How much is "a bunch"? Personally, I believe Oda improved a lot of it later on, particularly pacing, and it's never been to a horrid pace like Bleach or Slam Dunk has been.
Yes, One Piece is better than Bleach or Slam Dunk. Being better than poop doesn't automatically mean you are cheesecake. There's a lot of room in-betwee, not all of it good.
I purchased and read 11 volumes of One Piece. After volume 10 I was done. IIRC Volume 11 was really good, and reminded me why I liked it in the first place. I stopped reading anyway. Same boat as Rym.
Don't give me that old story about "it get's good later". I have a huge pile of unread comics in my house that are good the whole way through. They have no bad or slow parts to struggle through in order to get to the good parts. They are 100% good part. I will not spend even one more second of my time in my short life reading One Piece until I have read at least all of those.
But I did read those 11 volumes, so I am still curious about what the One Piece is. I'm just not willing to slog through it to find out. Just like I'm not willing to slog through the random encounters in a JRPG. If there's a spoiler I can read about the One Piece, I'm definitely going to read it.
One Piece, if you skip the details of fights, can be summarized so succinctly that it's amazing how little happens in so many volumes.
Now all I can think about is different manga without their defining elements. Initial D would just be a bunch of dudes standing around next to cars or roads, talking about racing, and would be about five volumes long. Occasionally, they'd drive to another prefecture to to the same thing.
History's strongest disciple Kenichi would be about a young man with zero talent but lots of determination learning martial arts from a bunch of different masters, and fighting successively more difficult opponents while chasing after his love, the granddaughter of the head of his dojo. But everyone would be conservatively dressed.
One Punch man would be a bald guy going to disasters and just standing around.
Shougeki no Soma would be a young boy who is an excellent cook going to cooking school, and when people eat food they have completely normal reactions.
I caught up up the current chapter of One Piece and I don't see why everyone is freaking out. One Piece has too many story arcs where, like Scott said, its a island story with too many side characters that we'll never see again and have very little implications to the overall plot. Oda has an annoying tendency of giving every member of the main crew something to do/fight per arc which lengthens these island stories even more. The typical formula is "something dark and tragic happened to this country long ago" and then the Strawhats come and fix everything by punching the bad guy and moving the plot only slightly forward. It happens too often and I've started ignoring all of the side characters since their backstories are all similar and they will never appear again.
Not to say One Piece is bad, because there are kickass story arcs where the events feel like they are shaking the entire world. Enies Lobby, Sabaody Archipelago, Impel Down and especially Marineford were all incredibly fun to read. Oda has set up so many interesting plot points that could interact with each other in interesting ways and when those points do intersect, its amazing. But I really don't want to read another island story to get there.
They were fine when Oda was still adding cast members but the story is now in the "New World" where shit is suppose to get real. There are so many plot points to explore instead: Dragon and his revolutionaries, Poneglyphs and their relationship to the Void century and its superweapons, the history of the World Nobles, the will of "D", Vegapunk's experiments, the upcoming fights between the 7 Warlords, 4 emperors, and the 11 supernovas, and of course One Piece itself. I know Oda will get to all of this stuff eventually because he's very good at continuity, unlike Bleach and Naruto, but he's doing it at a snail's pace.
I really don't get this statement Fundefined. Are you actually caught up?
So you want all these threads, story elements and opposing agendas of different factions to be tied together, yet you are not entertained by the current story arc which is doing exactly that? The Straw hats have an alliance with Law, one of the supernovae, while four other other supernovas have also put their efforts together. Each of these groups have the goal to bring down one of the four emperors. For the Strawhats and Law, one of the Warlords (Doflamingo) is in the way, who is essentially both literally and figuratively a world noble, ruling like a despot with protection by a marine admiral, and now the revolutionaries also show up in order to bring Doflamingo down as well.
The current story line is a culmination of a lot of different story threads, and it is pretty much the biggest of the kind since Marineford.
I am caught up. And think about all the useless characters that were introduced this arc. Everyone at the coliseum, every toy character, every character in this country that wasn't introduced before this arc, all of them are irrelevant to the overall plot. The coliseum especially was annoying. Starting a mini tournament arc with almost all new characters, when plenty of other more interesting things could be happening is just time wasting.
Are things moving? Yes, but they are still happening at a glacial pace. I didn't care about the children last arc, I didn't care about the Fishmen/Mermen in the arc before last. I'm done caring about minor one note characters that Oda introduces with each new island.
I can understand the coliseum which seemed like a bit of a joke to me as well. However, I think a large part of One Piece is that it fleshes out the scenery of the individual Islands with inhabitants. It shows that there are events happening and people living who the Straw Hats haven't met yet and it gives the islands a "living" quality. I think it would be much more odd if the series became self-absorbed and only showed things concerning the conflict of major factions, without showcasing what it was like without or before the Straw Hats appeared on an island.
Worldbuilding is definitely a huge strength of the series in my opinion, and if the stories become a little slower so we can actually see this worldbuilding in action, I gladly take it.
This whole discussion is basically the reason I haven't watched an episode of Detective Conan in over 2 years. The actually important stuff (The Black Organisation, Character development) episodes have so many mystery of the week episodes between them. There has been 1 Actual update on the black organisation story in the 125 episodes since I stopped watching it.
If you liked Voynich Hotel, A)It'll propably be returning soon, and B)you'll also enjoy Nickelodeon by the same author - a series of connected one-shot stories very much in the same style. If nobody else, I'm pretty sure Banta and Scrym will like it.
Good. Also, your Nickelodeon link goes to a version in not-English. Bam.
I'd also recommend Oddman 11. Warning, though, for NSFW content (though the same could probably be said of Voynich and Nickelodeon, if memory serves).
Douman Seiman is one of the few creators that I would recommend folks to check out everything he has done. The only other currently active mangaka that I would give the same rec to would be Satoshi Mizukami, Inio Asano, Hiromu Arakawa, and Kaoru Mori.
If you haven't read Kingdom yet, go and read it now! Kingdom is a manga about the Warring States Period in China (not the Three Kingdoms, that's much later) and the establishment of the Qin Dynasty. If you've played Dynasty Warriors, this is the manga version of it's ridiculous gameplay on your stimulant drug of choice: Hundreds of thousands of soldiers in battle, generals with near superpower levels of strength, absurdly comical "genius" tactics, it has it all. The art is fantastical and its incredibly ambitious in the scope of its storytelling. The protagonist is yet another hot blooded shounen lead but the manga is overall so goddamn cool that I can overlook all of its flaws. The first arc is rather slow but trust me, its worth the journey. http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=14444
There is an anime version out as well but it's pretty rubbish from what I've heard.
Been reading a pretty interesting manga, lately, called "Maoyuu Maou Yuusha", or "Be mine hero! - I refuse!".
Basically, Famous hero shows up to the final battle with the Demon queen who has been ravaging the human world, and as Villains do, she starts telling the Hero her grand plan. Except, her plan isn't just "Kill shit, rule world" or "Infiltrate society and pervert it to evil" - She starts explaining the economics of the war to the hero, and how the war is basically to support the human world and prevent it from collapsing. And then starts explaining about how to make the human world sustainable into the future economically and socially. So, the hero joins on with her and decides to fight on her side - as she carries out her war to infiltrate and pervert the human world to her ends by introducing new ideas like Potatoes, crop rotation, vaccination and the printing press.
I just read all of Shokugeki no Soma. Thanks, Churbs, Banta.
Maoyuu is basically "Hey, let's take a fantasy world and induce the Renaissance!", and I feel like that makes it a bit biased towards the standard European History narratives, but it's pretty good.
Some time ago had a "let's watch three to four first episodes of bunch of different animes" -day with my friends. Maoyuu was one of the things we watched and by the end of third (or fourth) episode I had grown bored of it.
If I want farming and fantasy, I'll play some Rune Factory.
Oh wow. That's a hell of a lot more pendulous swaying than you even see cleavage in the manga. It's a lot more restrained - Hell, the Demon Queen (side note - everybody's name is basically what they are. Hero, Demon Queen, Maid, Merchant, etc) even complains about her plunging necklines, and prefers to cover up for most of it that I've read so far, and spends a lot of time in gear that wouldn't even get scowled at in church.
A young man is in his last year at music school, and is stuck in a rut. Everyone around him seems to have these plans and big ideas, while he is just drifting aimlessly. Then, one night, he sees a sad girl without shoes standing in the snow.
I don't think I need to tell you where this is going...
Yeah, it's the first manga I've read since AMR stopped working for me.
Any tips on that, by the way?
Yep - Google basically stopped allowing non-google chrome webstore apps on chrome, on any platform for the stable and dev builds. Any other builds, branches or versions that AMR worked on previously should still work, as long as it's not the stable or dev branches.
Personally I use Chrome Canary, which is functionally identical, except for the extra stuff that google adds before they're in Chrome proper - I think you can figure out why, considering the name. But you can use whichever other flavor you prefer.
Also, here's how you very easily transfer over every bit of data from your original AMR install(which isn't removed, just permanently disabled), and pass it to the new one - it's not strictly necessary, but it's a lot easier than any other way, or starting over.
NOW, what you want to do is go to (your user profile)\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default, and make a backup of The chrome-extension_nhjloagockgobfpopemejpgjjechcpfd_0.indexeddb.leveldb folder in the IndexedDB folder, and both of the following files from the Local Storage folder:
Once you've backed those up, sort out installing AMR onto chrome canary. When you've done that, copy the backups into the the the same locations under the Canary install, which should have identical directories, except instead of being in the "Chrome" folder, it's under "Chrome SxS". Overwrite the existing files with the ones from your previous install - they're just the fresh blank ones, as opposed to the ones with your data.
Ah, nice. Thanks. Too bad I reinstalled AMR in an attempt to get it to work and lost everything. Time to start combing ADTRW for all the manga I found in the last year.
Ah, nice. Thanks. Too bad I reinstalled AMR in an attempt to get it to work and lost everything. Time to start combing ADTRW for all the manga I found in the last year.
That sucks - I keep semi-regular backups of that stuff, just in case, because no way known I'd remember all my shit if I lost my list.
If you want, I can PM you over a dump of my manga list again. It's longer, but judging by your comments on the forums, we've got a pretty good crossover between our lists.
Offer is, as always, open to anyone else with AMR.
Comments
I purchased and read 11 volumes of One Piece. After volume 10 I was done. IIRC Volume 11 was really good, and reminded me why I liked it in the first place. I stopped reading anyway. Same boat as Rym.
Don't give me that old story about "it get's good later". I have a huge pile of unread comics in my house that are good the whole way through. They have no bad or slow parts to struggle through in order to get to the good parts. They are 100% good part. I will not spend even one more second of my time in my short life reading One Piece until I have read at least all of those.
But I did read those 11 volumes, so I am still curious about what the One Piece is. I'm just not willing to slog through it to find out. Just like I'm not willing to slog through the random encounters in a JRPG. If there's a spoiler I can read about the One Piece, I'm definitely going to read it.
History's strongest disciple Kenichi would be about a young man with zero talent but lots of determination learning martial arts from a bunch of different masters, and fighting successively more difficult opponents while chasing after his love, the granddaughter of the head of his dojo. But everyone would be conservatively dressed.
One Punch man would be a bald guy going to disasters and just standing around.
Shougeki no Soma would be a young boy who is an excellent cook going to cooking school, and when people eat food they have completely normal reactions.
Not to say One Piece is bad, because there are kickass story arcs where the events feel like they are shaking the entire world. Enies Lobby, Sabaody Archipelago, Impel Down and especially Marineford were all incredibly fun to read. Oda has set up so many interesting plot points that could interact with each other in interesting ways and when those points do intersect, its amazing. But I really don't want to read another island story to get there.
They were fine when Oda was still adding cast members but the story is now in the "New World" where shit is suppose to get real. There are so many plot points to explore instead: Dragon and his revolutionaries, Poneglyphs and their relationship to the Void century and its superweapons, the history of the World Nobles, the will of "D", Vegapunk's experiments, the upcoming fights between the 7 Warlords, 4 emperors, and the 11 supernovas, and of course One Piece itself. I know Oda will get to all of this stuff eventually because he's very good at continuity, unlike Bleach and Naruto, but he's doing it at a snail's pace.
So you want all these threads, story elements and opposing agendas of different factions to be tied together, yet you are not entertained by the current story arc which is doing exactly that? The Straw hats have an alliance with Law, one of the supernovae, while four other other supernovas have also put their efforts together. Each of these groups have the goal to bring down one of the four emperors. For the Strawhats and Law, one of the Warlords (Doflamingo) is in the way, who is essentially both literally and figuratively a world noble, ruling like a despot with protection by a marine admiral, and now the revolutionaries also show up in order to bring Doflamingo down as well.
The current story line is a culmination of a lot of different story threads, and it is pretty much the biggest of the kind since Marineford.
Are things moving? Yes, but they are still happening at a glacial pace. I didn't care about the children last arc, I didn't care about the Fishmen/Mermen in the arc before last. I'm done caring about minor one note characters that Oda introduces with each new island.
Worldbuilding is definitely a huge strength of the series in my opinion, and if the stories become a little slower so we can actually see this worldbuilding in action, I gladly take it.
If you liked Voynich Hotel, A)It'll propably be returning soon, and B)you'll also enjoy Nickelodeon by the same author - a series of connected one-shot stories very much in the same style. If nobody else, I'm pretty sure Banta and Scrym will like it.
I'd also recommend Oddman 11. Warning, though, for NSFW content (though the same could probably be said of Voynich and Nickelodeon, if memory serves).
Douman Seiman is one of the few creators that I would recommend folks to check out everything he has done. The only other currently active mangaka that I would give the same rec to would be Satoshi Mizukami, Inio Asano, Hiromu Arakawa, and Kaoru Mori.
Edit - Also, bam, how's that for timing, Latest chapter of Voynich just hit Batoto.
There is an anime version out as well but it's pretty rubbish from what I've heard.
Basically, Famous hero shows up to the final battle with the Demon queen who has been ravaging the human world, and as Villains do, she starts telling the Hero her grand plan. Except, her plan isn't just "Kill shit, rule world" or "Infiltrate society and pervert it to evil" - She starts explaining the economics of the war to the hero, and how the war is basically to support the human world and prevent it from collapsing. And then starts explaining about how to make the human world sustainable into the future economically and socially. So, the hero joins on with her and decides to fight on her side - as she carries out her war to infiltrate and pervert the human world to her ends by introducing new ideas like Potatoes, crop rotation, vaccination and the printing press.
and
What's not to love?
Maoyuu is basically "Hey, let's take a fantasy world and induce the Renaissance!", and I feel like that makes it a bit biased towards the standard European History narratives, but it's pretty good.
Maoyuu was one of the things we watched and by the end of third (or fourth) episode I had grown bored of it.
If I want farming and fantasy, I'll play some Rune Factory.
Kind of like a manga take on certain US superhero comics, only the main character is an angry T-Rex detective.
Dokyuusei no Macho-kun
Do you even lift: the manga.
I don't think I need to tell you where this is going...
COMPETITIVE EXTREME PC OVERCLOCKING!!!
87 Clockers
Any tips on that, by the way?
Personally I use Chrome Canary, which is functionally identical, except for the extra stuff that google adds before they're in Chrome proper - I think you can figure out why, considering the name. But you can use whichever other flavor you prefer.
Also, here's how you very easily transfer over every bit of data from your original AMR install(which isn't removed, just permanently disabled), and pass it to the new one - it's not strictly necessary, but it's a lot easier than any other way, or starting over.
NOW, what you want to do is go to (your user profile)\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default, and make a backup of The chrome-extension_nhjloagockgobfpopemejpgjjechcpfd_0.indexeddb.leveldb folder in the IndexedDB folder, and both of the following files from the Local Storage folder:
chrome-extension_nhjloagockgobfpopemejpgjjechcpfd_0.localstorage
chrome-extension_nhjloagockgobfpopemejpgjjechcpfd_0.localstorage-journal
Once you've backed those up, sort out installing AMR onto chrome canary. When you've done that, copy the backups into the the the same locations under the Canary install, which should have identical directories, except instead of being in the "Chrome" folder, it's under "Chrome SxS". Overwrite the existing files with the ones from your previous install - they're just the fresh blank ones, as opposed to the ones with your data.
All information adapted from here, but it doesn't tell you half of that, mostly just the filenames to back up and where they go.
If you want, I can PM you over a dump of my manga list again. It's longer, but judging by your comments on the forums, we've got a pretty good crossover between our lists.
Offer is, as always, open to anyone else with AMR.