Added a new category: manga

Nowadays my greatest source of entertainment comes from reading manga. My first post on manga was about some patterns in the typical way of producing those that sell well. You can read about it here. I decided to dedicate a section to it because I have consumed about 1000+ pages of various titles through scanlations (short form for translated scans of the original manga) by various groups. For something that I spend nearly an hour a day on, there must surely be something worth writing about.

Although the general rule of thumb is to go buy the manga and not download the scanlations once some company licenses it in your country, I cannot really abide by it. Why? Well, those companies take so long just to get one tokuban out! Sometimes the scanlations are already way ahead on volume 20 while the official tokuban has only reached volume 2! A better compromise would be to continue reading the scanlations until the official versions catch up with them. Another problem actually arises from collecting the official tokubans: physical space! You actually have to find space to store all those graphics novels whereas I can easily fit the entire series into my external usb2 harddisk. Again, I am not advocating privacy, but I would really appreciate it if the Japanese companies released the manga in some electronic form for easy portability.

What I will probably include in future posts in this category would the titles of the latest manga that I can get my hands on. By doing so, I get to adorn my web site with some pretty pictures without having to take them myself. Oh yeah, almost forgot about copyright issues. But if I give the proper credits I guess it is all right, isn't it?

Anyway, here is my tribute to one of the greatest manga artist of all time: Rumiko Takahashi. She created well-loved series such as Inuyasha, Ranma 1/2, and Urusei Yatsura. She has many other titles under her belt as well. And each new series that I pick up never fails to inspire fits of laughter and hours of enjoyment. For a great website that features a summary of all her works, please visit Rumic World.

Right now, Cartoon Network is showing the older Inuyasha anime series over the weekdays. And they have the latest season airing every night on Saturdays. This would be a good time to actually watch the series. I am happy that the translation of the anime went pretty well and that the characters do not sound like silly little children with cotton balls stuff down their throats.