Kokukirin said:
Death Note is great because it is unique. There are very few manga of its kind. Rather than the plot or artwork, I'd say its the war of intelligence that attract me. This, however, also implies that DN part 2 is a failure. I mean, M and N are easily the luckiest characters in the series. Without that random luck, M is long dead and N wouldn't get the essential clues to track down killer. And when luck becomes a dominant factor to the story, DN is ruined.
*MAJOR SPOILERS* [spoil]I loved L as a character. Hell, I could even begin to understand why the hell so much yaoi was out with him and Light (which, that realization in itself scares me ~.o). That's why when he died, it felt so... impactful. It wasn't as saddening to me as say, when Wolfwood from
Trigun/
Trigun Maximum or Grimmer from
Monster died, but as far as single deaths to characters... for those who weren't spoiled before reading it, it shook them.
Mello and Near were somewhat entertaining when they first showed up, but then Mello just got shafted to the background, and Near's turned into a genius that makes L look like an idiot. Characterization is damn-near completely lost in Part 2 of
Death Note, and I find it amazing that the only characters that actually amuse me anymore are Misa and Matsuda. o___0[/spoil]
CLAMP's manga have one of the best artwork, only very few have good story. IMO only RG Veda, Tokyo Babylon and X are good. I am sure many will disagree with me, however...
I've heard a fair share of great things said about
X. I was figuring of looking into either the manga or anime eventually, but I'm not entirely sure which to get into first.
Scrap said:
I'm a huge fan of Grayman, and I think the plot's good because...there's just so much going on but it never really gets out of control, and I thought their Innocences were cleverly designed.
The premise of it is typical, but there is a lot of depth like you indicated. And the designs of each of the Innonces are fairly ingenius, with some good suprises. I was actually shocked when [spoil]Crowley was revealed to be an Excorcist.[/spoil] And plus, we can't forget the fact that the female characters in
D.Gray-man are actually good. Rinali and Miranda are both just plain awesome, and we can't forget Chamelot. Seriously, we need more female manga-ka out there -- they (usually) don't make stereotypes and bad characters out of the females.
Jesse GS the II said:
Well, I like it. His character deigns are simple but still very expressive, and I wish they'd been followed more closely in the anime.
Well, I can't really say that his drawings are sloppy... but that's about all that he has going for him. I can't honestly figure out why the hell his art work is praised so much, or why
Love Hina is praised as 'OMFG gr3t3st m@ng@ evr!!1111' or
Negima, for that matter. Can't say anything about the anime version of
Love Hina, because I wouldn't watch that even if I was threatened to.
You want expressive drawings? Check out
Trigun Maximum and its manga-ka, Yasuhiro Nightow. This guy can make you feel emotions without any dialogue, just with character's expressions. His art work improved by leaps and bounds since he first started, and truthfully, the only other two manga-ka which I feel argued to be better than him when it comes to facial expressions are Katsuhiro Otomo (manga-ka of
Akira and
Domu: A Child's Dream) and Naoki Urasawa (manga-ka of
20th Century Boys,
Monster, and
Pluto). Ironically enough, none of these artists draw in the typical anime/manga fashion. Truthfully, I'm glad that they don't, because its makes their manga series so much more unique and 'authentic' in that sense.
... Hell, I go off on a rant, and all I wanted to say is that I can't stand Ken Akamatsu's work or the fanbase around it. 8D
