Board 8 > Tom resumes reading all the Bolo Household Manga Collection (spoilers)

(+) Yeah! (+)

mo' projects mo' problems

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got 99 problems and too many concurrent projects accounts for a few of them

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Started a new job this week. Unlikely to find time to catch up so Ill just jump back in when you continue

fair enough!

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I am equally unlikely to get much done, like, the rest of the year

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But we'll see

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part of the issue is Battle Angel Alita is kinda gory and stuff so I don't really wanna read it on the way to church and funerals and stuff so I missed a couple primo opportunities

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another part of the issue is it's friggin' december

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But not for much longer!

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It's Christmas break!

this would be a good time to get a couple in but my wife is also off work and while that's nice it's kinda throwing off my rhythm a bit lol

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Whats a break? I hear about hear about these foreign magik so but am yet to see them.
(Thats obviously not strictly true but the breaks in my new school are reeeeeal short)

Double AFK update soon?

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Battle Angel Alita Vol. 1, chunk 3/3
Lots of interpersonal drama this time around, as Alita falls for a boy who has fallen in with the wrong crowd in a misguided attempt to earn his way to the flying city. This will not end well for the kid, based on what tiny bit of outside knowledge I have, but we don't get that far in this volume. They're doing a good job building to it though!
My rating: 8/10
Way more gore than I'm usually comfortable with, let alone actively seeking out, but somehow the artwork is pretty enough to keep me coming back anyway, and Alita herself is just always great.

The Bride Was A Boy
Gave me diabetes. Part autobiography, part edutainment, part romcom- follows a trans woman's life, transition, and relationship with her husband. It didn't really teach me much I didn't already know (except for how the Japanese legal system handles LGBT type things) but it's always nice hearing about an actual specific person's actual specific experiences and thoughts. And I'm always down for fluffy romance anyway, I think.
My rating: 9/10
Good if you want a primer on trans stuff or if you like chibis doing cute things.

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And with that we're back to stuff I already owned!

.hack/Legend of the Twilight Vol. 3/3

We all came back together and even brought in some of the OGs for a big never-give-up battle with some face turns and stuff. Would have had a bigger impact probably if I hadn't taken, what, four months off? But a solid shounen conclusion nonetheless. Big volume with tons of omake things afterwards.
Overall rating: 8/10
Kinda paint-by-numbers, but it came before a lot of series that did similar things, so can't really hold that against it. Executed fairly well, art's to my taste. Didn't hold up super great, in no small part because I got a lot older and the fanservice characters didn't.

.hack/XXXX, Vol. 1
This covers the original games, I guess, making it a weird sorta prequel to Legend of the Twilight. I don't know how many volumes there were, but the first one already covers a lot farther than I ever got. (I got stuck on I think the final dungeon of the first game? IIRC everything was suddenly immune to physical damage and I didn't have the magic resources or patience to deal with it) Got a bit confusing because they kept jumping around with flashbacks and such, but still did its job and got me interested to see where it was going. Which is kinda unfortunate because .hack and its fifty million constituent entries just kinda dropped off the planet entirely years ago. Maybe I'll watch some Let's Plays in the Tompic instead! (cross promotion woooo)
My rating: 7/10
Bit more interesting than Legend of the Twilight I think, but doesn't have the nostalgia goggles going for it, nor the rest of the story available, so I don't think it'll really stick with me at all.

Real update later today! Theoretically.

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.hack//G.U.+
Story Tatsuya Hamazaki
Art Yuzuka Morita


I definitely rotated that pic but WHATEVER it's a live update.

I know pretty much nothing about GU, up to and including who Haseo is. I think this is where Atoli comes from though, and I had her once in Mercs and she did an absolutely terrible job but seemed nice. I think this is a relatively recent purchase, and I don't think I've read it before now. Let's roll. According to the end notes, this is a slightly different retelling of regular G.U., which actually came out before the games for whatever reason.

Some PK's do a PK, and then Haseo saves a Wave Master (Atoli?) from being their next victim. He is the legendary PKK, who kills PKs and then they can never come back. Somehow. Haseo is your vanilla edgy cool loner type so far. Player Killing is a relatively recently development in The World (....wasn't that a thing in the older ones though?) and then PKKs came along to kill the PKs and for some reason Sakaki thinks it's their fault that The World is grittier and less friendly. He yells at Haseo and Atoli whines about people's feelings, but he gets a cryptic email and blows them off to go do a thing.

Haseo goes to Hidden Forbidden Holy Ground because everything that happens in this franchise happens there. There he finds Tri-Edge, Ovan, and/or Shino, which he's been looking for. We have a cryptic backstory-related conversation that even Haseo has trouble understanding, but as best I can figure, Shino and Ovan disappeared and Haseo became edgy, and also Atoli looks like Shino. Tri-Edge is a person, who killed Shino in the game, causing her to go into a coma IRL. Ovan is going to be the mysterious mentor/anti-hero/rival type I guess. He peaces out and Tri-Edge shows up, looking like an eeeeeevil version of Kite or Shugo. Despite an outburst of righteous fury, Haseo ain't doing so hot in the ensuing fight.

Never ye mind though, it's time to flashback. Okay flashback over. It looks like maybe Ovan used to be a PKK?

Haseo wakes up and some important half-naked lady I feel like I should recognize identifies Tri-Edge as Azure Flame Kite, and says that he data drained Haseo. Then she and her fellow game admin, Tattoo Man, somehow teleported him to the system area Serpent of Lore. They want to have a chat about AFK before he creates more Lost Ones, but Haseo is not having any of it after they covered up the Shino incident.

Haseo storms off to go be edgy somewhere else, but gets an encouraging lecture from Atoli about feelings and people and connections. Flashback: Haseo/Shino/Ovan/are there other people in the Twilight Brigade? are looking for the Key of Twilight. Haseo goes back to Pi the Bikini Admin and Yata the Tattoo Admin because

Atoli is petitioning to end PKing. The surviving bit villains from the opening scene are bored. Haseo needs to get stronger, and goes back to HBHG, where the sign of Tri-Edge zots him to a, uh, Lost Ground. Hey, it's Bordeaux, the head PK person we killed in the opening! She has some kinda power up from somebody, and is looking for revenge and a ticket back by killing Haseo. Her attacks hurt for real oh no! She's about to finish Haseo off when the save is made by some dude, who blows her away. He gives us more exposition on how AIDA possess people. He's Kuhn, who's in GU along with the two admins I guess. Epitaph Users like him (and Haseo, apparently) are needed to fight the AIDA.

Now we come to you live from an arena, where defeated champ Alkaid (hey that's probably where somebody got the idea when I asked B8 to name my character in FE!) is using her rematch clause against Endrance, who is cool enough to have an Epitaph AND AIDA. He name drops Mia and then Alkaid is defeated by the work of an enemy stand Avatar. Only Epitaph Users can see the Avatars of other Epitaph Users. This dude's looks a bit like a Persona version of Mia. He identifies Haseo and scoffs at his weakness.

Haseo has challenged Endrance to a fight, despite being the clear underdog who stands to die in real life. Ovan has Atoli tell Haseo to become stronger to save Shino. Endrance OHKO's Haseo, but he gets better and awakens to his persona Avatar, Skeith.

My rating: 6/10
Might be an interesting spin with some of the callbacks to the original, but I didn't really like any of the characters so it's hard to get invested. Bit too 90s edgy right out of the gate.

Discussion: How do you feel about gritty reboots?
Hint for next: A well known mangaka, but we have a few titles to go before we get to what he's actually known for.

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This makes me wish I knew what .hack was. On the other hand though woooo updates

but now school has resumed

also .hack is a good time and possibly worth checking out if you like games/anime/manga about MMOs

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such meta

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My vacation starts tomorrow. Woooo

nice

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perhaps it is time to let this purge, as we are approaching the massive dead zone known as Musical Season

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