The Old School Otaku Lounge

Lately, I've been spotting some classic manga being reissued in a thick, omnibus collected volume format. So far, I've spotted Kimagure Orange Road and Maison Ikkoku at convenience stores, and Golgo 13 is being reissued as well.

There seems to be no lack of love for the classics in Japan.

Oh gosh, I hate Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. Basically every single student of mine likes One Piece, and I just can't stand that show. Especially Luffy. Why on earth would they make the lead character look like a complete moron? How can anyone think that imbecile is cool?

greg wrote:Lately, I've been spotting some classic manga being reissued in a thick, omnibus collected volume format. So far, I've spotted Kimagure Orange Road and Maison Ikkoku at convenience stores, and Golgo 13 is being reissued as well.

There seems to be no lack of love for the classics in Japan.

Wow...it's great to see KOR back in the conbini! Need to pick them up in omnibus format.

I gave my KOR manga set to my friend's J-wife before I moved to Japan. I figured it wasn't worth it to ship all that manga when I can pick them up for super cheap here. I now have 1-17. I think there are 18 total in all, IIRC.

I've slowly read up to most of volume 4. I want to continue because it's great reading practice, but I also recently bought volume 1 of the Fire Emblem manga that I may try out.

Interestingly, the character of Hata doesn't exist in the KOR manga. Komatsu is Kyosuke's only friend in school. There was one boy who looked just like Hata in the first volume, but he was only in one panel. They added his character for shits and giggles to help pad the stories for TV.

Space Adventure Cobra is being reissued as well. They're already up to volume 10 or so with these omnibus issues. A part of me wants to collect the original Jump Comics versions, but those seem fairly hard to come by and I'm thinking I may as well just buy these re-issues.

It's hard for me to not touch the comment on One Piece. I'm just about caught up and it's popular for a reason, it's damn good. Eiichiro Oda is a fantastic story teller, I have nothing but respect for him. I will say however that I stopped reading Naruto, and I've never been fond of Bleach. But...it's hard for me to see such hate against One Piece when I know differently. But too each his own, always.

I do wish more classic manga would get licensed here. I would LOVE for someone to release Kimagure Orange Road.

Oh yes, Ryoran, I should let you know that if many threads on here appear fragmented, it's because we had one user on here who posted constantly until he had some sort of snit fit and demanded all of his posts deleted. I'd forgotten about this thread until you posted in this and I saw how many of the posts in here were deleted as a result.

Yeah, I just don't care about One Piece at all. The character designs, the setting, everything. Although somebody on here recently pointed out its ingenuity of being a cross between anime and Looney Tunes, and I can see that a bit. While I do have slightly more respect for the show because if it, I still just don't care for it. Then again, I love sci fi epic anime and manga, as well as level-grinding RPG video games. If somebody hates those, they're completely entitled to their opinion.

greg wrote:Oh yes, Ryoran, I should let you know that if many threads on here appear fragmented, it's because we had one user on here who posted constantly until he had some sort of snit fit and demanded all of his posts deleted. I'd forgotten about this thread until you posted in this and I saw how many of the posts in here were deleted as a result.

Yeah, I just don't care about One Piece at all. The character designs, the setting, everything. Although somebody on here recently pointed out its ingenuity of being a cross between anime and Looney Tunes, and I can see that a bit. While I do have slightly more respect for the show because if it, I still just don't care for it. Then again, I love sci fi epic anime and manga, as well as level-grinding RPG video games. If somebody hates those, they're completely entitled to their opinion.

Oh I see. XD;; That's cool though, from what it sounds like it's just not your cup of tea.

I can see Cobra coming out because of the live movie being in production:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_(man ... adaptation

ryoran wrote:I do wish more classic manga would get licensed here. I would LOVE for someone to release Kimagure Orange Road.

Oh gosh, if someone released Orange Road here I would weep tears of joy. ;___;

There HAS been a small boom of classic manga being released recently, I noticed. Some older titles released recently:
-Barbara
-The Swallowing of the Earth
-Message to Adolf
-Princess Knight
-Black Jack
-Ayako
-Apollo's Song
-MW
-To The Terra
-Andromeda Stories
-Heart of Thomas
-A Drunken Dream
-Itazura na Kiss
-Nasicaa of the Valley of Wind hardcover box set re-release (I got this for Christmas this year and I'm in LOVE with it, this totally makes up for me not being able to buy the old "Perfect Collection" box set back in the day. Non-flopped with all the original sound effects still intact. <3)

And ones that are going to be released soon:
-Unico (To be released Mar 27, 2013. I was actually part of the Kickstarter to make this happen! They're also going to be releasing Tezuka's "Atomcat" and "Triton of the Sea" because of this Kickstarter!)
-NonNonBa (To be released April 2, 2013)
-Kitaro (aka GeGeGe no Kitaro) (To be released April 2, 2013)

Granted, most of those are Tezuka titles, so they'll automatically sell well enough...but things like "To the Terra" and "Itazura na Kiss" I never expected to see released here in English. Digital Manga Publishing, Vertical Inc, and Fantagraphics seem to have no problem taking a chance on older manga, which I think is refreshing in this time where many companies don't seem to want to publish anything unless they feel it's "safe" and think it'll sell well to younger audiences.