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Thank you all for the warm welcoming! We’ll see if I find some firm footing in this forum.

@Will_c Dougie will probably get some coffee and some cherry pie and smile. How Dale reacts will be quite interesting!

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Will_C

@garjones, Yeah, I also really like Happy and Yawara by him, but haven’t read them to completion so I don’t want to recommend them without reservations. Happy is like an exploration of injustice toward an undesering who everybody is jealous of. Makes me so mad when I read it. But Yeah, Urasawa just keeps laying golden eggs! I haven’t looked into Billy the Bat yet, but it seems inspired by western comics.

 

@Christian. Yes yes YES give in to the space debris!

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lorcan_nagle

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Todd

So I anders talked to me, asking about some good manga without superheroes, and that got me interested in just fanboying over some things I like in front of complete strangers. I’ll arrange it in descending order depending on my general opinion of quality, but don’t read too much into it.

 

Berserk

This one shouldn’t really need any introduction; it is a classic for good reasons! A dark gritty fantasy story with great art. What I think is exceptional, especially in the origin story, is how much is told through body language and facial expressions instead of dialogue; complex characters act in contradictory ways and it’s deeply engaging.

 

20th Century Boys, 21st Century Boys

An intricate story that weaves together events in different time periods. It’s quite out there storywise and hard to explain. It’s by Urasawa Naoki, the person behind Monster, which was mentioned earlier. Basically som kids make up stories when they are young which later start happening when they are adults. We follow them as they try to figure out what’s actually going on. Thematically relevant to our current global predicament.

 

Planetes and Vinland Saga

Planetes, also mentioned above, is an interesting and poetic story that starts of as a slice of life in space, but goes into some philosophial ruminations about isolation, trauma and life/death.

Vinland Saga is by the same author and is more action oriented, a tale set in the viking times. It also has a poetic flare and changes tone quite much as the main character matures through it. We follow a young icelandic boy as he gets swept up with some mercenaries, growing up in war and violence.

 

Nausicaa of the valley of the wind

In my opinion the best work by Miyazaki (the guy who did those ghibli movies, yes). Post-apocalyptic story, somewhat messianic, centering on the inanity of human conflict in the vaster context of ecology

 

Vagabond, Real, Slam Dunk

All works by Inoue Takehiko are great; mostly famous for his samurai manga Vagabond which really blurs the line between classical ink painting and comic book, it starts of looking fantastic, and it ends in some of the best painted scenes I have ever seen. A historical manga about Miyamoto Musashi, probably the most famous swordsman in japanese history, it mostly fictional, but it draws heavy inspiration from Musashi’s treatise on martial arts.

Slam Dunk is more of a typical underdog story about a misfit who joins a basketball team in school, exciting, but nothing revolutionary. Real is more interesting, focusing on wheelchair basketball and has more mature subject matter.

 

National Quiz

In the future Japan is a dictatorship by game show, the National Quiz. The winner gets one wish, the loser are sent to labor camps. What can you wish? Well, if you want eifel tower in your backyard, the japanese army will make that happen. Satire like this is rare in manga!

 

To you, the eternal (fumetsu no anata e) and Koe no Katachi

Fumetsu is a strange story about an object that learns through contact and becomes conscious through imitating living things it encounters. It’s a story about an immortal that lives through ages, it’s about the people he meets and the loss he feels at outliving those he loves.

Koe no Katachi deals with themes about bullying, it follows a boy who meets a deaf girl who he treats really badly, and then seeing the consequences of his actions and how to deal with that responsibilty

 

Welcome to the NHK

A story about a hikikomori (a shut-in, that never dares to leave his appartment because he fears meeting other people) and how he get’s pulled out of his normal shut-in life to do stuff like joining death cults and making porn games. Completely crazy, but surprisingly poignant.

 

Touch, H2, Cross Game, Rough, Katsu! and other works by Adachi Mitsuru

These are slightly silly, yet cozy, love stories/dramas mostly centered around baseball and other sports. Adachi has a special style of understated slapstick that is quite charming.

 

Narutaru.

I’m not quite sure how to explain this one, because it has a strange tonal dissonance between a cutesy art-style that is quite mellow, but with sudden bouts of violence that makes it kind of creepy and scary.

 

Gunnm (Battle Angel Alita)

It’s a pretty great story, I’m sure most are familiar with it in some way or another. I love it because of the transhumanist themes and how the story widens in scope over time.

 

Homunculus

A guy gets a trepanation on his forehead to open his third eye, then he starts seeing some scary auras around people. Very well written and well drawn.

 

Shingeki no Kyojin

“Attack on Titan is good” is basically a meme by itself, but it is good, and has consistently kept an engaging narrative that keeps you guessing. It seems to be nearing its conclusion soon, but yeah, well worth reading. I think the anime feels a bit too slow compared to the manga.

 

Angel Densetsu 

The nicest and gentlest boy just so happens to look hella evil and becomes the local Delinquent Legend unbeknownst to him.

 

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DavidM, Dave, lorcan_nagle, garjones, Will_C

Hello humans. I am a human that has found this forum through my biologically human brother anders, in sweden known by his alias Anders.

 

I am mostly a manga enthusiast, although I have a long and intimate relationship with Peter Parker. My favourite comic of the non-japanese comic world is probably Planetary. It is a nice piece. Harder to give a specific favourite in the manga world, but I love Inoue Takehiko’s work, and Urasawa Naoki’s.

 

I am an anthropology student and a hobbyist artist. I love painting in ink and oils.

 

Favorite Millar book? Who is this person?
Favorite comic character: Wolverine
Top TV shows right now: Not watching anything right now, looking forward toward the Wheel of Time-series
Best movie you saw in the last year: Jojo Rabbit
Where do you live? Southern sweden
What do you like about The Carrier? WE SHALL SEE
If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be? Less polemics, more cooperation and maybe, you know, be excellent to each others?
If you could have one last meal before your glorious death in the Thunderball arena, what would you eat? Aloo Gobi with lots of coriander
Top 5 fictional characters you’d go to Vegas with? Dr Cox, Michael from the Office, Dale Cooper, Bonchien from Fumetsu no anata e, Mat from the Wheel of Time
If you could visit one place, where would you go? Lhasa
If you had to room with another Millarworlder, who would you pick? I don’t know c:

Good evening!

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Dave, Todd, Will_C