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Manga Bookshelf

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pluto

3 Things Thursday: tl;dr

April 7, 2011 by MJ 28 Comments

It happens to everyone at some point or another, for some reason or another. Sooner or later, every manga fan will drop a series they previously liked–maybe even loved–out of boredom, disappointment, or just plain oversight. And though a significant part of what draws me particularly to manga is its tendency towards long-form storytelling, it’s happened to me too.

Though as Kate Dacey recently stated, breaking up is hard to do, sometimes making up is even harder. Once you’ve let a few volumes pass for this reason or that, even if your intention is to pick a series back up, the catch-up can be daunting. So on this 3 Things Thursday, I’ve decided to take a look at 3 series I’ve dropped, intentionally or not, why I dropped them, and what my chances are of returning to the fold.

3 series MJhas failed to continue:

1. Bleach | Tite Kubo | Viz Media – At this point, I suppose I know more fans who have stopped reading Tite Kubo’s shounen battle epic than those who have kept on, but for my part, I’m actually a little surprised. While it’s absolutely true that I tend to find its long battle sequences tragically uninteresting, the point at which I dropped the series (after volume 28) feels a bit sad. Yes, the series was headed into a (likely) long stretch of battles, none of which I was keen on sitting through, but it had also just produced two of my favorite volumes of the entire series. With such riches so recently offered up, why did I stop reading?

I think it’s possible that $9.99 a volume just felt like too much to spend to wade through another swath of battles, waiting for the next bit of juicy characterization to finally materialize. Now I’m more than five volumes behind. Return? Unlikely.

2. Otomen | Aya Kanno | Viz Media – Otomen is a series that has left me tormented. On one hand, it’s absolutely brilliant. I mean really, truly, a gorgeous piece of work. But much like one of Kate’s drop-ees, Detroit Metal City, a person could die waiting for something to actually happen. These series are like old-school television sitcoms. Though at any moment it might seem like something significant could happen, changing its characters’ lives in truly dramatic ways, everything is back to normal by the end of the episode, with everyone safely returned to exactly where they started. As brilliant as the series’ premise is, it’s failed for me as long-form storytelling, and unless there’s going to be some genuine forward motion in plot or characterization, I’m loathe to give it more of my time.

I stopped reading this series after volume five, though on some level, it broke my heart to do so. It’s such a smart, funny series. But what’s an epic-loving girl to do?

3. Pluto | Naoki Urasawa/Osamu Tezuka | Viz Media – This dropped series is the saddest of them all, because I had no intention of dropping it at all. And though I understand how it happened, I’m not sure how to get back on track. Back in July of 2009, I wrote an entry called Tears and Manga, inspired by my experience with volume four of Pluto, which had so affected me with the death of a mechanical dog in its first chapter, that I was unable to continue reading at the time. Now, any regular reader of this blog will know that I love to be hurt by fiction. Really I do. I love to feel deeply about what I’m reading, even if those feelings are difficult to handle. I fully expected to jump right back into Pluto, one of my very favorite series at the time, once I’d recovered from the hurt, and I expected to read it eagerly to the end. But the truth is, I haven’t. In fact, I don’t even own past volume five.

How do I return, now that I’ve failed to buy the rest of the series? Can my heart or my pocketbook ever manage it? I sincerely hope so.


Readers, what beloved series have you dropped and why?

Filed Under: 3 Things Thursday Tagged With: bleach, otomen, pluto

Tears and Manga

July 29, 2009 by MJ 32 Comments

So, I picked up volume four of Pluto earlier this evening, anxious to dig in to the latest volume of my favorite manga series this year. My plans were dashed less than a chapter in, however, when I became so emotional that I actually had to put it down. Since this volume is new, I’ll avoid any details. Suffice it to say this was a fairly small incident (relative to the scope of the work as a whole) that just happened to hit me unusually hard. This isn’t a fatal issue, of course. I’ll pick it up again once I feel I’ve recovered, perhaps in a less vulnerable moment. Nor is it a criticism of Pluto, by any means. I want to be moved deeply by fiction. That’s why I read it. It’s a powerful testament to the craft of both Tezuka and Urasawa that the series is able to affect me so strongly.

hachi-tears-smWhat this experience brings to mind now as I remain here uselessly in my chair, not quite ready to pick up anything else, is other moments in manga that have brought me to tears. …

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Filed Under: FEATURES Tagged With: banana fish, fullmetal alchemist, her majesty's dog, hikaru no go, manga, nana, pluto, tokyo babylon, we were there

Pluto, Volume 3

June 13, 2009 by MJ 9 Comments

Pluto, Vol. 3
By Naoki Urasawa & Osamu Tezuka
Published by Viz Media

pluto3
Buy This Book

Based on the story “The Greatest Robot on Earth” from Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy series, Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto takes place in a future world in which robots and humans live as equals. It begins by following a detective named Gesicht (a robot with exceptional sensory abilities) as he takes on two similar cases–the murder of a robot war hero who was beloved by the world and the murder of an activist who worked to preserve existing robot civil rights laws. Though the lack of physical evidence at both crime scenes suggests that a robot is the culprit, robot laws forbid a robot from killing a human which makes that possibility complicated and potentially very volatile.

…

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Filed Under: MANGA REVIEWS Tagged With: manga, pluto

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