Forum - View topicJason Thompson's House of 1000 Manga - After School Nightmare
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Graceful Nanami
Posts: 303 Location: United States |
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Pretty much one of the best, most thought-provoking and unique manga I've ever read. And it has gorgeous artwork. It's so... normal and yet so damn otherworldly.
And you really should do a column on Basara by Yumi Tamura. 
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phoenixphire24
 Posts: 260 Location: SoCal |
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Wow, this sounds like a complex and interesting series (and horror, yeah!). I'll definitely keep an eye out for it at the used bookstore. Damn, I need more money.
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Graceful Nanami
Posts: 303 Location: United States |
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^ Go! Comi (the English publisher) is no more, sadly, so good luck with that.
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Bara_Megami
Posts: 106 |
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I just read volume 8 yesterday after taking a long break from the series (I was disappointed with the events in volume 7, so I gave up for awhile) and I was think about how this would be a great series to cover for this column, so what a coincidence
. Volumes 9 & 10 are near impossible to find for a reasonable price, so good luck to everyone wanting to read this series...
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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I'm surprised to read this opinion. While I think it's accurate for the first three volumes (if my memory serves. Perhaps it was four?) I recall that after this the series first degenerated into gay romance cliches (discarding the gender issue sophistication this article mentions) then into plot twists for twists' sake, then into total nonsense, all the while the fantastic but not esoteric dream sequences became few and far between. I found it unreadable several volumes before the end.
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Graceful Nanami
Posts: 303 Location: United States |
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Total nonsense? Nah.
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Sewingrose
 Posts: 579 |
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I dearly love this series, and wish I'd heard about it before it went out of print and the prices became insane.
It is a manga, and there is over-exaggeration, but it had a sort of honesty to the topics of gender and sexuality that I don't think I've seen done in a manga or anime before. And the dynamic between the main three felt so very lovely complicated. In fact all of the characters are very real and share the twisty-turny nature of the world in their personalities. It's also one of the few mangas I read that knew how to actually use Symbolism right. |
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phoenixphire24
Posts: 260 Location: SoCal |
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Aww, boo. I'll certainly check the used bookstores for them, but that's disappointing to hear. Of course that just means I'll find 1-8 and then have to give an arm and a leg for the rest. 
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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As I said when someone reviewed this in Right Turn Only!, I was able to find the entire series through my library system. Try there if you can't find it anywhere to purchase. I also agree that the ending, while it might piss off some people, makes so much sense that it cast the whole series in a new light for me. Especially if spoiler[you know more about Japanese conceptions of pre-birth life, which is... complicated to say the least]. And I really love the journey that the characters go through to get where they are at the end. It was an excellent, if deeply disturbing series. |
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Princess_Irene
ANN Associate Editor
 Posts: 2655 Location: The castle beyond the Goblin City |
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Agreed! I loved trying to figure out the ending as well - at one point my sisters and I were convinced spoiler[they were in purgatory], and I suppose we weren't that far off. Both my youngest sister and I kept chanting the "Kagome, kagome" rhyme that we learned from, well, Kagome Kagome, but it took us a bit to really grasp the significance. I join Jason in really hoping more of Setona Mizushiro's work makes it into English, but for the Francophones out there, most of her catalog is available in French, and Amazon.ca is pretty affordable. |
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wandering-dreamer
 Posts: 1733 |
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I found the first two volumes of this at a local library and liked what I read so I've been meaning to try and find the rest of the series, little scared to look at the prices for volumes nine and ten on Amazon now however.
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chrisb
 Subscriber Posts: 641 Location: USA |
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^ I would check your local Half Price Books. Every single one I've been to has a few volumes with some random 9s and 10s available
The best thing about this series was the beautiful imagery. There are a lot of shots like the flower faced girl. The symbolism is a little too simple at times, but it's effective and it fits. |
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st_owly
 Posts: 5234 Location: Edinburgh, Scotland |
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I'm so glad I discovered this by accident, whilst it was still being released (RIP Go Comi). I have all 10 volumes and can't wait to have them back (They're at my parents' now) It's one of the most beautiful series I've ever read, and it really tugs at the heartstrings, whilst also managing to be really creepy at the same time. I found the ending made more sense the second time you read it. I'm sure I remember reading an author's note somewhere that said something along the lines of "Go back and read it again, and see if you notice the clues pointing to the ending."
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
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Agggh! I posted twice by mistake! -_- ;;
Last edited by ptolemy18 on Thu Aug 25, 2011 10:50 am; edited 1 time in total |
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ptolemy18
Manga Reviewer/Creator/Taster
Posts: 357 Location: San Francisco |
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Yeah, I thought the same thing for awhile. It's a very dark and disturbing series and throughout the series, I kept thinking "This has got to turn around at some point and suddenly become 'positive.'" But... spoiler[ instead of what I thought would happen, which would be that 'graduation' turns out to be some great thing and all the characters who graduate are happy and content with themselves, graduation turns out to be REALLY SCARY... but it's still better than the alternative. I had actually thought for awhile that the whole graduation thing was a metaphor for how short life is, and for death -- i.e., like the nurse says in the quote, "you've got a little time in this world to sort through your issues, and then you're dead. Good luck." And that *is* sort of what it's like, but that would have been too depressing even for this manga; the manga's actual ending is more cyclical, like reincarnation, like birth and death are both just passages between different worlds. That being the case, the gender issues both make sense in the context of the whole twins thing that's specific to Mashiro, and it's also like the hero/ine is choosing (or discovering) her identity for her new life. I think the message is that we're put in this world to discover (or choose) who we are, and there's some core of 'us' that we may get to take on to the next world. Because if this is the way we're born, maybe this is the way we die too? (Hmm, now I'm thinking about "YuGiOh: Millennium World." How'd that happen? -_-) ] |
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