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7) PHD Comics



For someone who has worked through a PHD program (and dropped out) these are hilarious comics that really reflect the trials and challenges of working through a PHD.

It's very realistic and still pretty straightforward comics without much character development. They were written by a PHD dropout as well.

Very realistic indeed:





8) Magical Girl Apocalypse (2012-)



Extremely graphic gorefest. It's basically The Walking Death but some of the zombies are magical girls which makes them much more dangerous and scary (like trying to kill one while driving a car but it's magic wand shoots balls of fire ).

Pretty fun but lacking in any actual artistic substance. Very much like an average hollywood film instead of a literary work of some merit. I decided to drop this manga as of now.



9) Vinland Saga (2006)



I had high expectations for this title. Its a very sophisticated manga though it still has the unrealistic battles where one man is stronger than several others combined so that himself can turn the tide of a battle, like Aquilles (Portuguese name) in the famous poem The Iliad.

These days I have been reading more manga than anything else, one of the reasons is that I am bored with animation and film. Though one of the problems is the high cost of manga in the US. But the number of masterpieces of manga is enormous, its very easy to find a manga that will easily beat 90% of the anime films I have watched. One example is the sophisticated reconstruction of 11th century Northern Europe in Vinland Saga.

Its brutality is also very impressive. Sometimes it is hard even to look at it, some scenes are very hard to swallow as any vestiges of human decency and civilized behavior are discarded at the desperate situations the characters are in, at least for me since I am very sensitive regarding comics.

10/10



10) Nodame Cantabile (2001-2009)



A manga about musicians and their challenging lives. Despite following the story of two very talented musicians it still shows how hard it is for a musician to live and also the problems that Japanese musicians must deal with.

Like other josei manga, it's art style tends to be more simple and organic looking (lines are not as straight) if compared to seinen and shounen manga. In fact, I can usually identify the target demographic of a manga by it's art style. More clean, angular lines and simple designs are typical of shounen manga, more complex and realistic designs are typical of seinen, though seinen featuring bishoujo characters tend to follow more closely shounen manga and the already standard otaku art style.

The main characters are very likable, specially Nodame, Chiaki is a bit arrogant and also bitter but still interesting. Overall though I found the manga powerful and realistic piece of slice of life but a bit lacking in it's entertainment value (especially if compared to Vinland Saga).



11) Watchmen (1986)



Widely regarded as a classic of the comics medium, specially among fans of North American superhero comics, I found that it is indeed a great comic. It is certainly on another level than American animation, which is essentially restricted to children's movies and crude adult comedy, this, despite being a superhero comic, is indeed a serious artistic work.

The characters were all very interesting. Rorschach, Veid and John, in particular were the most interesting characters of the comic, as I identified with each of these 3 in certain ways. Rorschach's very sarcastic/dark mentality, unconditional commitment to his ideals and excessive aggressive posture made him a winner and my favorite character of the whole comic, when he showed up I always loved it. John's out of the world personality, his extreme arrogance and the fact that despite being essentially immortal being he suffers at least from psychological vulnerabilities like humans do. Indeed, he is not human anymore as his being exists in the form of electromagnetic waves, his blue body is only an avatar he uses to communicate with us. Veidt is perhaps even more arrogant than John, if perhaps a bit tad stupid in some ways and excessively grandiose statements (everything he says he speaks as if he were stating the greatest things in human history).

One problem is that the art of this manga is a bit tad simple and unrefined if compared to Japanese manga. Lines are not as precisely drawn and movement is not depicted in any way, as American mangakas apparently haven't developed drawing techniques by the mid 1980's to depict motion in static panels. Character design is excessively realistic but not detailed enough, at this level of detail a more stylized look might have been better. The designs of buildings and machinery are also unimpressive. Overall, the art was the disappointing element of this manga. Well, but like animation, manga is an area where Japanese "technology" still has a substantial distance between it's potential competitors.

Doesn't she look like a transvestite here?

The actress in the movie looked way better:


But what this thing excels in is the story. It is in a vein similar to PMMM, both titles being an serious and brutal deconstruction of a genre traditionally associated with children's entertainment. Both also being very short and possessing a certain beauty of form: by the time I finished reading it I could gaze upon it's whole structure and appreciate it's beautiful construction, like I did with PMMM.

One thing that bugged me was also the unconvincing explanation for John's return to Earth. He returned to Earth after staying in Mars because he reached the conclusion that life was previous. Thing is that the author failed to notice what makes life and civilization to precious: it's richness and complexity. Modern globalized civilization consists of 7 billion people, each one is a highly complex thing, all interconnected into social webs, producing and consuming cultural products, such as manga. Mars itself is not precious because, essentially, it's lack of life and civilization means it doesn't produce manga. Hence, Earth deserved to be saved from the threat of nuclear self annihilation.



I Agree with you that Watchmen's a great book though (even though I disagree with you about the art).

The problem I had with Dr. Manhattan's return from Mars is that it's not really convincing in terms of his view of human behavior. Doesn't he basically just transition from a mechanical view in which every human action is determined by some prior cause to one in which they arise partly out of some quantum randomness? It's not a huge deal that Moore didn't find a perfect foundation for non-arbitrary human agency but I think he wrote himself into a corner there.



The art in Watchmen looked like a movie storyboard (which is probably why the movie followed the comic so closely - the storyboard was already done in the form of the comic). Do you think the altered ending of the movie (substituting Dr. Manhattan as the threat instead of a faked alien invasion) was better than the ending in the comic?



I think that the movie ending was good too. Perhaps more fitting. But I have no strict preferences regarding the ending.

Comics in general are similar to movie storyboards, at least for comics made in Japan or heavily influenced by Japanese comics because Japanese comics have adopted the camera angles and composition of movies. Manga adapted into live action or anime also tends to heavily influence the direction of the adaption, in some cases it looks like the manga was just animated with each scene being one panel.



12) A Silent Voice (2013-2014)



This is one of the best example of manga melodrama that I have read. Very moving stuff, which even reminded me of Brazilian soup operas but differently from the soup operas it was actually moving.

Scholar of Japanese popular culture Susan Napier said that manga and it's influenced mediums tends to be highly realistic in their depictions of human psychology and daily life. Manga like A Silent Voice are very good examples of that. This is a shounen manga, like Naruto and Dragonball, so the psychology is not as sophisticated as in seinen or josei titles (or even shoujo titles) being more visceral and explicit. Which is the reason why it reminded me so much of Brazilian soup operas. I didn't actually cry in any of the chapters of this manga, however, mainly because I have become desensitized from consuming so much drama over the past few years. Had I read this in like 2012 I think I would have cried like a baby.

The art of this manga is not exceptional being very simple and conventional: character designs adhere very closely to typical contemporary aesthetics of shounen manga though the art of the settings tends also to be realistic and highly detailed. One thing that I noticed about manga is that animals and settings are usually depicted with more realism than humans, which tend to be more cartoony and deformed.

Also, it has some scenes that may be highly interesting for movie fans:







Decided to write up something good (well at least I made an effort) for a change:

13) Battle Angel Alita: Last Order (2000-2014)

After witnessing MovieMeditation’s massive review I also decided to raise the bar on my reviews on the site. Especially considering how cr*ppy my reviews so far have been (although on another site a guy told me the reviews I wrote were very “concise”, though I guess he was just being delicate, because most of my reviews here do not provide good information for a prospective reader or watcher of anything I have actually reviewed on this site, so I decided to write up something actually substantial for a change!).

Introduction

The original Battle Angel Alita was one of the first mangas I read when I was about 13-14 years old. It’s an adult manga so when I read it I was deeply disturbed by it at the time: in that manga the boundaries between man and machine disappear completely. No other work of fiction I know is so willing to push into its ultimate logical implications the concept of cybernetic organisms. Another famous works of the genre, from the GitS manga to the several movies of GitS and Robocop, don’t treat the subject to the same extent.

Besides being an interesting work of science fiction it features some great characterization, well-paced narrative, great artwork, boundless imagination and highly entertaining plot. It’s an all-around masterpiece of the likes that are rare in any artistic medium. In fact, it’s easily among the best works of science fiction in any genre that I have had the privilege to experience.

Background

Battle Angel Alita: Last Order was conceived by its creator (both the main artist and writer) Yukito Kishiro as a continuation of the story of Battle Angel Alita. The original Battle Angel Alita was written between 1990 and 1995, just during the peak of Japan’s economic bubble and of it’s relative importance to the rest of the world. The original manga depicting the story of cyborg girl Alita who is rescued from a state of suspended animation by scientist/doctor Ido and who gradually finds her place in a very “weird” world, that is simultaneously futuristic and retro looking. Everything in that manga felt like it was old and rusty, including most of the cyborgs: instead of perfectly realistic reproductions of the human form most cyborgs in Battle Angel Alita were monstrous in one form or another: basically a human brain inserted into some type of robotic machine not always humanoid and varying in size from a dog’s size to 15 meter tall giants.

Kishiro had to finish his story in the original manga by the seventh volume, much earlier than he wanted due to pressure from the publishers. After doing an unsatisfactory conclusion (though I even cried during that conclusion when I read the original manga), he stopped working on the story for five years, while working on parallel projects. After he got the chance to resume his work on Battle Angel Alita he started serializing chapters again under the title “Last Order”, whose significance is central for the plot of this continuation of Battle Angel Alita. Thus it should not be understood as a sequel because it is not.

Art style



Kishiro’s style is still very reminiscent of 1980’s manga in my opinion. It reminds me a bit of Masamune Shirow’s Appleseed in some aspects. Though the style in Alita is more gritty, in fact, and characterized by very clear lines. One manga critic (1) said that a critical factor for the emergence of the moe aesthetic was a type of appreciation that he called “the pleasure of the lines” which is the pleasure generated by the well-defined, straight and placed in highly angular composition lines common in manga. Alita is perhaps a member of the otaku school of manga art, in contrast with mangas like Vagabond which opt for a more realistic art style and clearly consistent with the tone and style of this manga. Although it’s degree in adherence to generic otaku manga art is not as high as most other mangas that I would classify as such: a person not familiar with manga in general might not instantly think this is a Japanese comic. Of course, the highly detailed black and white art with very professionally drawn lines is also

World building



One of the things I love about science fiction or fantasy (or historical, to a certain degree) is the world building: use your imagination to construct a world that doesn’t exist. It’s very particular of this type of fiction and some critics of science fiction and fantasy usually focus on the relatively poorly developed characters, since most of the brain matter of the creator of such works is usually dedicated to world building and the science fiction concepts and ideas instead of being focused on character development. Not here in Last Order though, both the characterization and the world building are exceptional.

One of the strongest points of Last Order is the amazing world building that it does. Very few other works of fantasy, historical or science fiction that I read create/depict their world in such level of detail as Last Order Does. The manga is even arrogant enough to call itself a work of boundless imagination (yep, around chapter 110 and even brags that James Cameron (of all people) is talking about it), though it is indeed fully justified. One of the most creative things of the manga was the setup of the political order of the (already well colonized and developed outside of Earth) Solar System: In the original Battle Angel Alita manga there was no information regarding the world outside of the city of Scrapyard, the city floating above it, Tiphares and its surrounding wasteland, where all plot elements of the original manga takes place. It was depicted in the original manga that Tiphares was suspended by some sort of giant superstructure whose other end was presumably in space and the centripetal force of Earth’s rotation was what actually held the whole superstructure in place:



In Last Order we finally see what is actually in the end of this “space elevator” superstructure that begins at Tiphares: the even more impressive orbital space city of Ketheres, which actually used Tiphares as its laboratory and its population as their (unwilling and unaware) human test subjects for several types of experiment. For example, it was revealed in the end of Battle Angel Alita that all adult inhabitants/citizens of Tiphares had their brains replaced with computer chips. The so called brain chips that simulates the activity of an adult human brain, while their original brains were sent to Tiphares to be added as organic components of the (constantly evolving) orbital city’s supercomputer Melchizedek.

In fact, it is later shown that supercomputers like Melchizedek are self-aware creatures that consider themselves superior to the puny humans that they are (or at least they think that are) manipulating. With names from biblical or mythological sources, these computers are effectively real gods of the futuristic solar system. Though only two of such artificial beasts are described in the manga it also suggests there are several more of these computers.

The other computer described in detail in the manga is Zeus, the main supercomputer of the Jupiter System Union, which is as a political organization, even more powerful than the relatively small but influential Earth’s council LADDER, which is an organization headquartered in Ketheres that functions as the Solar System’s United Nations of sorts. While the Jupiter System Union is a regime that controls Jupiter and all the settlements located in the planet’s orbit and it’s numerous moons. A very centralized regime, it forces all citizens to replace their human bodies with black boxes style cyborg bodies so that they don’t have to spend money building up infrastructure on Jupiter’s moons and space stations to house human inhabitants, instead with their brains in these black boxes the citizens of Jupiter can survive in a vacuum easily. Clearly, this political system is a reference to the Soviet Union and it’s cookie cuter nature and disregard for individual needs as it replaces forcibly all citizen’s bodies with standardized ones for the reduction of social costs.

Besides the Jupiter System Union the other main power of the Solar System is the Republique Venus, which is populated by genetically engineered transhuman peoples. They look monstrous as well: with huge heads and tiny bodies, they look like gremlins of something. And they manufacture food using human DNA as well, so these transhumans are also cannibals. This faction was based on the United States and the historical French Empire and they even pride themselves of allowing free competition, unlike the collectivists at the Jupiter System Union. Both factions exist in a state of cold war as they both want the resources of the asteroid ring between Mars and Jupiter: Jupiter System Union wants these asteroids to use as raw material in their massive construction projects, such as the creation of a Dyson Sphere around Jupiter (I wouldn’t know why they would build a Dyson Sphere around a planet though, the idea of a Dyson Sphere is to envelop a star to capture all its energy emissions). While the Republique Venus wants to uses the asteroids as raw material for their terraforming projects on Venus.

The Republique Venus is also adept in using nanotechnology (in fact their proficiency in genetic engineering came after research in nanotechnology was forbidden due to massive accidents caused in the past by self replicating nanorobots, the so called called Grey Goo apocalypse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo) , so they shifted their human resources into genetic engineering, including the creation of genetically manipulated beasts of warfare) and they also invented nanotechnology to block aging: injecting nanorobots into the bloodstream of people and these nanorobots will supposedly repair cells and stop aging. As a result most of the population of the Solar System became effectively almost immortal (only dying from accident or violence) which meant that natality rates had to be controlled very carefully since almost nobody dies anymore and children became sort of a “plague” in the Solar System.

Besides Earth, Jupiter and Venus, Mars is also heavily inhabited and is in fact Earth’s oldest colony but it is divided into several factions that are always in civil war: one faction supported by the Jupiter System Union, another supported by the Republique Venus, a faction of Nazis called the Neo Third Reich and the “good faction”: domestic (thus not under influence from the superpowers) and freedom loving of normal people. It is later revealed that Alita herself is a martian who was in state of suspended animation for nearly 200 years after her body was thrown on Earth due to the last great interplanetary war.

Another thing that I liked very much was the justification for the state of the Earth: while the solar system remained well developed and heavily populated with human settlements spread all over the place, most of Earth itself remains a wasteland and Scrapyard appears to be the largest city on Earth’s surface in fact. And most of the population living near Earth either inhabits the orbital colonies or the moon settlements. The reason for that is that around the year 2010 in the manga’s chronology Earth was hit by asteroids and mankind almost went extinct during the “nuclear winter” (not to be confused with the title of the famous Sodom album) following that catastrophe. After the nuclear winter was over a massive settlement grew around a military base that served as a shelter for over a thousand people during that long nuclear winter, that settlement was what would become the Scrapyard and it’s leader decided that humanity’s chances of survival would be improved if mankind spread through the solar system instead of being confined to Earth. So most of the resources of this newly established center of civilization on post-apocalyptic Earth were allocated to the construction of the space elevator which is the superstructure that we see in the rest of the manga. Ketheres was built at one end of the space elevator and Tiphares was built at its beginning in order to stabilize the whole superstructure. Because most of the resources of this gem of civilization were allocated for space colonization the rest of the Earth wasn’t colonized/developed and just became a massive wasteland. Apparently, no other large population centers emerged in the world following the nuclear winter so “Scrapyard”, that miserable town that lived off the garbage Tiphares sent down to it, and the beginning of the story of the first manga can be understood as the origin of the whole interplanetary civilization depicted in this massive manga. That’s quite typical of science fiction stories like those though but still makes my heart race.
Martial arts

Anyone familiar with the Dragon Ball manga (or the TV series adaption of it) might notice many similarities in the way combat is depicted here and most of the ca. 4000 pages of Last Order are dedicated to martial arts combat. I personally find it one of the manga’s weakness when it stars to focus too much on the details of combat instead of other, more interesting, aspects. As well as the relative time dilation involved: thousands of pages of manga later and it is still the same tournament, yes, because the plot of this manga is built around a martial arts tournament that last only a few days: thus about 5 days represent 3,000 pages of the manga.

Because (nearly) all the characters are full cyborgs (or genetically engineered monsters) they practice martial arts that were developed for these artificial bodies. And also, one thing that bugged me was that they still had techniques made against the human body in its original form: “grab the arm like this and then do like that”, but considering cyborg’s bodies can be so different from human bodies why would you expect something like that to always work?

Also, since they are cyborgs whose bodies were made using super advanced nanotechnology at least the completely over the top fights can be rationalized in some way: how could a 1.9 meter tall cyborg defeat a 50 meter tall monster that shoots organic missiles though it’s skin? (yes, that one of the Republique Venus’ genetically engineered monsters, they even had a 500 meter tall giant monster as their trump card in the martial arts tournament), well, because he is a cyborg. Lot’s of over the top fights in here, any fan of Dragon Ball would be happy to read this for that aspect alone. Though I found the whole approach of this manga to fights to be a bit too over the top for my tastes: the use of time dilation is common in manga and has been common since the 1960’s when an entire chapter of manga was written depicting a single second of a baseball match. But for me it feels weird to just read through hundreds and hundreds of pages to find out we are still in the same day of the story! And then we have flashbacks of hundreds of pages long that span huge periods of time. But that is one of the things that I love about manga: the incredible level of time and space distortions they manage to put into narratives. Though I like some type of distortions more than others.

Characters



One of the great things in manga/anime/Japanese live action is that female characters are given bigger roles than in Western fiction. While in Western fiction apparently all thinking and acting people in the world are men: women exist only as a consumer goods for men in these books. But here, instead, women are people too! They fight, they have interests, they have dreams, they play an active role and about half of the important characters are women. In fact, this is a gender neutral world as men and women can do everything and the main character in fact could be perfectly replaced by a male character and none of her lines would seem weird (except that she would be a gay man since Alita has a lover) though in the past Tiphares even made a female android using Alita’s data which an identical body who was supposed to beat Alita up (but lost, naturally to the main character), that android eventually got to change his/her body to a masculine one. Though since he is an android whose only objective in life is to get strong and become the Solar System’s strongest martial artist he doesn’t care about anything relative to “gender relations”.

All characters are also well rounded and have very characteristic personalities. It’s among the most interesting science fiction mangas in that respect as other titles I read recently had much inferior characterization: I rooted for the main characters/protagonists and I hated the villains as well. But well, this is indeed one of the best mangas ever made, so it’s unfair to compare it to lesser stuff, specially science fiction mangas that tend to focus less on characterization than this one. Battle Angel Alita, both the original manga and this continuation are essentially about Alita’s quest for self fulfillment. She doesn’t know exactly who she actually is: she was found in a state of suspended animation by the scientist/cyborg doctor Ido in Scrapyard and she didn’t have any memories of anything that might have happened before, except stuff like knowing how to talk, read and write and her martial arts skills. Over the course of original manga, she eventually learns bits of her past but most of it is still completely obscure and then some of her memories come back but completely unconnected with the rest of her memories: as if there were the memories of two persons inside her mind: Alita and somebody else.

Another interesting aspects were the highly developed side characters: manga is essentially a character driven art form. Or at least is usually character driven, which helps to explain why there are so many science fiction manga with great character development if compared to the relatively "character development poor" science fiction literature in the west. Since in manga the character is central everything is usually build around the character instead of the character being inserted in a setting as is usual in Western science fiction and fantasy, thus in this way the character development tends to be superior and more realistic.

Though I still had some misgivings relative to some aspects of the main character: by the end her change of costumes start to look like as of Kishiro was beginning to imagine her a a fetish object as well as a character. In that way it kinda of hurt a little bit my suspense of disbelief and hence my immersion in the story.

Conclusion

Another thing that I forgot to mention is that despite the extreme brutality of the stories told in the manga, this manga is also characterized by the use of constant humor throughout. Even in some parts that were supposed to be relatively serious (or that would have been done in a completely serious way in other comics/mangas) have some very, very funny elements. And I actually found the jokes funny this time (unlike many manga/anime comedies that have very boring humor such as the famous Gintama).

Kishiro is indeed a genius of the field of manga (what impressed me as well was that he wrote the original Battle Angel Alita manga when he was younger than I am now) and this is a must read, I think, for anything interested in comics/graphic fiction, though it’s full of crazy things: imagination runs crazy wild here so people without capacity to suspend disbelief (and I mean, to REALLY suspend disbelief) will not be able to grasp it fully. But it is great storytelling overall and not to be missed by anybody who likes science fiction as well and is not afraid of picture books. Pop culture at it's finest.

(1) “The Moe Manifesto: An Insider's Look at the Worlds of Manga, Anime, and Gaming”, chapter 12.



Saw your post in my review thread.

This is indeed one hell of a review! But I think the reason why people might not read yours, long or short, good or bad, is because your audience is much smaller. Not as a reviewer, but in terms of your audience.

I wrote a review to one of the big blockbusters up and running right now and it's a movie and fits with a wide audience. Your review isn't of a movie, it isn't mainstream and it isn't a style or subject that many people know of and apprciate like you do. It's sad there isn't more people wanting to expand and such, but it is a movie forum after all and picking something other than that, especialy stuff obscure as this, you want have many people checking in. Just look when you reviewed something more known, like Watchmen, there was already two people wanting to share their thoughts... I mean, I have tried the same when reviewing obscure or overlooked films. I won't get as many reps/comments. Just look in the rate the last movie you saw thread. Post a poster of something universally acclaimed and nothing but a rating it gets +20 reps or something.

But awesome that you want to continue to do it even so. I admire your drive!



I post some of these reviews in manga sites as well (where there are way more people interested in manga than in here). Though that was actually the first review that I did here of a comic/manga that I think I will post on a manga site.



14) All I need is Kill (2014)



I first heard about the novel when they released that mediocre Hollywood movie but now I read the manga adaptation of the novel. Now that's a great awesome manga. I also think it's a good introduction to the medium of manga for someone who likes science fiction.

I love the art style of these modern science fiction manga with their very very strong lines that fit well with the mechanical designs that are featured in the manga:



I also noticed that I find manga art to be evolving in a direction that I find more and more appealing. Well, manga artists are always improving their art to look cooler and cooler. We can even think that modern mainstream manga art is the "best" or at least most refined artistic stylization.

The story is very cool. Very entertaining and efficient since its not a serialization but a one shot manga adaptation of a novel. That's good because the book feels more like a novel rather than a never ending series (like Berserk).





I first heard about the novel when they released that mediocre Hollywood movie but now I read the manga adaptation of the novel. Now that's a great awesome manga.
That's a great awesome ARTIST. The manga LOOKS way cooler than the movie what with the more lithe battle suits and friggen' battle axes, but honestly, Edge of Tomorrow did All You Need Is Kill a favor. It even had a better title.
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