Hmm, going on a bit of an aside, but I'm curious if anyone else has read any of the Yen Press manga based on novels owned by the Little, Brown company. I've rented quite a few of them, Cirque du Freak, Maximum Ride, Daniel X, and Witch & Wizard. I've noticed something about them though, but this could be because three of them are based on James Patterson novels. Now, with Cirque, that was made (or at least started) before Yen Press came into existence so it had less of Little, Brown's influence. The other three have come since Yen was started and they're pretty different to me. Maybe it's just me, but I found all three of the Patterson ones to be...well sorta rushed, they should be able to take their time with this, yet it still feels like they're being rushed. Cirque on the other hand feels slightly abridged, but hardly rushed. I'm really not sure if it's just them being Patterson books either, maybe he really does write in that way with cheesy "kids rule, adults drool!" themes, so I'll probably have to read the Soulless manga to know for sure.
Anyway, more manga readings!
Finished
Sanctuary! An overall good series, but it started to falter after volume 6ish where
Hojo and Asami's relationship is discovered and that tension, which was a very interesting part of the series, pretty much had to vanish and what replaced it just wasn't quite as good. But it's still a series that made me keep reading long after my eyes cried out "We're going to bleed! We can barely concentrate on the words, why are you doing this to us?!" Well my eyes were fine in the end, lol. The series came off as being very bromance to me, Asami and Hojo are one of the most bromantic couples I can now think of. It's funny, when I see politics in America, they make me depressed and annoyed, but I would love for either Asami or Hojo to run for a government office over here, they might actually make things happen. I dunno, political thrillers are just different than actual politics and while I could see that this wouldn't appeal to everyone and there's a bit of misogyny in it, if you like political thrillers, you should go for it.
4 out of 5
Huh, so there are goo manhwa out there,
Bride of the Water God almost had me convinced otherwise. I've noticed that an awful lot of the manhwa that comes over here is shojo, and if you look at Yen Press' catalog, it's shojo with rape hands (my term for enormous hands twice the size of the characters face, they just look so creepy
observe), but
Threads of Time is clearly a shonen, and the author is actually a female too. It's her second work, her first was a short story that was included in one of the volumes. I suppose Tokyopop used to put out a more balanced manhwa between shonen and shojo, but now that they're gone, it's mostly shojo and rape hands.
Ok, so I'm done getting off topic, back to the Threads at hand! One of my problems with manhwa is one that I no longer experience with manga and that is that I'm not used to hearing Japanese character names, but not Korean ones. Luckily, there aren't many Korean names in Threads of Time either, so it's also a good series to ease you into manhwa since most of the names are actually Mongol, which sounded more distinct to me. So anyway, we have you main character, Moon Bin-Kim (whose name was distinct for me because "Moon" is also an English word and made me think his name as being more awesome) who has been having dreams of distant Korean during some war in the 12th century that, thankfully, you don't need to be very familiar with history or this war to enjoy the story (well they make it very brief for you: Mongols and Korea at war). Eventually, his dreams overtake him and he is now trapped in past Korea as the son of a Korean general. But the Mongols invade pretty quickly, but in the process, the Mongol princess, Atan Hadas, meets Moon Bin and they have a "love at first sight" thing. The third character in our triangle here is the ruthless Mongol general Sali Tayi, a very formidable foe who is awesome at combat and kinda a jerk and, of course, engaged to Atan Hadas. Moon Bin isn't sure what to think of his new surroundings, he's only got one pack of cigarettes on him, but he's also gained a family environment that he's never had before since his present day parents kinda ignore him. Then the war starts and crashes that precious family and he will have no choice but to fight Sali Tayi, the man who took it all away from him.
The series has an historical backdrop, but not one that you need to be familiar with in order to enjoy. Part of the series is awesome action and another part is going over war stuff, but that's not boring either. Moon Bin actually fades out of the foreground between volumes 2-6, giving more time to Atan Hadas and Sali Tayi, then he regains his position as main character from 7-11, so it's a bit split that way. But really, the series is once again proof that women make the best shonen, and seeing how it was a Tokyopop title, get on it!
4 out of 5Wait, I was wrong, Yen does publish at least one shonen manhwa:
Raiders. I've read the first 3 volumes so far, I got them cheap outta the Borders Anyway, no rape hands here! Not sure why these are normal manga size yet the shojo is oversized, jerks...
Anyway, this involves undead zombies, the main girl needs to eat flesh to heal herself, and a boy who drinks the "blood of Jesus", the only potential cure from being a zombie, and become immortal. At first the zombie woman more of less holds him hostage as a form of infinite food (she doesn't like to kill, but understands that she must), but he soon goes along with her willingly (in part so that others won't have to die and because he did kinda steal her only hope at a cure). Luckily, there are four more phials of the blood of Jesus out there and they're going to hunt for them.
I do have some complaints with this series, possibly more than praises. While the premise is interesting and always moving forward, the action can often be unclear and you honestly wish sometimes that the book came with a slider to make it appear darker, as the lines can be so faint as to be damn near invisible, I seriously think the lines on some pages are thinner than a human hair. Everything seems either too white or is really black, it rarely seems to hit the right color balance inbetween that no other manga or manhwa on the face of the planet seems to have.
So, it's not a particular deep series, but it's a quick and pleasant enough way to pass the time.
A while ago, I got to read I think the first three volumes of this? Well now I'm up to volume 6 of
Tegami Bachi, Borders once more Anyway, I really have been enjoying this series, even if it took me a while to get used to all the dark night sky in this series (as per the plot, it's like the exact opposite of the whiteness of
Raiders). It's a monthly shonen series and one that Viz seems to kinda ignore half the time. It seems to improve with each chapter, we finally did get over if Niche will wear pants or not and we're getting onto the mystery of the series and what happened to Gauche Suede.
Now, I've heard of several complaints on this series and some of them I really don't think are deserved. For one, yes, Lag Seeing
is more of a crybaby than Jacuzzi Splot and unlike Jacuzzi isn't crying so others won't have to, Lag is just a crybaby. That said, he's not the sort of crybaby who cries because he/she believes him or herself to be useless, Lag is simply easily swayed by emotion and usually cries as a result, but the instant he faces any monster, I had no problem believing that he does indeed have the skill to face it. So no, he's not a doormat and he doesn't have self esteem issues. This is honestly how you should make a crybaby, one who cries at happy endings, not because he's a wimp letting himself get walked all over like the ultimate doormat. I could see his crying getting annoying to some, but it was no problem for me because he was crying for perfectly fine reasons.
Another problem that I sorta agree with is that we do sometimes spend too much time debating if Niche will or will not wear pants for Lag's sake. Niche does kinda annoy me, Niche's emergency food supply, Steak, actually seems more useful to combat sometimes then Niche, who can turn her freakin' hair into swords. Luckily, that tones down after a few volumes and is never put there in place of the story when there's something else that could be going on.
And thirdly, some thinks it moves too slowly. I don't think it does, for one, it's a monthly series, it's rare for them to be able to just take a week off to teach Goku and Piccolo how to drive a car. It takes a bit to get going perhaps compared to other monthly shonen, but I didn't find it to be a problem because it was entertaining in the meantime. That said, Viz is being a bit slow with the release for this series, dammit! They're up to 11 in Japan, but 7 is about to come out here, but this isn't a series where big delays help it either.
