More Manga Drops
The discussion in the Manga I’ve Given Up On post, combined with David Welsh’s comments, reminded me of several more titles. These didn’t come to mind originally because I’ve been disposing of the volumes, so they required a bit more memory-prodding.
Baby & Me — Cute characters, but too many of them too quickly (with all the siblings of the family down the street), and not enough depth. Stopped with book 3.
Cheeky Angel — Not enough forward movement, and I enjoyed the boy-in-a-girl’s-body premise more before he started accepting his gender switch. Stopped at book 8? 10? 12? I don’t remember. (Also, this series was a victim of a site change. When transferring over pages from my previous static setup into WordPress, I reconsidered its recommended series status and demoted it.)
Crimson Hero — I was more interested in the culture clash aspects than the volleyball competitions, and the author didn’t agree. No harm, no foul, but there’s other things to read. Quit after book 4.
Hot Gimmick — Whenever people tell me that I’m not optimistic enough, that I don’t have enough faith in authors to turn stories around, I think of this deplorable series and laugh. I read the whole thing and was disgusted that no permanent character development took place.
Iron Wok Jan! — Too much of the same, and the portrayal of the girls (both as basketball smugglers and as supporting cheerleaders) became grating. I stopped a few volumes after this review (book 16).
Kare Kano — This writeup covers many of the same details as the conversation we’re having here, and the commentors filled in more.
Nodame Cantabile — As David suggests, I’m not listing books where I sampled a first volume and didn’t care for it, because that’s outside the scope of this exercise. I mention this one only because I tried it twice, again after reader encouragement, and it’s just not for me. The pigsty lifestyle of the lead put me off.
Rurouni Kenshin — A samurai superhero was a fun novelty, but I admit, it was more entertaining when I was getting the books for free. When Viz stopped promoting it, I gave up, I don’t recall when.
5:19 pm
Hmm something this reminds me of is that at time I’ve had to drop manga series because I can’t find new volumes.
I liked what I read of Cheeky Angel, but have never seen a new volume after #8.
I LOVED Kindaichi Case Files, but again couldn’t find new volumes. Heck on it, when I went to order online I learned that some of the volumes I wanted were out of print.
I guess with so many series out there though, that unless you are a big name series you get ignored by some book chain stores in favor of new series I gues.
5:19 pm
I tried the first two volumes of Kare Kano, having seen (and loved) the anime, but I acutally preferred the anime– and it’s usually the other way around for me! The same thing happened with GTO. Granted, both anime shows incorporate a lot of manga-style elements (on-screen text, panels, etc.); don’t know if that had anything to do with it.
Sorry to hear that about Cheeky Angel; that’s one of the series I’ve been considering picking up at some point.
5:20 pm
Rurouni Kenshin ended with volume 17 with the death of Shishio. In my opinion anyway. That was the end; take away that ridiculous ending where Shishio and his pals are walking on hills of human bones in hell, and you have Kenshin pretty much setteled in a life with Kaoru and Yahiko. I tried reading the rest of the series, but it became too silly; fighting a giant who looks like Apocolypse from the X-men. The books I’m giving up on are Oldboy ( I’ve seen the movie; know the surprise ending ), BLAME! ( started good; great art; great action; too cluttered with leathery bad guys whom you can’t tell apart), and To Terra. I know people in the Blog world love this book but, for me, the story flops and the dialog is some of the worst I’ve read. Great art, but I never read a GN for pretty pictures alone.