Manga Weekend Hosts – Manga Olympics for Bloggers (MOB) | Spring/Summer 2013 *STICKIED*

And thus! After consulting arawr (who helped me gather all my thoughts and rants together and basically rewrote this whole post), Manga Weekend will be hosting a very ambitious manga blogging event – Manga Olympics for Bloggers, Spring-Summer 2013. The official start date shall be the 3^rd June 2013, this date has a EXTREMELY HIGH possibility of changing. So keep in mind that it should start sometime in June.

So like any normal Olympics, we kind of need participants to participate (doh) so, um, please do. Depending on the amount of bloggers that sign up, the format of the event would be a tourney-styled or just a free for all. Seeing as this whole event is quite dependent on its participants, it would be great if you could fully commit during the duration of the event once you’ve signed up. We’ll pretty much run through how we’ve planned things out so far, and are open to suggestions so don’t forget to leave a comment below as well =D

If your blog focuses more on anime rather than manga, we hope that you’ll still join/encourage and support your sister manga blogging community!

One-Shot for the Weekend – Danshi Toilet de Machiawase

Danshi Toilet de Machiawase  (男子トイレで待ち合わせ) / Meeting Up at the Male Toilet

Manga-ka: Mizu Asato

Genre: Comedy, Doujinshi, Romance, School Life

An original doujinshi of a girl, a boy and a male toilet.

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Well… this is a bit of an odd one-shot on our part. Sometimes I get the feeling that a lot of our one-shots for the weekend revolve around more or less the same sort of theme, so I thought I’d try something different this time round – and I’m not quite sure how to react to it…?

Danshi Toilet de Machiawase is a one-shot about the scenarios between a boy and girl that find refuge in an abandoned boy’s toilet during their lunch break. The initial thought I had was that it was going to be your usual hanky-panky; but when I saw that there weren’t any of the usual genre associated with a doujin x toilet kind of manga, I decided to give it a go.

There’s an odd kind of humour for an odd kind of manga with an odd kind of male lead.  Most of the comedy has to do with the situation the girl finds herself in, and the type of consideration the guy provides in return. Rather than having some sort of chemistry between the two, I’d say it’s more like they’ve reached this (unfathomable) acceptance of one another which is really quite sweet.

Quite different from what we usually recommend, but if you just finished another repetitive week with repetitive school/work, here’s a one-shot to just blow you off course and make you laugh this weekend =)

Rating: 3.7/5.0

One-Shot for Last Weekend – X-Tai Shinsho

X-Tai Shinsho 

Mangaka: Ezawa

Genre: Action, Comedy, Historical, Shounen, Supernatural

Sugita Genpaku made a contract with a demon in exchange for the ability to cure any disease.
But if he doesn’t find someone to treat within the time limit, his soul will be taken!

Published online on Gangan Online in 2011 by Square Enix.

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Okay, I admit, it’s kind of odd that I’m writing a one-shot post for last week considering the coming weekend is just around the corner. But, still, I don’t like leaving an odd bob of a weekend out while we’re active. The one-shot I’m bringing you to attention is X-Tai Shinsho, it’s really similar to another manga series I’ve written about before in a mushroom-manga post called Kaitai Shinsho Zero. It’s whole concept is almost identical in a way, a super-doctor which cures people of extra-ordinary illnesses. I had wanted this one-shot’s story to be more in lined with a Black Jack kind of doctor story. Like a doctor who is curing the weak and sick in a more humane manner than a ball-busting, demon killing-fest like Kaitai Shinsho Zero; but that was not to be, since the protagonist in X-Tai Shinsho also kinda went that route.

The thing that really caught my interest was the fact that the protagonist would die if he doesn’t cure a person with a deadly illness within a time-limit, it was like, wow Shounen manga really hates their protagonists don’t they. I always find that they always have some seriously depressing past but I suppose that’s how you build a extremely epic story? The manga-ka’s drawing style is also extremely pleasing on the eye, really similar to works from Comic Zero-Sum/Avarus/Gene(I’d fit GanGan Online into this group really). The one-shot was written in the way in which most Shounen manga one-shots are written – to allow a continuation to another extremely long serialisation. I don’t think this one-shot was extremely mind-blowing but I still really like the concept and the fact that the manga-ka chose to set it in a historical era; and having a light-hearted/little haughty protagonist is always a plus(keeps things less serious).

Rating: 3/5

“As my love first came to realization, Word had already spread.”

It’s kind of amazing how you look at something differently after watching it the second time. I spent yesterday and a bit of today re-watching the first season of Chihayafuru (and unbeknownst to me so was chungky). For those of you who don’t know it, Chihayafuru is a manga/anime about a bunch of high-school kids playing karuta. Karuta’s basically a game based around the hyakunin isshu, a collection of 100 poems by 100 poets.

Chihayafuru really changed for me when I re-watched it; most probably because my understanding of karuta was a lot better, but now that I knew some things were going to happen, I could pay attention to others instead. For example, there are times in the story where they use the poetry from the hyakunin isshu to illustrate the relationships between the characters; before I thought they were just pretty words that relate really well to the situation. But my second experience with Chihayafuru found the description to be so beautiful, I’ve quoted some of them in this post!

Let’s start!

I read the Chihayafuru manga before the anime came out, and I’ve been captured by it from the very beginning. Maybe it’s my own bias for stories that use the ‘childhood friends’ card; I always feel that the relationship between children are a lot more direct, honest and simple (e.g. not manipulated by hormones yet). So anyway, the three main characters are 1, the heroine (Chihaya), 2, the transfer student who introduces her to karuta (Arata) and 3, the bully/friend (Taichi). I’ll be going off on my own rant about it from here on, so spoilers will follow. But if you’re like chungky who went all “Well, don’t mean to spoil it for you, but looks like the bully’s gonna get her,” when I’d only explained what characters were in the story and nothing about storyline, then we all never had to worry about what ultimately would or would not happen.

BUT THAT’S THE THING!!

Mushroom Manga Talk (?) – Changing the Past in Orange

Orange (Takano Ichigo) /オレンジ (高野苺)

Manga-ka: Takano Ichigo

Genre: Drama, Mystery, Shoujo, Romance, School Life, Slice-of-Life, Supernatural, Tragedy

In the Spring she was 16, Takamiya Naho receives a strange, but detailed letter from herself, ten years in the future. At first she thinks the letter is a prank, but then the things written in the letter actually happen, including the new transfer student that sits next to her in class, Naruse Kakeru. In the letter, her 27-year-old self tells her 16-year-old self that her biggest regret is that Kakeru is no longer with them in the future, and asks her to watch him closely.

———————–

So I don’t usually read – much less write – posts around the shoujo/drama genre, but there was just something about Takano Ichigo’s Orange that compelled me to get typing. The story revolves around a high school girl called Naho, who somehow receives a letter from herself 10 years into the future. The letter basically tells her to re-do the things that her 10-years-later self (let’s call her Naho2) regrets even to her present day, from the little things such as not stepping up as a batter in a class softball tournament, to not being able to save somebody very, very precious to her.

Gosh I feel old but it’s about half a year since I’ve turned 21, and chungky’s also just turned 21 so Happy Birthday dude. Anyway, around the time I turned 21 I started doing everything I always wanted to do, but had been afraid of failing, or having people laugh at me since 1991. There’s always this nagging at the back of my head saying “Well you could’ve done it 10 years ago; you just chickened out,”. I should have been more persistent, I should have been braver, I should have said this, I should have done that. Should, should, should.

But I didn’t.

Shingeki no Kyojin – Chew on it Bro

Shingeki no Kyojin (進撃の巨人) / Attack on Titan

Several hundred years ago, humans were nearly exterminated by titans. Titans are typically several stories tall, seem to have no intelligence, and devour human beings. A small percentage of humanity survived by locking themselves in a city surrounded by 50m walls. Flash forward to the present; the city has not seen a titan in over 100 years. However, this all changes when a colossal titan appears and breaches the wall that had protected them for a century.

Genre: Action, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, Shounen, Tragedy

Status: Currently airing, planned for 25 episodes

Original work by Isayama Hajime, directed by Araki Tetsurou and produced by like a massive bunch of companies including Production I.G.,  FUNimation Entertainment, Mainichi Broascasting, etc. etc.

Rated  R17; and like guys, pay attention to that rating because I (and I think a lot of other people) really got the shock of their lives from watching this anime. Speaking of which, I’m wondering why none of the genres mention ‘psychological’ considering the fact that watching this probably leaves you with some mental scars.

Let’s start!

———

What do you mean you haven’t watched it?!

I think it’s pretty solid to say that the anime of the season right now is Shingeki no Kyojin; I know it’s not much of a reference but whenever I read comments off 9gag, there’s always someone putting in  some titan joke or yo’ momma is a titan or whatever. Even chungky who doesn’t usually watch anime (much less one that is quite graphic, to say the least) has got a bit of an unhealthy obsession with it,as mentioned previously, “following the anime religiously and even re-watching it like a cow regurgitating grass,”.

Anyway if you haven’t watched Shingeki no Kyojin by now, you have no idea what you’re missing out. I cannot remember the last time I’ve been this floored by an anime; there’s something very brutally blunt about the way the story is executed. This post does contain spoilers, but nothing beyond like the 4^th episode. The basic premise is that humanity has been hiding behind 50m walls for the past 100 years to hide away from the titans, who are these humanoid creatures that come in assorted sizes (usually larger than yo’ momma) and have pretty much been snacking their way through the human race. This post shall henceforth primarily focus on the aforementioned snackers.

Found ya

Proposal: Manga Olympics for Bloggers(MOB) – A Manga Blogging Olympics

These past few months, as a manga & anime blogger, I’ve been reading news/opinions from various platforms about the death of manga.

Do I mean the industry? Yes.

What about manga blogging? Yes.

Wait, did you say yes to both questions, yes? Yes.