The Snowy Manga Discussion Thread

[Super_Boom]

Ongoing

• One Piece - King of manga, both in sales and quality. I could write LAPs on this, but I honestly can't think of any manga so carefully pieced together to create such a cohesive experience. 
  
  
• Shokugeki no Souma - Predictable as heck, but great characters, artstyle, and overall very fun to read. Current holder of my OTP (Sorina!)
  
  
• Hunter x Hunter - Technically this should be in the hiatus section...but I'm caught up so I'll put it here. Amazing story with some deep and thoughtful narrative, and some of the most impactful moments I've witnessed in this genre. The narrative doesn't follow traditional formulas, but once you grasp the themes the author is going for, it really stands out as one of the best stories in its genre, and one of my definite favorite manga (the anime is one of the few 10/10s for me).
  On the downside though...the art is kind of rough, since the author refuses to work with assistants, and he constantly goes on hiatus. 
  
  
• Boku no Hero Academia - Follows some genre tropes at first, but does a good job standing on its own as the story continues. Artstyle is really nice, cool blend of Western comic styles with Japanese manga. 
  
  
• Fairy Tail - I'm very hot-cold about this manga. On one hand, I love characters, the comedy is great, and the artstyle is one of my favorites, almost perfectly simulating an anime style. On the other hand, there's almost no story continuity, the plot feels extremely contrived, and most of the time it feels like the author isn't really planning more than 2 or 3 chapters in advance. I'd recommend this to anyone that doesn't mind turning their brain off, and wants to see big fights and cute girls. Do not read this for the story.
  
  
• Seven Deadly Sins - Keep thinking I'll drop this, but every 20 chapters or so I really find something to enjoy about it. Lot of the same problems as Fairy Tail, only without the lovable characters and nice artstyle. Well, I suppose that's not really fair, since I do like the support cast (King and Diane best characters), but the main character is an obnoxious self-insert, and the main girl is basically a blow-up doll...only more annoying.
  
  
• Ao no Exorcist - I always forget to catch up on this, and usually end up binging half a year's content twice a year. The start of the manga is great, and I like the cast and humor a lot...but lately I don't really feel the story is very well connected. On top of that, the last few arcs have really lacked in the magic of the start of the series, with a shift away from Judeo-Christian demons to regular ol' Japanese yokai, which is a bit dissapointing to me, since there are so many other manga that feature traditional Japanese themes. It does seem like it's returning to its roots recently, so I hope this is a good sign for things to come.

 

Catching up

• Tokyo Ghoul - Been slowly catching up on this one. Very dark, but not to the point where it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth..yet. Has a nice set of characters, and some interesting themes that I wasn't expecting.
  
  
• Horimiya - Not much to say on this one, but since I love the "opposites attract" dynamic in pairings, I knew right away this would be my cup of tea.
  
  
• Today's Cerberus - Not sure about this one yet. I guess it's like a harem with three girls in one body. FIrst few chapters were okay..but Cloud says it gets better so I'll keep trying.

 

Hiatus

 

• Magi - I used to like this one a lot more, but it has a serious identity problem that kind of annoyed me. It starts off a shounen adventure in an Arabian Knights setting, introduces Game of Thrones style character betrayal and political drama, and eventually shifts to some weird Jetson universe where one of the main characters becomes the CEO of the world. It's still interesting enough that I want to get back into it...but the change in tone kind of annoyed me.
  
  
• Yamada-kun and the Seven Witches - Hilarious story with cute characters...and I highly recommend this up to chapter 90. After that...I don't know. This is a good example of a manga that should have quit while it was ahead. The plot after chapter 90 just introduces new plot troubles to extend the story, introduces new characters to keep things interesting while ignoring most of the existing characters. I really wasn't cool with this artificial extension, so I stopped reading.
  
  
• Shingeki no Kyojin - I'm interested enough to care about what happens, but the ugly art design and anti-climactic character death turn me off. Haven't read this one in a while, need to buid up motivation again.

Some other smaller manga that I didn't care enough to write down...but these are the key manga I read weekly, or plan to read weekly eventually.