Topic: Anime & Manga (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

At episode 333 of Bleach (dubbed)

Why do you bold everything?

I started bolding the names of games, shows, & stuff like that when I first came here, and it's just a habit now, lol.

My thinking was that if someone was just skimming through the forums, as a lot seem to do, by bolding the main subject(s) they'd know if there's something in my post they'd be interested in or not.

That's... actually a brilliant idea!

Well I ended Dandy and have started Jojo. I'm almost done with Magi now, I'm about 18 eps in. Once I finish Magi season 1, and the first arc of Jojo (9 episodes) I'll get back to HxH and One Piece. Inferno Cop continues to amuse me as it is perhaps the strangest anime I've seen. Tonari no Seki-kun is also hilarious, but in a very different way. On a separate note I've started to watch The Boondocks, not that it's anime, but it's heavily anime styled so I thought I'd mention it.

A second season of Non Non Biyori has been announced. No specific date was given, but I expect it to be released around the time the second season ofKiniro Mosaic airs.

As for the last season of anime I watched, I finished up on Log Horizon, Tokyo Ravens, Kill la Kill, Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai! Ren, and Mikakunin de Shikoukei. I very much enjoyed these series for the most part, although Chuu2byou Ren felt a little slow during the middle episodes.

From this season I saw the first episodes of Selector Infected WIXOSS and Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei. The two anime seem to set themselves up to have some "epic" or action packed drama, which I thought was a little overbearing to watch. I think I'll rather skip on them for now.

I also watched the first episode of Love Live! S2 today, and it was fun; I thought it was pretty hilarious how some characters changed from the previous season. I'm guessing this will be the last season it'll have based on how the episode set itself up, oh well.

Well I just finished Jojo Part 1: Phantom Blood. (First 9 eps) That was a surprising and somewhat of a downer ending too. Still, I'm excited for Part 2: Battle Tendency. Of course, I won't be able to start that 'till Thursday, Crunchyroll will be releasing episode 2 of Part 3 and Battle Tendency simultaneously.

yay more Non Non Biyori! Out of all the slice of life that came out last year (and my gosh there was a lot), I'd rank it pretty high.

Also, I never noticed how quickly all these idol series popped up. Are they any good? I heard one of the songs from Love Live, or was it Date a Live, a while ago and I thought it was alright. I have a soft spot for music based anime after all

_{EDIT: Definitely Love Live, lol. Date a Live doesn't even have anything to do with idols haha}

@Jollykarp Unrelated to your post (sorry ) but have you finished Goodnight Punpun? If so, what did you think of it?

@TheKingOfTown nope, haven't gotten around to reading it yet :/

I don't tend to read dramatic stuff in semester too. But I shall get around to it eventually!

@Jollykarp: If you liked watching Non Non Biyori then you'll probably enjoy Love Live! as well. Once you get to episode 3 you'll probably get hooked.

As for other idol anime series, I tried watching The IdolM@ster for a bit but I found it to be extremely boring (especially the first episode). Also, there are a lot more characters in it than in Love Live!. I dropped The IdolM@ster after a while though; I didn't feel like watching all 26 episodes.

Another idol anime I haven't had a chance to watch, but want to, is AKB0048. It's a crazy anime where the girls featured in it are based on the actual AKB48 Japanese idol group, except the story is set in the future where they have to save the world from evil by singing and using the power of friendship. Oh, and they sometimes fight with their mic sabers (microphones with laser swords), mechas, and other weapons. ._.

Read the newest chapter of History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi earlier!

Well, I've finished the Balbadd Arc of Magi. It reminded me of the Alabasta Arc of One Piece in a lot of ways...but overall it was pretty great arc IMO. Tonight I watched the first episode of the Sindria Arc, and it was really good! It also caught my attention recently that Tonari no Seki-kun, which was told to have 13 episodes, has now had that number expanded to 26! I'm happy to see that this short series will keep going through to the end of the Spring Season.

I saw the first episode of Hitsugi no Chaika (Chaika the Coffin Princess) today. It started off with a pretty good OP song before proceeding with the usual background story. One thing that quickly caught my attention was the flat animation. The characters barely stand out from the background.

As for the actually content of the story, I thought it was pretty good. There's wizards with guns, mythical familiars, blood and gore, and ninjas/mercenaries? Another thing I noticed was the design for the main female protagonist. Her dress really stands out compared to the other characters and it seems like she's always carrying around a coffin with her.

I just found a rather funny comparison of the level of detail in the art of One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach.

lol!

I've finished watching Gurren Lagann today.
it became my favorite anime ever.
also this song

It doesn't matter how detailed or sparse the art style is, as long as it conveys the story well~

Ehh I suppose, but more detail fleshes your location out much more IMO. Then again, if minimalism is the style than that's fine though, but it needs to be done well. I own the first two volumes of Bleach, and those low details in that pic don't really seem to be the style lol. I find really detailed drawings, like Oda's, to be compelling, sweeping in scope, and make the setting that much more rich. The more I look into it, the more I want to buy more manga. Several series, Rurouni Kenshin, Toriko, D.Gray-Man, and Blue Exorcist to name some are titles I want to read as opposed to watch for various reasons. Especially after reading the first chapter of D.Gray-Man on Viz Media's App.

Speaking of which, I don't buy anything from Viz's app at all, and I never will. But I still love the app, because it allows me to read the first chapter of almost any manga for free, giving me a "sample" or "trailer" to whet my appetite if you will. It helps that the opening chapter of a manga is usually much longer than a standard one, around 50-70 pages on average. While some of the chapters don't really grab me, Hunter X Hunter's was one of the main reasons I started to watch the anime, and now that I've read the first chapter of D.Gray-Man I really want to read it. (Not watch it, I here the anime messes too much up) I've also really been wanting to buy the Magi Manga ever since I read the chapter (Which I did after starting to watch actually) and because I hear a lot about the anime deviating and the manga overall being better.

So in the end, despite the fact that I'm more of an anime person, I really feel an urge to expand my measley manga collection soon...if only I had the cash... ;_; (Right now my "collection" consists of volumes 1-2 of Bleach, volumes 1-4 of Fullmetal Alchemist, volumes 1-7 of One Piece, volume 1 of Pokemon Adventures, and volume of Trigun with omibus 1 of Trigun Maximum, meaning I still need vol 2 of Trigun ha.)

Lol, I'm actually kind of the opposite of you. I read manga really fast, so I can't help but feel detailed artwork gets lost on me. Very rarely do I slow down and enjoy the scenery :/

And yes, there's always the nice feeling of owning the anime and manga you like. It's costly though, and I can't begin to think of where I'd store all my favourite manga if I bought them haha

Well, I very rarely read manga online unless there's no other option, or if I'm not particularly interested in buying it. (Dragon Ball, but mostly because of it's translation, not because I dislike it) Thanks to the fact that I own the volumes, I like to read fast the first time, but pour over the illustrations and enjoy them after. While I'm not a huge fan of the way Viz translates One Piece, but they do a decent job and it's my favorite series so I still buy it. I know it's expensive, but it's more worth it and does help the industry. I keep 'em all on my bookshelf, but they don't even occupy a full shelf yet haha.