Favourite Manga

My favourite mangas are One Piece and Beelzebub. One Piece for the storyline and it's fight scenes, and Beelzebub for hilarious things that appear in the manga.
 
  1. Fushigi Yugi (books 1 - 13, because the 'sequel' in books 14 - 18 is a bit... meh). This was one of the first mangas I read, and possibly the first I completed. I read it at 15, so I suppose I may think differently now, but I found the story heartbreaking. The characters were great, it was well written, and the little notes along the side from the author were a nice touch; you were able to see how certain ideas had developed and how the feedback from readers had affected her.
  2. Immortal Rain - Sadly this was never compelted. :( Consequently, I only adore books 1 - 4, which provide the first part of the story. The characters are great. You've got the slightly ditzy, lovable immortal, and the more gutsy young girl who is originally too feisty, but matures as she spends time with him.
  3. Chobits and A.I Love You - Okay... These are both reasonably similar, really, so I'm putting them together. Both are a little creepy, insofar as they're about a man who falls in love with a mechanical woman, but when you get past that, both present a very good love story. The sacrifices characters make are extremely touching and provide a certain depth that's lacking in other examples.
  4. InuYasha - It has to be here because it's the first manga I read and my favourite example of its genre. There are flaws, yes, but I'm still very fond of it. :)
 
Yeah, mine would have to be xxxHoLiC and Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles. As these two run side by side it would be wrong not to put them together. I was actually introduced to CLAMP by seeing the first season of the Tsubasa anime, and was pleasantly surprised when I started reading the manga. When I finished both of the series I felt very close with the characters and since then have gone back to them countless times. While both series start out on a melancholy -they still have plenty of haha moments- things get fairly dark when the main questions in the series start getting answered. And the Mokona's rock!! :woot: Overall, they're both great. I would definitely recommend them to anyone who doesn't mind a bit of tragic romance.
 
My personal favourite manga is Berserk. I just love the artwork and the heavy violent dark nature of it.

It is perhaps the only manga to truly manage to widen my eyes, both with its heavy gore, quotes and renaissance art like aspects. A manga chapter of around 30 pages with such detail makes it feel like I’m viewing a manga art style that is about to die due to many new manga writers using a far more simplistic trend. It is also amazing how the creatures in this manga actually look like and acts like the monsters they are inspired from which in most media is ignored due to its disgusting properties. They are brutal, ugly, scary and lacking any form of human morale.

The manga started 23 years ago and there have only been 333 chapters due to its immense level of detail. In those years it has inspired many people including the makers of the Demon/Dark Souls series.

What always captivated me about this series the most is the main character. The character Guts is to me the definition of strength and power so that no matter what happens to you and no matter how dark the world is you can always survive if you have the stomach for it. If you have the guts to face it head on.

Moreover it also doesn’t have a kid with supernatural powers or some high socialistic special person or superhuman main character. It's about a mercenary kid who learns through a hard experience what battle and war is. Intense sword training and many other horrible events shape him into a powerful fearless warrior.
 
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I couldn't pick a defined singular favourite between a select few manga, but I'll list off my current favoured manga, and explain what attracted me to it:

Battle Royale: I'd seen the film about 5 or so years ago, but I'd never gotten the chance to read the manga; big mistake. The flow of the manga is speedy and fast paced(primarily towards the start) and the character list is big and bold, yet developed. When I read Battle Royale, I could actually connect with numerous different characters, and was actually saddened by their deaths. For such a large list, this is quite an accomplishment.

The protagonist- Shuya- was definitely the stereotypical shounen hero- preaching included- but that wasn't that irritating to my readthough. Although I preferred most characters over him, he wasn't a terribly bad. He was entertaining and slightly charismatic- a minimal slice better than his film counterpart.

On the other hand, it loses some credit due to the dragging of the final battles towards the end(One particular match crawled for me) which dulled the speedy element to the comic. Also, while it is a manga and-therefore- will definitely have hints of hyperbole, many of the characters back-stories were somewhat over the top in my opinion. For these reasons, Battle Royale misses out on the top spot, but definitely deserves a read- But not for gore-haters.
 
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