[Manga Monday] The Crap Pile
No, “The Crap Pile” is not a name of a manga (to my knowledge. Care to prove me wrong?) This week, I’m piling together all the crappy manga that didn’t even deserve to have 400 words written about each of them. Most of these I dropped after a few volumes or chapters, but one I stuck out to the end (and it was only three volumes) so… Yeah. Read on if you dare; some of these mini-reviews may be incoherent due to my intense hatred for all things fail-y.
Full Contact
A guy likes a girl who likes martial artists, so he expresses interest in becoming one himself. As a result, he’s randomly forced to join a dojo filled with young vaguely bishounen-y guys… and one cute girl. And high school stuff ensues, and there’s bullies that the main character punches, and then I stopped reading it because holy crap I felt my brains falling out my ears.
Mamotte Shugogetten
Tokyopop’s Cute Little Romantic Comedy #9001 is pretty disgraceful. It has character designs from hell (read: the early nineties) and it does absolutely nothing to break the molds of the genre. (I hate romantic comedies anyway, but at least stuff like Kampfer takes the comedy to a new level and has actual awesomeness and stuff.) Anyway, Mamotte is basically a rip-off of Ah! My Goddess, and it doesn’t even manage to make its characters as appealing as its spiritual predecessor. tl;dr: Pass on Mamotte Shugogetten unless you’re really desperate for something to make your otaku self feel better.
.hack//Legend of the Twilight
I reviewed this one two years ago, but I reread it recently… and it’s even worse than I remembered. It has its points of utter awesomeness, but really, what the heck was the point of this series?! Its characters are weaker than a piece of loose-leaf, its art is ridiculously inconsistent, and it throws out more comedy cliches than Mamotte Shugogetten above. I can’t believe I gave it a 4.5 out of 10 last time. Deserves more like a 3, and that’s only because the last volume has a decent Crowning Moment of Awesome.
Lagoon Engine Einsatz
Oh, Yukiru Sugisaki. You pulled me into your realm of awesomeness with D.N. Angel, and I opened Lagoon Engine Einsatz expecting something close to that level of epicness. Don’t get me wrong – the art in LEE is absolutely amazing, and the emo poetry at the beginning of each chapter is kinda neat. But other that that, it’s a waste of paper. The characters are horrendously flat and the beauty of the universe you’ve crafted falls apart by the end of the first volume. We can’t appreciate your genius when it gets jumbled and random and mindscrewy beyond recognition.
Macross 7 Trash
It’s Macross… without the music and mecha. It’s a series about EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEME ROLLERSKATING (a la Air Gear) and a little bit of romance. In other words, it’s a recipe for failure, and it kinda implodes on itself within the first two chapters. Sigh.
Safe to say, the above series are among the worst manga I’ve ever read. Or maybe I’m just slightly warped and have obscenely high standards for what I read. Thoughts?
~CJ
