I just wanna let you know that I started a new blog with a firend of mine called Anime.Manga.Shinkansen!

If you want to read my latest articles, then forget this blog and switch to A.M.Skinkansen instead.

http://amshinkansen.wordpress.com/

This review is based of chapter 1 – 24

Title:
The title is very hard to translate. I had to ask my Japanese Sensei to help me with this one. In German it means “Ich unter Gleichen” and I have no idea how to translate it in English. Google-translation says “I am among equals” (but you know… Google is lame in translating). So… if you can help me with this translation, please leave a comment!

Content:

Suguo and his little brother Ikou were abondoned by their father from their home in the countryside. With hardly any money they try to go to Tokyo. On their way they meet a strange-looking guy named Itokin. As they find out that they are in the same situation (no real home, job etc.) they team up. From there on, the group gathers more and more people.

The relationship between all the group members is hard to describe. They are not real friends but rather an alliance on purpose. The purpose is to get a job, away from the street and of course super hot chicks.

So the story goes on showing how they desperately try but failing every time followed by flat and tasteless jokes which will make you laughing your ass off!

Art:
You can describe the art as high-end bad quality seinen-like drawings.

The side characters are a bit out of shape from time to time but he main characters are well made. In most comedic situations the faces are – let me say – overdrawn which supports the atmosphere dramatically (almost like in “Great Teacher Onizuka”).

GTO:

BTI:

If there weren’t these faces, my rating would have dropped about the half.

Overall:
This manga does everything right with doing some things wrong in a refreshing good way.

The comedy scenes are placed well and they come over natural but always exaggerated. There’s only a small degree between dumb and genius. This manga manages to jumps between those two as if there isn’t anything easier in the world.

The weird thing is that the weak points are also the strong points since it really depends on your personal taste if you like this style or not. I lke it very much so I  gave this series a 9/10 on MAL.

This manga lasted very long the 3rd pace in my top 5 manga. It has recently been replaced by Naoki Urasawa’s “Pluto”.

PS: Do you know the punk band called NOFX? Well, I do and the mangaka obviously as well:

The Hating Girl

Title:
The English version of the title (The Hating Girl) isn’t quite right translated.

So let’s divide the title into segments:

Subete ni ————– Iya ——————— Garu
Everything about —- arrow shooting —– Girl

You see… because of such translating differences you shouldn’t learn Japanese by comparing the translated with the raw version (just grab your jisho and read only the raw).

Content:
I’m not gonna say why she has an arrow stuck in her head or if she still has it at the end of this stoy!

A Japanese boy named Ryouji transfers schools. In his new class he sits next to a girl with an arrow stuck in her head. As he has never seen something like this before, he wants to find out more about her so they start talking.

They build up a relationship full of misunderstandings leading into various hilarious situations (let me say broom stick and pocket warmer… you will know what I mean ^_^). Please don’t misunderstand me with hilarious situations, this is NOT an ecchi manga! This manga is almost like a yonkoma-manga warped into real a “full-panel” one.

So where is the hatch?
Okay… there are a few but they shouldn’t be overestimated: The chapters are very short and almost each one of them is about one special thing which slightly disturbs the flow of the story. The character development of Ryouji is also very limited.

Art:

When it’s about drawing style I like almost everything: sketchy drawings in BLAME!, shounen-like drawings in Dragonball, old-school in Ranma ½, and the realistic style of Naoki Urasawa.

The art of this manga is like a mixture of shounen-like and old-school style. The pictures look like if they were drawn by a (very) skilled child but that makes it so loveable and supports the comedy scenes. I think this manga wouldn’t work without this style. It would definitely loose it’s persuasive power.

Overall:
I really enjoyed the time while reading this manga. Unlike all the shounen ecchi/harem  mangas you can’t predict the storyline as this one jumps over the well known clichés and redefines them. On top of that the characters are lovable and the progression of their relationship is well made.

I gave this manga an 8/10 (8 means “very good”) on my MyAnimeList profile because the strong points cover up the weak spots so you don’t notice them at first.

I hope that you had a great New Year’s eve!

During this whole Christmas/New Year time I thought about what I want to with this blog as I definitely can’t keep up the reviews for the weekly publishing manga (I’m starting a new course for learning Japanese next week).

My solution is that from now on I review only non-mainstream, underrated and infamous manga.

A negative side is that I’m probably gonna lose some of my readers but you know that’s okay for me as long as I can keep on blogging.

I’m at a point where I can’t easily find some good mangas out there. Let’s take the genre “romance” (shounen + seinen). I’m really kinda into this genre and thus I’ve read almost every famous romance manga. So the only possibility for an addict like me is to search every online reading site (well, mostly mangafox.com and mangahelpers.com) for more stuff.

Surprisingly, I found a bunch of nice unknown series which can compete with their famous big brothers.

In the next few days I’ll post my first “new” review. It’s about the manga called “Subete ni Iya Garu” (the english title is “The Hating Girl”). If you want to you can already check out the series on mangafox.com and begin reading it.

So… stay tuned.

PS: I’m probably gonna change the theme again…

I wish you all a merry Christmas!

Here is a very nice video I found on Youtube. If you have 3 minutes you should watch it:

Please don’t expect a manga review before new year’s eve… I’m kinda busy right now….

Well then…. later!

Sasuke vs. Danzou

Summary:

The chapter begins ans instead continue fighting Madara let’s Sasuke has his chance to get revenge. So danzou starts a jutsu with a few hand signs and dashed towards Sasuke. He is about to punch him in his stomach but Sasuke summoned a bone of Susanoo to stop Danzou.

After tat he summons Susanoo’s hand and grabs Danzou with it.

The scene swithces to Naruto and the others. Kakashi orderes Yamato to take back Naruto to Konoha and he and Sai are following Sakura. Then we see Naruto looking back on the recent events. He starts hyperventilating  and faints as he crawls deeper and deeper into his memories.

Back to Sasuke and Danzou:

Danzou is still caught by Susanoo’s and Sasuke asks him if its true that Konoha made Itachi kill his own clan. Danzou reveals that it’s true and because of that Sasuke summons almost everything from Susanoo’s body for his final strike. Danzou doesn’t stop talking so Susanoo crushes him.

Just when Sasuke  thought that he won Danzou appears behind him. It was a genjutsu!

My 2 Cents:

Before I talk about the chapter let’s have a look on the cover of this week’s WSJ:

In the background there are a bunch of wannabe cosplayers almost all with black hair. That’s the proof that WSJ kidnapped some schoolkids dressed them as Naruto and pasted them on the cover. For an alibi they took some serious cosplayers with dyed hair so that the ones with black hair don’t stand out so much……

Well let’s talk about the chapter…

Yeah… it was an average chapter. Too much talking but it had some cool scenes and Sasuke’s face is nicely drawn. You can almost see his hatred through his face. Susanoo is also well-drawn.

Damn… I really hoped that Madara would be fighting against Danzou to show off some of his abilities

I’ll give this on a 7/10.

PS: I really hate the pussy attitude of Naruto in this chapter!

PPS: Thanks to manga123.com and SleepyFans.

Are you ready for this week’s BAKUMAN? Here we go…

Summary:

After talking in the studio with Mashiro, Shujin phones Miyoshi. She tells him hat she read Aoki’s manga and that’s it’s obvious that he not just talked with Iwase alone.

Shujin tries to convince her that the whole “Shujin x Iwase x Aoki”-thing was a simple misunderstanding. So he tells her to wait at the zoo as he wants to speak to her directly. Unfortunately Aoki tries to call Shujin but as he is busy with speaking with Miyoshi, she decides to go to the zoo where she and Shujin met with Iwase a few chapters ago.

At the zoo Shujin runs into Aoki and Miyoshi sees them.

Aoki and Shujin are chasing after her to stop her running away. As she don’t stops Shujin proves that he truly loves Miyoshi by asking her to marry him.

So Miyoshi calms down and after a deep talk with Aoki and Shujin she finally understands this situation and even allows Shujin to talk with Aoki about their mangas on the phone. By the way… Miyoshi wants to get married when  Ahirogi’s manga gets serialized.

After that they all o to a cafe with Azuki. She forgives Mashiro for not telling her that Shijin and Aoki have been exchanging ideas.

My 2 Cents:

So… everything is set back to normal. Mashiro and Azuki are back together, the bitch fight is over (the winner is Miyoshi >_>) and they focus on Tanto. Meh… I really wanted to see Aoki and Shujin together… but my my hopes vanishes -.-

In te last chapter I noticed an increase of some super hilarious faces of Ashirogi (see the ast 2 screens for example). I really like that.

Well then, thx SleepyFans! 9/10 for this chapter.

BAKUMAN Anime Update:

From now on I post the updates regarding the BAKUMAN Anime in the every week’s BAKUMANS post.

Some of the staff working on the anime was revealed:

Kenichi Kasai (Honey and CloverNodame Cantabile, Sweet Blue Flowers) and Noriaki Akitaya (episode director on Nodame Cantabile, Honey and Clover II, Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion) are directing the animators at J.C. Staff. Reiko Yoshida (Kaikan Phrase, Maria Watches Over Us, The Story of Saiunkoku) is supervising the scripts.

The anime will be 25 episodes long and an internet page for it was opened.

Sorry for the cut and paste from ANN

Freakin’ hell yeah!

How awesome is that! I fell out of my chair when I read the news on ANN. I was so looking forward to this and finally in about a year we get BAKUMAN on TV!

This is the snippet from Shounen Jump with the confirmation.

The year 2010 is gonna be so great. I’m looking forward to 4 animes now: BAKUMAN, Durarara!!, Dance With The Vampire Bund and Katanagatari.

I post updates about the BAKUMAN Anime as soon they’re avaliable…

PS: Does that mean the manga ends before fall 2010? For the manga’s sake I hope they continue it and don’t cover up the full story in one anime season.

Summary:

Danzou is unsealing his ar and the two root-ninjas attack Madara to buy some time. They attack with some shurken and a mind-body switch jutsu. Marada dodge them both with his time/space jutsu. He sinks in the pillar where they’re fighting on.

Then Madara appears behind one of the root-ninjas and gets instantly attacked by a sword. And again Madara dodges with letting the sword slip through his head while using a time/space technique.

This time the root-ninjas try a combo attack on Madara. But as they not so stupid as I thought they want to get Madara when he uses a counter attack as he has to materialize some of his body. It fails again and on top of that the root-ninjas injures the other one! As the injured one is down the other one attacks Madara with full strength but he sucks the root-ninja in his mask.

The scene switches to Naruto and Gaara talking that the Sand will act as Kakashi is the Hokage etc… Fortunately the scene switches back to the fight.

After that Madara pulls off his right arm to distract the injured root-ninja and sucks him into his mask, too. Madara also disappears into the dimension where he keeps Sasuke and comes back with him and Karin to the battlefield.

Danzou has finally unsealed his arm and we see this:An arm full of Sharingans!

My 2 Cents:

Madara shows us a blink of his power and still it’s impressive. He fights two of the best root-ninjas and sucks them into his mask. He is really one of the strongest guys out there… maybe the strongest (with the 7 Bijous he has quite an advantage). But I will wait with my final judgement who’s the strongest as Danzou just showed us his sharingan-arm. kinda creepy…

I’ll add this to the topic “creepy things” aswell: Madara takes his harm off and throws him at the injured root-ninja.

I think the body of Madara is like a puppet. In one chapter (I can’t remember which one it was) Sasuke saw Marada through his sharingan and for me it looks like a puppet’s body.

BTW: Maybe Madara finishes off Danzou and Kakashi takes Danzou’s place as Hokage. An other possibility is that Tsunade finally wakes up and take the hokage’s seat…

You see many things to cover the next chapters… this one gets a 8/10.

Sorry for not reviewing last week’s chapter. I was so freakin’ busy that I had time for only one review and I chose Naruto… But here you see some funny scenes of chapter 65:

Oooh… just as I predicted: She’s falling for Shujin!

I didn’t see this coming: Tano got first place in Akamaru.

Last but not lease: BAM!

I hope that I’ve got time this friday for Bakuman!