This is an incredible manga series (and, for that matter, anime - although for the anime, I'd really recommend the fansubs, as the English release is This is an incredible manga series (and, for that matter, anime - although for the anime, I'd really recommend the fansubs, as the English release is agonizingly bad). And the thing is, it shouldn't be this good. It's about a bunch of Go-obsessed people. Who talk about Go. And play Go. And argue about Go.
And yet it's the most compelling, involving, and fun manga I've ever read. Partly, this is because of the characters - Shindou Hikaru, Touya Akira, and Fujiwara-no-Sai are realistic and interesting, and the relationship between Shindou and Touya is, well, very slashy, if you're me. But it's entrancing whether you read it that way or not. The secondary characters are likewise engaging. And the artwork is incredible, especially in the later volumes.
And it has no typical manga elements. There are no battles, just shouting matches over Go games (and refusal to play Go games, and playing Go games with the wrong people or in the wrong way). No one levels up, although they certainly get better at Go. The only really typical manga element is the destined rivalry, and it's between guys playing Go, not ninjas or whatever.
Oh, I'm doing this badly. And that's because I really can't communicate the joy of Hikaru no Go in words. But it's fabulous all the same, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone. ...more
GetBackers is a fun manga, but, in my opinion, is actually more accessible in anime form.
The manga art is unusually hard to follow - particularly in GetBackers is a fun manga, but, in my opinion, is actually more accessible in anime form.
The manga art is unusually hard to follow - particularly in fight scenes, and especially in the first five volumes or so, I would have had a hard time figuring out what was going on if I hadn't already seen the anime. And the plot and content of the anime follows the manga relatively closely; you aren't missing a lot by restricting yourself just to the anime series, if you choose.
And, actually, this is not a series I'd recommend to people who don't read manga regularly. It has a lot of the manga conventions - the video-game style fight scenes and moves, chibis, etc. - that tend to turn people new to the genre off of manga.
But I enjoy the series a lot. Ban and Ginji are incredibly adorable and so very obviously doing it that even some of the official art has them in, like, wedding garb. (And we won't even talk about the slashiness of the secondary characters; Kazuki and Juubei are, as far as I can tell, canonically a couple.) The world is interesting, the characterizations are fun - basically, this series is reading candy for the manga inclined....more
thefourthvine
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