What Are You Reading?

[Spark Of Spirit]

I'd think they would since only 20th Century Boys and Pluto are left to do. 12 volumes of 20th Century Boys and 4 volumes of Pluto would be very easy releases.

Unfortunately, Billy Bat is Kodansha, so Viz won't be getting it.

[Avaitor]

It took me a little bit to get into A Silent Voice. The first chapter wasn't all that engaging, and it took a while to build to something. But by the time I finished the first volume, I immediately ordered the second, and Amazon should have it over by Friday.

I think the important thing so far is that I don't feel at all sorry for Shoya. He was far too mean to Shoko, and deserved the hazing he's taken. Sometimes it's not all that fun to see how cruel he gets, but I couldn't put it down somewhere between the second and third chapters.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I didn't feel sorry for him, up to a point.

Then when the others were overly vindictive to him for doing exactly what he did, that annoyed me. They dog-piled on him and pretended he was the source of all their misery, when they were all just as guilty as he was.

The fact that they carried their abuse of him over into middle school was my breaking point. At some point you have to let it go and move on, but they just kept hammering on him for basically no reason except vindictiveness. At that point I had no sympathy for any of his old friends.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

To be fair, you aren't really meant to feel sorry for him (at least not in the first third or so of the story). The whole story is about his redemption, and in order for one to redeem themselves they have to have done something terrible in the first place, so Shoya's punishment is pretty just in the early volumes.

It's sort of akin to the character arcs of Theon or Jaime in ASOIAF, in which they start out as ass-holes, are punished for it, and change for the better as a result of dealing with those consrquences. That's the appeal of stories like this, and it's a far cry better than your typical PSA BS that so often gets pushed down our throats by the media and countless after-school specials in regard to anti-bullying. Typically, it's an unrealistically one-dimensional person pitted against some other brat who we are supposed to identify with just because he's the victim. It's a lot more ballsy from a writing standpoint to humanize a bully and tell an entire story from his point of view.

[Pharass]

Yeah, I pretty much have to agree with everything Spark and the Dr. wrote in their posts. Don't really have anything to add to the discussion beyond that, I'm afraid.

Changing subject a bit, I went on another trip to Stockholm recently (accompanied by my mother and sister) and, among other things, I took the opportunity to add to my ever-growing collection of comics. Unfortunately, I was unable to procure the volume of Scalped I'm missing (I'll just have to order it on-line or buy a digital copy), but I did buy a bunch of other comics; both volumes of old favorites that I hadn't read (Corto Maltese and Usagi Yojimbo) as well as comics that had been sitting on my to-read list for ages (volume 1 of Buddha and Habibi). All of which were great reads.

All in all, it was a good hunt.

[gunswordfist]

Hopefully you can get a good deal on Scalped!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Just picked up Astro Boy Omnibus volumes 2 and 3 today. I REALLY wanted to get volume 4, but I just don't have the funds right now. But hey, at least I got all of the One Upon A Time arc to read through! I was actually really tempted to pick up Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, which I had been looking for recently, but despite temptations I passed it up to get the third AB Omnibus so that I could complete that very story arc.

[Pharass]

Bought and read volume 4 of Scalped. Great as usual, Red Crow continues to be my favorite character, though my favorite part of this volume was probably the one that focused on Carol, as we learn what the source for her resentment towards her father is. I say probably, because this volume contains lots of terrific (and terrifying) moments.

[gunswordfist]

That's such a sad backstory.

[Avaitor]

While I was in Atlanta, I found the second omnibus of Astro Boy for half-off, and bought it.

I still need to get the first, but I'm pretty happy to finally start.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The great thing about a series like Astro Boy is that it's made up of episodic stories for the most part, so you can pretty much start anywhere. Hell, the omnibus editions have the stories published out of order as it is.

The first volume does have "The Greatest Robot On Earth", though, which I highly recommend reading eventually since it's such an iconic story.

I'm still working my way through the second Omnibus, myself, and haven't quite reached "Once Upon A Time" yet, but so far I have found that "Crucifix Island" really resonated with me. It's probably my second favorite story that I've read from the series so far.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm just a few chapters in to Once Upon A Time, but one thing that I found interesting right off the bat is this story-line's placement in the volume order. This is one of the later entries in the series' original run by Tezuka. Yes, I know that Tezuka wrote this manga on and off, and had different stories published over various different publications (ranging from shonen magazines to newspapers), but by "original run" I mean any piece of Astro Boy manga both written and illustrated by Tezuka himself.

Anyways, my point is that this story came out in 1969, whereas all the previous stories from this omnibus were either from the late 50's or very early 60's in their chronology. So, it's just really fascinating to see how much Tezuka's story-telling and art style changed (and quite frankly improved immensely), when jumping through time over the course of an entire decade. That isn't to say that his earlier stories were bad by any means, but you can clearly tell that there is a lot more thought put into his later works, no doubt due to having had a lot more experience by that point in time.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I just read through volume 5 of My Hero Academia, and there was a little note at the end. Since this volume ends at the end of the Sports Festival, I thought it was a neat tidbit Horikoshi through in.

Sports Festival

When I was putting this arc together in my mind, it was going to be a vehicle for Todoroki's development. There'd be two chapters for the obstacle race, one for the interlude, two for the cavalry battle, and about five for the tournament itself. That was the grand plan, but when I started drawing, I realized I needed to showcase all these different characters, so it couldn't be as succinct as I'd imagined.

Since then, I had a talk with Naruto's Kishimoto Sensei, and he told me, "Whenever you make a estimate for the length of an arc, count on it ballooning to twice that length." How right he is. Wow.

I'm going full throttle with the volumes to come, too, so thanks for your support.

All's well that end's well.

Reading this arc to completion in volume form gave me a new respect for it, and I'm glad to see it was a real learning experience for Horikoshi, for which this still remains the longest arc.

It dovetails immediately into the Stain arc, seeing as both Ida's brother and development begins near the end, and Todoroki begins to come full circle by his fight with Midoriya (which is probably when the arc hits the roof in excitement until the end), not to mention Uraraka and Bakugo who looking back now you can see a lot of the seeds to sprout later. Even things like Tokoyami's weakness, and Kirishima's feelings of inadequacy come back later. The choice of the anime staff to make season 2 both of these arcs was a smart one.

LumRanmaYasha was right about the arc being better than you would think. I'm still of the opinion that it's probably the weakest part of the series so far, but that is mostly due to what Horikoshi said here. It was his first big arc and its weaknesses mostly stem from that. But there are a lot of great things here. All the character development is great, the obstacle race is typical Horikoshi cleverness, and the back half of the tournament has some really exciting character moments with an intriguing end to the arc.

What comes next is undoubtedly better (and it hasn't dipped in quality since, which is amazing) but for being the weakest part of the series, the Sports Festival really isn't so weak. Good going, Horikoshi.

[Markness]

I recently bought some Hunter x Hunter volumes I had been needing to fill a huge gap in my collection of the manga from RightStuf and also got one of their Viz 30th Anniversary coins for the order. They still have the coins available last I checked. It feels good to finally get all the volumes of the manga after years of some being out of print.
Some might give Viz flak for some things but I have to give them a lot of praise for re-printing many of their lesser known series. Dark Horse has been giving fans of Eden It's An Endless World! the shaft lately by not re-printing certain volumes of the series as well as not bringing over the last four despite how they claim to love the manga.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'm currently working my way through Astro Boy Omnibus 3, and will post my thoughts on it once I'm finished.

I also FINALLY picked up Justice League: The New Frontier (paperback edition), which I've been wanting to get for years.

And I got Doom Patrol Vol. 1, so I look forward to that as well.