Followed immediately by a cosplay beastiality doujin...

 

Franken Fran is hilariously awesome.

 

I will sing your name from the nearest mountaintop for simply having something to do with this manga.

Even if they're using someone else's scans.

 

Would it be pointless to mention two classics of Japanese sequential art, just because they're in black and white?

Lone Wolf and Cub
Feudal Japan- Itto Ogami, the Shogun's executioner is betrayed by the Yagyu clan and commanded to kill himself over a false charge. Instead, he and his infant son Daigoro escape to the wilderness, where Itto uses his formidable skills as a paid assassin in hopes of saving enough money to take down the Clan that sought to destroy him.

Dark Horse finally published the full set translated into English, though the page size isn't really large enough to truly enjoy the ink drawings of carnage and sex as Itto follows the path of Meifumado.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Post-apocalypse times ten, the remains of humanity fights for the remains of the technology of the past that is being overtaken by the giant insect/spore forces of nature attempting to reclaim the planet. In the midst of this a young woman leaves her isolated village to join an army and gets caught up in several layers of political squabbles, all the while searching to understand the alien life that threatens to destroy everything.

She's the prototype of the blessed girl savior in Manga. No sex, plenty of gore.

 

I second Lone wolf and cub and Vagabond. LWC is a classic, the first chapter ever was published in 1970 and was ongoing for a long time.

Vagabond is Inoue's take on Eiji Yoshikawa's Musashi. Sometimes I think that I like his better, because although he does follow the book closely, he tries to give the other characters depth, so he's not focusing only on Musashi like the original does .

Also Shigurui is the best thing I read in a while. Also with samurai, and also after a novel, but darker, the characters are driven by their obsessions.
Ichi the killer and Homounculus are two mangas that I read a couple of years ago and made a big impression on me.

Another really good manga that I read recently is Battle Royale.
The only thing that I didn't liked about it is the author's need to justify all evil, so to speak. I mean, there's this really psycho kid whose background they kept hidden until the end, and while reading I thought that was okay, some people are just born like that, and Kiriyama was one of them, so no need to show him killing kittens when he was a baby. But no...
Aside that, it is as close to perfection as it can be, that's why is my second favorite after Shigurui.

 

Actually the art was not that bad, I just had a problem with the style is all.

 

I just started on Berserk. It's pretty good so far, and though the art isn't great for the first few chapters, I've heard it improves a lot further on.

 

Just a quick note on this: there is a SFW version of this somewhere on the net. The sex and some of the more NSFW parts were edited out with no real impact on the overall plot.

And it's awesome, no matter which version you read. A definite must-read for any fan.

 

It is slightly... bizarre, especially towards the end of the Golden Age arc, but that's one of it's selling points, in my opinion. On that point, any recommendations of a similar genre to Berserk? The medieval fantasy part, I mean.

I hadn't heard of the movies actually, but very much looking forward to them now.

I'm starting Fate/Stay Night now, quite looking forward to it after some of the recommendations I've had. I've also got Chrome Breaker ready to start, which a friend recommended recently.

 

Both are anime recommendations but...

<- What's in my avatar!

Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu - Legend of the Legendary Heroes.

Very underrated anime. Based off a light novel. It does start off kinda light-hearted. People say quite similar to Slayers (which I haven't seen), but then becomes a lot more serious as the plot progresses.

Probably not as dark as Berserk. But I'd say Shion is kinda like Griffith - he's very close to Ryner, the main character. He's a king. And he's generally a nice guy to his friends - and as he plays the role of King, he's ruthless, dark and not quite as fucked up as Griffith.


There's also Juuni Kokuki (Twelve Kingdoms). Which is an older, straight up anime also based on novels. It's about a girl who gets taken from our world and thrown into a fantasy type world. The anime covers different arcs of varying lengths, some good, some average. But yeah, has a very straight up fantasy feel about it - more like a book than an anime.

Not nearly as dark as Berserk.



Fate Stay Night is pretty good, I wouldn't say the anime implementation was amazingly stand out, but definitely worth watching. The movie, Unlimited Blade Works, on the other hand, was pure epic. So highly recommend it if just to get to the movie. Very good feel both either way - has that kinda dark feel on a synopsis which would usually be a lot more shounen-y.

It's not really medieval fantasy though.

 

Thanks! There really doesn't seem to be much out there like it, to be honest. I'll look up these rec's tonight. I have also been reading Hellsing, if you know of anything similar in genre to that? I'm just starting on Chrome Breaker also, which looks promising.

 

Yeah, it's about blonde, claymore (as in two-handed broadswords as tall as they are) wielding women going about chopping up Eldritch Abominations while simultaneously trying not to turn into monsters themselves. It's one of my favourite seinen anime and has an intricate plot that pushes all the right buttons for gory fight scenes and the likes.

 

Hm... How gory is gory, exactly? I'm not exactly a fan of gore for gore's sake...

 

It's seinen, so pretty gory. There's more to it than just fights though. There's plenty of intrigue to go around.

 

People and monsters get hacked, slashed, torn, and generally destroyed. Limbs, heads, and partial heads are removed, things get chopped in half. Much gushing blood ensues. That said, it (usually) fits in with the story decently well. It's not like people randomly explode into blood and guts on every page. And the gore is pretty much limited to flying/gushing blood. I can't recall any cases of visible organs or anything like that.

 

Claymore is published in a shounen magazine, not a seinen one.

I read this a few years ago, and it didn't impress me at all at the time. I think it was because I kept comparing it to Berserk, which really isn't fair to Claymore at all, so I'll have to revisit it at some point to see if it is as meh as I remember it being.

 

I've heard Berserk compared to Claymore so many times, but to me they seem significantly different in setting. Claymore seems very... unique, to me. Also, it's unfair to compare anything to Berserk, IMO. I'm loving it at the moment. :awesome

 

Just a word to the wise, Claymore is not great. I've never read Berserk, so more of an unbiased opinion here.

Though I have been told about Berserk, and holy shit does it sound depressing.

 

Silver Spoon is awesome, especially when Armstrong shows up.

 

Don't know if anyone's interested, but Togashi is finally back from his latest hiatus. There are two new chapters of Hunter x Hunter out there and I find the second very interesting on many levels.

Uncle Stojil