Another week in the books. Let’s chat about manga in the general discussion thread! Feel free to use this thread for questions, comments, recommendations, etc.
Like normal, please be careful with spoilers. I wrote a guide about spoilers in case you need a refresher on how to handle them (also linked in the sidebar).
Not sure where else to put this, but I appreciate ani.social for new anime/manga discovery. Sometimes I toggle on Local and look around, and I often find an anime or manga title that sounds interesting, I click it, I look it up online and maybe read some discussion here about it if applicable, and add it to my ever-growing list of stuff to read or watch.
It is also funny because I see people writing that they didn’t like an anime or manga for X reason, and X reason is exactly what draws me to it. I find both positive and negative reviews pretty useful as long as you say why you (dis)liked it. You tell people what kind of content is there (often tells more than just the promo content for the anime/manga/book/film/game/whatever it is), and they can judge for themselves. I always toss over an upvote to these because they are useful on telling me if I’d like the content or not, even if the opinion they have on the work ends up being opposite to mine.
Glad you find all my (and others) writing about random series useful! I agree with you that a review (positive or negative) is way more useful when some reasoning is provided. I think it is some kind of universal law that the to-watch/to-read backlog only ever grows.
Alright, birthday week over, back to a normal week of manga…
Here are a couple series I wanted to mention from what I read this past week:
This series is kind of like Mary-san in that it is single-page chapters and they are released quite frequently. I saw that this series is coming to an end later this month. So, I just thought I would plug it here. I don’t think I have posted about this series before, but I have enjoyed my time with it. Mitsuki, the female lead, is incredibly cute, and really embodies the hot and cold nature of cats in that they will crave your attention until they absolutely don’t want it…no middle ground.
Alright, I am sure some of you just rolled your eyes at me from the title. “Not another one of wjs018’s bakery-themed series…” I hear you, but…well, that is exactly what this is. I am only a handful of chapters in so far and it is kind of like Bocchi the Baker. The MC is a shut-in that has helped her family’s bakery over the years through things like graphic design for the menus and mascots. However, she suddenly has the manager role thrust upon her and she has to figure out how to interact both with the customers, but also the employees. It has been a lot of fun so far.
This is a single-page oneshot that I came across in the recent updates page. The premise is basically what it says on the tin, but I was just impressed at how much story this one was able to tell in a single page.
Only two chapters out for this one so far, but I am not sure I am going to continue it. Basic premise is that a couple of neighbors/childhood friends see each other alot and hang out. The girl gets a cat that begins to try to set the two friends up and take the step into a romantic relationship. The main thing I had a hard time looking past in this one is that the guy that the cat is talking with kept saying things like how he doesn’t want to be more than friends with his neighbor. However, the cat basically just ignores this and still tries to orchestrate romcom moments between the two. It’s just, if the characters both only want to be friends, then why try to force them together?
Fun fact: in addition to the meaning we usually see (underestimate), nameru/舐める can also mean “to lick or taste”. So the title can translate to either “Don’t underestimate bread” or “Don’t taste bread”.
It can also mean “to burn”, but I don’t think it works in the sense of burning food. I think it’s probably more like “to scorch”. I can’t seem to find any examples of it being used this way, so I’ll hold off on whether “Don’t burn bread” is also a valid translation.
Japanese puns are next level sometimes. So, if I understand jisho correctly, when it is written in kana (ナメる) it usually means underestimate, but with the kanji (舐める) it usually means to lick. I would have never picked up on the pun due to the writing difference. In the actual native title it is written as ナメる, so that is why the English title probably went with the underestimate translation, but the lick pun is fun.
Started reading The Moon On A Rainy Night last week after someone shared it here. It’s quite nice. Was happy to see it have an official translation too.
Speaking of which, the Bocchi The Rock spinoff with Hiroi Kikuri is also getting a translation!
I also finally decided to just sail the seven seas for Girl Meets Rock after several months of no updates on the situation from Manga Plus. Is it that hard to get the rights to publish overseas? Yen Press managed to do it with The Guy’s Not A Guy After All (I think, I only skimmed it so far). If so, why not pull a JoJo? Or is it something else after all?
Glad you are enjoying The Moon On a Rainy Night. I have been really into it since I found it and am glad that I have gotten a couple people to read along with me now.
I’m unfortunately not going to read along with the community, as the official volumes are 2 behind
Other than those I posted (and a metric ton of manhwa about villainesses), this week the two biggest discoveries for me where:
It’s a fun story of a wrongly transmigrated (how novel) woman into the classic medieval/magic/dungeons world. To ‘compensate’ her for their mistake, the god of that world trains her to be a skilled pharmacist. The story is relatively simple and cute, with some hints of romance. Since it’s on Alpha-Manga, it took me forever to manage to read the available chapters. Wish they would just release a subscription tier instead of their stupid points.
Instead of transmigrated pharmacist, loli alchemist. The first chapter had me in tears with the constant loli doing something noises. The story is extremely cute, for once the parents are absolutely great and supportive, and the main protagonist is absolutely adorable. 🥰
their stupid points.
Those are the worst. It’s the reason why I only have Manga Plus for legal manga, other than buying volumes
It annoys me to no end. I purchase the stuff I like when available in my country, but this is neither on Play Books, nor Kindle. Only that 💩.
Alpha Manga has some of their stuff on Kindle, like May I Ask For One Final Thing, but only on Kindle… I prefer Kobo.
Sadly not that, at least where I live. 😢
Yeah, Alpha Manga doesn’t link to it either, like they do with the other one sadly.
Sailor Moon
I finished the Sailor Moon manga last week. It was pretty good! Between the manga and the TV show I’d say I prefer the manga more. The TV show had a lot of filler, and the filler gave lots of opportunities to flesh out the characters of Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Venus especially, but it was a much better time experiencing the story at a sane pace instead of waiting dozens of episodes at a time for something to finally happen. The final arc especially was much better this way.
Char’s Daily Life
I’m nearly done with the second volume of this one. It’s a goofy AU where Char and other Zeon characters, primarily from UC Gundam’s One-Year-War, are living in modern-day Japan. Char has amnesia and is just trying to get by. It actually ended up feeling a lot like Gintama, but not quite as cleverly written as Gintama. Still a fun read, and well worth having bought for the cover art alone.
I absolutely adored Sailor Moon when it originally came out! 🥰
