larryhammer: floral print origami penguin, facing left (buh?)
[personal profile] larryhammer
... you'll hear me say "whatever you want, whatever you want."

It's good to be knocked out of one's comfort zone every so often. Not regularly, though -- it needs to be aperiodic, to avoid anticipation -- and of course, no comfort is unlivable. Here's three recently encountered brain-strainy, if not breain-breaky manga:

Arata Kangatari, being a Shounen Sunday manga by Yuu Watase. Which I can only describe as "Yuu Watase writes a Shounen Sunday series" -- with all the story strengths and weaknesses that implies. Makes my head hurt, thinking about it. Best not to think about it and just read. Fortunately, since it's pretty good, that's not hard. Not as good as Cross Game, but what is?

Simoun Magical Biyuden, being Simoun reimagined as a magical girl school comedy (!) with the simouns themselves as magic wands (!!), and Aeru as the idiot shounen hero she almost is anyway (o_O). Fortunately, it's ignorable.

Katatsumuri Zensen, lit. "Snail Front-line", in which a girl's classmate turns into a snail -- again. As in, this time his mother won't let him back in the house till he turns back into a human. So he stays on the girl's houseplant, and goes to school with her in a small box. And then things get complicated, in the way of sweet shoujo romances ... that happen to include a WERE-SNAIL.

(It's really a stress reaction -- a literalization of wanting to retreat into one's shell -- but I don't care: it's still a crawling, talking were-snail.)

What conceptual delights of serial art have people being discovering lately?

---L.

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