Genshiken

Genshiken, by shimoku kio, is a manga and anime based off a college otaku club in Japan. The main character, Sasahara, seems to be a shy boy unwilling to make his love for anime and manga( and some perverted games ect.) known to anyone but decided to join the otaku club at his school in hopes to make some new friends. Actually genshiken doesn’t really have a main character, it just starts off with this guy. It also doesn’t have much of a plot or story line, its just about following this group of otakus and their little otaku adventures haha but I sure enjoyed it, to get some of the jokes your going to have to be pretty knowledgeable of certain shows, mangas, and games, but its just a really fun manga, I want to watch the anime too but I haven’t gotten around to it.. Uh yea! If you’ve ever read ‘drama con’ (about otakus at a con: but american) you’ll like this too, the hardships and lives of the obsessed, what they go through, its mostly a comedy but it has little splats of romance here and there are just right, lots of cosplay too haha fun stuff :}

I’d say its worth reading, its known for a reason you know
Grade=B

Bakuman

Bakuman, written by Tsugumi Ohba and drawn by Takeshi Obata(Same duo for Death Note!) is a GREAT manga/anime about two boys, Takagi a brilliant writer(and person all around), and Mashiro a wonderful artist who collaborate starting in the 9th grade and decide to become Mangaka’s!(people who can live off of just doing manga)

Its’ pretty easy to explain haha with twists of romance, comedy, drama and its quite the ‘Slice-of-Life’ a really fun manga to read with some great characters and a lot of inspiration behind it. The story does a good job of expressing these guy’s passion to follow their dreams and stick it through. Also, its super fun in the fact like a sports manga it has a lot of knowledge to share! I’ve learned a lot about the manga process and how its all put together (names, manuscripts, blah) and also about Shonen Jump! If it was all true at least haha but like I said, its fun. So try it :}

I’ve also been watching the anime, Just came out this spring! And it follows the manga and I like it just as much haha

Grade=B+

FLCL

FLCL, Furi Kuri, Fooly Cooly, the original animation written by Yoji Enokido and manga written by Hajime Ueda is a science fiction series that has been known to be quite crazy and a little perverted. FLCL is about Naota, a boy who seems to live a boring life claiming “Nothing amazing ever happens here, everything is ordinary” talking about his home town of Mabase. Until one day when he is ran over by a mysterious woman, Haruko, on a Vespa and hitting him in the head with her Rickenbacker 4001 guitar then all hell breaks loose when strange things start happening to Naota, like robots emerging from his head and fighting him! Even worse, Haruko Haruhara who ran him over starts to live at his home and seems to favor Naota very much, fighting the robots that come from his head, and always getting closer to him. The first robot that comes from Naota’s head is defeated and kind of settles down, then being known as Canti, who also starts to hanging around Naota’s house doing odd jobs for the family and when trouble starts up he can turn into a weapon with the help of Naota can shoot bullets and provide to be quite useful. Sometimes. The series is focused on Haruko’s battle to find Atomisk, the Pirate King, who has the power to manifest entire galaxies, which is a power Haruko desires.

Can you tell its hard to explain such a concept weird anime? 

It is 6 episodes of excellence. This series was what got me addicted to anime/manga in the first place so my passion lies here haha but from what I’ve learned from all my research over the years and living on FLCL World Proboards when I was 13 was that FLCL was pretty much an experiment anime, a ‘just for kicks!’ but intended for adults. The production company(FLCL production committee, Gainax, Production I.G, and Starchild Records) had no clue it would ever become as big as it did. It was only 6 episodes for heavens sake! Haha but that’s the good thing about FLCL, you know that it was pure and made for enjoyment and not for money, it doesn’t have the movies and the ova’s and the millions of run-on episodes, its no money sucker, it’s a Fooly Cooly! 

Its fun, its silly, its has great character, every character you will get to know because its such a successful short series, your gonna have to watch it a few times, maybe even high once or twice to get the full effect, but most people who give it a try will enjoy it. PLUS it has great music! The Pillows are fantastic, the entire series has The Pillows music within it, man their great…
Grade=A+ :}

Mirai Nikki

Mirai Nikki, or Future Diary by Sakae Esuno, is a pretty interesting concept for a manga, its got the sense of a novel but you know, with pictures :} so it revolves around Yukiteru who would rather write down every little thing that goes on around him/to him in a cell phone diary then hang out or make any friends but besides not being interested in having any friends hes a pretty normal high school student. His cell phone diary’s name(imaginary friend) is Deus Ex Machina, yea hella complicated, but one day Deus asks Yukiteru if he’d like to play a survival game with eleven other players where the winner becomes the next Deus, who is kind of like God. In order to win all the players need to be eliminated or their phone needs to be destroyed, the last one standing wins! To make this all possible each player has some sort of phone(or communication device) in which the future is somehow told. With Yukiteru, his phone ’random diary’ tells him what will happen to him every minute or so; each players phone/diary tells a different type of future. When all the players are assembled by Deus he announces that player One, Yukiteru, is who he believes to be the strongest player, and from that point on he is the biggest threat and most targeted and in order for him to win the game he must team up with another player. Player two, Yuno, is a popular pretty girl who is in love with Yukiteru, she stalks him constantly and partners up with Yukiteru. Her phone is a ‘Yukiteru Diary’ telling her everything that happens to Yukiteru every few minutes, which is completely useless to just Yuno by herself but teaming up with Yukiteru and his ‘random make them a very unbeatable duo. Yuno is a fearless and clever character who would do anything to protect Yukiteru, while in the beginning hes a huge wimp that always needs to be saved by Yuno, as we get further into the series we see Yukiteru grows more courageous and starts to realize that his life is really on the line in this game and also that Yuno is all that she seems to be, with secrets leaking out ever crack she missed.

I’m sorry the summary is so long but with Mirai Nikki I just want to get it right, there are a lot of little details I had to sneak in there because the main points wouldn’t make sense without them!

This series is pretty interesting(I know I said that in the beginning too) and a little confusing, you have to make sure to keep up, it’s got the cover of a cute uncomplicated manga but its nothing like haha I’d say this is on of the cooler manga I’ve read, I haven’t stuck with it because I started it sometime last year and kinda stopped for a little bit and when I was craving it again OneManga.com had gone down(the manga part at least) and my current site doesn’t have as much as a variety as OM did, but I’ll hit it up again soon, reviewing it and reading about it again is really sparking my interest all over!


If your looking for a manga that is pretty much completely different than anything you’ve ever read with a good read along with it this is it, and it also has two side stories, Mirai Nikki: Mosaic, and more recently Paradox, where in Mosaic the story follows two other Diary Holders and helps fill in some plot holes in the main story line, while Paradox is a bit more confusing focusing on Aru, who is a non diary holder a classmate of the two main characters and a clever boy who has a likeing for Yukiteru obviously causing Yuno to hate him and Murumuru who is Deus Ex Machina’s second in command and both of their intentions on going to the alternate universe. I don’t want to spoil anything… so I cant exactly explain Paradox into full depth haha
Grade=B- (because its so darn confusing)

Hana Kimi

Hana Kimi, or Hanazakari no Kimitachi e is a shojo manga by Hisaya Nakajo. It centers around a girl from america named Mizuki and her love(fan girl love) for a high jumping track star named Sano; but when Mizuki finds out Sano has quit high jumping she decides to go to Japan, start attending his school, and talk him into high jumping again; the catch, he goes to an all boys school where Mizuki has to chop off her hair and live her life as a male to keep up her new persona and win over Sano’s heart, but not without dealing with a few haters, love triangles, and usual shojo/high school cliché’s.

I like the twist that hana kimi has to it, the fact that she is technically a boy in everyone’s eyes is pretty funny to me, and how another one of the male main characters, Shuichi, starts crushing on his guy(supposedly) friend Mizuki and he thinks he’s turning gay and goes through a bunch of teen life crisis’s! sucks buts its pretty cute. This shojo of course is cliché but it’s a lot more creative then other ones, and has a lot more ‘moves’ in it that most shojo’s haha

I’ve watched like the first three episodes of the hana kimi live action drama, but I kinda thought it was lame, the person who played mizuki was a real guy, AND he was a completely average joe guy, not cute at all. My girly side did not approve! Haha
But if I don’t count the drama cuz I just wasn’t feeling it the manga is pretty good(for a shojo).
Grade=B+

Eyeshield 21

EyeShield 21, By Yusuke Murata is an American Football based manga. It centers around a young shy and very non-confrontational boy named Sena and his secret ability to run like the wind. At the school Sena attends there is a dead-end American football team that has only two dedicated members, Hiruma the captain/quarterback, and Kurita the main blocker. One day Hiruma witness’s Sena’s speed and agility skills when being bullied at school and immediately recruits him for the schools team, the ‘Demon Devil Bats’ but as Sena does not want anyone to know who he is he takes on the pseudo character of ’Eyeshield 21’ who wear’s an eye protector over his helmet to hide his face. Along the way the team gains more players, expands their own skills, and is constantly making their teamwork better. The manga focus’s on the teams passion for football, and their will to win.

If you love sports manga’s this may be the ultimate one, its long, intense and full of awesome adventures. All the characters that come up in the story line are always developed to a very relatable level and have their own problems and skills to work on. The manga focus on the whole team/individual players strength and weakness’s and how to keep making themselves a greater force. Along with being fun and funny haha its very realistic and had a lot of information to share! This was the most enjoyable way to learn a\bout football for me, I was doing powderpuff for school a year ago and had really no clue about football(Like most of the girls though) and I know can proudly say I can keep up with the sport. 

Except for the fact that’s it’s a very run-on manga I enjoyed it!
Grade=B

BxB Brothers

BxB Brothers is a dumb name for this manga(Yep I’m starting like this). By Ayane Ukyo, this shojo is pretty typical. I gotta stop reading shojo’s..  So its about a girl named Sono who starts attending a new school and is met by three handsome but trouble making boys who take an interest in her. We find out they are in club called ‘BxB Brothers’ and invite her to join them and eventually she agrees; it’s a typical shojo, little adventures, cute love triangles between characters, so much suspense and tension between the characters to just get it on! But they never do.. But compared to some shojos I’d say this one is worth reading, they have good supporting characters and 2 of the main boys are pretty fun, kuremura, who is typically Sono’s love interest, and Hikaru, a male transvestite who likes Sono and is also apart of the BxB brothers club.

It’s cute. I’ll give it that! And it was a pretty easy read, I Just finished it 10 dragged on volumes haha only like three days of reading, and today was Christmas and I still got it done! So if your in the mood for a shojo that’s not half bad, I’d give this one a try, the beginning is a little off, I think the start of the manga is a lot different to what it becomes along the way. It might have something to do with the fact that I think its originally a Chinese manga that translated funny :} haha

But seriously! Until the end and in the beginning the club name isn’t really important! I think they just didn’t know what to name the manga, damn that’s silly!
Grade=C

Homonculus

Homunculus, is a Horror/psychological senin manga by Hideo Yamamoto. The manga takes place in the middle of Tokyo by a local park that is camp to homeless people and across the street is a hotel for the wealthy, this is where a handsome homeless man, Nakoshi, lives in his car on the street between the too. One day walking through the park a punk guy, Manabu, stop and asks him if he can perform trepanation on him for 700,000 Yen(the surgery where they drill a hole in your skull, medieval surgery) in belief that by opening a hole in Nakoshi’s skull he can open a sixth sense. Nakoshi is a misanthrope who does not believe in the supernatural but goes with Manabu who is a surgical doctor who is quite interested in the human behavior from psychological, medical and occult.

Homunculus was awesome, its one of those manga’s that is like super glue but also a headache at the same time. You love it, and where it’s going but just can’t figure it out! Homunculus makes close to no sense as I’m reading it, but is still completely interesting, a lot of it, even though 12 volumes in, has a lot of mystery. Nakoshi does develop a sixth sense, he is able to see other peoples ‘Homunculus’ which are illusion type deformities and when he gets close enough to a person with one he can slowly unravel them and disarm them of their homunculus, but it will then latch itself on to him. The concept is great, I love mangas from Japan where they are realistically from Japan, like the art is actually real and the people are Asian. So along the way of figuring out these ‘homunculu’s’ Nakoshi must deal with his own past, he is a pathological liar who never  tells anyone about himself till he is actually confronted by it when Manabu starts to try to figure this strange homeless man out.

If I could I’d make everyone at least try this one out, it’s a nonsense concept and I love it!
Grade = A-

Death Note

Death Note,  The story written by Tsugumi Ohba and manga art by Takeshi Obata. Alight, I know when it comes to Death Note there are two teams, the first are the people who think its way overrated and just not great, while the team who thinks of Death Note as a work of genius; and I must say, Death note, all around, is one of the best manga’s I’ve ever read and completely deserves all the popularity its gained.

Okay so the story, Death Note is about Light Yagami who is a genius high school student, and one day while looking outside during class he saw a book fall from the sky. After class he went to go see what it was and found out it was the ‘death note’ he takes it home, believing in all the rules it states ‘who’s ever name is written in this notebook shall die’ and is then greeted by the books holder, a shinigami(death god) Ryuk. Light is the new owner of the book and decides to kill all the evil in the world so he can create peace. All the while the world police enlist the help of a world famous detective who goes by the name L to help catch the killer responsible for all these unexplainable criminal deaths. There the story spurts into genius madness, where Light(Kira) and L play a game of cat and mouse to kill each other before the other one does.

I read the manga when it showed up in borders a few years ago, and loved it from the start, and I watched the anime as well, both being great. I still have a lot of questions about death note but I loved it from beginning to end.  I completely say if your not sure if you want to start reading mangas or just want to try this one out start here, it’s the hook!
Grade = A                                                     

Durarara!!!

 Durarara!!! Is a manga/anime by Ryohgo Narita and illustrated by Suzuhito Yasuda. I just got done watching the 24 episodes and one OVA they have out right now. I liked it a lot, its very different and confusing but I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how its supposed to be haha. So we follow the main character Mikado, who wants to experience the exciting life of the city, he transfers schools to where his BFF is, Masomi in Ikebukuro. They soon enough begin a friendship with an attractive girl in there class, anri; The story surrounds about 16 characters, all of them having different significance to the story but what they all have in common are little parts in big things that happen within the city. Its kind of gossipy and crazy and weird. But a pretty good anime that I enjoyed, I especially liked the black ryder character, who is a headless woman who rides around in a ultra strong motorcycle with a cute helmet with cat ears haha

But yes, I’d watch this again no prob, its very fun and all the characters are interesting, anyone could get attached to any of them.
Grade = B-

Absolute Boyfriend

Absolute Boyfriend by Yuu Watase, where a young girl who seems to have no luck with getting guys stumbles upon a website that provides with the 'Absolute Boyfriend' thinking its just a game she fills out the application and personality/qualities of her boyfriend for fun. The next morning before school a giant package is delivered to her house and crazy but a real life human robot is inside! Riiko, the main character, is blown away and embarrassed not knowing what to do with it before her next door neighbor and childhood friend comes and picks her up for school. Soshi, the neighbor, is avoided and Riiko ignores her new handsome boyfriend for awhile because she is freaked out but when Night, absolute boyfriend, protects her from some boy that turned her down and was now making fun of her, she falls head over heels for Night. The story is virtually a love triangle between Riiko, Night, and Soshi, both wanting to be with her but she is always falling for Night as he was made for her.

The art and main male characters are really great and like most shojo mangas, its really cute, and probably one of the more longer and better shojo's but I myself get sick of them about half way through but since I committed to it that much might as well finish it (True Otaku) so I'd say if your looking for a cute shojo this is it, took me three days to read the series by the way haha. Like i said, Shojo's aren't my fave..
Grade = C+

Gantz



Gantz is an extremely gory, sexual, sci-fi(but also realistic), awesome manga by Hiroya Oku that I've only read the manga so far but really, words can't explain how much I've gotten addicted so quick! I had never wanted to read it before because it's really long, and I keep up with naruto, it makes sense to me. BUT! so this story is about people who die, usually in pretty tragic ways, like being slaughtered by an express subway, Suicide, Shootings, you name it; and after these random people die they are transported to a room. Gantz is the giant black orb that resides in the room, even now most of the game is still a big mystery that the players are always trying to figure out. The people in the room are sent on live or die missions, located still where they live, but no one can see them or the 'aliens' 'monsters' they were sent there to fight, Gantz gives his players and protective and superhuman suit along with T-Guns(Crazy ultra neat futuristic guns) if you die in the fight to stop the aliens you die for good and do not return to the room, if you live and defeat the monster you go back to the room, where you receive points for your killings, and are let free back into the real world. But the catch is you'll keep being brought back. You will live your normal life but until you receive 100 points. Which I can't tell you anymore because that gets to much into the plot and little twists and turns of this manga.

I've never read gory manga before but I have no problem with it I've learned! Gantz is completely interesting and for how long it is everything involved strings along wonderfully, the fight scenes are way better than anything you'd read in Jump! The characters supporting characters are always changing(dying) so you'll never get bored and it really has every aspect to a what a great manga should be like. Plus the chicks are hott.

Grade = A

Paprika

Paprika the film was based off Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993 novel of the same name. It's about a crazy creative story that takes place in the near future where a psychologist creates a device in which the user can travel through people's dreams. But one of the doctors uses it illegally to treat patients outside the research center; the doctor uses an alter-ego named 'Paprika' to enter people's dreams. A problem arises when three of the prototypes to this invention have been stolen and paprika goes on an amazing journey to find them. Traveling through a surreal and Sci-Fi world with beautiful colors where reality and dream world combine! Anyone could admire and this completely new and interesting story that would surely blow anyone's mind. I highly recommend trying this movie out, even if you don't think you'd enjoy 'Anime Crap' it just like any other really great movie that you must see! Also for those who really liked inception, "Christopher Nolan indirectly cited the film as an influence for Inception."
Grade = A