Manga Mavericks

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Oh, goodie, I can probably actually prepare this time with a full re-read.

Also, I'm the resident FMP light-novel expert, thank you very much.

In all seriousness, though, I need to collect the official releases and give that series a re-read. I am glad that we got a few more volumes adapted in the anime, but am also bummed out that it still couldn't cover the whole story.

I'd also like to see Foggle on one of these episodes. I feel that would bring about a number of interesting conversations.

[LumRanmaYasha]

No reason we can't have you both on for FMP! 

I'm also sad that the new anime didn't finish covering the whole story. It seemed there wasn't a whole lot of buzz around it in general. They really waited too long to continue it.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Also, Lum, while I'm sure you'll do a Movie Mavericks on it, I'm curious what your thoughts were on Detective Pikachu, since I know that you were really looking forward to that movie.

[Foggle]

Thank you so much Foggle! Your generosity means the world to me, and we really appreciate it! 

No problem, my friend. Happy to help!

And of course, you're my go-to guest for when we do an Excel Saga podcast!  I really want to re-read the series sometime soon and talk about it. I'd also love to have you on if we ever cover the Full Metal Panic! novels, which I'd really like to do as the first light novel series we talk about on the show.

Oh, goodie, I can probably actually prepare this time with a full re-read.

Also, I'm the resident FMP light-novel expert, thank you very much.

In all seriousness, though, I need to collect the official releases and give that series a re-read. I am glad that we got a few more volumes adapted in the anime, but am also bummed out that it still couldn't cover the whole story.

I'd also like to see Foggle on one of these episodes. I feel that would bring about a number of interesting conversations.

I also very much need to re-read Excel Saga and FMP! But yes, I would love to be on those episodes with y'all.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Also, Lum, while I'm sure you'll do a Movie Mavericks on it, I'm curious what your thoughts were on Detective Pikachu, since I know that you were really looking forward to that movie.

I really liked it! I think it's a miracle it worked at all, but they've successfully shown that they can make Pokemon work in live-action and tell stories in that world. The plot wasn't the most impressive, but its heart was in the right place and I enjoyed the characters pretty well. I'm excited to see them make more! I'll definitely be recording an @ Movies and maybe write a review of it sometime this weekend, after I get a chance to see it a second time (I had too much work going on the weekend I first saw it to do it then).

Thank you so much Foggle! Your generosity means the world to me, and we really appreciate it! 

No problem, my friend. Happy to help!

And of course, you're my go-to guest for when we do an Excel Saga podcast!  I really want to re-read the series sometime soon and talk about it. I'd also love to have you on if we ever cover the Full Metal Panic! novels, which I'd really like to do as the first light novel series we talk about on the show.

Oh, goodie, I can probably actually prepare this time with a full re-read.

Also, I'm the resident FMP light-novel expert, thank you very much.

In all seriousness, though, I need to collect the official releases and give that series a re-read. I am glad that we got a few more volumes adapted in the anime, but am also bummed out that it still couldn't cover the whole story.

I'd also like to see Foggle on one of these episodes. I feel that would bring about a number of interesting conversations.

I also very much need to re-read Excel Saga and FMP! But yes, I would love to be on those episodes with y'all.

 

[LumRanmaYasha]

Some new podcasts of ours came out this weekend! First up, we interviewed Dr. Mari Morimoto, a verteran translator in the manga industry for over 25 years as well as a professional veterinarian! She's been the translator of many big series over the years, including Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, and Naruto! We talked to her about her experiences in the industry, and she shares several awesome anecdotes about how the process of manga translation has changed since the 90s and insights into how several translation choices were made! Plus, she reveals some info about Udon's upcoming release of Rose of Versailles and all the hard work that's gone into the translation of the manga!

And for our Patrons, we've released our long-awaited That Time I Got Reincarnated as Yamcha podcast! Maxy and Bomber joined us to discuss the history of this short but sweet Dragon Ball parody, which is a sincere love letter to the series that gives its most mistreated character some welcome time to shine! This was a ton of fun to record and available exclusively on our Patreon (at least for now)!

[LumRanmaYasha]

Hey everyone! Long time no post. I need to update this thread with all the stuff we've been doing in the last couple months when I get the chance, and finally continue The Great Animated Episode thread, among other things. But I wanted to post today because we're recording a podcast tomorrow that's been a long time coming and think a lot of you guys'd be keen to listen to.

To celebrate Dragon Ball's 35th anniversary earlier this year, we're recording a retrospective on the manga with Joey Weiser, a comics artist we interviewed earlier this year who is best known for the Mermin series and who did The Daily Dragon Ball Project a few years ago, and our friend Sakaki, who actually read through the manga for the first time for this podcast! We're excited to discuss the series with both a veteran fan and a newbie and dig into what makes Toriyama's original manga so special after all these years!

We'd love to get any questions or topics you have for us to discuss on the show! We'll be recording at 10am CDT tomorrow, so get your questions in here or by e-mailing them to us at mangamavericks [at] gmail.com!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Always good to see you around here, Lum! Hope you had a happy holiday season!

My questions would be pretty basic so I'm sure you'd cover some of them by default anyways, but here are some general points it would be nice to see you guys cover if it works out:

Favorite arc- Pretty self-explanatory but it would be nice to hear what other people find to be their favorite aspect of the series by highlighting what story-line worked the best for them.

Favorite character, fight, etc.- Pretty much the same deal as above.

Thoughts on the shifts in tone and Toriyama's writing style evolving through the various phases of the manga each time he changed editors.

Dragon Ball gets criticized a lot for being long and overly drawn out with it's fights, but one thing I noticed when reading the manga is that it's not really all that much more drawn out than many other battle shonen manga, if at all, with only a few real exceptions. Do you guys feel that criticism is really deserved or is it more of an issue with the anime that became synonymous with the series as a whole?

Also, in general, maybe give some brief thoughts on the anime vs. the manga and which version does certain things better or worse than the other. Maybe also briefly touch on the English dub(s)/soundtracks and how it affected your individual perceptions of the series initially.

And lastly it might be nice to highlight some of the genuinely strong points of the series. Obviously this is all up to you guys' personal preference, but I've always felt that the modern anime and manga community are a bit overly harsh in their assessment of the series as a whole. Obviously we all eventually evolve our tastes over time and realize how flawed of a series Dragon Ball is, but I also think that upon re-reading the manga, it still has many strong points that make it worth reading, especially the early arcs, and I also see a lot of value in how different it was from other battle shonen manga of it's time, to the point of influencing big changes in the genre, which gets taken for granted a lot these days, IMO.

[Daikun]

When is your All-Comic page going to be fixed? It hasn't been working for at least a month and I've had to use different RSS feeds to get new episodes of your show.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Thanks for the questions Dr. E-k! We actually recorded so long that we're going to have to answer fan questions in a follow-up podcast, but we touched on a few of your topics in the main discussion itself! ^^

When is your All-Comic page going to be fixed? It hasn't been working for at least a month and I've had to use different RSS feeds to get new episodes of your show.

Thanks for letting me know - I let the webmaster of the site know so hopefully they can fix the issue with the page. In the meantime, you can find the podcasts on All-Comic through this link: http://all-comic.com/category/manga/manga-podcasts/manga-mavericks/

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I doubt that this will get answered since Lum rarely ever comes on here anymore, but I was wondering if you guys were planning to do a KnY episode now that the series has officially wrapped up. I'd consider it to be a personal favorite of mine from the past few years of WSJ, and probably one of the most popular series to have come out from the 2010's as far as any Shonen series goes. I would definitely like to hear what you guys' think about it in general.

[LumRanmaYasha]

We'll definitely do one in the future! I'm a big fan of the series too and would love to cover it on the show, especially now that it's over and Viz has made all of it available in the Shonen Jump vault. 

But in the meantime, our very own VLord actually started up a Demon Slayer podcast last fall and covered the entirety of the anime as it broadcast on Toonami as well as the last 30-ish chapters of the manga! I've been on a few episodes myself, and it's a really great show with fantastic conversations on the series. VLord has even interviewed actors from the dub of Demon Slayer like Brook Chalmers (who plays Urokodaki) and Bryce Papenbrook (who plays Inosuke).

Sorry for being so absent on here - I've mainly been spending my online social time on places like Twitter and Discord, but I'll try to check in here more often again (and maybe resume the Greatest Animated Episode tournament too). 

Btw, our Dragon Ball podcasts are out! Thanks again for the questions Dr. E-K, we got some great discussion out of them!   

Here's some other podcasts we've done recently that I'd also like to highlight!

Our interview with On Takahashi, CEO of Irodori Comics
Our Yu-Gi-Oh! retrospective with editor Jason Thompson!
A Conversation We Had About Problematic Media
Urusei Yatsura manga retrospective with Dawn from the Anime Nostalgia podcast!
Lum Squad episode 2, where we discuss the Urusei Yatsura anime!
@ Movies on Alita: Battle Angel
@ Movies on Captain Marvel
@ Movies on Tokyo Godfathers
@ Movies on MHA: Heroes Rising
@ Movies on Dragon Ball Super: Broly

Plus, we got to check out Loren Bouchard's new show Central Park a few weeks before it drops on AppleTV and did a special podcast review of that as well!

We've got a lot of great podcasts plans for this summer, so there's a lot more to look forward to! 

[LumRanmaYasha]

Yo, we're recording a Food Wars! retrospective tomorrow on Manga Mavericks, and I wanted to reach out to you guys here since we've had many debates and discussions on the series in these forums. 

We'll be joined by mangatuber Aisha/MommaLuvsManga, Kate Sanchez the founder of the But Why Tho? website and podcast network, and professional chef Jonah Bacon-Lefkowitz who currently runs a takeaway tea shop in Toronto. My cohost Colton and Aisha will have just finished reading the series fo the first time through by the time we record tomorrow, while Kate finished the series through the volume releases earlier this year!

We'll be recording tomorrow at 3pm CT, so if you have any questions for us, we'd be happy to serve!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Always good to see you drop in from time to time, Lum.

I admittedly haven't kept up too much with current manga these days due to kind of having my attention dragged in various different directions simultaneously, including novels, classic films, video games, and Western comic books, among other things, but I still do find time to read manga titles that interest me, and I've been eagerly eyeing those Urusei Yatsura releases to finally jump into that series.

I can't think of too many questions besides the obvious ones for Food Wars, but here are two:

1. Regardless of anyone's overall thoughts on the series, it's genuinely agreed upon by the majority of readers that the series took a pretty steep decline in quality after the conclusion of the Central arc (I'd personally argue that it was well before that point, but that's besides the point). What do you feel that Y?to Tsukuda could have done differently to avoid the pitfalls that the story fell into in that final arc?

2. What would you consider to be Y?to Tsukuda's greatest strengths and weaknesses as a writer based on this series?

[LumRanmaYasha]

Thanks for the questions Dr. E-K!  Glad to see you're planning to check out UY, hope you enjoy it!

We just finished recording, and we ended up getting so many questions from different platforms that we decided to answer them in a separate Q&A special we'll record on the 11th, so if anyone has any more for us you'll have a few more weeks to submit them!