Not to mention that they’re always presented as shy little kids and teens with no hope in hell of wooing women. Forever have we been presented with these characters that endlessly drag on about tired and old conventions, littering the landscape with drab and boring creations whose sole redeeming feature was being appealing to us poor addled creatures because they were slightly more exciting than the girly NANA and (blood-)sucky Vampire Knight.

Then came Isutoshi, the genious behind Slut Girl and Tende Freeze, forth from the darkness to give us AIKI. Joukyuu Kunitoshi, the anti-hero that struggles to care, tries to have sex with any female with breasts and doesn’t feel particularly lonely. He’s fucking awesome at martial arts, is far from shy and unlucky around the girls, and a superspecial asshole martial arts prodigy with a handicap created by his father in a fit of paternal worry and anger through devious means.

Confused because there cannot possibly be such an amazing piece of work out there, and I have to be making it up? Fear not, for S.A.S stepped up to the plate to deliver unto us that which is awesome!

What more to say to truly do this series justice in words? Imagine King Leonidas screaming: “Go! Read! It!” and kicking you in the nads for not being on your way already. Take the hint, read the damn thing.

Right now I’m listing my favourite mangas like this:

1. One Piece
insurmountable gap between the awesomeness that is One Piece and the rest
12. AIKI
13. Full Metal Alchemist (still writing about this one :) )

With lots of on and off loveable series onwards. The fact remains that One Piece and Full Metal Alchemist are the only two mangas that manages to not only be awesome all the time, but getting increasingly so.

AIKI is a relatively new addition to my list at all, so longterm quality and fun can still be questioned. The thing is though, Isutoshi’s known for his strong cast of characters and focus on fun, and since I love a good cast of characters I think I’m justified in having high hopes for this series. While I know that reading a manga that a (primarily) hentai-mangaka’s writing can be offputting for some, I sincerely think that any reservations of that kind should be cast off to give this one a chance.

I don’t really know how to describe it in words to do it justice. It’s sweet, direct and simple. Nothing complicated. A girl that is a ghost, and a guy that’s very much alive, are living together in a rundown house. They fall in love, and has an uncomplicated relationship (as far as you can have an uncomplicated relationship with a ghost…) where they explore things together and push each other to discover new aspects to themselves and life.

Normally I’d say “… uh, dude, she’s a dead girl, wtf are you doing?” in my head, which is what I thought when I read the description, but seeing who the author was made me check it out anyways. See, the author’s a genious - or atleast borderline genious - as he’s able to make any situation and moment emotional or eerily beautiful, unless they’re highly amusing. As with Ai-Ren the story has a slightly bittersweet tone to it. You read on and you keep cheering for this innocent and beautiful couple that seem so impossibly happy.

I’ve read to chapter 11, that’s all that is scanlated so far, and I’m really impressed. The beginning contained carrot-amounts of sexual situations (to lure in the unsuspecting reader I guess), but the happy go lucky tone of the series was prevalent even there, and it seems the happy stuff just keeps pouring in. It’s nice to read a manga that puts a smile on my face like this, it hasn’t happened since Yokohama Kodaisha Kikou. It’s cute, it’s simple, it’s endearing and loveable.

I know, I know, it’s only 11 chapters so far, but if you want to read a manga that makes you feel a bit better, this is the one.

It’s being scanlated by Solaris-H.

So what makes a normally uninteresting, interest-changing idiot that can barely latch his interest onto something for over a month into a fan? I had trouble putting it into words, and for some things (make that most) I still do. Then the other day I discovered why One Piece manages to reinvigorate my interest over and over again.

Chapter 502 was again about things that’re wrong. Things that’re very very wrong. Not nail-polish being in the wrong colour, the wrong tone, or whatever the hell I can spam this sentence with. No, nothing like that. To freely quote myself in a previous post about chapter 502:

This time around it’s about slavery and oppression, abuse and discrimination. Topics that really whips my chords around until there’s a knot in my stomach.

One Piece picks up human suffering and shoves it in your face, pointing out that there’s something wrong, and that this kind of shit happens. Does injustice happen in the real world? You can bet your ass it does, we just do like the ostrich supposedly does, shove our heads as far into the ground as possible - hoping to never know.

One Piece rips our heads out of the ground to point out that there’s crap going on, injustice happens, and the further you get the more shit you see, the deeper you come the deeper the pile of shit. That description’s depressing as hell, it really is, and the manga wouldn’t really amount to much if it was depressing 24/7, if every single issue spent all it’s time shoving your head full of depressing abuse of commoners and everyday people trying to get by.

Here’s where One Piece goes from a gritty tale about unfairness and injustice to downright awesomery and kickassing, where it makes fanbois jump in joy because asses are getting kicked (almost literally). It’s awesome to see Luffy kick ass in the most impressive and spectacular ways, it really is. It’s so gratifying to see your hero whip out his arm (literally) to smack the bad guys right where it hurts the most, in complete righteousness. Fighting for justice, avenge the wrongs that’ve been done, pony up some hurt in return to those who would hurt and exploit the weak.

That’s where One Piece really shines. It dares to show that the world sucks in strangely realistic ways. Rich people abuse the poor, the strong prey on the weak, the weak banding together to be strong, then preying on the weaker, things like that. Then it shows us that there’s hope and a bright light at the end of the tunnel through Luffy and his crew.

Luffy and the crew’s travelling through their world in a crusade to gain fame, notoriety and fulfill their dreams, however weird or awesome they are. From Luffy’s famous dream of becoming the Pirate King, to Usopp’s dream of becoming the bravest man in the world. They’re dreams, childish, simple, and so easy to relate to in so many ways. It’s hard to explain, it really is, but every one of their dreams can seem ever so ridiculous in the beginning, until you see the determination that Oda’s portrayed in their eyes.

See, the crew has dreams. Simple dreams, awesome dreams, impossible dreams (read: Usopp… ). They’re not afraid of pursuing them either, and they support each other in the quest. Support and friendship being one of the most important aspects of the series, an ongoing theme about relating to those you cross paths with, befriending new people - as well as protecting new people, new friends. Even going as far as declaring war for their friends. Friends who have been wronged in some way, because they’re weak, too kind, or just unfortunate. I suppose it doesn’t matter since it’s a friend in need, or just someone in need of help.

That’s when you get to watch Luffy and his crew turn from the jolly gang that can’t stay serious for a moment into a manifestation of righteous fury that makes your knotted guts unwind because justice will be served, that the wrongs will be right. You get to watch their vaunted abilities come to light, see the awesome and impressive moves and whatsitnots that comes romping through the issues.

The fights are spectacular, awesome, well thought out, and most importantly; meaningful. I could go on and on about all the details in the fights, their abilities, weaknesses and so on. I don’t see the point in that, you’ll see it for yourself if you pick it up, and you can run around talking about all the abilities at any time you want. What really matters to me in the end is that the stories and themes in One Piece are meaningful, they invoke feelings, they matter.

To me, that’s what makes One Piece epic and it’s the reason I’m a huge fan. One Piece tells a compelling and serious story about amazing and funny characters that’re willing to walk through fire and fun for that which matters and doesn’t in a world that feels all too real despite it’s surreal setting, invoking glee and sadness like no manga has ever managed to do for me before.

Pre-Ramble
I discovered I had more to say about this topic and this series than I originally thought. It’s become a massive essay about Naruto, mostly as a reflection for me and how I feel about the series and how it’s turned out. I still like the series, and I still read it, because it’s highly entertaining - there’re aspects of it that badly needs fixing though. .. and sorry for the lol-texts. I couldn’t help myself… [Edit: Click the pictures for more details. There are a few with cut-offs]

The title there goes for practically every single one of the ninjas in this series. Actually, the only time I can remember there was a whole lot of stealthing going on, they were considered weak, almost to the point of comical relief (unless they were comical relief, and I just didn’t find it funny. I usually don’t find comical relief funny. Funny eh?). Unless you count the times they were hiding from an enemy, contemplating a clever and sneaky, but obvious, attack on their foe. There’s no such thing as a stealth-kill in this series. Which makes me wonder what you might consider an assassin, and how potentially badass they would be, because they, you know, do actual sneaky stuff. “I R TEH BOOGIEMAN!”

Truly Sneaky?
From here on Naruto becomes a difficult topic. When a ninja has been mentioned, you think about a guy in black gear with lots of shady tricks and abilities that comes sneaking in the night to make sure you won’t see the next day. When you mention a ninja in Naruto, you are actually talking about a martial artist that knows magic. No shit, actually. Boiled down, Naruto is about Kung-Fucking-Fu Mages, and the more physical training you do, the more magical stuff you can throw around like bad breath, as well as getting better at the magicky stuff over time. The focus is of course on the obvious, the magicky stuff. It’s flashy and cool. The straightforward physical combat is severely downplayed, and is most often watered down to a “Y HULO THAR BUDDEE! FUN 2 SEE U HEAR!” that goes on for about 3-30 seconds, and then they jump away from each other, ready to do some serious smack-talk for 3 episodes (or 3 manga-chapters). “U SUXX!”. “NO! U SUXX!”

Magical Ninjas
The aforementioned smack-talk is quite often intermingled by a series of minor jabs at each other, be it through throwing knives, dubious minor magic, or dubious major magic that we can’t see because it’s, well, sneaky. I guess that’s where the ninja heritage comes into play, although I doubt it. In most cases the magicky stuff is either a show of brute force, a contest of stamina, or some hidden and clever chess-game that we’ll never truly understand because compared to these masters of chess, we’re dumb and blind. Well, we’re of course awed by the explanation that we get in the end, when it’s too late for the oppoent, and then we’re similarly awed by the resulting smack-down. If it’s a flashy smack-down we become even more awed [Ref: Naruto Vs. Sasuke - Angry Emo Kitties Final Fight]. “U SEE WUT I DID THAR LOL?!”.

Characters
The gallery of characters is surprisingly strong in this series, surprisingly so actually, side-characters tend to be weak(er). We have all these weird characters with strange and freaky abilities, magicky abilities, and even weirder, stereotypical personalities (I’m look at you Gai! Maito Gai, weirdest dude there. Maito Gai - A Mite Gay?). You would think an ensemble of the 50 most standard and dull-ass bunch of characters would be just a tad boring, but this is where Naruto shines - the cast of characters. No matter who you’ll be spending time with you can be sure that you will be in the company of some weirdo guy that’s forever doomed to be entertaining because he’s hilarious in a number of subtle ways, or because he’s just not like the rest of the crew. “LOL I R SPESHUL RITE?!”.

The Good Guys
There’re no two characters alike, they’re all a bunch of weirdo stereo-types, they’re comical in their exaggerated vices and virtues. You’ve got the heavy-drinking Tsunade that’s old enough to be your grandmother, with a bosom the size of Mount Doom. There’s the eternal enigma and silent-type awesomesauce guy, Kakashi, with an exploitable weakness for ecchi-books. Let’s not forget the previously over-emo Sasuke, the most popular character in the series for years (yes, they ran polls about it) who has a magickal thingamajig in his eyes that gives him a hefty advantage against other magicky abilities. He’s our beloved hate-object. Or atleast he used to be, he’s not as whiny anymore, just silent and focused, not to mention a bit older and more powerful. Let’s ignore that he was in company with Orochimaru for 3 years, the lech. Ew. “PLAY WIT MY 1 EYED SNAEK PLZ!”

The Bad Guys
Now, that was the good guys, except for Orochimaru, who was eventually killed by Sasuke, or so we think. I doubt that chapter’s concluded just yet, his death was too obvious. Orochimaru’s the kind of bad guy you have to love, despite being an icky and ew bastard that makes you think of a pervert that likes watching dubious porn, simply because he’s such a completely unlovable character. If Kishimoto Masashi, that’s the author of the manga, ever made the perfect villain, Orochimaru’s it. There’s also Sasuke’s arch-nemesis, his brother Itachi, who killed off the entire clan to prove a point (++, but I won’t be spoilering it right now), and is generally overpowered. To be quite honest I don’t really picture Itachi as such a massive villain like Orochimaru, but my suspicion lies with the incessant whining of the character of Sasuke downplaying it. A major bad thing is easily downplayed and turned unimportant if someone’s harping about it constantly, and that’s what was done in the first 90% of the series. Yes, that means I’m entirely umsympathetic to Sasuke’s pains. “I HURTZ! MORE TAHN U!”

Combat
The combat-system in Naruto is pretty complicated, in a sense. The melee is straightforward, while the magicky stuff can be as esoteric as the author wants, which can be pretty damned wonky. If you’re not a 100% melee kind of guy, you’re not going to be doing a whole lot of close combat, you’ll preferably stand 10-30 metres away preparing some kind of scary and efficient attempt at taking down the opponent. There are what, 3 of the melee-types in Naruto? Gai, Rock Lee and Naruto? No, Tsunade and Sakura as well. Of all of those, only the character called Rock Lee is completely melee-based, all the others are able to sprinkle some magical fairy-dust around when applicable. The rest mix in the odd chakra-magic (the name of the magicky battery. You run out of it, you run out of magicky stuff, most likely not able to move either, since it’s connected to stamina). With the exception of Naruto, all of these people are generally quite successful in their endeavours, as far as we’ve been able to tell, and they use their magicky chakra along with their tricks happily and efficiently. “I HIT U 4 LOLTGHOUSAN!”.

The Protagonist
No series would be quite the same without a protagonist to cheer for, and Naruto is no exception to this. In the beginning we sympathized with his loneliness, his desperation for attention and friends, and his desire to accomplish something. We wanted him to stop being miserable and sad, we wanted him to be special, beyond being the outcast of the village. We wanted him to be awesome, we wanted him to be the hero. And so we cheered him on when he stole something special so he could learn a forbidden jutsu (that’s what they call the magicky things in Naruto, jutsus) through a forbidden scroll that was really powerful and awesome. Of course, we had no freakin’ idea what this really was until we were shown, and we had our first moment of “Whoooooaaaah… awesome” when Naruto created a thousand clones of himself, accompanied by the fantastic music that’s become the hallmark of the series epic moments, and laid down the smack. Now, why did he steal this scroll to learn this forbidden thing? Two reasons, to get attention, and a desire to protect the village. This outcast boy that’s been ignored and avoided as much as possible has a tremendous desire to become the Hokage (leader of the village or something) to protect the village, despite everything. “LOL U SAD SMAKDOWN!”

Now, the character went through some pretty memorable moments, building up as a character, letting us get to know him, and the highlight of this was when they were in the Land of the Hidden Mist, or whatsitsface. Naruto came up with an amazing move, all on his own, one where he changed himself into a ninja-star (or whatever it’s called), and let Sasuke throw him. The throw was a miss, an intentional one, and what happened then has been lost in the Mists of the Hidden Memory. What I remember from this episode is that I thought it was so awesome that Naruto had developed to the point where he was tactical and innovative, and from here on I was pretty devoted to the series. “LOL LIEK FANBOI?!”

The Protagonist Struggles
Ironically that’s where it all went downhill. From here and onwards all you get to see Naruto do is use Kage Bunshin (the forbidden technique, meaning Shadow of Something, or perhaps Something of Shadow, but what he does is make clones of himself) ad nauseum, atleast until he learns Rasengan (a whirly ball he holds in his hand, and when presses against the opponent, more on that later), and we get to watch him use Rasengan and Kage Bunshin ad nauseum. To be quite honest there’s nothing new throughout the series from here and onwards, with the exception of the Nine-Tailed Fox-Demon thingamajig inside him that gives him an extra boost. While it’s awesome to look at Naruto in über-mode, it does get pretty tiring to watch this Three-Trick Pony do absolutely nothing new and interesting all the time. “SUPER SAIYNA LVL 72932?! LOL!”.

Ponies!
Now, I would be kind of ok with the whole concept of this Three-Trick Pony if it was a truly awesome pony. It’s not. I mentioned that Naruto was a melee-type, one that relied exclusively on beating the living Zeus out of his opponents. More irony, it’s usually Naruto that gets this deity beaten out of him, because his skill at hand to hand combat is about as awesome as mine. What we end up seeing is Naruto making a whole bunch of Caged Munchkin clones that charges at the opponent with little success. He then either hides to try again, or he aims to sneak in a Rasengan. Now, I mentioned how utter crap he was at melee? Well, the thing is, if you suck at melee, and your two ultimate moves are based on melee, alternately that’s all you can think of using it for, would it make sense that he manages to land the sodding thing? Nope, and that’s what happens. The most exciting thing we get to see is how he’ll be able to land this powerful whirly-ball on his opponent, quite often after a bunch of tries. Which is extremely unexciting after you’ve seen it a few times. “LOL WHIRYL BALLZ!”.

Stopped Making Sense
Where did the innovation and ability to excel go? He picked up a forbidden technique in hours. He excels at changing forms (which he hasn’t done in ages either). He’s got the stamina from hell. He’s got a demon inside of him that gives him power. He’s got so much going for him, so why does the author insist on keeping him a Narutard? In the latest iteration of the saga of Naruto, Shippuuden, we get to see him start learning about a new trick, using elements from nature, and that some can use this, and some can use this element. The author of the series introduced another element! So Naruto has to learn about his element. Of course, we’re presented with a dumbass Naruto that just doesn’t grasp it, so they figure that Naruto should make a million clones of himself that can practice this stuff, since they are each an individual. Neat perk, you go work, I go play. Kek. So, as usual Naruto is Narutard. He spends ages learning something, and now he’s even boosted by this really awesome trick. but why doesn’t he use his most awesome and proficient trick more, develop a branch that he knows better instead of insisting on learning some dumbass incarnation of a previous Hokage’s super-trick? “LOL NARUTARDZ!”.

The Plans?
Seriously, for all the good things in this series I get the feeling that the creator of Naruto just doesn’t get it. Naruto was awesome, now he’s a muppet. The reason I’m interested in the series at all has nothing to do with Naruto himself, although I do hope he’ll suddenly start to shine. No, I like the series because of the supporting cast. They’re awesome. I love them all. From Chubby Chouji to Sad Sakura, they’re all quirky and fun, interesting and varied. Naruto is just uninteresting. He doesn’t develop in any direction that seems remotely natural. It seems the author ate too many funny shrooms at some point, or just ran out of ideas. Most likely he lost his first flow-chart, and forgot Naruto’s existence, leaving his assistants to fix all the errors, and every time he sees Naruto become interesting he goes “WTF?! WUT R HE?!” and brings out the eraser. Stupid assistants eh?

The End
Shit, I could go on and on and on about this topic and how Kishimoto seems to have completely forgotten Naruto’s roots and how he’s become a parody of himself and bad story-telling. When I went to school I learnt about something called the “red thread” that’s supposed to go throughout the entire text/story/whatever. Naruto’s lost his for now. Let’s hope it’s picked up again at some point in the future, so that Naruto once again can be awesome like he once was.

And this is why I ended up discussing characters earlier by the way. Hot topic in my head!

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.

Omamori Himari

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This 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 , 9 years old, or dumb. There’s just too much half-nudity, or outright nudity, and highly suggestive pictures and text, I forgot videos, out there in this world that this merely ends up being funny.

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.