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For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to
join us.
For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to
join us.
For those who don't know, forums.penny-arcade.com will be closing soon. However, we're doing the same kind of stuff over at coin-return.org with (almost) all the same faces! Please do feel welcome to
join us.
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Initial D cameo spoiler:
Tomoki is the world's most unwilling harem protagonist, dude just wants everyone to leave him alone and to play soccer. Tragically he's in high school where not giving a shit is the coolest thing you can possibly do, which makes his fanclub just want him more.
Also boy how the turn tables, once upon a time Tomoki was the one dying from secondhand cringe from his weird sister. Now it's Tomoko who's surrounded by her friends and dying from secondhand embarrassment at the misadventures of her sibling.
You see, every week the author goes as hard as possible drawing whatever the hell they want.
And that's Dandadan.
They had a few series before Dandadan that didn't get picked up that were supposedly more traditional. Finally, their editor told them to just do whatever crazy nonsense you want and not to worry, and voila!
It has the opposite effect, it sounds like The X-Files, only they're trying to solve anime shenanigans, which is probably too amazing for this world.
Dan Hibiki
Dan Rykert:
And some other Dan probably.
i'd almost guess its music from the show maybe
it does slap though
Give Dan Hibiki his own Virtua Fighter series.
Let me hear Dan Hibiki's creed.
Dandadan is going to be a very weird show and it won't be for everyone.
It's still in the Shonen genre, but like people have posted, it's also a paranormal thriller romcom where the mangaka just lets loose.
I'm excited for Science Saru to translate the weirdness from page to screen, but I anticipate that a portion of the audience will bounce off of it.
I think you can still read the first 3 chapters for free on Manga Plus if you just want to dip your toes.
The whole series is free on Manga Plus, but only in the app and not on the website, for some reason.
Also I'm not sure how long that bit about MHA was sitting in my drafts but it's probably still accurate. I tapped out long ago.
Daniel LaRusso.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
the Universe movie I guess?
The whole series is on Viz Manga as well, but only on the website.
I never read Ranma 1/2 but I assume it basically follows the same formula. Do not correct me.
I really enjoy it. Art is stunning, action scenes are fantastic as said earlier, the main couple is really cute and it feels like they get an equal amount of "protagonist screentime", and the hanger ons are charming instead of annoying.
It didn't introduce a new character EVERY arc but it did introduce a new character in many of them, most often a rival of some sort for either Ranma or Akane's hand in marriage. Some stuck around more than others.
Our main male protagonist loves alien conspiracy theories, ends up possessed by a ghost, and develops spooky speed ghost powers. Our main female protag belives in the superntural, has a grandmotehr who goes around kicking the supernatural's butt,and gets kidnap by aliens and develops ESP.
and then shenanigans continue to ensue from there. It's well worth a binge!
As to the not being avaible to read on the app: For whatever reason, it's marked as an adult series, and the app does not support this while webpages do - Hell's Paradise is the same on the Viz Media website. It's rather irritating.
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
necry talkie put out their own MV for the scott pilgrim takes off opening, lots of fun references, make sure to watch til the end
one of the standout performances from ado's concert at budokan this summer was a surprise rendition of unravel, she later released a studio recording this month and finally uploaded the live version to her channel and i can't stop listening to either of them
Also the first translation, since Netflix doesn't sub the song at all... (Not even with subs on, I checked.)
As you can probably guess from the signature, I love her stuff.
Steam: YOU FACE JARAXXUS| Twitch.tv: CainLoveless
or directions
Always been drifting from the beginning
The disturbance surrounds me
I already know I’m lonely
Say goodbye
The sky I’ve always been looking at
Full of fantasies and illusions entangled
Someday, surely, in the vast cloudy sky
Say goodbye
Slash your tears away
I won’t run away anymore
Good stuff, I'm going to read more of this
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
Ryoga is more than happy to seek directions from people. He's just so untethered from reality that you tell him to turn right at a corner and he ends up on the other side of the planet.
How the story begins:
18-years old Fuuko, cursed by terrible power of bringing misfortune to anyone she touches, is ready to commit suicide to avoid bringing suffering to anyone else in her life. At that point she meets Andy, half-crazy immortal man that wants to die, but is unable to. Seeing destructive potential in her power, he at first abducts her, then forms partnership with, in order for her to gain more control over her power to finally kill him for good.
They also start getting chased by The Union, mysterious organization that both hunts ability users like them, while also employing them. To make them stop chasing after them, Andy decides to just kill 2 of their main agents, so he and Fuuko can take their place in the organization.
Why is beginning of this story, in my opinion, terrible:
1. First few episodes have a lot of cringeworthy humour based on Fuuko being straight up molested by Andy, which is pretty goddamn off-putting, considering that they are the main pairing of this story. Fortunately, as if by touch of a magic wand, after few episodes this element of the story disappears completely, and never returns. The change in tone is so abrupt, that I have no other choice but to suspect that focus on fanservice and pervy jokes was caused by some editor and not the author himself.
2. First few episodes, while introducing main characters, and some major plot concepts, like abilities (called Rules here) and their users, does not really show what this story is REALLY about - we need to wait for Episode 5 in order to learn, what will become the main goal of the characters.
3. Plot development of those first episodes is rather inconsistent with what we learn later in the story.
Now, that we have ugly parts summarized, let's move to why I fucking love this manga.
The Setting and Main Plot:
Spoiler for things that we learn only 5 episodes in:
The Union, justifably pissed about it, wants to murder God. To do that, they work on Quests given by malevolent talking book Apocalypse, that are mostly focused on killing / capturing UMA-s, and rewards given for that vary from artifacts, to knowledge about locations of other ability users, to opportunities to make The Union bigger, as only limited number of people can take part in quests.
The setting is shamelessly video-game-y, and I love it, it is basically a roguelike game, in which Union leader choses quests that give the best rewards, while trying to improve their home base in order to challenge even more difficult quests.
What is more, UMA-s themselves are pretty interesting, because they REALLY are the rules they are representing. If UMA arrives on Earth, its concept gets introduded to the world immediately, and no one is aware of any change outside of the ability users themselves. In the same way, killing UMA deletes concept it represents from existence. If UMA Ice Cream gets killed - no more eating ice cream for any of you.
The Fights:
Once I wrote that I learnt to despise Jujutsu Kaisen, because while I consider the point of fights in the shonens to show character development of main heroes, or to allow them to show some previously unknown part of themselves, JJK author takes the opposite approach, and considers characters themselves to be a necessary, but unwanted requirement in order to show the fights, because fights are the only thing he truly cares about.
Undead Unluck, meanwhile, perfectly embodies what I expect from the fights in the shonen stories, as every single fight here is focused on showing what characters can do, and what characters can do is based on who the characters truly are, and how do they see themselves and the Rules that they are using.
What is more, do you remember that one One Piece fight, in which all Strawhats fight together against a giant enemy, and need to cooperate to bring it down? A fight that is very well liked by everyone that saw it, and yet we never see a teamwork of this kind in OP ever again? Well, Undead Unluck, on the other hand, has almost only fights of this type, as straightforward 1 vs 1 duels can be counted on the fingers of one hand - instead, we are constantly seeing group combat, and the fun comes from seeing what kind of crazy synergies can be found when using supposedly underhwelming powers. It never gets boring.
The characters, the beating heart of this manga:
As I wrote above, while JJK author treats his characters in disposable way, UU author, meanwhile, seems to truly love all of them, and it really shines through when reading the manga. Outside of exceptions, about which I talked about earlier, every single character so far gets a lot of focus, even if sometimes we really need to wait a long time for their turn to arrive. Characters are not very deep, but they are interesting, they are larger than life, and they are ultimately very easy to root for.
The main star is, which may be surprising, Fuuko.
Fuuko at the start of the story is a damsel in distress, whose role is to panick around and get angry and Andy. We do not need to wait for a long time though for her character development to begin, and I am sorry for overhyping, but it is truly glorious. Fuuko is, in my opinion, the absolute best female heroine ever seen in the Shonen Jump manga, thanks to the way she is being written, and thanks to her relationships with other characters.
It is pretty difficult to write a good "good" main hero. It is easy to make them boring. All-loving type of main character, when done wrong, can be too bland to truly like (Deku from MHA, I am looking at you), and even if author succeeds, there is often still something missing (Tanjirou from Demon Slayer is much better than Deku, but he is still not the most fascinating protagonist ot read about).
Fuuko, meanwhile, is probably the first character of this type that I truly love, understand, and want to root for. When Fuuko declares that she is going to use Power of Friendship on some enemy I am not considering it childlish - instead, I am all "fuck yeah, befriend the shit out of them!", which is not something that I ever expected to be writing about before reading this story. There is no denying that empathy is the main selling point of her character, and she is spectaculat at being empathetic towards others.
She also grows to be a true crazy awesome Gigachad, but elaborating further would be a spoiler too far.
The pacing, the genre jumping:
UU is one of those mangas that to not waste time of its readers. There are only 2 arcs that are longer than 25 chapters, and vast majority of them can be more often considered to be mini-arcs, as they rarely take up more than 8 chapters or so. Plot moves forward with the speed of sound, which is also sometimes something that is easy to mess up, but in this particular case, it words very well, even if some plot points deserve some more elaboration.
Thanks to very random nature of the setting, it is also very easy for the author to write different kind of challenges for main heroes, so it would be a disservice to call UU a "boring" shonen manga, in which characters only punch each other and do nothing else. We get a little something out of a vast majority of genres, so we are never really sure what to expect when starting a new arc.
I would like to write even more, but that would require serious spoilers, so this is where I am stopping. I can only hope that I managed to convince at least a one person to give this series a chance, because I would really love others to also enjoy it as much as I did.