatly enjoyed Bleach and Skyscrapers of Oz. Skyscrapers of Oz would have been about number four on my list if I'd read it last year, so I'll make sure to write it up soon.
Whew. That took a while. I do not think I will do the anime version, because we resorted to a spreadsheet during the spring of last year to keep track of what everyone was watching at Bryn Mawr, and I'm just Not Going There. But I had fun with this, and I hope people find it interesting and/or useful.
And changing the subject entirely, a slightly belated Happy Birthday totrifles!
I read a lot of manga last year, in three languages (English, Japanese, and French). Most of it was at least worth reading, and I tended not to finish the stuff that wasn't. So I've decided to do a top-ten list, which I'll talk about in detail, and then mention afterwards some titles of things I also liked, without much discussion. If you haven't heard of something I liked and want to know more about it, ask and I'll be happy to write it up later. I am also going to steal Melymbrosia's apt and precise threat, which communicates my precise sentiments: Spoil me for things I haven't read, and I will kill you with my brain.
1. Death Note (through issue 53)
Language: English
Availability: scanslations over Bittorrents
Description: I really want to tell you as little about this as possible, since it's one of the few manga I've ever read which achieves genuine suspense. I found myself unable to predict what was going to happen next most of the time, and I still can't. I feel that the surprises of this manga should be allowed to unfold precisely as the mangaka intended. However, I will say that it is drawn wonderfully by the artist who gave us Hikaru no Go, and that it is hands-down the most intelligent manga I have ever read, and contains the most intelligent characters. Its principal pair are locked in a game of cat-and-mouse at a genius level, and it's never clear just who is the cat and who is the mouse. It is philosophically interesting, genuinely wrenching, and achieves both high tragedy and black humor, sometimes on the same page. Don't go into this one looking for a light read, but do read it. It was far and away the best title of 2004.
Note: I have absolutely no idea when this will be licensed, since it runs in Japan in Shonen Jump magazine, an anthology usually known for action-packed fighting and sports stories. Death Note is neither, and is part of an attempt by Shonen Jump Japan to change its image to appeal to more mature readers. However, Viz Comics in the US has first-refusal on all Shonen Jump titles, since Viz in fact puts out the US version of Shonen Jump. Viz is maintaining the US magazine using the original preteen-boy aesthetic (going so far as to take out Rurouni Kenshin for age-level reasons, even though Kenshin was part of the US magazine's starting lineup), and Death Note is decidedly aimed at an audience older than Viz would prefer. We may see Viz license Death Note and put it out in graphic novel format only, but so far they seem to have been unable to decide on a course of action, wanting neither to license the property nor to let it out of their hands. However, the manga is fairly readily available in a decent online fan translation; try Bittorrents.
It is genuinely worth the effort of tracking down the scanslations. I will try to post a link within the next couple of days, but I don't have the address of our most recent source, so I need to consult with the housemates.
2. Petshop of Horrors
Language: English
Availability: all ten volumes are available from Tokyopop
Description: Count D runs a mysterious petshop in Chinatown, which sells extremely rare and unusual animals-- animals which may, in fact, even be supernatural, given the peculiar things that happen to the Count's customers. Detective Leon Orcot is desperately searching for some way to arrest the Count and bring him to justice, but it's not going very smoothly...
Petshop has been one of my favorite titles since I saw the two-episode OAV, which I also highly recommend. The manga has an anthology-style setup, focusing on stand-alone stories with vague connecting threads of plot, until the last several volumes, which tie the whole thing together in an extremely satisfying way. Some of the stand-alone stories are horror, but most of them are not; I would call them weird tales, or tales of the inexplicable. Many of these attain the tight plotting, interesting character development, and twist endings of the best of O. Henry, but they also work as mood pieces, melancholy, lonely, tragic, or startlingly redemptive. There are one or two individual chapters which do not explain enough to be comprehensible, or which fail to work in other ways, but overall these are some of the best short stories out there. I have nothing but good to say about the underlying plot, too, and the whole thing is made even more delightful by some of the most delicate and beautiful art I have ever seen in manga. Count D says that he sells love and dreams, and the art is certainly dreamlike. The love... depends on your point of view.
3. Angel Sanctuary (through volume 5)
Language: English
Availability: volumes 1-5 available from Viz; 6 should be out very soon
Note: I have read more than five volumes of this, both in French and in scanslations, but I want to restrict my remarks to the portions that are most easily available to everyone.
Description: Setsuna Mudo, an Ordinary Japanese High School Student (TM), discovers that he is the reincarnation of the angel Alexiel, who was one of the leaders years and years ago in a great war in Heaven, and that there are many, many people from many, many factions who would like to wake Alexiel, kill Alexiel, hurt Alexiel, cause Alexiel to take over the world, sleep with Alexiel, or, in at least one rather confused case, all of the above (hopefully not simultaneously, but I wouldn't bet on it). However, all of this pales to him in comparison with his most pressing problem: being in love with his sister.
I have determined after long and careful study that the extremely complicated plot and cosmology of this series do, in fact, make sense, but that it doesn't particularly matter; this is a character piece in many ways, and I like many of the characters. I like Setsuna's best friend, Kira, who has cool down to a science, and I like the cross-dressing demons; I like the insane blind angel and the various damned henchmen. I also really enjoy what the series does with gender: Alexiel is female, Setsuna is male, they are the same person, and that's all there is to it. The art has moments of great beauty, although it also has moments wherein I can't tell the characters apart, and the dialogue has some magnificent single lines. This is the classic example of a series which should not be as good as it is, especially considering all the cliches it drags in, but it has a rock-solid core of quality lurking under all the smoke and feathers.
4. Planetes (all but the last volume)
Language: English
Availability: 1-4.1 available from Tokyopop, and I think 4.2 is out although I don't have it yet (and do not ask me about the volume numbering system-- I have no idea)
Description: Gritty, existentialist sci-fi about a group of people who collect and dispose of trash that is floating in Earth orbit, and about the ambitions of one of them to be an astronaut on the first manned flight to Jupiter, and about the politics of dealing with space and with the territorial implications of space flight. The title means 'wandering stars' and is a technical term from ancient astrology referring not simply to the planets, but also to the seasonal motion of the stars across the sky, and the influence of both planets and stars on those being born on the surface of the earth. The editors get brownie points from me forever and ever for putting this title in a correct Russian font on the inside front covers.
Planetes reminds me of John M. Ford or of the very best of Heinlein, and is a title that should be more widely known in the science fiction community than it is. It's one of those rare stories that manages to have very funny things (there's a chapter focusing primarily on smoking that is simply a thing of beauty) while at the same time not flinching from the darker voids of the human soul (this is a manga that can get away with quoting the poetry of Kenji Miyazawa, with all of the connotations of life and death and oblivion that go with the poetry). I will be very interested to see how it resolves.
There is a Planetes anime, by the way, which has been licensed, although I don't know by whom. It is also very good, but is really a different series with characters who resemble but are not identical to their manga counterparts. Actually, the Planetes anime has one or two of the funniest episodes of anime I've ever seen, and it is lighthearted in a way that the manga simply isn't-- well worth a look, for it maintains the sense of wonder while leaving out only a little of the philosophical speculation. I still like the manga better, though.
5. Tactics (volume 1)
Language: English
Availability: volume one is out from ADV Manga; no release date yet for more
Description: Kantarou Ichinomiya has always been able to see youkai and household spirits, and make friends with them; he's also always had the ambition to find and befriend a certain legendary demon-eating goblin. Tactics is the story of what happens after Kantarou finds and unseals this goblin, names him Haruka, and brings him to live in his house.
I think that someone, somewhere, had a checklist of my specific buttons for manga, the things which make me, personally, jump up and down and go all fangirly and frightening, and for Tactics said person took this list and used every single thing on it, in order. Gorgeous bishounen with wings who doesn't look like all the other gorgeous bishounen with wings out there? Check. Scheming masterminding manipulative bastard who doesn't actually hurt anybody? Check. Gratuitous totally innocent yet somehow suggestive bondage? Hints of shounen-ai? Incredibly esoteric and accurate references to Japanese folklore? Latin used in the text? Check, check, check, and check. And to top it all off, it's intelligently written, very well translated, and funny as hell. No signs of plot yet, but I don't think they're necessary. It gets by very well as an episodic, character-based comedy with a very subtle maybe-romance.
I wrote my
yuletide fic in this fandom, and it was a joy to work with. I wish this manga were getting more attention, because I think a lot of people would really enjoy it. There is an anime, which is a bit more well known, but the anime is not as funny, not as sweet, and suffers from a Gratuitous Little Girl. ADV should be pushing this one more; it's a treasure.6. Hellsing (through volume 5)
Language: English
Description: The Hellsing organization is an order of Protestant knights under the control of the Queen of England. They kill vampires. Their head, Sir Integra Wingates Hellsing, has a vampire of her very own. His name is Alucard.
I love the Hellsing anime dearly. It's one of the things I watch when I'm feeling really depressed, because Alucard makes everything better. He's an ur-vampire, a force of nature who is essentially invincible, and he exists in bondage to and friendship with Integra in a relationship that is surprising and yet somehow inevitable. I was going to like the manga unless it was essentially different from the anime, and it isn't. It's got everything good about Hellsing, as well as, in volume five, a plot twist that made me bounce in sheer delight with the combination of my loves of vampire coolness and aerospace engineering.
That said, this title isn't for everyone. It's probably the goriest thing I read on a regular basis, and I've seen it categorized before as splatterpunk. The art is in a style that can be somewhat off-putting (although it can also be very beautiful), and the general levels of crudeness, vulgarity, and nastiness are pretty high. If you can't deal with a fairly graphic, fairly regular major body count, don't read Hellsing. It strains my capacities on occasion. Alucard is a killer, when Integra tells him to be. He eats people, when allowed to do so. There are other monsters. I find the characters-- Alucard and some of the most kick-ass women in anime and manga-- to be entirely worth it, but I know that others may not feel the same way. If you didn't like the anime, don't read the manga, either; they are really very similar. However, I do recommend either to anyone who has even the slightest enjoyment of horror series, since Hellsing is the finest one of those I've yet encountered.
And hey, German teleporting werewolves. What's not to love?
7. Ghost in the Shell: Man-Machine Interface
Language: English
Availability: now in trade paperback-- Dark Horse, I think, but I'm not positive
Description: Following the first Ghost in the Shell movie, Major Motoko Kusanagi transcended every prior definition of humanity and vanished into the Internet. Man-Machine Interface is the story of what happens next, as Kusanagi comes into her own as the first fully realized intelligence of cyberspace.
MMI is fascinating because it attempts, as part of its narrative structure, to simulate the thought processes of its central character, and those thought processes are innately other. It's one of the few comics I've seen that genuinely reaches for the alien, and it does it in a unique way. Because Kusanagi is in and of the Net, she is in many senses omnipresent. She leaps from cyborg body to cyborg body as her whims and goals demand, sometimes simultaneously existing in seven or eight places at once. Her computerized mind keeps track of more variables than the human mind can, and does so infallibly. Consequently, I have no idea what actually happens in the plot of MMI. Kusanagi is so consistently engaged in so many activities that it is not possible to keep track unless you use a spreadsheet. Every action of hers, no matter how inexplicable, does have a motivation if traced back far enough, but a lot of it has to be really carefully traced.
Therefore, I have no idea what happens to Kusanagi in the series—but, through observation of the incredible number of strands of information she deals with and the ways she processes them, I'm starting to have an idea of what it might be like to interact with a being like her. I'm starting to be able to imagine what a Net intelligence could do. And that's the rare thing about the manga: it can suggest, plausibly, an intelligence much greater and much different from our own, yet based in it.
In addition, I like Kusanagi; I like the human personalities she puts on and drops; I like the gentle humor which rings through the series, mostly coming from her. (For example, Ghost in the Shell, as a franchise, is famous for its fanservice; when asked why she usually wears micromini skirts or goes naked, Kusanagi answers, smiling, that there is a decided difference in how quickly hostiles are able to respond to her when she's undressed, and quotes an average increase in response time per inch of skirt missing.) Man-Machine Interface is a puzzle, but it's a puzzle worth investing effort in.
8. Excel Saga (through volume 9)
Language: English
Availability: through nine available from Viz
Description: Insert the song 'Pinky and the Brain' here. ACROSS, an organization with an acronym so long I can't remember it, is trying to take over the world. Well, actually, it isn't. The world would be a bit ambitious. What if something went wrong? It's going to start with the city of Fukuoka first, and work up. Unfortunately, even though it has a genuine megalomaniac mastermind, the bishounen-as-all-get-out Il Palazzo, it also has Excel, the title character. Frankly, they may never take over a building.
The anime was mad and deranged and hilarious, with a few surprising kicks in the teeth and a couple of moments of being horribly offensive. The manga is mad and deranged and hilarious, but in a totally different way. In addition to parodying every Japanese cultural reference that no one here has ever heard of (but that the poor translators have very kindly footnoted in the twenty-to-thirty page cultural note section in the back), the Excel Saga manga shows signs of, well, character development. And overarching plot. And stuff that happens actually meaning something. And a core of very, very black humor, if indeed it is humor at all. This is very confusing, but I could get used to it.
In addition, I live in the not-unreasonable hope of Menchi, the cute mascot, someday gaining access to automatic weaponry. Because that would be both just and beautiful.
9. Gravitation (through volume 9)
Language: English
Availability: through nine from Tokyopop
Description: Shindou Shuuichi is in a rock band; Yuki Eiri is a novelist; there is yaoi and angst and sweetness and madness.
Other people have talked about this manga much more coherently than I feel myself capable of managing-- it's not a manga especially productive of coherency-- and I really don't want to be redundant. I direct you especially to
coffee_and_ink, who feels about the same way I do on the subject. 10. Rurouni Kenshin (through volume 11)
Language: English
Availability: through 11 from Viz
Description: Himura Kenshin is a wandering samurai, trying to atone for his past as the famous assassin the Hitokiri Battousai in the Meiji Revolution.
Kenshin is one of the classic samurai anime, and, although I would not call it *the* classic samurai manga (that would be Lone Wolf and Cub), it's pretty good. The manga has better dialogue, tighter plotting, fewer digressions, and more character development than the TV series; on the other hand, it doesn't have as much of the cheerful good humor that makes parts of Kenshin TV brilliant comedy. It suffers from unrealistic secondary villains, but there's enough moral ambiguity, historical trivia, and pretty art here to make anyone happy. The translation's pretty good too, and comes with some notes on the historical background, although the more you know about the factions and personalities of the Bakumatsu, the better the manga will be.
In addition, the manga is really the portion of Kenshin that I can recommend unreservedly. I love the first two OAVs (out in the US under the title Samurai X: Trust and Betrayal), but I think they're helped a great deal by a knowledge of who Kenshin is and who the other historical personalities wandering around are, and so I tend not to give them to people without a short and probably boring lecture on Japanese history and the life story of Himura Kenshin, which is infodump that I feel should not be necessary if something stands well by itself. The third OAV is unwatchable and that's all there is to it, and the TV series has a lot of filler of extremely uneven quantity, causing me to advise people to watch very specific arcs and leave it at that. But the manga—it's all good, and it's all worth reading. It's decidedly the place to start if you want to become involved with the whole multimedia hodge-podge that is Kenshin, and it's some of the best of the lot.
I also liked, (in no particular order): XXXholic, Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Flame of Recca, Yuu Yuu Hakusho, Fake (guiltily and with aggravation), Crescent Moon, Shin Shunkaden/The Legend of Chun Hyang, Gohou Drug/Lawful Drug, Diabolo, Lament of the Lamb, W Juliet, Tramps Like Us (with deep reservations), Here Is Greenwood, Vampire Game, and From Eroica With Love. I admit that the Fruits Basket manga is utterly brilliant, but am reserving judgement until it ends due to fear of the mangaka's capacity to be evil, and I have not yet read the Yami no Matsuei manga, out of a kind of self-defense against my housemates' obsession. I would like to read Please Save My Earth but have not yet managed to track it down or borrow it from
gallian (would you like to temporarily swap it for Crescent Moon?).This year I'm looking forward to RG Veda, Hunter X Hunter, and more of just about everything on my top-ten list; I've also already greatly enjoyed Bleach and Skyscrapers of Oz. Skyscrapers of Oz would have been about number four on my list if I'd read it last year, so I'll make sure to write it up soon.
Whew. That took a while. I do not think I will do the anime version, because we resorted to a spreadsheet during the spring of last year to keep track of what everyone was watching at Bryn Mawr, and I'm just Not Going There. But I had fun with this, and I hope people find it interesting and/or useful.
And changing the subject entirely, a slightly belated Happy Birthday to
trifles!
