MANGOES (japanese manga adult literature)

You forgot HOLY TESTICLE TUESDAY, the holiest of all days!

And to add something more substantive to the thread:
HI-SCORE GIRL


I imagine there are probably folks here familiar with it already since it’s right in the SB wheelhouse.

It’s a video game nostalgia story where the basic plot being about an elementary kid who loves video games and suddenly having to deal with the appearance of the rich perfect girl who never talks from school at his favorite arcade being just as perfect a Zangief player, as well as at most anything else. And he deals with it poorly at first but over time their antagonistic relationship changes and grows as they play together.



Also yes apparently in this your fighting game main can become your spirit animal and I love it.

Starting in 1991 and currently in 1996 with them in high school, it delves pretty heavily in game history and reference, especially arcade stuff, and it really captures that feel of wonder as a kid back when arcade games were amazing things and experiences you couldn’t get at home. But it’s not all nostalgia and is telling a nice story in its own right.

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Only mangoes I’ve read in the last year are 3 books by Yuichi Yokoyama, who is probably the best ever. Here are the first 3 pages of his book Garden.




It’s literally just this for hundreds of pages. It is perfect.

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Tried Alexandros last night. Got some fifty pages in but it’s not grabbing me. The chosen typeface is also a pain to read.

Travel is one of the few pieces of physical media I still own

Feel like no one scans the rare good shit from any comics space, it’s bloody annoying

Been trying to have a look at Crickets for ages now but I will not suffer clutter

Alexandros is really really good

Wait, is Alexandros out, or is a scanlation?

Anyway, mangos I am reading:

  • Mobile Suit Gundam: Thunderbolt. Gundam stuff, the author likes to smash you in the head with “war is a meat grinder” and pretending he knows about jazz. But I like where the story is going and cannot leave Daryl Lorenz alone.

  • Dungeon Menshi, which I made the error of picking the english edition (the spanish one is ahead, I think). It’s a common problem I have: picking between two editions. English ones I can just go out and buy them and for the Spanish ones I have to wait till I fly there. But on the other hand they are nicer, paper tend to be better and most of them are printed with their dustjackets.

  • Black Lagoon: which I got the first volume after the second Roberta arc and regretted doing it. Not for Lagoon itself, which I acknowledge as trash I enjoy if not as much as before. But the translation of the last volumen (spanish edition) was incredibly abysmal. Anyway, till next year when I may purchase another volume ala Berserk!

  • Mob Psycho 100: you really really get attached to Mob. Love how the whole supernatural world want to force him to use his power and answer aggression with aggression but he finds the way to do things his own kind way. Lucky enough to be able to buy this on paper, but the trimestral release is killing me.

  • Devilman G: Bought it las Saturday. Yeeeeah, this thing lets you know really early is going to be a Nagai type of work.

  • Golden Kamuy: Every one of my friends has insisted that I must read this, so I got the first volume and let’s see where it gets.

Also got the first two volumes of Hero Academi, but I don’t think I am in this for the long run. Not when a coworker gave me all the volumes of the Chimera Ant arc. That’s enough shonen for a while.

Not reading that much this year as my shelf space is getting more and more scarce and am quite lost in how scanlations of old stuff are going right now.

It’s a scanslation.

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:cowboy_hat_face:

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Blew through Teppu in half a week as it’s rather short. It’s essentially entry-level MMA with a woman protagonist. Problem is, that protagonist is rather unlikeable and suddenly (to me, at least. I may have missed some development somewhere) gets sadist notions as her main driver for joining the sport! I guess it also wasn’t popular enough to fully resolve the story to the author’s liking as it ends somewhat suddenly.

read a manga called Holyland

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From what I understand the author hit major health issues, cancer or the like. Went on hiatus for a couple years or something before he came back and ended it where he did. I for one rather enjoyed Natsuo and her asshole tendencies, though I wouldn’t call her likeable.

Anyone know of some legitimately good, cute manga series?

I’m the Secret Santa of someone who is wild about Yotsuba and dressing up super frilly and magical girls and rhythm games and such. Would love to get her a something good and relatively new in that vein.

sweetness and lightning is a good manga about a dad cooking meals for his daughter

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Bloom Into You appears to be extremely cute shoujo ai manga officially published in english, if she’d be into that. I’ve only skimmed the first chapter but I got hit with heart pangs regardless.

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Shot in the dark, but maybe Hoshino, Me o Tsubutte? It’s about a grumpy dude who gets roped into doing a girl’s makeup for her. It’s not ~CuTe~ but I think it’s kinda cute. I feel like there’s not really any male gaze pandering in it?

For some reason it came to mind right away. Series is ongoing and I have no idea if it’s being translated/published officially tho

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Went back and finished Alexandros. It picks up after that first fifty pages, and I did find myself enjoying Alexander’s arc, but I also strongly felt that I was missing out on an element of it by not being some history nerd.

Read all of Blue Heaven last night (three volumes), and I would also say this is good but missing something. Interesting characters, but the spoken moral of “never give up!” felt weirdly anime and even just vague in context. But the translation wasn’t amazing (I am becoming much more aware every time a character says “can’t be helped”) so that may explain that. The were two short stories by the author also included. I found 69 to be completely throwaway, but Route 69 was a much more interesting character study.

I haven’t touched Prison School but one of my exes was a big fan of it. I read the 14 chapter spinoff Fukukaichou Ganbaru (apparently by a different artist, the recently and it’s definitely the same brand of absurdly over-the-top eroticism paired with slapstick and melodrama that makes it so funny. All fourteen chapters are also almost entirely nonverbal which is always a worthwhile effort in my book.

Junji Itou’s Cat Diary: Yon & Mu is perfect in every possible way, please read this comedy by a horror writer.

I’ve read the first volume of Fujiyama-san wa Shishunki and it’s about some punk ass kid who gets a crush on a 5’11" girl and is therefore a story about me. It is really cute and gentle so far. The girl’s name is Fujiyama, but Fujiyama-san also translates to “Mt. Fujiyama”. IT’S A TALL JOKE.

And lastly I’ve three volumes deep into Ushio & Tora which is old shonen (well, '90-'96) and therefore intrinsically good. I enjoy when I can get a feel for the amateurishness in a manga’s artistry because it makes me feel like the gap between me and the professionals is smaller. There’s 33 volumes in all, so I’ll die of old age before I reach the end.

i totally get this feeling from the art in girls last tour. the landscapes in particular are so beautiful, but at the same time kind of scribbly and very imperfect.

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Yeah, exactly! I feel like I can hear the author saying “That doesn’t look right. Well, let’s move on anyway, I don’t have time to fix it.” And because of that it gains a certain charm.

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I HAVE NEVER FELT SO CALLED OUT

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