What Are You Reading?

[gunswordfist]

I wish we had another Best Villain competition so I could nominate Lincoln Redcrow.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Today I did something I've never done before; I bought the first volume of a manga/comic series I have never read before. Well, I've read a sample chapter before, but not a good chunk of the series to say I'm familiar with it. However, I think Vinland Saga was worth this experiment, and I look forward to reading it. 

[Spark Of Spirit]

I hope you enjoy it.

[Grave]

Dangit, I don't know if reading the current chapters of Hajime no Ippo's a good idea, especially considering that the chapters are so short, and the mangaka does so much dragging (or rather, it feels as if there's so much dragging), but at the same time I can't help but read it because it's been a while since New Challenger and I want to see where Ippo stands when it comes to world boxing, but then again I really need to stop reading the current chapters and start where New Challenger left off.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I haven't bothered reading any of the current chapters yet. I'm almost 700 chapters into the manga, so I'll catch up with the story myself over the next few months.

[Pharass]

I wish we had another Best Villain competition so I could nominate Lincoln Redcrow.

Red Crow is great, he reminds me a lot of Al Swearengen from Deadwood.
Nitz is a pretty good villain as well, though he's more of the "love-to-hate" type.
I personally would be on-board for another Best Villain tournament. After all, I've discovered plenty of new villains since the last one.

[gunswordfist]

I wish we had another Best Villain competition so I could nominate Lincoln Redcrow.

Red Crow is great, he reminds me a lot of Al Swearengen from Deadwood.
Nitz is a pretty good villain as well, though he's more of the "love-to-hate" type.
I personally would be on-board for another Best Villain tournament. After all, I've discovered plenty of new villains since the last one.

Sounds like I need to watch Deadwood.

There was a point where Redcrow became almost too likable then soon after that got toned down with a flashback of him doing something despicable. Same for Nitz except overall I don't like Nitz. That's the beauty of it all.

I say we need another Best Villain tournament ASAP.

[Pharass]

I wish we had another Best Villain competition so I could nominate Lincoln Redcrow.

Red Crow is great, he reminds me a lot of Al Swearengen from Deadwood.
Nitz is a pretty good villain as well, though he's more of the "love-to-hate" type.
I personally would be on-board for another Best Villain tournament. After all, I've discovered plenty of new villains since the last one.

Sounds like I need to watch Deadwood.

There was a point where Redcrow became almost too likable then soon after that got toned down with a flashback of him doing something despicable. Same for Nitz except overall I don't like Nitz. That's the beauty of it all.

I say we need another Best Villain tournament ASAP.

You should definitely watch Deadwood, it's an excellent show and Ian McShane as Swearengen is one of the best characters to ever grace the small screen.
I wouldn't mind hosting another villain tournament (it's been awhile since the last one), but I want to get done with the Best Manga tournament first. Of course, you can always start one up yourself.

[gunswordfist]

I wish we had another Best Villain competition so I could nominate Lincoln Redcrow.

Red Crow is great, he reminds me a lot of Al Swearengen from Deadwood.
Nitz is a pretty good villain as well, though he's more of the "love-to-hate" type.
I personally would be on-board for another Best Villain tournament. After all, I've discovered plenty of new villains since the last one.

Sounds like I need to watch Deadwood.

There was a point where Redcrow became almost too likable then soon after that got toned down with a flashback of him doing something despicable. Same for Nitz except overall I don't like Nitz. That's the beauty of it all.

I say we need another Best Villain tournament ASAP.

You should definitely watch Deadwood, it's an excellent show and Ian McShane as Swearengen is one of the best characters to ever grace the small screen.
I wouldn't mind hosting another villain tournament (it's been awhile since the last one), but I want to get done with the Best Manga tournament first. Of course, you can always start one up yourself.

I'll see if I can get around to watching it.

So you were the one to host the Best Villain tournament? I am lazy so I'll just want for someone else to do it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm currently 730+ chapters into HnI. I pretty much knew that they would cancel the Ippo vs. Miyata fight, because that's pretty much obviously never going to happen until the end of the series (IF it even ever actually ends). That said, they pretty much handled that whole issue well, showing Ippo's disappointment at basically losing the chance to meet his goal of fighting against Miyata as a pro. Still, I'm waiting for them to reveal the reason for why the match was really canceled. Just like all of the characters at the Kamogawa gym, I want to hear a damn good explanation for this, otherwise I'd be pissed at a reader and call the cancellation of the fight a complete cop-out.

[Grave]

So I decided to read Bleach again, but like everything else I can't really start at the beginning so I'm starting at the point where Byakuya fight against Renji. I know Bleach is frowned upon by many, and despite it being as terrible as it is (and I'd tell anyone to stay away from it in a heartbeat) I still have a soft spot for it. It's what got me into manga (much like how DBZ got most into anime, although, I'd say Rurouni Kenshin got me into anime over DBZ)

With that being said One Piece hasn't been able to hold my interest despite me being at the best point of the series (Enes Lobby).

Hajime no Ippo on the otherhand, this past chapter was a good one. I guess once I finish my run-through on Bleach, I'll start at chapter 414-ish and work my way up.

[LumRanmaYasha]

I finished Pluto today. The ending was not as intense as I was hoping, but overall it was a great, focused story exploring some interesting (and someday, maybe even quite relevant) identity and "what-does-it-mean-to-be-human"/humanity themes, and the fact it was an excellent remake of an Astro Boy storyline makes it pretty cool too. I might go so far as to say, because of how focused and consistently developed and well-written the story, themes, and characters were, that I like it a bit more than 20th Century Boys, which I do love, mind you, but also felt somewhat all over the place, shifted character focus around a bit too much, and had some slow parts, honestly. Either way, all three of Urasawa's english-translated manga are top favorites of mine now, and whenever Billy Bat finishes I'll come back and finish that series as well.

I also caught up on Black Butler, if only to have another ongoing manga to keep up with now that I've dropped some series or they've finally finished. It wasn't too hard to catch up, since I left off at the end of the previous arc already, so I could come into the recent arc fresh and completely finish it. It was...alright. I'll give it credit for having the first exciting game of cricket (or, any game of cricket, really) that I've ever seen depicted in comics/manga. The overall story itself was kinda eh. Not bad, but it was pretty predictable, and the Circus arc did the formula so, so much better and had a much more interesting payoff. Not to say I'm not intrigued by the fact that Undertaker seems to be a villain/possible series big bad and the Queen is planning to create a zombie army, and whatnot, but of course it'll take forever for the series to get back to those plot points, which reminds me of how irritating it can be keeping up with monthly series, sometimes. Anyway, it was a decent arc and far better than a lot of other arcs in other certain ongoing manga, and at the very least I can jump in and follow this new "Werewolf" arc that has just started, now.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I don't entirely agree with you about 20th Century Boys. The story was all over the place for the first 50 chapters, yeah, but after that it was really well-focused until the final act of the story, which was initially a bit messy again but also regained its focus before long. As for Pluto, I do like it, but I definitely feel that 20th Century Boys had the stronger characters. Pluto had a lot of interesting characters as well, since that's Urasawa's strength as a writer, but I didn't find any single character in it to be quite as engaging as Kenji or Ocho were.

At any rate, it's been a long while since I've read Pluto, so it's definitely due for a re-read, but I don't think I'd change my opinion on it too much after reading it again (which is to say that I think it's fucking amazing, but not quite as good as Urasawa's Big 2 for me). Also, if I'm to be honest, I actually do still like the parts of 20th Century Boys which weren't strictly linear. I called them messy since that's how you described those parts, but really they don't come off as messy at all after re-reading the story and knowing everything that encompasses the story throughout the timeline in retrospect. Have you only read 20th Century Boys once, or did you re-read it yet? I'd say that if you've only gone through it once, wait about a year or so and then try it again and see if those parts that you thought were all over the place don't make more sense to you as to why they were structured that way upon reading them again. While 20th Century Boys is not my favorite Urasawa manga, I do believe that it is actually more interesting to re-read time than it is on the first run through.

[The Shadow Gentleman]

Speaking of which, I recently finished the first 2 or so volumes of 20th Century Boys. Overall it's good, but it does feel a bit slow. But with all the chapters that are left, that doesn't really bother me.

And I'm going to start Pluto soon as well.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The story drastically changes after the first 50 chapters or so. I won't spoil anything for you, but you'll definitely want to stick around to see where things really pick up from.