Sunday, December 1, 2013

The 12 Reviews of Christmas Giveaway Returns!

Sorry for the silence, folks.  A lot of things have gone down in the last month in my life - I quit a terrible debt collection job that was literally leaving me depressed, got denied for unemployment, got a great temp-to-hire job, only for said job to end 2 weeks later when they hired someone else, and getting sucked into XCOM because I apparently consume video games the way tweakers consume meth.

So yeah, things have been busy.  Nonetheless, I have returned to start my favorite of the few traditions this site has: The Second Annual 12 REVIEWS OF CHRISTMAS.

Just like last year, I will be posting 12 reviews of brand-new series this month up to Christmas Day.  Also like before, I will be doing a 12 Reviews of Christmas Giveaway, although this year it will be slightly different.  This year I will be giving away a mystery box, a selection of the books reviewed this month to be revealed at the end of the month.  Entering the giveaway is the same process, though.  To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment below answering this question: What was your favorite manga this year?  As before, it can be new or old, long or short, popular or obscure - all you have to do is briefly explain why it is so below and you could have a chance to win!

17 comments:

  1. This year I started reading Kaoru Mori's A Bride's Story, and I love it. I love the beautifully detailed art, I love the timeless way the family interacts while still feeling very culturally rooted, I enjoy all the immersive details of the lifestyle we're seeing, and I've always had a soft spot for disparate-age romances that still feel genuine. Well, EVERYTHING about this manga feels genuine. It's sweet but not saccharine, pleasant but not weightless fluff. Kaoru Mori really is a talented artist, I look forward to seeing more of her work.

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    1. Yes! Yet another Mori fan! Let us talk of how awesome she and her work is!

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    2. It wouldn't have found its way onto my radar if not for your recommendation, so I really have you to thank.

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  2. Well Grad school has kind of consumed my life and most of my reading time, I'd have to say my favorite to read this year has had to be Blade of the Immortal or Seiichi Hayashi weird surreal manga collection Gold Pollen and other stories. I have really gotten into Blade of the immortal thanks to my Studio Proteus research project (which is nearly paper conclusion). It is huge epic and despite the fantasy elements has a realistic fitting tone for a samurai work. The character's and their struggles are believable and continue to grow as the story progresses. The story folds in a truly fantastic way and has a real sense of tense and weight to it.

    Explaining why I like Hayashi's work is like trying to explain abstract poetry. It is very strange and has a alternative style, but is incredibly well rendered and reflects artistically traditional artwork in a very atypical way. The real reward though is the detailed notes and essay's in the back that give a real context to the works.

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    1. Enjoy Gold Pollen, especially since Picture Box (the publisher) is going out of business.

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    2. I know it's so sad. They also did a Tezuka reprint of his third work The Mysterious Underground Men which had original colouring and a number of great essays about Tezuka.

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  3. After watching Flowers of Evil the anime, a few months later I picked up the manga and I am in love with it! I'm already through the 7 volumes out right now and I can't wait for vol 8 in January!! The manga brings in so much more to the story that we will, probably, never see in the anime. It's a mix of drama and psychological that I can't help but eat up for hours! And I love Nakamura's character so much! I just hope we find out how she's doing after the summer festival incident...

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    1. I've not read beyond Volume 2, I really have to get back to that series someday.

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  4. I've read a lot of great stuff this year, heck the stuff I read this year has gotten me back into reading manga on a regular basis. But the best I've read is 5 Centimeters Per Second. I read this thing in one and it had me glued to my chair. Everything about it was and still is perfect to me. From the characters, to the writing, to the artwork. I actually prefer the manga over the anime, mostly because I like how the manga wraps everything up pretty nicely. It even brought me to tears, helped that when I was on the finals chapter, I was listening to Nightmare's song Konoha.

    To make it short, I fell in love with this manga upon reading it. It alone gave me hope that manga can still be really good.

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    1. I need to get around to that. It's apparently been a big success for Vertical, and I'm always happy to see something from that company do well.

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  5. Full Moon o Sagashite by Arina Tanemura, this book is one of the ones who i felt it suck my soul into the book. It truly made me cry and a crazy thing happen the same day i finish reading the whole collection. I went to Tijuana and went to a dollar store and found a wallet of Full Moon o Sagashite (Destiny)! Sice then on this book will always stay in my memory (heart). \(>~<)/

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    1. While I can't say that I share you enthusiasm for Arina Tanemura, I know a lot of people love that series (both the manga & the anime).

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  6. Since I had a chance to start reading Basara this year and have loved it to death so far that's my pick for my favorite manga read in 2013!

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    1. Oh right WHY; because it's sweeping, epic-sized fantasy/sci-fi (although there are no magical or futuristic elements aside from the fact that it's set in the future, we really need a word for that) that manages to balance the politics and interactions of a huge cast of characters and explain all of their motivations, sympathetic and clear villains alike.

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    2. Basara's a good choice - I've only read the 1st 4 volumes thanks to the library, but the story shows great potential, and THANK GOD Viz rereleased it digitally.

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  7. I would say that 20th/21st Century Boys was my favorite manga that I read this year (because it was), but it got that honor last year already, so I'll talk about something else instead.
    I got into a few new series this year, including a few that I found out via your blog. I really enjoyed the four volumes of Kingyo Used Books that Viz put out (it's neat learning about all this old manga that never made it stateside) and the volumes of comics by Yoshihiro Tatsumi that Drawn & Quarterly has been putting out (which I like, even if, outside of A Drifting Life, they're kinda samey in tone). However, the best overall probably has to go to A Bride's Story by Kaoru Mori, for reasons that will be obvious to anyone who has read it. Story's great, character's a great, it's worth buying just to look at all of Mori's pretty, pretty art, etc. I think it is/is going to be the one manga that I always buy whenever a new volume comes out. I'm also happy that Yen Press has been able to stick to the lovely hardcover and dust jacket format, as I think it makes the books seems even nicer than they already are.

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    1. YES! MORE MORI FANS! I'm glad my review is getting the good word out there. Now if someone would just license rescue Emma...

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