Hashikko Ensemble

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Hashikko Ensemble

A manga about a boy with a low voice that’s invited to start a chorus at his vocational high school.

Shimoku Kio is most known for his successful Genshiken series but as someone who teaches people how to sing I was EXTREMELY skeptical of how Kio would be addressing this subject. After following this series since it began I can now say that some of the facts he says about singing are correct and others are wrong enough to be cringeworthy. 

It’s disappointing to me because I’ve always wondered how a manga would address the topic of choral singing but currently I’m reading this series with my hand over my forehead just waiting for the next awful falsehood about singing to appear on the page.

~dakazu

PLINIVS

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PLINIVS

A manga about the life of Gaius Plinius Secundus or Pliny the Elder. He was a Roman philosopher and the father of the Encyclopedia.

Mari Yamazaki has experience with Roman characters in her comedy Thermae Romae and with biographies in her adaptation of Steve Jobs. Apparently she really wanted to draw a serious story about Roman times and thought Pliny was a perfect subject. It’s co-created with Miki Tori. 

I really liked this book but it was a little difficult to follow all the characters and politics happening. The plot follows both Plinius and the Roman Emperor of the time Nero so there’s a lot of backstabbing and scheming drama. I will say Yamazaki has a unique skill in making real life people like Nero or Steve Wozniak very cute.

I plan on reading more!

~dakazu

208 – 4 More Years – 4 year Anniversary Special with Ryan Higgins

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208 – 4 More Years – 4 year Anniversary Special with Ryan Higgins

Please join us for our special 4 year anniversary of Manga Machinations! We’ve asked our friend Ryan Higgins from the Comic Conspiracy store and podcast to join us as we talk about the comics industry through a retail store and learn how manga is sold!

Follow Ryan Higgins on twitter!

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BTOOOM!

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BTOOOM!

A manga about a top ranked video game player who gets kidnapped to an island and is forced to play a death match battle royale version of his game in real life.

…Yeah this is super stupid and totally generic. As if you couldn’t already tell by the cover that parodies an XBOX 360 game. The game itself is a copy of Bomberman.

This series finally ended recently and I was completely dumbfounded with their choice to put out dual final volumes. You can choose a Light/happy ending or a Dark/sad ending. I just about lost it when the antagonist’s secret motivations were completely changed for each separate ending. It just came off as a poorly written visual novel game or something.

Not recommend. You’re better reading Battle Royale(the novel because it’s superior to both the manga adaptation and movie).

~dakazu

Bokura no Q

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Bokura no Q

A manga about a boy being followed around by a mysterious talking sphere that grants him regenerative powers for answering it’s questions about life.

A pretty strange series that reminded me of series like Parasyte. The main character ends up using the sphere’s powers to battle against an antagonist who uses his own sphere to murder people as he pleases.

The art work of Jikei Ichima is a little rough around the edges but it gives the series a pretty unique feel. I’m willing to check out some more to see if the story progresses past a simple battle manga.

~dakazu

VS. Again

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VS. Again

A manga about a salary man who decides to rejoin his company’s volley ball team and pursue his abandoned dreams of getting to the premier V-League.

This was a really interesting seinen sports manga. I don’t think I’ve read a sports manga that focused on a commercial league before. The team struggles to balance their day jobs and their pursuit of joining the V-League. Sometimes they even have to fight against people that view the volleyball team as a waste of the company budget. The climax of the series even focuses on the potential end of the team after they start to win big because the company would not be able to afford the expense of going to a higher league.

A unique take on the sports genre. I really enjoyed this book.

~dakazu

GREEN WORLDZ

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GREEN WORLDZ

A science fiction horror manga about a group of humans surviving in a world over run with giant plants and insects. They’re led by a mysterious man who has ties to the main character.

This was a decent manga that I found pretty entertaining. The action was well done and drawn. I think my biggest complaint about this series was that a lot of it’s various designs such as story, characters, weapons, and monsters were either generic or were influenced from other things. Things like the big plot twist were super obvious. In an extra end-of-volume afterword Yusuke Osawa comments that he’s a huge fan of Bloodborne and it shows in the designs of weapons the characters use to fight with.

This manga was available through the Manga Box app and was fully translated but apparently Manga Box stopped the majority of their English translation support so it’s no longer officially available. A bummer.

~dakazu

Hajime no Ippo

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Hajime no Ippo

Look, at one point in my life Ippo was one of my favorite manga of all time. I would still advise people to check out the anime because if you haven’t heard punches accompanied by jet engines sound effects, you haven’t lived. However this manga has gone on for too long and it’s just tedious in so many ways now. Unfortunately the most recent events in this series make it clear that we’re still no where near the ending.

I pray George Morikawa will be able to finish what he started almost 29 years ago.

~dakazu

Manga Poverty

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Manga Poverty

A chronicle of manga artist Shuho Sato’s struggle with trying to live off of manga artist wages and his decision to leave print publishers and start his own digital distribution manga website.

Super fascinating and informative read. Sato doesn’t not shy away from his bitter experiences dealing with publishers and how it effected his opinions on the manga industry. Great book and the only shame is that the English version doesn’t come with a manga introduction that was in the original Japanese version.

This is available for purchase on the amazon kindle store and we discussed this with Deb Aoki on a recent podcast.

~dakazu

207 – Manga in Motion 31 – Little Witch Academia

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207 – Manga in Motion 31 – Little Witch Academia

This week we look at the 2012 anime project that grew into it’s own full television show, Little Witch Academia! We’ll be looking at the original short and the crowd funded movie!

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