Random manga chatter

[Dracos]

http://bato.to/comic/_/comics/boku-no-hero-academia-r12714/

Continues to be my favorite new manga.  Part of SJ Alpha as well.  The story of a young man (in superhero world) who wants to be a hero.  Born with: No powers, Excellent Instincts.

Taken under wing by Golden Age Famous Hero...who is dying horribly.

They make quite the pair.

[Dracos]

http://mangapark.me/manga/wizards-soul-holy-war-of-love

Another cute work from the Bonnouji artist.  Guy tends to do pretty decent 'these are actually people' takes.

[Merc]

Fairy tail's second timeskip, and the arc's concept of 'there is this nation of mages waaaay stronger than us and they want to hurt us, but they are afraid of all the things we just beat the shit out of....oh no! We beat the shit out of the thing they fear! Now the super mages will beat us!!' bugs the hell out of me. Really? This is the next foe?

Have trouble really finding a reason to continue following it.

[thepanda]

http://mangapark.me/manga/re-monster

This has been an interesting read so far. Not sure if I'd call it good, exactly, but interesting.

[Dracos]

Fairy tail's second timeskip, and the arc's concept of 'there is this nation of mages waaaay stronger than us and they want to hurt us, but they are afraid of all the things we just beat the shit out of....oh no! We beat the shit out of the thing they fear! Now the super mages will beat us!!' bugs the hell out of me. Really? This is the next foe?

Have trouble really finding a reason to continue following it.

I still like the characters...

But yeah, the arc setup was pretty dumb.  Especially with "Okay, the strooongest mage" (Who has never been on camera) "Has DEFECTED and they have 11 mages, just as strong!"

There's lots of crummy setup there to establish: We're going off to fight another group of 12 mages.  They will be plausible threats, despite our enormous powerups that make most the magic population of the country not even a warm up.

[Merc]

Yeah, I still like characters, but the set-up for the story arc blows.

[Dracos]

Man current chapter blows hard.

Lots of really pathetically 'Oh god, these guys are EEEEVIL" followed by a mook taking them out, followed by one of the Tweleve scaring them with magic power.  Really. At THIS point?

They're all post recent training arc.  They've hung out with S-class mages all over town.  There should not be 'oh god, this one person is so magically powerful I'm sweating' anymore.  Taking the angle of numbers was right.  Taking the angle that they have individual powerhouse mages that are just that strong was eeeh.  That was not plausible threat.  That was "2 on 6, we win."

[Dracos]

Yeah Fairy Tail has wandered into random space pretty much.

Ippo is updating and...well the fighting is decent and the writing is bad?  dunno if its translation or otherwise, but they really kind of flubbed the communication of Bison's frustration with Takamura taking out his goal, David Eagle.  They also really made the coach look stupid and the relationship weird with Takamura shoving the coach out of the ring and the coach having garbage in the way of advice or a plan for dealing with Bison.

I think it is one of the better actual matches they've had in a bit, but well, just delivered poorly as a whole when they step out of the fighting.

[Empyrean]

http://mangapark.me/manga/re-monster

This has been an interesting read so far. Not sure if I'd call it good, exactly, but interesting.

I read this one recently as sort of a "monster protagonist" kick along with Spirit Migration and In Regards to My Reincarnation as a Slime.

Re: Monster is straight up goblin power fantasy. At times it feels like I'm reading a manga adaptation of Progress Quest, but I ended up binging all the currently released chapters, and I want more. It's not great, but it sort of grabbed me. The power curve is steep and starts really low (goblins get killed by horned rabbits, seriously) so I'm curious to see where it'll end up.

Spirit Migration is about an amnesiac spirit that wakes up in a dungeon full of monsters that is periodically raided by adventurer parties. He finds that he can possess monsters, and he thinks he might have been human, so he decides to make himself useful in the hope that he can figure out who he was. Based on a light novel (series?). Definitely worth a read.

In Regards to My Reincarnation as a Slime is another light novel series adaptation. A dying man wishes for various things, which ends up being his baseline skillset for his next life, in which he is reincarnated as a slime. Like, the little gelatinous blob monsters from old school RPGs. He's pretty ridiculously overpowered for a slime, though, and decides to go out and make his way in the world. Pretty entertaining so far, but it's only about three chapters in.

Another thing I read recently was Tomo-chan wa Onna no ko!

Here is the first strip, and it gives you a good idea of what you're in for: http://img.bato.to/comics/2015/06/28/t/read55906057d750c/img000001.png

It's 4-koma series about a tomboy who is trying to get out of the friend zone with her childhood friend. Except it's less "friend" zone and more "best bro forever" zone. Her ultimate goal is to date her friend, but she's romantically clueless, and he's so stuck in the mindset that she is a bro that he thinks it's weird that she wears a skirt. She gets romantic advice from a female friend who is mostly just in it for the trolling.

The series as a whole is cute and funny, and there are around a hundred strips out so far, so you can catch up to current in one sitting. It does seem to be making some plot progress, which kind of surprised me; usually these sorts of series don't mess with the basic setup and just use that to throw gags until it gets stale.

[Jason_Miao]

Re: Monster is straight up goblin power fantasy. At times it feels like I'm reading a manga adaptation of Progress Quest, but I ended up binging all the currently released chapters, and I want more. It's not great, but it sort of grabbed me. The power curve is steep and starts really low (goblins get killed by horned rabbits, seriously) so I'm curious to see where it'll end up.

If you're okay with reading a translated webnovel rather than the manga, http://japtem.com/projects/remonster-toc/ has up to chapter 7 of 10 translated.  I believe this is beyond the point where the manga is translated.

edit: I should mention - I glanced at where the manga is right now, and the webnovel gets fairly rapey after that point.  It's all text, and it doesn't go into explicit detail, but I still found it to be unpleasantly gratuitous.  So, fair warning, and I'll let you decide whether you want to continue reading.

[Empyrean]

Re: Monster is straight up goblin power fantasy. At times it feels like I'm reading a manga adaptation of Progress Quest, but I ended up binging all the currently released chapters, and I want more. It's not great, but it sort of grabbed me. The power curve is steep and starts really low (goblins get killed by horned rabbits, seriously) so I'm curious to see where it'll end up.

If you're okay with reading a translated webnovel rather than the manga, http://japtem.com/projects/remonster-toc/ has up to chapter 7 of 10 translated.  I believe this is beyond the point where the manga is translated.

edit: I should mention - I glanced at where the manga is right now, and the webnovel gets fairly rapey after that point.  It's all text, and it doesn't go into explicit detail, but I still found it to be unpleasantly gratuitous.  So, fair warning, and I'll let you decide whether you want to continue reading.

I'll see how bad it gets, I suppose. I picked up the webnovel translation of the encounter with the Dryad, and it was pretty much just a fade to black instead of a sex scene. I've definitely got my limits, and have ditched manga over rape content in the past (the guy who wrote Wolfen Crest needs therapy, good lord; I read later that the rape scene that led to me ditching that story went for something like twenty chapters), but if it's not too sickening I'd probably just read through. Thanks for the heads up.

[Dracos]

Fairy Tail spinoffs have ended.  And with them anything really consumable as Zeraf who is Spriggan who is whatever has just flat out become whatever he needs to be to be the next villain.  Power levels and tolerance for wiping out cities has made things kind of ridiculous.

Hajime has been updating.  And while the boxing is kind of neat, what they did with coach was super lame and the amount that Takamura seems prepared is also very lame.

[Merc]

Again, from gathering, Drac asked for manga links:

RPG: Korean series. Guildmaster returns to virtual world game after two years without. Finds out the game stalled because he'd crafted the unique quest item needed to access the expansion before he quit and the developer said they weren't patching around it. Not entirely sure where it's going just yet, but it at least has my interest for now.

4 Cut Hero: Another korean series. Kid defeats the demon lord, finds out that the princess was a 'prince', leaves and goes live the life of a NEET. Prince turns out to be some kind of manipulative dragon and the former demon lord's minions keep crashing onto the hero's life. It's a weird series, but amusing. Nothing that really makes sense is happening though.

Gamma: (Yuri warning) Story is about the formerly strongest superhero, a magical girl who lost her powers (mostly). Outside of the older sister's sister complex, yuri doesn't seem a major thing until the last few chapters. Also, there is NSFW art in this series as a secondary warning. Starts with comedic elements but starts becoming more serious as it goes along. Looks to be a short series and close to ending (assuming it doesn't start some sort of new arc).

Soul Catcher(s): Music shounen. Main character can see into people's hearts and ends up getting drafted as an orchestral conductor. Now he has to fix his school band's hearts so they can win the nationals! Typical shounen fluff, but I like it.

Ballroom e Youkoso: Ballroom dancing shounen. It's Hajime No Ippo, except replace boxing with ballroom dancing.

[Merc]

And it seems the last chapter of Gamma did just come out, so it's over.

I enjoyed the series, though the NSFW lesbian scenes at the end could have been done without probably. Given that so much anime/manga sells off fanservice, I can sort of understand, but I still prefered the power ratings they were doing before the last volume and the more subtle touches of yuri prior to it instead of the overt in-your-face NSFW scenes. Ah well.

[KLSymph]

The following is an email conversation (slightly dramatized) between me and a member of Fallen Angels Scans which ended this morning.

Hey KL, you did a good job with the Rakudai Kishi manga translation. Our group wants to continue Madan no Ou to Vanadis, which hasn't been updated in five months due to Bento Scans's translator being busy, but we don't have a translator ourselves either. Would you be interested?

I don't know. I like Madan, but given my other commitments I'm not sure if I can fit in a second regular series.

It's a monthly manga, so you'd have two weeks to complete each chapter.

...It's hard to decide. Do you have some raws I can take a look at?

Sure! *sends volume 5*

*flips through pages*

Hmm.

*type type type type*

Here you go. Please have a proofreader go through it because I don't know the editing standards for this series very well.

Did you just translate a five-chapter 160-page tankoubon in one day!?

No, I didn't translate the last two pages since they were author omake and not part of the story.

If you're wondering, yes, I had this entire conversation with a straight face.