>>131113
have*

>>131113
This is one of the things that keeps me from being an "ongoing" manga reader apart from just being bad at remembering to read stuff. There would need to be a Taiga thing for manga that autodownloads or something and then a pop-up tells me that it happened. But, if something updates 3 months later (or worse) I can't just jump back into it. I'm going to forget important stuff!
I'm going to read some Puniru chapters and...
Oh wait, the Kernel Scanlations only goes up to Chapter 4.
Well, I guess I'm done with it then. It's cute and a little bit humorous, but I'm not sure how much I can judge it after only 4 short chapters. I think this cute SoL stuff is far more enjoyable in anime form so I'm fine waiting for adaptation to land.

>>131022
I can't believe they actually had sex, got up from my seat when that happened.
All in all, great manga. Interesting how it doesn't really have a main plot around which everything revolves around, it's more like a couple dozen characters having their own ongoing stories whose plotlines intersect.

For example, the government has put a mole into the mercerado operation that's taking place in this faraway island (that's the horny druggie who's let herself go). They give some mercerado to the frustrated mangaka next door, getting him hooked. But this operation has opponents besides the government, so an assassin comes in to take them out, who during his preparation period meets with a separate assassin that is chasing a different mark across their own plotline. He succeeds in taking the farmers down, but then faces a new problem when he's trapped by a local serial killer. And now that the operation has been dismantled the mangaka suddenly can't afford the drug's higher price, and so must overcome his addiction with the help of a neighboring ghost. This is only a fraction of what goes on in its three volumes.
There isn't any central element here, nothing is fixed in place, but it flows exceedingly well just from these people inhabiting the same space and pursuing whatever it is they're looking for. The design, at a structural level, is impeccable.

And it's absurd, it has SEXO, droghe, mort, terribly unexpected twists, et PræCūra, but these unrestrained wacky things its bold characters pull do in fact impact these plotlines in serious ways. It's not simply comedic, you gotta appreciate that.
It's not only dense in its plot, but in its visuals too: it's exceedingly hard to find a page with three panels or less, and in the whole of its three volumes there is only a single spread, this being its penultimate page. Perhaps 90% of its pages have between 5 and 7 panels, the other maybe 10% featuring 4, and each panel has a shape different from the rest. Tons and tons of diagonals and varying sizes. The character designs have a stilized flatness devoid of gradients that gets it compared quite regularly to Kumeta and SZS, and a lot of its backgrounds are outright blank, although it manages to fit in quite well. Deceptively dialogue-heavy too, that at least for me made this feel unexpectedly slow but not in a bad way.

Consistently irreverent and lethal in impactful ways, very good stuff. I also read Suicide Parabellum, a single volume of multilayered yuri mindfuckery with a brilliant ending, and How Many Light-Years to Babylon?, another great pile of twisting buggery. You know the pic about the English knowing the pain of getting their food made of? It's from there, chapter 22. Overall Dowman's work reminded me of >>124094 a good deal but it's far more lighthearted, I'll see about reading other works of his.

>>87056
I'm currently reading Homunculus - It's absolutely incredible, these characters, the plot, how things are explored. WOWOWOWOWOWOWOW fucking hell, it's so good. I don't know how to talk about it in general, sorry for anybody reading this but woah, you've gotta read it man

>>131555
Holy, that ending :'(((((

I read through Akagi in about 2 days and it's a very compelling story between two rivals. It's amazing the amount of work that goes into 300 chapters of quality story telling in manga is the equivalent of 20 years hard work.

>>131577
Well fuck, now I'm sad. Wowah, I've gotta do some fun stuff for the rest of the day to compensate!!!!

>>131555
>>131577
>>131585
Picked it up and I'm halfway through. This shit is absolutely insane, it's like if you mixed Mieruko, Ace Attorney, Tokyo Godfathers, and Monogatari and transcended all of them somehow. I can't even pick a page to attach because I have no idea how to do any justice to it. Holy fuck.

>>131555
I've seen pages of this before, or maybe I should say reaction faces, so maybe I should read it if others here seem to love it...

>>131612
I recognized pic, and I know the one where he's going to drill his own head but I haven't reached it yet. Shit's rad.
(I think it's just he and I, though.)

I got to about chapter 25 of DeDeDeDe and I kind of just wanted to skip around to see various outcomes. I think this is one of those manga you had to be reading while it was airing.

The ending was not that great. I guess I'll slow read it when I have nothing to do, but it's kind of a mess. Anime version looks nice though.

>>131693
Ehh, I didn't read it "live". Or rather I read it up to a certain point and ran out of new chapter and shelved it for a while. I'm not sure how to describe Dededede apart from saying it does a good job of just showing humans dealing with a situation in a very human way. Relationships, conflict, that sort of thing. It's a major theme that something amazing is treated as mundane, giving it a great atmosphere to see how different people behave in such a situation. The characters themselves are the main attraction and if you're not drawn to their stories then, yeah, you're probably not going to like it.

Homunculus, then, by Hideo Yamamoto. Author of Ichi the Killer, which also contains a considerable amount of blood and semen, although this one's quite different.

The protagonist, Nakoshi, has recently become homeless, and is living in his car inbetween a luxurious hotel and the park where all the other homeless guys live. Most of the story takes place in this area, and not only do I find that respectable in and of itself, it's also a very meaningful location whose importance comes up in many ways. Anyways, the homeless, they're decent folk, they enjoy the company of "car guy" (who keeps lying to them about his backstory), they're getting by as well as they can, but nobody really wants to be there. Neither does Nakoshi, and when after running out of his last savings a weird dude comes in offering a big wad of money to let him drill a hole in his skull and see if he gets any magical powers, well, he turns him off actually. Reasonable behavior. But after his car gets towed away and he realizes he has absolutely no means to make any money and get it back (besides selling his organs), as well as seeing doc return with the same offer for a different guy, then he uneasily decides to take the leap.

He gets the trepanation and, after some unsuccessful tests, it turns out that if he closes his right eye he becomes able to see people differently, ranging from slight deformities to total transformation in brutal shapes. It's a weird ability, and they never fully grasp what it is he's actually seeing, only that it has to do with feelings and memories, himself's and other's. These are the titular homunculi, and this is where the synopsis ends. From here on, Nakoshi will for various reasons start to interact with people in order to unravel and resolve whatever is behind them, and while the first of its five subjects proves to be a straightforward venture with a net positive outcome, this will not hold for either the other four, or his unraveling of himself.

What I like about the manga is that it's full of exploration. Not in the sense of exploring a topic, I mean that the characters have to make sense of whatever the fuck it is that's going on, they have to ask each other questions, hypothesize, test, experiment, and often make wrong guesses. A lot of back and forth, jab, riposte, and shifting dynamics, somewhat of a battle but not quite. There's one big obstacle in the way of all of this: big piles of lies. They are sensible lies, the kind you would tell to a random homeless man trying to figure out your personality and your flaws, and the ones a pathological liar would tell you in turn to look not too insane. It's uncomfortable to question yourself, to pry into your own traumas, but even more so for them to be pried into, and Nakoshi does this forcefully all the time, as he takes it upon himself to make the most out of this ability. So when he gets it right, that has its impact. How could it not? The situation is ludicrous. This interplay of investigation, mind games, and self-reflection (very important aspect), tied to the shifting madness of its capital-S Surrealism and the haptic feedback Nakoshi is receiving in his mental and physical rush to uncover... things... those give way to very intense moments, frienzies, either from or against Nakoshi. His sight allows Yamamoto to display side by side the subtle expressions of a real human being versus the extreme representations of their emotional state, and the magic even does have a degree of impact on the real world. The previous comparisons to Ace Attorney and Monogatari should make more sense now.

There are as many events taking place as what you'd expect from examining multiple people's lives, but surprisingly it hits the mark with all of them. (Save perhaps for the very controversial resolution of case 2.) You wouldn't expect gender exploration and finance vultures to be in the same story neighboring each other, but they are, and it's incredible. Across its ten volumes there is absolutely no wasted time and no filler, no weak parts, everything fits perfectly into Nakoshi's story with a beautiful pace that allows it to go from heated debate to pensive stretches of contemplation with complete smoothness. There's one stretch I came across on the re-read where it's seventeen consecutive pages of the guy walking into a shabby tent to search through it, with no narration, and all the dialogue in it was him stammering out two words to himself. I appreciate that kind of stuff.

But the center, the core of the story, is character development, you can count on that being present in spades. As I said before, the first case is the most straightforward, the second is interesting in her counter-aggression, the third I won't say, the fourth is a tragedy, and the fifth, the fifth is truly the point where things go off the rails. As for Nakoshi, he's a guy that repeatedly has to face his failures, his misplaced goals an extensive missteps, and... well, the ending is brilliant, I'll tell you that much. His relationship with Ito is pretty unusual as far as friendships go, since at the start doc is shamelessly taking advantage of homeless people's desperation in order to use them as guinea pigs, and they have an unequal dynamic all throughout. He's the one who has the tools and the knowledge while repeatedly disbelieving the magical dimension of Nakoshi's sight, and Nakoshi sure as hell fucks with him in turn. Not like a friendly rival, but a very fuck you sort of way, yet they still end up growing attached and showing that they care for each other. His journey is fairly more nuanced than the currently airing Senpai wa Otokonoko, I can say that too. As one last point, I really like seeing homeless people being treated as human beings. It's something I respect a lot.

Really, a majestic manga. At least 9.5/10.
About Ichi, just three words: bloody mental illness. That's all.

>>131704
i like it but I can't marathon it. It has an element of mystery to it but it doesn't really care for it as much as characters and exploring the psychology of people during an apocolypse

Also,
ULTIMATE Dowman Sayman rankings:
Voynich = Melancholia = Parabellum > Babylon > Nickelodeon > POWER GAP > Vivarium = Suibakusen > Dungeon > Paraiso > POWER GAP > Oddman = Case of Hana & Alice > POWER GAP > Phantom Brave

I'd only recommend the top four, honestly. They're all very dense, tightly woven, and have top-tier endings, while Nickelodeon feels like it has too many characters that aren't distinct enough or as interconnected as the previous ones, with an ending that peters out and doesn't feel like a finale at all. Vivarium is really slow and doesn't feel like it has any major payoffs so far, it kind of coasts through things without the rapid inventiveness of the others. Oddman bothered me with the girls constantly fawning over the MC, felt somewhat repetitive too. Dungeon... is a comedy isekai, and Phantom Brave a straight JRPG adaptation that in the afterword admits he didn't put much effort into. Suibakusen is hit or miss, Paraiso has... I'd say too many sex jokes (bit of a dumb complaint) but I'm not sure that's it, and it's still more varied than Oddman. Hana & Alice, eh.
If you've read the top and want more Dowman, I'd suggest Nickelodeon and Suibakusen. The others not so much.

>>131693
>>131747
People usually talk about the SoL as an upside, so if you didn't like that it'd certainly be a determining factor. Especially saying the ending is not that great when afaik its later developments have a ton of buildup you skipped over.

>>131749
i was saying it's not great because that was what an opinion on a forum was

>>131746
Ooo, you read the new editions then. The tankobon release had 15 volumes - same content for both editions regardless. I should have done that.

>>131754
Yeah, they had close to 700 pages each. It's what I got off Nyaa, and now that I look at it it does indeed say 2023 in its filename. The pages are fucking BIG so each one is like around 2 gigs and they take some time to open.

>>131755
Yeah, the scans for the tankobon releases were wayyy worse - I had to go to the new release to get screenshots.

I have read Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun up to date most of it while at work.

>>87056
Wow, the ending to My Home Hero felt quite sudden. They were doing the flashback & looking back on their efforts kinda thing, but I didn't expect the next couple chapters to be the last. I thought they were setting up the finale, and it would end a bit later.

Overall, pretty great. I do think that the arcs were too segregated however, kinda stop and start.

guess I'll read another 25 chapters from ch25

>>131135
I just finished this too. It's great, but I don't have much else to add on to what was already said.

That big scene around the end... man what a metaphore

>>132042
I heavily recommend reading Melancholia and Suicide Parabellum, they're shorter, quicker, and more of a mindfuck.
>>132051
Is Anonymous lel'ing at the text above?

Yeah. I guess DDDD was pretty good afterall. It took ~25 chapters before the plot started moving away from more heavy SoL stuff, but things went kinda nice. Definetly good manga

It's actually kind of neat how much they let the readers piece together what happened after the time skip. like the video game creators probably built the mech that the Demons likely were riding around the end.

>>132058
>Suicide Parabellum
This was awesome. It's so short but it feels substantial for its length. I really like how you're gradually given more information to make sense of this scenario that you're initially in the dark on. It does feel like the kind of story you need to read a second time to fully make sense of. Or not. I got kind of lost with the chronology of things once the other Chihayas started showing up, but maybe given the nature of the "real" Ouka it's not actually important. Not sure how I feel about the ending. Can't tell if it's supposed to imply whether Chiyaha was an actual sentient being or if it was just meant to symbolize Ouka falling back into her extended coma. Uhhh something something, karmic twist ending. I guess serves her right for trying to take her own life? It's good either way.

I think I'm fond of short form stories like this. They're what I wish Fujimoto would make more of instead whatever the hell he's doing with CSM. Uzumaki was one of the first manga I read start to finish and left a pretty big impact on me, and that was only like 20 chapters, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Dowman Sayman wasn't really on my radar until recently, but I want to read more of him now.

>>132087
Parabellum is a strong contender for one of his best works, in my opinion. That's why I ranked it at the top alongside Voynich and Melancholia.

Now, for a bunch of spoilers

This is a story with looping, but not a looping story per se. As more layers and more instances of Chihaya pile up they begin to interfere with one another and navigating the dream world differently, like how they group up and patrol certain areas, then thwarted by the masked one. They are all figments of her imagination, the ideal person that she wishes to be pursued by, there's an endless amount of them but only one ultimate Ouka, as host of the dream. Chihaya's sacrifice in the zeroth layer upends the game and allows Ouka to wake up, the details beyond that don't exactly matter, it's a selfless miracle, but I would assume the bullet is still there as it causes her to relapse back into the dream world, where all the characters still live in the back of her mind.
What happens at the end, is that just like how Chihaya was previously going into the layers created by Ouka's suicide, Ouka has returned and done the inverse: entered Chihaya's world through the corpse she left in the boss room. But the pursuer pulls a Homura, as her love and loneliness makes her take over and shoot Ouka with the parabellum while inside Chihaya's domain, thereby restarting the game. Amazing stuff really, as sudden for us as it is for Ouka. Insanely succint.

>Fujimoto
I gave my thoughts on Goodbye, Eri above, it's also an amazing single-volume manga. In fact, it's only a few pages shorter than Parabellum. He's definitely capable of making more like it.

I finally gotten around to GTO: Paradise Lost which takes place after GTO and it's really good so good it's almost better than the GTO anime.
Sadly I can't really talk about the plot because it's so spoiler heavy. I can say this though: He's teaching bratty Idols now.

reading nana, wasnt interested at all at first but a friend liked it so i decided id read it so we can have it in common, i really like it but i might just be a sucker for anything involving romance

I haven't actually read much manga lately, only some danmei novels.

JJK is supposed to end September 30th

>>132619
Seems kind of strange for it to end when it's so popular, but it's good that it's written with an ending in mind. With that and My Hero Academia ending it seems like there's going to be room for some new giants to emerge.

>>132624
It's got defined plot villains so if they get defeated then they have to switch into spinoffs

>>132625
What do you mean, if you have big bad established villains/end points just have some new badass villain come out of nowhere and beat them offscreen.....

I was actually surprised by how good this was. The first few chapters and the art were kind of meh but i ended up reading around 40-50 chapters in 2 days.

pointless bump

>>133268
Uhhhh, I can tell you I read like a fuckton of chapters of Tsuyoshi and it was pretty shit. It's a martial arts series where random challengers keep popping up to fight with an unbeatable dork that just wants to be left alone, but the enemies are fairly bland, and the techniques are a mixture of actual martial arts, tech, and magic but it doesn't go particularly deep into any of them. Tsuyoshi always wins because he's the strongest, and he's the strongest for reasons no one understands. A hundred chapters in, he snaps and decides violence is the answer, but even then he doesn't actually kill anyone, and after that I dropped it. It's better to go and read Baki.

The QA manga I read up to volume 10 and it's okay-ish, it still has unique moments when it continues to focus on jank and I always found them hilarious, but outside of those it's rather weak. It's not very good at conflict since Haga is too knowledgeable and resourceful to lose, and he's never meaningfully challenged in moral terms. Characters don't evolve and the story as a whole feels staggered as things suddenly end and then it simply moves on to another thing. At one point they get trapped, they have a timeskip while remaining trapped, immediately after it there's a flashback training arc, and from then on it becomes a lot more generically action-y. In general it deals with death really sloppily, too. In general I would not recommend it, even if it has parts I quite enjoyed.

>>133271
I can't even remember any of Baki but I know I read it

>>133273
I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't remember too much of it either. But I'll be damned if it isn't a wild ride.

>>132169
>Melancholia
This was great too. I really like these types of stories where you have multiple characters with their own personal plots that kind of run independent of each other, but overlap and cross over from time to time. It makes me think of a TTRPG campaign, or at least the kind of campaign I would want to run.

>I gave my thoughts on Goodbye, Eri above, it's also an amazing single-volume manga.
It is. Look Back is great too. One thing I would hear sometimes about Fujimoto is that he's much more suited to making oneshots than longer series and I'm inclined to agree.

bought the neko book
everynyan is so cute and the colored pages are great
overall just a very calming iyashikei

reading oddman 11 and holy flip these shabs are kimo

>>133674
cuuuuuuuuuuuuute

>>133409
>Look Back
A nice read, although I can't say I didn't get confused with the time travel. Interestingly enough, I ended up switching to dual view when I noticed halfway through he was making use of these pairs of pages that are much more bound to each other than to the ones before or after, and more or less function like a spread with a break in the middle. Another neat design choice. And he really does like dishevelled girls, huh?
If you want more Downman, there's Babylon and Nickelodeon. I do think Nick is a lot like Melancholia but somewhat weaker. As I said, it's not as interconnected and it peters out with a non-ending. Babylon is more straightforward in terms of its smaller and consistent cast, still has some very nice twists.
>>133684
SKABs, super kimo anime babes.

Also neat how Shark Kick is a parody of Fire Punch of Chenso put together.

b

i wish ponko didn't get axed