full metal manga

Last week I was going to do a round-up of some of the manga I'd been reading but ran out of space and energy, so I though I'd go though it now.


First off, as I mentioned, I've been reading my way into Fullmetal Alchemist. I don't think I really need to explain what FMA is, as it's one of those ubiquitous shows that everybody's either seen or read. Well, except for me.

I've seen a couple of episodes of the Brotherhood version and will probably buy that somewhere down the line, but although I knew of the show it never really crossed my path. But then I decided I should get it, bought the first volume, which I thought was good enough to pursue, and so bought the rest.

Obviously I was therefore in big scale catch-up mode and there are now 23 volumes released in English, so I've quite a bit to get through in order to be current. I'm up to book 10 and I'm generally enjoying it.

I have to confess I have been a bit struck by my traditionally feeling of "Is this quite as good as everyone proclaims it to be?"

Don't get me wrong, I am enjoying, but I'm not sure it's at the top of my favourites list, shall we say. One thing I do think is clever is that it has a consistent, ongoing narrative that advances at a decent pace. With a lot of manga like this you get artificial story extension (I'm looking at you, Naruto, Bleach and DBZ), but here, while that is definitely going on, it's handled in a much more intelligent and well done way.

It' snot so much artificial extension, as sensible, well considered extension.


Next, a couple of ongoing series I'm still enjoying. First there's Kimi Ni Todoke (From Me to You). I'm definitely still liking this, but I think this is also engaged in story extension and I'm not sure it's being handled in as good a way. It struck me actually to be having a similar issue as Kare Kano.

In that manga, the main characters were really interesting and it was a clever story, but really that story resolved itself within a few volumes. There was then a big middle section that mostly focused on the (less interesting) peripheral characters before coming back to finish off the main character's story.

I'm pretty sure Todoke is going to do the same and we're just switching focus to the other characters. It's still well done, so I'll stick with it, but part of me wishes it had just wrapped itself up in a few neat volumes.


The second ongoing series is Natsume's Book of Friends. Weirdly, having just complained about story extension of a main over-arching plot, my slight criticism of Natsume is that it doesn't really have an overarching plot.

The series is essentially a collection of short stories and it works well at doing that, but it can make things feel very bitty. I still love the book, though, and dearly wish someone would license the series for DVDs. It's actually on crunchyroll, but is region locked to the US :(.


Next I though I'd mention Toshokan Senso: Love & War. I was seriously considering dropping this, but the second volumes was a lot better than the first. I think part of the problem was that because the first volume covered what I saw of the manga, but radically shifted things about, this disconcerted me. Now that it's into stuff I haven't seen I think it's easier for me to understand, though it still has the problem that a lot of shoujo has of poorly flowing speech and panel layouts.


Okay, as usual when I do one of these catch-ups, the post is getting huge, so I'm snipping it in half and I'll post the rest later.