Category Archives: Manga

2012 Awards

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trophyYes, it is that time of year again. I was going to delay this until Wednesday or Friday, or even the weekend at the latest, but I decided to simply do so, since I had everything sorted and delaying was pointless, really. Slacking off is no good.

You probably remember my previous awards list. This time, however, I decided to actually be serious about it. Why give a series that is good and continues to be good a humorous award for the author being good, when another new series could also be good? This time, the awards are to be serious, and intended to convey any sort of weight of being ‘the best in this category.’ Not much weight, since this isn’t a huge blog, but some weight, as I don’t get bribed, nor do I have any incentive to award awards to well known mangaka, games studios, or anime studios. They usually don’t send me review copies, so I get to remain independent and not have to worry about sucking up to them so that I may continue to be on their good side.

These awards work simply: I have a few categories, and will award the award in each category for what was the best in the category. A new game/manga/anime will be weighted more so than one that didn’t come out this year. However, if something from this year was that far from par, something from a previous year that was still good may take precedence.

Let’s get started, then.

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Review: Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou

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1337617062533Monster Musume no iru Nichijou, which is also known by the following names: モンスター娘のいる日常,
魔物娘的(相伴)日常,
Daily Life with a Monster Girl, and
Everyday Monster Girls.

For those who did not realize it yet, this is a comedy-romance hybrid and a harem series. Yup, another romantic comedy harem manga. What an original concept that has in no way been overused in any definition of the word and in no way is seen in what feels like every manga and anime to some extent.

But that’s exactly what they were expecting you to think.

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Manga Review: Imouto Wa Shishunki

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Imouto Wa Shishunki is a basic slice of school life comedy 4 panel manga. The series centers around a boy with a younger sister. he has a perverted friend, she has a couple friends, later three primary friends. One of them is the classic straight man from comedy, and cuts down the jokes of the other girls.

The plot is so basic as to be non-existent. Actually, I would like to say that is true, but the plot simply is not there. There isn’t even a Lucky Star or K-on! type of plot where there are jokes and such, bu they at least age as the story progresses. K-on was mostly 4 panel format (better known as 4-koma) and the characters went through the years of high school. Imouto Wa Shishunki has none of that. I could settle for no changes and progressions in the characters so that they remain 2 dimensional, but they don’t even age. Nothing at all changes about them.

Given that the plot isn’t there, along with the parents of all these high school kids, One would expect then that the adults in the story would be reasonable, responsible people. Luckily for me, that doesn’t happen. the adults are more perverted than the students, to the extent of making jokes at the students that I am sure would be harassment at the very least. They do lampshade this with a single strip where the straight man girl asks if she should sue, and the teacher says they’d prefer not.

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Review: Nana to kaoru

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Due to some very unfortunate circumstances for me, I will be delaying my reviews of Aselia The Eternal, Demonbane, and Sonicomi by an unspecified amount of time, as I just had to re-install the OS on my computer, and I have lost the save files, along with a lot of other things. The hard drive is now making a grinding and scraping sound, so This computer is not long for this world. As such, I will be covering manga and anime until I can get something done about this.

Right, that is out of the way, time to review as best I can Nana to Kaoru. First, this will be really hard to review. I originally intended to try to find someone experienced with this who i could e-mail for information about the situations and character relationships in this manga, but that Id ea got tossed out as rather impractical. As such, all my knowledge will come from wikipedia.

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Manga Review: Neon Genesis Evangelion

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Here, as promised, Neon Genesis Evangelion (the Manga.) In Japanese, It is Shin Sheki Evangelion, which translates to New Century Evangelion.

EVA is regarded as a good series and a definitive mecha series. However, if this is the definitive or a definitive mecha series, I feel sorry for the genre.

Plot: The plot evolves around a boy named shinji, who is called upon to pilot a giant robot called EVA. He meets his father, who ignores him and treats their relationship as purely business and tries to get shinji to stand on his own two feet, which is something shinji continually tries to avoid doing. Gendo, shinji’s father, prefers to spend time with ayanami rei, an emotionless 14 year old girl who spends a lot of time being naked. Fanservice that they attempt to justify through her emotionless character-she simply doesn’t care about being naked.

Of course, it is later revealed that she is some sort of science creation and there are many clone bodies of her (which a couple other characters destroy) so it stands to reason that the big boss of the blace (gendo) would spend more time with rei-given she is basically an artificial creation, they basically need to constantly moniter her. Given how much it costs to make a clone of a simple animal, and they have a giant fluid-filled tank full of rei clones, it would also to be to ensure nothing happens to what amounts to a really expensive body.

Either way, the series constantly pulls off slight sexual innuendo and suggestive themes, some of which are very subtle and very freudian.

I would try to explain the plot, but it is a jumbled mass of conspiracy theories and twisted judeo-christian ideas. But, it is something about these angels are tryng to come into contact with some giant thing nailed to a cross and cause something, but they stop it by fighting the angels with these gian trobots that are actually made from the crucified thing, but one of the robots turns into an angel…and something about a giant spear in space and a computer that is called the magii and…

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