A recent conversation in the What are you watching? Anime Edition thread brought up the fact that there wasn’t a manga discussion thread yet. So, to get the ball rolling, the most recent manga I’ve been reading has been Fushigi no Kuni no Bird, which follows the English "adventuress" Isabella Bird as she documents the cultures and lifestyles of first the Japanese, and then the Ainu (a native people that I wasn’t even aware existed until reading this manga who live on the northern island of Hokkaido). It’s been a fun read, not just in terms of the story itself, but also in getting m…
A recent conversation in the What are you watching? Anime Edition thread brought up the fact that there wasn’t a manga discussion thread yet. So, to get the ball rolling, the most recent manga I’ve been reading has been Fushigi no Kuni no Bird, which follows the English "adventuress" Isabella Bird as she documents the cultures and lifestyles of first the Japanese, and then the Ainu (a native people that I wasn’t even aware existed until reading this manga who live on the northern island of Hokkaido). It’s been a fun read, not just in terms of the story itself, but also in getting me to learn about the Ainu.
Took a break from this manga, but i have been reading chained soldier.
Quite a good manga, if you are into harems. This one is quite progressive, at least a little bit, because the characters are in 18-20s area.
I’m also trying to get into, uh, demon school (yes, the iruma kun one. Wish I have a better nickname for it than the one it was given). The reason being is because season 4 is taking forever to be finish, so I might as well just read it.
I’ve recently slogged my way through a reread of Nisekoi. It’s odd - at the start of the manga, there’s a real sense of forward momentum as various secrets are revealed to various people, but almost imperceptibly the pace grinds to a halt until you’re reading a chapter about Raku chasing a parrot around town and you’re like "man wasn’t there a plot to this thing?" Also notable, I suppose, for (ending spoilers) Onodera (the worse one) starting the series having already won and yet still managing to lose to Chitoge.
Anyway, after that, I thought I’d probably better unwind with a little bite-size, light and fluffy manga. Nothing too long or dense, you know?
So I started rereading Bleach.
I’m not very far in - just at Ichigo’s contest with Uryuu - but man, it’s so refreshing compared to how I remember it being. The art is adorably janky! There are backgrounds! Rukia’s in like every chapter! I still don’t place it above One Piece, but it really is some damn fine shonen battle manga. I’m still not reading past the Deicide arc, though, no chance in hell am I going that far into it. Life’s too short and I want to get to some other manga this year.
…okay *maybe *the Fullbringers arc too but no further.
Recently, I decided to read the Rideback manga—I blame the MEL’s fantastic opening for the anime—and compared to what I remember of the anime it’s both wild and extremely topical. For example, in the anime, the main character’s introduction to Ridebacks is a chaotic ride around campus caused by Fuego malfunctioning. In the manga, she’s asked to use Fuego to help put up some signs for a student protest, but one of the students gets harassed by the cops and the whole thing rapidly devolves into a riot as the other students rush to help the first one. Next, in the anime, another club member challenges her to a race around campus, which also happens in the manga, though the specifics are a little bit different. After that, the main character enters a more formal race, on an actual track, in the anime. In the manga, that race gets mentioned, but before it can happen there’s a major student protest at a military base, with the military moving to brutally suppress the protest and the MC rushing to save a friend who’s at the protest.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what happens next in the manga because I’ve only been able to find up to the first chapter of the second volume, out of 10 volumes, in English.
Pain.😭
Does anyone know where I could find the remaining 9 volumes? I don’t think they were ever officially translated, but I’d be happy to pay if they were.
I’m also trying to get into, uh, demon school (yes, the iruma kun one. Wish I have a better nickname for it than the one it was given). The reason being is because season 4 is taking forever to be finish, so I might as well just read it.
You might also enjoy Mairimashita! Iruma-kun: If Episode of Mafia. It’s an AU manga where Bablys is a mafia, on earth, instead of a school for demons, in hell. It’s well written and it’s interesting to see how the different setting changes the different characters.
I’m not very far in - just at Ichigo’s contest with Uryuu - but man, it’s so refreshing compared to how I remember it being. The art is adorably janky! There are backgrounds! Rukia’s in like every chapter! I still don’t place it above One Piece, but it really is some damn fine shonen battle manga. I’m still not reading past the Deicide arc, though, no chance in hell am I going that far into it. Life’s too short and I want to get to some other manga this year.
I really need to get to One Piece at some point. I know a lot of really cool stuff happens, eventually, but most of the early chapters are really not to my taste.
I really need to get to One Piece at some point. I know a lot of really cool stuff happens, eventually, but most of the early chapters are really not to my taste.
I honestly do not blame you - and honestly, when you’re talking about a manga where the first 100 chapters can still be said to be the prologue, not liking the early chapters is a significantly bigger problem!
Oh aye, does anyone know a good scanalation website that i can read manga on? Like, one with all the images there, in order, and has all the update chapters of whatever manga on there? In english?
Oh aye, does anyone know a good scanalation website that i can read manga on? Like, one with all the images there, in order, and has all the update chapters of whatever manga on there? In english?
MangaDex I guess? If you’re willing to figure out how it works, Mihon is a great app.
MangaDex I guess? If you’re willing to figure out how it works, Mihon is a great app.
I tried mangadex, it just doesn’t have the English translation at times, which sucks. I tried manganato, which had shitpsot comments from Facebook (which makes it really funny to me.)
But i will try that Mihon app, thanks.
MangaDex I guess? If you’re willing to figure out how it works, Mihon is a great app.
Mangadex recently had a lot of English translations wiped from its database - it used to be *the *place to go for pretty much anything but that’s not so much the case any more.
If you’re after scanlations, places like FanFox and Batotwo might have it if Mangadex doesn’t. Or, of course, support the official release if there is one and you’re in a financial position to do that.
Mangadex recently had a lot of English translations wiped from its database - it used to be *the *place to go for pretty much anything but that’s not so much the case any more.
Ah, so they got the manganato treatment I see. Though, manganato got closed down, and its copy cats got made, which are utter shit because the images are messed up for certain mangas, the images won’t load up, and the fact that images are not even in order or there.
Also, @chellewalker, the app is said to be unsafe for my phone, so i cant download it. But I found a website that is actually perfect, mangafreak (if you have a VPN type of browser). It’s perfect of you are scroller than a pager.
So I started rereading Bleach.
I’m not very far in - just at Ichigo’s contest with Uryuu - but man, it’s so refreshing compared to how I remember it being. The art is adorably janky! There are backgrounds! Rukia’s in like every chapter! I still don’t place it above One Piece, but it really is some damn fine shonen battle manga. I’m still not reading past the Deicide arc, though, no chance in hell am I going that far into it. Life’s too short and I want to get to some other manga this year.
…okay *maybe *the Fullbringers arc too but no further.
And done!
Honestly that went way quicker than I thought it would. I don’t know if it’s because I had nothing to do all week, or if Tite Kubo’s doing something with his paneling and artwork, but for whatever reason it was super bingable. There’s a real sense of relentless momentum at least up until the Winter War arc (where it did drag a little), with each fight scene chaining naturally into the next all through the Soul Society and Hueco Mundo arcs.
I did much prefer it pre-Soul Society, though - it’s got this punk aesthetic that it never really recaptures except on the covers, and while the art definitely improves in a technical sense it kind of loses a lot of its personality, I feel. Oh well.
It’s also reaffirmed my belief that while some of the twists in Thousand Year Blood War might have been halfway planned, there’s no way they were planned all the way from the start - or if they were, the twists were hidden in a way that makes the reveals feel like an asspull instead of a natural misunderstanding being resolved. Talking specifically about Old Man Zangetsu actually being Ichigo’s Quincy powers and that thing about Bankais not being repairable here.
Anyway, after that, palate-cleansed with *Tenshi-chan to Akuma-kun, *which is a delightfully silly OTT gag manga about people with really embarrassing names. Specifically, the MC Tanaka Akuma (real name) who wants to reduce the stigma people with stupid names like his face in society… not helped by the actions of Tachibana Tenshi (real name), a bizarre and violent girl with a tendency to put whoever calls her by her first name out the nearest window. It’s cute! It’s also, as far as I can tell, incompletely translated, with only 12 out of 16 chapters available in English. Oh well.
Next, I haven’t decided. It’s been a hot minute since I went through Quintessential Quintuplets, so maybe that?
It’s also reaffirmed my belief that while some of the twists in Thousand Year Blood War might have been halfway planned, there’s no way they were planned all the way from the start - or if they were, the twists were hidden in a way that makes the reveals feel like an asspull instead of a natural misunderstanding being resolved. Talking specifically about Old Man Zangetsu actually being Ichigo’s Quincy powers and that thing about Bankais not being repairable here.
I think that TYBW would be more forgivable for me if it had more than two teacups of sauce, but as-is, 95% of the Volkswagen are forgettable and don’t even really enable anything interesting enough to offset the fact that the arc’s foundation is sand. I do like what the arc does with Aizen, but that’s the only particularly standout thing to me. Everything But The Rain is pretty alright too though.
Anyway, yeah, I agree that Bleach is super bingeable. I’ll be looking through it to double-check something and then I’ll suddenly be fifty or a hundred chapters later.
Last edited: Jul 5, 2025
The end of Vigilantes first season got me to binge the manga all the way to the end. I really enjoyed the story as it felt a lot more down to earth next to MHA (probably helped by the fact the cast is 1/10th the size of the main story). Koichi was a fun protagonist with an actually weak power he takes good advantage of, and while All-For-One showing up expanded the focus a fair bit, he didn’t overshadow the story.
A less mainstream work I also recently found was Coffee Moon, which is about a girl who’s been stuck in a timeloop for about 3 years already. It’s really neat because while she hasn’t gone insane or anything that extreme, she’s gotten hyper-fixated on attending the birthday party with her mom at the end of each day. The actual inciting incident for it is when a second person starts to repeat the timeloop.
Killer Ape. 5 tomes if I remember right.
The plot happens in a near future after a whole disaster (all AI have been shut down) and then, the world is divided in 3 parts, each part been controlled by a corporation. The hero is a streamer who wants to achieve some success, so, he engages himself in a soldier project supervised by a corporation. This project send people fictionally in battle of the past to train them to become soldier.
The thematic are mainly is about what’s war and what makes hero, hero. The story is not totally fluid, the art is particular (but it’s because of it I have begun to read it) but there are some interesting takes in it.
I cannot say that it’s absolutely worth to read it, but at least, it’s not a waste to read it. The story makes sense all along at least (why soldiers don’t exist anymore, and why a corporation brings them again, how the hero evolves in contact of these legendary "heroes" like Napoleon,...) and there is a bunch of complots happening in the real world too, not everything happening in fictional worlds. The only thing which has disappointed me, is something happening the 2/3 pages before the end. It doesn’t really make sense for me, and it puts a stain on the end.
But yeah, overall, it was a nice reading. A bit out of the norm, but fine.
The one manga that have my interest at the moment is KaguRai~Kagura and Raito which is about a samurai lady and her demon childhood friend, both are leaving behind their known life in search of a cure to her demon’s friend condition and finding out the wonders of the world for themselves.
Amazing choreography and the fights are tremendously well done. With great detailed art, it is simply a sight for sore eyes.
My manga reading has been very inconsistent in terms of what I look at, quickly bouncing from one work to another, with the exception of Dandadan. I’m on volume 12 of that. I might consider trying at an effort to finish Call of the Night. The end of that isn’t far off from where I’m at.
Dandadan is pretty amazing.
Just finish Game Maou/ The Game Devil. Very short (38 chapters), it has been a... Particular experience. I was firstly appealing by it because of the use of pixel art. I was thinking it will kinda a sort of isekai ("hero sent in a fantasy word with a cheated skill"), but at the end, the story went very far from your usual isekai story, as the main thematic here the act of creation (here drawing a manga), the link between creator and the recipient of the art, the influence of art on people and how art can be used as an escapism of reality. Which is A LOT. The author don’t try to truly discuss about it, he is more inserting some examples in the story without really judging things. But as there is a big gap between the beginning expectation and the real thematic that the author wanted, the story is not fully fluid and quite messy. Sometimes not very understandable. And even if the drawing is fine, it cannot save the pathing of the story, like the sequence of flashback at the end.
I want to add that this story is worth binging because everything makes more sense and some minor elements at the beginning are really relevant at the end, proofs that the author knows since the beginning where he wanted to go. That is mainly why I think that the serie hasn’t been axed, because otherwise, I doubt he will have been able to link all elements like this.
Do I recommend it ? Well, it’s... Difficult. It’s not bad per se, but I can’t really say that it’s truly good. But there is something at least. The author has a real message for once, but the way he conveys it, is wild. And in the same time, this work has an advantage and a default : it’s short. You will not lose a lot of time if you read it and don’t like it, but in the same time, the author is not going deeply in the subject, so at the end, I feel that the story is missing something. It’s just a surface level analysis and even as this level, I think there is something which is not clicking fully. Like there are not enough pages to fully understand the mind of the author. For me, it has been an interesting travel but I can get that other people find it a boring travel. It’s kinda a work which can bring really different reactions.
Oh, btw, anothe piece of info, the author is Kakunoshin Futsuzawa, the writer of Octopath Traveler, if it can help to have an idea about what he writes.
Kaiju n°8 has finished, so I have reread it. And it’s good. Not very exceptional, but good. There is a nice balance between action, feeling and humor. I like how the story didn’t put an useless romance or that even if the numbers of women in it are low, they are still very present, active and doing their own things in the story. The art does the job. Everything is not perfect though. As the story is short (less than 15 volumes), a part of the cast is almost never deeply used, the lore/background of the monsters is very absent and the ending has some small parts which doesn’t really make sense. A fun thing is that the final fight takes one third or one half all the whole show, and still, it’s not unpleasant. Make me remember how Dragon Quest Dai has the same for its final fight too. By itself, it’s a perfect popcorn/summer series. It’s a basic shônen story, with some small twists on the base (like having a 32 years old hero – older heroes seem to be a small trend these days if I take account of Sakamoto Days and Blue Killer).
Whee, Frieren’s back, after six months! I guess this means the author’s done helping out with preparation for the second season, so hopefully this is it off hiatus for a while. Good thing too, the current arc is just heating up.
Make the Exorcist Fall in Love has a special place for me in my heart. Mostly cause I kept comparing it to Helluva Boss and Hazbin Hotel (both are pretty SFW when it comes to portraying the demon lords and the demons).
Lucifer of MtEFiL is an interesting sort, his loyalty shaken by Satan( or possibly Samael given Satan has associations with snakes; eyes of a snake and a big snake motif to his garment and what he had done to Lucifer) asking him a simple question that relies on rhetoric and contemplation. He’s almost like an average Joe but behind his smile and belief in sincerity, hardwork and proper work ethics, he’s rather full of himself since he saw God’s plans and thinks he’s invincible because he saw how things would played out.
I actually love the portrayals of their Seven Deadly Sins/Prince of Hell.
Asmodeus being the horrible, horrible monster of lust that she is. (Edit: No, I’m not pro rape. I mean, Asmodeus is the embodiment of Lust yanmo, the hard R is apart of fulfilling one’s sexual desire).
Mammon, the greedy meritocratic/egalitarian jackass who shan’t stand for anyone touching his things.
Leviathan being...well, having more character than her Hazbin Hotel counterpart. A mother, a woman who hated the powers endowed to her as it robbed her chances of befriending others.
Also, the protagonist is slowly getting corrupted per all the Corrupter’s plans.
Otr of the Flame is also a fun series. Uses a lot of Viking related stuff for thee characters aesthetics.
Last edited: Jul 23, 2025
Just discover that Vinland Saga has ended. Didn’t expect it so I was a bit taken aback by it. But by giving it a 5 mn thought, yeah, the ending makes sense and overall, it’s a great manga. Another one I have to add in my reread list.
I don’t know why, but this year is a slaughter in the series I am following. Game Maou, Otome Sensou, Mission Yokazura, Kaiju n°8, Vinland Saga, Magilumiere.... And I have two others who seems to come near their end too (like Kono Oto Tomare !). I have no regrets that they are ending, because clearly, they have said whatever they want to say without expanding uselessly, so, it’s good. But still, a bit sad, specially that I don’t see a lot of series to replace them. For now at least.
After a bit of a pause, I have finally polished off rereading The Quintessential Quintuplets! As harem rom-coms go, it’s pretty darn good, with a hook that allows to do some pretty interesting things that most on the genre don’t get to and allow for some more interesting character dynamics than the usual.
I also respect it a lot for being a harem series that 1) actually settles on a final love interest and 2) has that love interest’s identity actually be a mystery where it could have gone any way right up until the reveal. (Well, except for that one guy on Reddit who worked it out like halfway through the series and had like a 4000-word essay on why he was right, and it was all true.)
I personally will be forever salty about it (Nino Gang forever), but not a lot of harem series do that, usually it’s incredibly obvious who’ll win to the point that it just feels inevitable. Looking at you, Nisekoi.
A few short palate cleansers next, I think, and then I haven’t decided what my next long reading project ought to be… maybe it’s time to finally go through *Oshi no Ko *from start to finish and see if it hangs together any better?
Palate cleansers for this round:
Demi-chan wa Kataritai: A fairly sweet little monster girl series, with more of a focus on what adaptations need to be made for girls with special needs to participate more fully in society. There’s a bit of disability applicability, which shows some real thought has gone into things - for example, the dullahan girl who needs to carry her head around the whole time is permitted to carry a rucksack rather than a briefcase to school, and is given a harness for studying. But also, the adjustment isn’t perfect: the succubus teacher who can’t help but invade people’s dreams has to live way out in the boonies away from everyone else because of it, and moans about her super-long commute. It’s not, like, Interspecies Reviewers levels of worldbuilding, but it’s neat.
Next, Tomodachi Gokko. Apparently there are two series with this same title - this is the one by Yamada Daisy. A short series, only 20 chapters long, about a girls’ school where to be the student council girls have to form pairs called ‘bouquets’ and Display True Friendship (read: be the most yuri). Enter our MC, an outwardly peppy but secretly cynical transfer student with some kind of grudge against the system, who inserts herself between the pair most favoured to be the next presidents after a tiff and forms a pair with one of them. She has no intention of making friends... so they’ll just have to make every other bouquet wither. Fairly interesting if you’re into mind game stuff.
My longer project was one that I’d started but never finished, Bamboo Blade. It’s pretty great for the most part, a sports manga focusing on kendo... except the penultimate volume is a dragged-out match between two side characters introduced in that arc for some reason? Very weird. Still, it’s worth checking out.
Next - in honour of The Classroom of a Black Cat and a Witch getting an anime adaptation (yay!), time to reread that I think. No hardship, as it’s one of my favourite ongoing series right now. It’s by Kaneda Yousuke, the same author as Boarding School Juliet, but with more of a focus on supernatural action rather than romance.
What I’ve flipped to focusing on for a few days is...
. Dead Dead Demon’s Dededededestruction. I’ve gone through the first volume pretty quickly and am on the second now, about a third of the way through that
. Ruri Dragon vol 1. I’ve read the content of this before online, and am going through it again as an ebook. I should get to volume 2 soon.
I want to also try at getting through volume 8 of Shy, finally. I had a substantial pause in the middle of a fight, and am coming back at it with my memory a bit fuzzy. That’s often how it is for me returning to anything, and partway into an important plot fight is particularly bad for dealing with this.