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Poll: The Next Off the Cuff Review…?

8 February 2010 11 Comments

Two quick announcements. First, David Welsh is hosting the very first Moveable Manga Feast this week. Visit The Manga Curmudgeon for details about the featured title (Sexy Voice and Robo) and to read Sam Kusek’s take on it. Second, I am still hoping to find a home for volume three of RE:Play (Tokyopop). If interested, leave a comment or send me an email. UPDATE, 2/9/10: RE:Play has found a home!

Now for the fun part: I need help selecting another out-of-my-comfort-zone book for an Off the Cuff review. I’m not too keen on yaoi, mecha, alt-comics, or ultra-violence, so I’m focusing my energy on these categories. Which of the following titles would make for a good follow-up to The Box Man?

11 Comments »

  • Twitted by manga_critic said:

    [...] This post was Twitted by manga_critic [...]

    # 8 February 2010 at 9:10 AM
  • Matt Lehman said:

    For yaoi, Angela recommends Kiss Blue. For ultra-violence, she recommends Berserk because “it’s storytelling at it’s finest”. For alt-comics Not Simple, but I think you already read that.

    # 8 February 2010 at 12:59 PM
  • Katherine Dacey (author) said:

    Thanks for the suggestions! I do have a copy of not simple, though I haven’t read it yet, and I made a heroic effort to read Berserk, wading through three volumes before giving myself permission to quit. (File that under Not For Me, I’m afraid.) Kiss Blue wasn’t on my radar, but it sounds like it might be worth a shot.

    # 8 February 2010 at 3:46 PM
  • Jade said:

    Ugh, everything about Gantz is awful. I’d suggest avoiding it for now unless you want to turn your off the cuff feature into pan of the week. MPD Psycho is actually an excellent story if you can get past the fetishism of the artist…Eden is good too, but it gets so stark and nihilistic that it’s draining to read…Claymore would be a decent pick too, though again, the art can lean a bit towards the fetishistic, but not as bad as the MPD Psycho art.

    Have you given Tokyo Zombie a shot? It’s the cream of the alt-goof crop.

    # 8 February 2010 at 5:04 PM
  • Katherine Dacey (author) said:

    Thanks for the suggestions, Jade! I’ve been following Eden actively, though I have to say the weird hooker pride/Bus 186 interlude in South America definitely cooled my interest in the series. I haven’t tried MPD Psycho or Claymore, however, so those sound like good places to start. I know my old colleagues at PopCultureShock liked Tokyo Zombie, too, so that sounds like another good candidate; I get kind of a Shawn of the Dead vibe off of some reviews, and I thought Shawn was pretty funny (if too long).

    # 8 February 2010 at 5:12 PM
  • Michelle Smith said:

    I liked Tokyo Zombie a lot, too. :)

    I’d say no to Croquis, unless you’ve got a copy without the random German text, because it might prove annoying. Besides, I’ve heard better things about Little Butterfly, which is by the same creator.

    I was thinking about this feature of yours the other day because soon, review copies for Dorohedoro (sp?) will be arriving. I tried to read the first chapter on IKKI, but I only got a couple of pages in before I gave up. Dare I challenge myself to make it through an entire volume?

    # 9 February 2010 at 8:56 AM
  • Katherine Dacey (author) said:

    I had the same reaction to Dorohedoro, too: Not For Me! Given how blood-thirsty all the poll participants seem to be, however, it looks like I may be reading something ultra-violent for my next Off the Cuff review, as Gantz and Bokurano Ours are leading the pack. I don’t know if that’s because people love these titles, or are secretly hoping I’m going to hate them and rip them to shreds! We shall see…

    Sounds like I ought to consider Little Butterfly and Tokyo Zombie, though…

    # 9 February 2010 at 11:54 AM
  • JRB said:

    This ginormous Hinako Takanaga fan thinks Little Butterfly is better and a more satisfying read than Croquis, so I’d suggest the former. If you can get your hands on Challengers, that’s even better, but it’s painfully out of print. Akadot has a couple of volumes left, I think, but V1 is hard to find.

    # 9 February 2010 at 3:56 PM
  • Katherine Dacey (author) said:

    Thanks for the suggestions, JRB! I’ve never known where to start with yaoi, so I’ve stuck to the “safe” stuff: est em, Fumi Yoshinaga. The new Little Butterfly omnibus looks like a pretty good deal, so I may check it out even if Gantz or Bokurano Ours prevails in this week’s poll.

    # 9 February 2010 at 8:42 PM
  • uberVU - social comments said:

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by manga_critic: New blog post: The Next Off the Cuff Review…? http://mangacritic.com/?p=3403…

    # 4 March 2010 at 7:21 PM
  • The Manga Critic » Blog Archive » Off the Cuff: Little Butterfly Omnibus said:

    [...] be remiss in my manga critic duties if I ignored such an important publishing category. With a little encouragement from readers, therefore, I decided to take a chance on Hinako Takanaga’s Little Butterfly (DMP), a title [...]

    # 27 March 2010 at 5:18 PM

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