Journey into Mystery

i. Saint Young Men: Okay, there's nothing to spoil here but dude! Double chapter! Celebrating winter holidays FTW. Why are those two so adorable and funny?

ii. Historie: ( And by 'snakes in the room', I mean 'is my makeup well done?' )

iii. Vinland Saga: ( I'm going to drive around town and put heads on spikes )

Assorted comments on manga I read today.

• Kobato 13(.A?): I couldn't understand a thing! Now, crypticness is fun and I like it, especially when I can go back and reread when I know what it was all about. But when it comes to the animal-shaped characters, they just become almost unintelligible. All I got from there was that ( are these spoilers? )
  . Anyway, it's kind of bizarre that I'm following this manga for the plushies' plot, whatever that is.


• Vinland Saga 52: ...Holy crap. Now, that's losing your head. *rimshot* I just... What the hell, Askeladd. What the fucking hell. I hope the next chapter doesn't take a million years to scanlate.


• Historie 52: So far I'm enjoying Eumenes' adventures in Macedonia. And how he's more OMG LIBRARY than anything else (if anyone reading this has slash goggles, must've been disappointed that right after meeting Alexander, Eumenes is all "what an interesting place with interesting people ~AND THE LIBRARY~ ♥"). Have I mentioned the big crush I have on Eumenes? So awesome.


• Ouran 69: OMG, it's the return of Stupid Dork Tamaki! Now with 30% more misunderstanding and annoyance! I swear I LOL'd through the whole chapter. It just felt like an old chapter and all. I wonder if next month they'll bring out the cliffhanger about Kyouya's shady discovery, or they'll skip the drama for a while and return to humorous shenanigans on Haruhi's birthday. The so-called love triangle is coming more as humoristic than anything so far.


• Saint Young Men 5: ...I never said I read this, did I. It feels so wrong, but it's so cracky. And this chapter was just hilarious. Jesus' blog! Practically everything Buddha said! Death Note reference! The animals outside! Between this one and Ouran, I had my LULZ quota for the weekend :Db

Pass a Secret Note ✘ Meme



Lately I was in the mood for historical manga. I picked one of these two out of recommendations at free_manga, and the other because I had heard it was epic. But mostly, I picked these because you rarely see the civilizations where they take place in Eastern comics. Most historical manga set in the West is like... in France. Or Victorian Britain. Which isn't bad, but variety is good.

They both have something in common: The main character is a boy with the blood of warriors in his veins. Their life gives a huge turn when their father gets killed in an awful way that was indirectly the kid's fault. Even though the boy must undergo through a trip in faraway lands and perhaps never see the rest of his family again, here's where the coincidence ends. Eumedes uses his mind to get out of the situations he gets into, while Thorfinn grows up to be a violent, hot-headed killing machine (think shounen retard, but ANGRIER). It's not really because of the upbringing, even if the former was raised by a smart culture and the latter's has a bad fame; no, it's more of the circunstances and personality of the characters.

Also, if you want to read either manga, you gotta know that they have a good share of gore. Nothing extremely horrible, but there's blood and corpses and organs and heads disembodied going around. And if slavery squicks you too much, then you might have a couple of issues as it was normal in those time periods. The solid stories and great art make up to it, though, so I'd still rec them even if you dislike any of the above. You can find both manga in Onemanga.

( Historie by Iwaaki Hitoshi )

( Vinland Saga by Yukimura Makoto )