I thought I was done for this time, so close, so close. I finished up a manga, which one of them I am not sure of now, it is lost in the mists of time, hidden behind a veil, obscured by clouds, I could go on. What I was close to this time was not finding a new manga, and I was so close to stopping the manga-train that’d been speeding along at such a glorious pace fear caught my heart in an ice cold grip! The drama! I had so much steam, I had no path, where would I go? Was my manga-reading-streak about to grind to a halt just because I couldn’t find more tracks? The desperation knew no end! I was willing to pick up almost anything!
LO! AND BEHOLD! FOR I FOUND IT! That which would bring me back on track!
I’ll talk about the manga I found later, for now I want to mention a manga I really enjoyed despite it’s incredibly lame-seeming potential.
aThis manga could be your average manga with all the average jokes and all the average averages. Potentially so boring and cliché that it’s amazing the author even bothered getting around to pick up a pencil. You know, I’m glad he did, because despite looking poor on the outside, it’s a very enjoyable manga. I mean, for gods sake, the author’s mostly known for hentai! Some might find that a promising premise, but me, I was hesitant.
It’s about a cat, a swordsmaster, a girl, a demon, alot of ecchi. That’s all in one by the way. A demon cat-girl that’s supposed to guard a young man from demons until he comes of age and his power awakens inside him. It’s basically an echhi harem manga with fighting and magics and demons. The guy’s supposed to be a demon-slayer, but he’s a nice kid that doesn’t want unnecessary killing, the result being that he gathers alot of demons around him. Demonesses rather.
Inevitably I’ll end up mentioning the ecchi quite alot, because that’s what is supposed to be one of the major complaints, bonuses and debated points of content in this manga. You know, I don’t know if I’m extremely hard to faze or something, but I just couldn’t see how this content is supposed to be anything special. Sure, it’s funny how the author adds up a bunch of scenes and pages where there’s suggestive content (sorry for the stupid lingo, but I’m trying to be seriously funny), but I don’t see how this is supposed to spark any outrage unless you’re either fanatic
I’m not from Japan so I can’t comment on how they look at things, I’ll cross my fingers that Ingar’ll throw in an enlightening comment here about it, but nose-bleeds and/or anything remotely close to red, be it from a blush or blood seems far-fetched. That’s of course my point of view, I’m perfectly aware there are people in this world that things a woman in lingerie is sickening, I just can’t connect to that point of view.
I love the harem-jokes, the ecchi-jokes, and so on, it’s strangely enjoyable. I might be biased because I haven’t read a whole lot of ecchi-manga, but even so it’s strangely refreshing, and it definitely works for me. Strangely alot of things, but boiled down to as simple an evaluation as possible I would say that I found it fun, a lot of fun. No over the top ecchi, no over the top retardo humour, no over the top anything, except for fun.
I should probably mention the art too, because it’s one of the things that really struck me. It’s quality, solid quality that looks like it has a mangaka that likes what he’s doing, and he intends to do it well. I would hazard to say that it’s one of those mangas worth checking out because it’s got great and clean drawings, you know, as an example for alot of others to follow.
Actually, writing about Omamori Himari is really hard. It’s one of those mangas that didn’t dazzle me with boob-shots, it hasn’t made me go ‘oooooh’ and ‘aaaaah’ with preposterous and powerful showdowns yet either, and it’s certainly not given me one of those over the top laughter moments at all. What I found when I had read it was that I really enjoyed it for the above reasons. Easy to read, enjoyable, fun, and entertaining - it doesn’t have to do more than that for me to like it.
I’ll comment on the story when it’s managed to develop a little, for now it’s entirely unremarkable, but the characters in are fabulous. Of course, I’m biased since I’m a guy, and I really like harem-mangas.
/Omamori Himari
Really, what’s so special about “suggestive” drawings of the kind you find in Omamori Himari? It’s not like it’s hardcore “Debbie Does Dallas” or “La Blue Girl”. It’s funny, atleast in the beginning when it’s not all that usual. I saw several comments on this manga, that it was “a bit close to being over the top”, things like that. I mean, I see worse when I pass the TV and I see a commercial cross the screen, noone starts going “OMG” about that.
On the other hand my manga-reading has slowed down considerably. Less time, less mangas to dive into, and far harder to find the shifty buggers. I’ll be really happy when I can read updated manga atleast 5 times a day, maybe. We’ll see, I don’t know what that point really is, but I welcome it. For now it’s about 1 times a day, if even that. More like 0.5 to be more exact. Manga-dudes and dudettes are slow!
At some point I’ll have to write about Naruto by the way, and compare it to One Piece. There’s so much to say about it! … but I’ll refrain from starting here. I want to keep something for the next post.
Actually, the Japanese’s relationship to ecchi, hentai, nudity and eventually porn is something not even I have quite grasped. What I DO know is that the Japanese have a lot more relaxed relationship to these topics than we Westerns/Europeans/Norwegians have. It’s completely normal for a kiddy series to make some gags about “pee-pee”, “wiener”, “boobies”, “poo-poo” and so on (such as in Dr.Slump, Crayon Shinchan and Ranma 1/2 for the more matured audience). So I can only assume that this continues at a more escalated level in the rest of the manga/anime world as the audience gets older.
Japan and sexual topics is really quite interesting. Especially considering that officially, 37% of Japanese couples never have sexual intercourse. Officially, that is. After all, the sex industry is Japan’s second largest official income, after cars (and unofficially, pachinko, which is 3-6 times as big as the car industry). I will have to come back to it someday when I have more time, perhaps write something on my own blog if the interest is there?
Looking very much forward to your One Piece contra Naruto comparison, by the way. Since I enjoy both of the series on different kinds of levels, I will read it with special interest.
That, my friend, would be Awesome, yes, even capitalized. So please!
And yeah, I was aware that the sex industry’s pretty huge there, but I didn’t know it was that big.
The whole nosebleed stuff really puzzles me too, since it’s been observed to happen for real once, and verified by others … :P
The One Piece/Naruto comparison will most likely come after I try to do a minor summary and writeup about both of them, atleast for reference for myself.
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