Manga Mavericks

[LumRanmaYasha]

Ho boy, that was our longest and best episode yet! Expect it to come out later this week around thursday or friday, maybe even split into two part because of how long it is.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I would like to listen more to your Manga Fights episodes, but unfortunately they have all been about series that I still need to get around to or simply haven't seen enough of, so far.

It'd be neat if you did one discussing multiple general topics that involved the choice of more than one series as well as the series exclusive ones that you've done so far. Perhaps you could even get topic ideas from the people who email you questions. Just a suggestion on my part, of course. Obviously the podcast is about more than that, and I enjoy listening to you guys and your input and opinions on manga. I just feel that your manga debate episodes could potentially attract more listeners if some of them didn't only focus in a single series at a time, not that I don't see the appeal of those as well.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Doing different topics in an episode is a direction I want to steer Manga Fights in the future, but doing them based on a specific series has just ended up worked out timing and motivation-wise more so far. I do want to shake that up in the future though and have been thinking of ways we could start handling them differently next year.

I've actually wanted to get topic ideas from our listeners and we keep asking people to send us questions and ideas they want us to do. Problem is no one has sent us any suggestions so far.  But we actually got a lot of Q&As to answer for our recent episode and a couple of the questions asked could've made good debate topics, so one thing we might do in the future is answer the questions through Manga Fights debates instead of conventionally on Manga Mavericks. Of course, that'll only work provided enough people send us enough topics for us to keep doing an episode once a month. 

[LumRanmaYasha]

Our Toriko Manga Fight is up! We debate who the best character was (spoiler: it's Midora), whether the series really diminished in quality after the timeskip, if Jesse Eisenburg would make a good Toriko, and a whole bunch more! Plus we answer a whole lot of Toriko Q&As! It's one of my favorite podcasts we've done yet! 

[LumRanmaYasha]

The final Manga Mavericks of the year is up! And to celebrate the year of 2016 in manga, we go over some of our favorite things that happened in manga this year, from news stories to new series, to our favorite chapters and moments in manga this year! And of course, we've got a ton of news to go over too! 

Spoiler

Our Best of Manga 2016:

Podcast Breakdown:

00:25 – What's In Store This Week

News:

8:30 – NYT Best Selling Manga List: Week of Dec 4th-10th
11:20 – Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Manga Will Be Offered on Free Comic Book Day
13:40 – Oricon's Top Selling Manga in Japan By Series in 2016 List
27:50 – Princess Jellyfish and Kitaro make Amazon's Top Graphic Novels of 2016 List
29:10 – One-Punch Man ranks 13th on Diamond's Top 300 GNs of November List
32:10 – One-Punch Man Has Sold 11.11 Million Copies
33:15 – Yen Press' Newest Licenses
36:00 – Comixology adds Yen Press manga
38:20 – Viz licenses The Children Nowadays
40:55 – Kodansha USA licenses Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu
45:55 – Kodansha USA to Publish Akira 30th Anniversary Artbook
46:45 – Kodansha USA Resumes Publication of Animal Land
48:35 – Black Lagoon Resumes in Spring
49:00 – Keitaro Takahashi's New Manga
50:35 – Tsutomu Nihei's New manga
52:25 – Yuu Watase's New Manga
53:45 – Kenjirou Hata Plans New Manga
55:00 – Yamcha is the Hero in New 3-Chapter Dragon Ball Spinoff
1:01:25 – Nobuhiro Watsuki Continues Rurouni Kenshin with Hokkaido arc
1:04:45 – Viz's Weekly Shonen Jump to run Yu-Gi-Oh! Transcend Game and Rurouni Kenshin Side Story: Ex-Con Ashitaro
1:07:30 – The Seven Deadly Sins is on Temporary Hiatus
1:08:05 – World Trigger is on Indefinite Hiatus
1:09:35 – One Piece Will Enter the Wano arc in 2017
1:14:30 – Boruto Anime Coming in April 2017
1:15:45 – Kodansha USA Launches New Attack on Titan App

Our Best of Manga 2016:

1:18:00 – Best Manga News Stories of 2016
1:21:40 – Best New North American Manga Licenses of 2016
1:25:40 – Best Manga Characters of 2016
1:36:55 – Best Manga Villains of 2016
1:44:45 – Best Manga Fights of 2016
1:57:40 – Best Currently-Running Manga of 2016
2:07:00 – Best New Manga of 2016
2:09:30 – Best Manga Chapters of 2016
2:22:30 – Best Manga Series Finales of 2016
2:29:00 – Best Manga Moments of 2016
2:38:15 – Manga We Promise To Read in 2017

Q&As:

2:49:45 – Q&A: "Are There Series With Questionable Content We Find Worth Reading?"
2:59:00 – Q&A: "Why did No One Mention Everyone vs. Acacia in the Toriko Manga Fight?"
3:01:45 – Q&A: "Best and Worst New Shonen Jump Series of 2016?"

3:07:30 – Wrap-Up

[close]

We've also got our next Manga Fight planned, and it's going to be a doozy! We're covering JoJo's Bizarre Adventure to celebrate the manga's 30th anniversary. We'll be recording it next friday with Maxy Barnard and VlordGTZ, who will square off in our first ever Manga Fight between two guests! As always, send us your questions and topic suggestions for the episode and we'll incorporate them into the show!

Finally, we have a year-end poll set up to get feedback for our first year of the show! We'd really appreciate it if you guys took it and gave us some feedback and suggestions to help us continue improving the show next year. Thanks for listening and supporting us this year and I hope you guys continue to look forward to and enjoy what we have in store in the next. 

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yikes that's long! I'll have to give it a listen tomorrow.

In the meantime, I filled out the survey.

[gunswordfist]

I'm taking the poll now! Cheers to Manga Mavericks continued success!!

[LumRanmaYasha]

Thanks you guys! Your feedback is much appreciated. 

[Spark Of Spirit]

Kodansha is unbelievably slow with releases. The rate they're going with Animal Land I wonder if they'll ever get to Vector Ball. We're still waiting for Billy Bat to be announced and Urasawa is a good seller here.

I'm very interested in the Hokkaido arc. It feels like the type of arc that could only work if Kenshin wasn't the central character, and therefore wouldn't work in the main series. But characters like Sojiro, Saito, Sanosuke, and Ashitaro, feel like they could carry an arc on their own, and they were featured prominently in the promo art. I'm definitely eager to see where this goes.

Ashihara, despite his health, had a really good year for World Trigger. Sales went up after the anime ended, the rankings improved, he got a source book, the story finally made strides to end the Rank Wars, and he finally got a #1 chapter ranking. I only hope his health improves so that he can enjoy his success. World Trigger really clawed its way up in popularity and deserves what it has.

Black Museum volume 1 has a good start, gets boring and repetitive in the middle chapters, but becomes awesome once the villain shows up. I'm glad it was licensed because it gets really great in the back half. There's also a special thanks to Nobuhiro Watsuki, which is pretty cool. I really hope this release leads to more of his stuff to get released. In the back they specifically mention Ushio & Tora, Karakuri Circus, and Souboutei Must Die, in his previous works which hopefully means they are they most likely to be licensed.

My character of the year is going to be Katsuki Bakugo from My Hero Academia. While Midoriya is my favorite character in the series, Bakugo's development this year was off the charts. This is the level of depth you never see characters of his type ever get aside from older characters like Tora from Ushio & Tora. The angry rival character fell into a hard cliche, and Horikoshi deserves major credit for superseding it. Erina from Food Wars is a great pick. She has grown a lot over the last year. All Might is also an excellent choice.

Best villain would go to All For One. We still don't know much about him, but the menace this guy exudes is intense, and his battle with All Might was one of the best in the series. Isabella from Promised Neverland is another good pick. She's still got a lot of secrets to her as well.

Best fight goes to World Trigger. Which one? All of them. Ashihara was on fire this year. If I had to pick one it would be the one that finally gave him a #1 ranking, the battle between Tamakoma-2 squad, Ikoma squad, and Oji squad, was excellent. That fight in Black Clover was great because I really enjoy team battles, and outside of World Trigger and MHA, you don't see characters teaming up much in action series these days. Tabata seems to agree because he's done it again in the recent forest of witches battle.

Best currently running manga is My Hero Academia. Anybody who knows me saw this coming. It somehow only gets better and better as it goes, and this year was a great one for it. I would also include the Midoriya Vs. Bakugo chapters as the best of the year. Although the All Might battle, and chapters involving the Muscular encounter are up there, too. MHA had an excellent year.

Best new series would be Promised Neverland followed by Kimetsu no Yaiba. PN has maintained a sense of mystery and intrigue while building its cast of characters tremendously well. And it's only run for 20 chapters so far. KnY was a breath of fresh air in the action manga genre. Jump's current battle manga line up is the best it has been in a long time, and KnY's old school Kurumada-like sensibilities clashes well against the other series. It might be higher if I read more, but from the dozen chapters I've read I've enjoyed it a great deal. Viz really needs to run this in Jump. It's doing better and better in Japan, and NA needs new series, so it really needs to be picked up. I didn't know Togashi was a fan, but that's pretty cool.

Best series finale would probably be Toriko. I'm not much of a fan of the series, but since nothing I really liked ended this year, I'll give it to this one for having a satisfying conclusion, even to someone like me who had no idea what was going on.

Best moments? Well, I mentioned most of them above, but another great one was the Ray reveal in Promised Neverland. It made him a much more interesting and dynamic character, and made him my favorite character so far.

Series I'm going to read next year is a bit difficult since I don't really read scans anymore and I don't know what will be licensed, but I'm pretty sure I'll read at least some of the Ushio & Tora manga whether it is licensed or not, and finish off my Flame of Recca manga collection. My Jump subscription runs until mid-2019, so I don't really have to worry about that. I might otherwise read some old Sunday series since it's been so long, but I can't narrow any titles other than Karakuri Circus and Kyo Kara Ore Wa!! which I've really dug of what I've seen. And no, no one is translating Souboutei. I can only hope the Ushio & Tora dub will air on Toonami and give Fujita the boost he needs to get it officially released here. Or maybe Viz will finally simulpub some Sunday series. Would be nice since Shogakukan owns them and all.

Very good episode. Here's to another year for you guys.

As for JoJo, I have two questions. What Stands would characters like Caesar or Jonathan have had if Stands existed back in Part 1 and 2? And are there any characters you thought were underused in any Part, or characters you thought Araki could have done more with?

[LumRanmaYasha]

Kodansha is unbelievably slow with releases. The rate they're going with Animal Land I wonder if they'll ever get to Vector Ball. We're still waiting for Billy Bat to be announced and Urasawa is a good seller here.

I can understand that Animal Land probably isn't a strong seller, but it's so frustrating there's been a two-year gap between the release of volumes since the series concluded in Japan years ago. I'm glad they didn't drop it, but I really wish they hadn't make us wait so long for no real reason with so little left to publish.

My character of the year is going to be Katsuki Bakugo from My Hero Academia. While Midoriya is my favorite character in the series, Bakugo's development this year was off the charts. This is the level of depth you never see characters of his type ever get aside from older characters like Tora from Ushio & Tora. The angry rival character fell into a hard cliche, and Horikoshi deserves major credit for superseding it. Erina from Food Wars is a great pick. She has grown a lot over the last year. All Might is also an excellent choice.

Bakugo had one of the strongest character arcs in any manga this year for sure. I'm really excited to see where his character goes now that he's had this big breakthrough in his relationship with All Might and Midoriya.

Best villain would go to All For One. We still don't know much about him, but the menace this guy exudes is intense, and his battle with All Might was one of the best in the series. Isabella from Promised Neverland is another good pick. She's still got a lot of secrets to her as well.

I was considering All For One, as he's definitely made a big impression for how little he's appeared so far. One of my favorite chapters of MHA this year was the conversation between him and All Might in the prison. I'm becoming really excited whenever he shows up and am really interested in seeing how he'll figure into future events.

Best fight goes to World Trigger. Which one? All of them. Ashihara was on fire this year. If I had to pick one it would be the one that finally gave him a #1 ranking, the battle between Tamakoma-2 squad, Ikoma squad, and Oji squad, was excellent. That fight in Black Clover was great because I really enjoy team battles, and outside of World Trigger and MHA, you don't see characters teaming up much in action series these days. Tabata seems to agree because he's done it again in the recent forest of witches battle.

WT had some awesome battles this year, that's for sure. One of my runner-ups I was thinking of mentioning was the fight with Kakizaki and Katori squads. I was really into all the tactics Tamakoma employed in that match as well as what was going on with the opposing teams and their stories as well.

Best currently running manga is My Hero Academia. Anybody who knows me saw this coming. It somehow only gets better and better as it goes, and this year was a great one for it. I would also include the Midoriya Vs. Bakugo chapters as the best of the year. Although the All Might battle, and chapters involving the Muscular encounter are up there, too. MHA had an excellent year.

The series really went to another level this year. There were so many chapters from this year that really stood out, making it hard to choose which was the very best, though I think my favorites were probably #76, #93, and the chapter All Might and All For One talked in the prison (don't remember the chapter number on the top of my head).

Best new series would be Promised Neverland followed by Kimetsu no Yaiba. PN has maintained a sense of mystery and intrigue while building its cast of characters tremendously well. And it's only run for 20 chapters so far. KnY was a breath of fresh air in the action manga genre. Jump's current battle manga line up is the best it has been in a long time, and KnY's old school Kurumada-like sensibilities clashes well against the other series. It might be higher if I read more, but from the dozen chapters I've read I've enjoyed it a great deal. Viz really needs to run this in Jump. It's doing better and better in Japan, and NA needs new series, so it really needs to be picked up. I didn't know Togashi was a fan, but that's pretty cool.

With KnY being so successful and endorsed by respected mangaka like Togashi, I have to imagine Viz will at least license the series for volume releases soon if not for serialization in their Jump. Considering that they need slots to fill, though, they really ought to take another look at it and add it in. It's only a year young, so it shouldn't be too hard for most new readers to pick up on, but it'll get harder the longer they wait to add it.

Best series finale would probably be Toriko. I'm not much of a fan of the series, but since nothing I really liked ended this year, I'll give it to this one for having a satisfying conclusion, even to someone like me who had no idea what was going on.

What, you don't like Billy Bat? 

In all seriousness, I think the fact that even non-fans got something out of the Toriko finale and found it satisfying really speaks to how strong it really was. It's one of my new all-time favorite endings to a manga series, alongside Billy Bat's.

Best moments? Well, I mentioned most of them above, but another great one was the Ray reveal in Promised Neverland. It made him a much more interesting and dynamic character, and made him my favorite character so far.

That was a real game-changer, and has added a great new dynamic where Emma and Norman have to outwit their own ally to save the rest of their friends too. Ray is also my favorite character in the series right now, and I'm really interested in seeing how his role in the series changes as they inch forward to the escape.

Very good episode. Here's to another year for you guys.

Thank you for all the comments and support you've given us this past year! Doing the show has been a lot of fun and I'm glad people have really been responding to it. I'm really excited for what we have planned for next year, so hopefully we'll just continue to grow and get better with the more shows we do.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Starting with the new year tomorrow I'm taking a break from the internet for a bit (I'm still doing the podcast of course), so I probably won't be around here for a while. So, just to let you guys know, here's what we have in store for January.

This Friday we're going to be recording our JoJo's Manga Fight and retrospective, but we'll also be releasing the first episode of a new sub-podcast, Movie Mavericks, a discussion show where we basically talk about movies. In the first episode Vlord and I talk about our favorite movies of 2016 and the movies we're looking forward to in 2017. This will be an irregularly scheduled podcast, but we'll definitely do episodes around big comic and anime related movies, so expect episodes on One Piece: Film Gold, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, and The Lego Batman Movie in the near future.

We'll be releasing the JoJo's retrospective episode on Friday, January 13th, with the Manga Fight following on Friday, January 20th. Then, for our last show of January to be released on Friday, January 27th, we're going to be doing another mangaka retrospective! We'll be doing a retrospective on Takehiko Inoue and his career in celebration of his 50th birthday, covering his career and series from the beginning to present. We'll be joined by previous guest MinovskyArticle, who's also a big Inoue fan. I'm really excited to do this episode and since I know you guys are huge Inoue fans as well I hope you'll really enjoy it too.

After that we don't have anything definite scheduled, but in the coming months you can expect episodes on Toonami in time for it's 20th anniversary, Black Clover around it's 100th chapter, and Great Teacher Onizuka around it's 25th anniversary in May. Manga Fights will be on hold after the JoJo's one until the summer, but we have some big plans for them later this year, and I'll probably be back by then to let you guys know definitely what those are.

So keep an eye out on the show in the coming months! We have lots of episodes we're planning that we're really excited about, and have gotten great suggestions from our survey so far and hope to get more as people keep filling that out. Thank you guys so much for your support, comments, and criticism of Manga Mavericks and Manga Fights this year, and I hope you enjoy what we have coming in the next. So until I talk with you guys again, I wish you a Happy New Year!

[Spark Of Spirit]

I forgot about Billy Bat, but I also haven't read it since it started.

Happy New Year!

[VLordGTZ]

Since LRY is still on his hiatus, I thought that I might as well link the episodes that came out this month (especially since I'm in all of them):

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Manga Retrospective

JoJo's Manga Fight (Maxy Bernard vs. VLordGTZ)

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Q&A Discussion

Additionally, the first episode of Movie Mavericks came out a few weeks ago.  We recently recorded an episode covering One Piece Film: Gold with Colton, as well as an episode about our thoughts on Sailor Moon R: The Movie: The Promise of the Rose and Yu-Gi-Oh: The Dark Side of Dimensions.  Look forward to those in the near future!

[Daikun]

Can you guys provide an image of the JoJolion dog you talked about? I'm really curious to see this thing.

[VLordGTZ]

Can you guys provide an image of the JoJolion dog you talked about? I'm really curious to see this thing.

It's this one: