Newbie need help1

emotionalocean

Hi, I'm a newbie to the manga, and I was wondering if anyone can advice me on which manga books are suitable for a beginner?

thanks!:D

sharingan

emotionalocean wrote:

Hi, I'm a newbie to the manga, and I was wondering if anyone can advice me on which manga books are suitable for a beginner?

Thats an extremely open ended question with no real answer. If you can deal with reversed reading order, and manga's precocious tendency to mix seriousness with comedy, really any manga of worth can serve as an introductory material.

All Time Favourites:
My taste in manga is less eclectic than my taste in anime, I tend to be a straight comedy & action guy when it comes to manga. I find girls/womens manga comics to work well when it comes to outright comedy and light hearted drama. Nodame Cantabile is excellent, and it passed the girlfriend test too. Azumanga Daioh and Yotub&! are straight comedies also and highly enjoyable. For action manga, my tastes run to manga that are quite similar to western comics: Battle Angel Alita and its sequel Battle Angel Alita: Last Order, Gunsmith Cats (wait for second edition) and Cannon God Exaxxion. My all time favourite is Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Blade of the Immortal is considered *the* best Samurai manga.

Tokyopop/easy to get
Theres not a lot of the straight Tokyopop stuff that really does a lot for me, however I have really liked Immortal Rain, Tokyo Babylon was excellent as a kind of x-files thing, Lament of the Lamb was a nice downbeat vampire story, Remote is a personal favourite, though I recognise that it is not perfect by any means. I also really liked Chobits - one of the main 'odd-girlfiend' type of mens-romance stories and I am a fan of DearS which is a similar story except with aliens (not robots). Fruits Basket is something I really have to get back into someday.

Tokyopop with strong anime versions of their manga[]
Gundam manga while good, really is drawing on your fandom of its anime incarnations. As a result I really like Ecole du Ciel. I am a big fan of the Mahoromatic anime/manga too, but its a bit specialised. Planetes was a very good manga, but the anime was better. I am starting to get into Rozen Maiden, loved the anime, and I liked DearS by the same author. The Seikai Trilogy and the Scrapped Princess manga are really only for fans of the respective anime series.

Viz, import only
I dont tend to go for the really big manga series that Viz tend to go for (expense), basically the Shonen Jump stuff. Though I am currently collecting Full Metal Alchemist (action, fantasy) and Cheeky Angel (funny, magic, gangs) in addition to those mentioned in my favourites. I am collecting, but haven't read any of Midoris Days (odd girlfirend - literally the guys right hand turns into a girl) and Full Moon (magic/pop star), two anime series that I am a big fan of.

Dark Horse, import/online/comic book store only
Most of my Dark Horse picks are mentioned above.

Del Rey/Tanoshimi
Probably my fave publisher at the moment. I collect Tsubasa (only okay so far - CLAMP), xxxHolic (much better), Genshiken - comedy, p*sstake of anime/manga fandom, superb and Nodame Cantabile (excellent).

Eva24

Keep an eye on Tanoshimi. They've released a good few of the Del Rey titles recently [always nice to get a cheaper edition]

School Rumble is something similar to the themes and humour of Azumanga Daioh! and Yot&uba

Saiyuki and Saiyuki Reload [tokyopop] loosely based off 'journey to the west' I really recommend this one of my all time favourites.

Love Hina and Negima, same author but really enjoyable.

Maybe you could mention your favourite genres and it would help narrow it down. You said yourself that you're a beginner, I started with shojo [y'know, chick lit manga ] and kiddie manga [and that's not today or yesterday] but It quickly led me onto the better stuff.

sme

lone wolf and cub or samurai executioner are most excellent. i've read the first 10 vols of love hina and thought its very repeditive. but i'm into more historic/fantasy stuff rather than comedy/fan service type manga.
your question is akin to how long is a piece of string, it is all a matter of opinion

GWolf

Beginner. I'd say start with something aimed at the younger crowd first, like the Yu Gi Oh Mangas, then move onto the real good stuf, like say Love Hina or something. I wouldn't start with them cause they can be kinda surprising if your new to it all.

I'd especially recommend XXXholic. Excellent. And AI Love U, by the same author as Negima and Love Hina. MAerimanga, Sokaora Refugees.

sharingan

Hmm, I would probably keep my distance from the Ken Akamatsu stuff. His humour can be very repetitive, and theres a big cash outlay for his series (they are big). Love Hina got pretty repetitive very fast (i.e. book 4). If I was to recommend any of KA's stuff, I would probably direct you to Negima first.

I would probably also skip the Amerimanga/OEL Manga/World Manga (whatever they call it now). Nothing against the kids who do this stuff, but its average quality is far below the japanese standard, and in many cases the titles are highly derivative.

One factor that is pretty important in beginner manga recommendations is that you don't commit to a big series. A lot of the Gollanz/Viz titles over here are pretty cheap, but those manga series are freakin huge. One Piece - what 30/40 volumes in Japan at this stage?

Actually Maison Ikkoku is only 15 volumes. Which is reasonable considering the lower purchase price. Still, I would probably be recommending shorter series anyway, perhaps capping your manga purchases around the €50 mark. That translates to around 5-7 volumes only.

Eva24

Forbidden Planet in Dublin does three volumes of Manga for 25 Euro at the moment. I agree with Sharingan on the length of series. There are new chapters of Naruto and Bleach out on an almost weekly basis. There's well over thirty volumes at the moment and it will only increase.
better to research the length of a series online first so you can be sure

carbonkid

Whatever your taste in manga you cant go wrong with Rurouni Kenshin! ^_^

sme

if you are looking for a short series then trigun should sort you out. it was one of the first manga i read. it is only three volumes (not including maxium with some people tell me are a continuation of the originals.) after reading the first three vols i saw the anime and thought it was amazingly slow moving due to the fact that pretty much all of the main story of the anime is covered in the manga.

so if you are looking for a good manga, i'd recommend yasuhiro nightow's trigun.

samurai x? i suppose we are all entitled to our our tastes.