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Manga News/Discussion |OTD| Oh, you're reading manga? How cute...

Thud

Member
No but clearly the series wasn't planning to pivot to Robo as a pro like this. It wasted time setting up a lot of plot lines about robo making the high school team, the one guys former injury, taking the place of one of the core 4, building up Robo's endurance, and some of the kids possibly figuring our who Robo's father is that the series seemingly just dropped.

Maybe it will do better so we get that stuff via flashbacks lol.
 
Robot X Laserbeam 30

Uh ok I didn’t expect a time skip like that, and a 3 year one no less!? I dunno I feel like there was more that could have been done with the highschool golf stuff, but we’re just skipping right past that.
 

Taruranto

Member
Altair 87

SoBaxEV.png

What?


prqhnp2.png
 

Principate

Saint Titanfall
Man had a peak at the latest Hinomaru Zumou raws and man everything is all popping off this manga wastes absolutely no time.
Kuze "Kusanagi" has managed to reach Ozeki (second highest rank in professional Sumo) and all of the top ranked professional sumo athletes have gather (even Hinomaru finally reacing this point after beeing delayed for a year due to a broken arm) next Chapter is Kuze vs the current Yokozuna (highest fucking rank) We haven't even seen timeskip Ozeki Shinya

Shiiiit man Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
 

Chase17

Member
Man had a peak at the latest Hinomaru Zumou raws and man everything is all popping off this manga wastes absolutely no time.
Kuze "Kusanagi" has managed to reach Oozeki (second highest rank in professional Sumo) and all of the top ranked professional sumo athletes have gather (even Hinomaru finally reacing this point after beeing delayed for a year due to a broken arm) next Chapter is Kuze vs the current Yokozuna (highest fucking rank) We haven't seen timeskip Ozeki Shinya

Shiiiit man Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

This is tempting to read. How many chapters is the series up to?
 

zroid

Banned
I got impatient waiting for vol 8 of Mahouka/Yuutousei which apparently isn't being released till March or something... so I just read the Japanese version. :lol

I figured I'd get what was happening since I've already read that arc in the light novels.

...it's interesting how I get a better appreciation for how the story is conveyed through the art when I can't read the text
 

Principate

Saint Titanfall
I started reading the raws a few months back because the series is so good.

The pace is obscenely good for a Shounen, even as far as Sports shounen goes as they tend to have faster paces and typically know when to fucking end. Beyond the intial start up of the group the author has just been firing all cylinders from that point on.
 
No but clearly the series wasn't planning to pivot to Robo as a pro like this. It wasted time setting up a lot of plot lines about robo making the high school team, the one guys former injury, taking the place of one of the core 4, building up Robo's endurance, and some of the kids possibly figuring our who Robo's father is that the series seemingly just dropped.

Other than the captain's injury, this stuff can still largely stick around. Especially since a time skip means some of the other high schoolers can join Robo on a pro tour. I especially doubt that the kids would find out about his dad until some pro rats him out. It doesn't seem like Robo even knows about his dad.
 
shokugeki no soma 236

Yeah, Takumi isn't losing this match. I mean it was against Aizen anyway, which is basically an asshole character meant to be beaten in the end.
 

dani_dc

Member
While at the Jump expo I noticed a gag series from the early 80’s which was described to be the story of a male crossdresser,
I became curious to see how the subject was tackled before it became an entire genre in the decades to come.

However, my expectations were thrown out of the loop soon after starting, despite other characters referring to the character as a cross-dresser, it quickly became clear that wasn't the case. This was not a story about a male crossdresser, instead it was a story about a transgender girl.

Now, if the subject of crossdressing was already something which had the potential to go wrong, the idea of an early 80s Japanese gag manga tackling the issue of transgenderism seemed to be the recipe for a disaster...


Stop! Hibari-kun

XiLLJNO.jpg


Stop! Hibari-kun is a story about Kosaku relationship with Hibari, a transgender girl who is misunderstood as a deviant by her family, though accepted by those who know her only as a girl.
Kosaku is technically the main character, and the story is told via his perspective, but I’ll be focusing mostly on Hibari as she’s the most interesting aspect of the work.

The series follows a very traditional gag format of “set up, punch-line, reaction (usually with characters falling down with their legs up)”, which personally I didn’t find it particularly humorous.
The art is also rather plain, though the series has some pretty stylish covers shoots.

The set up is pretty normal by today standards, after Kosaku mother dies he is adopted by a mob family. It is there that he is presented to his four new step-sisters.
One of which is Hibari, supposedly the only male heir to the family, she refutes the idea of being her father son and instead presents herself as his daughter.

This is one of the first surprising points of consistence with Hibari, she always refutes the idea of being a male, and at times corrects those that refer to her otherwise.


The writing backs up her claims, the story presents Hibari as a normal girl, intelligent,popular, and with a strong personality capable of defending herself. Despite being written as a strong female character, she is never presented as being masculine.


To further this thought, she is constantly presented as a female in her school environment, and while there are characters that try and expose Hibari as a transgender, she is always accepted and treated as a female by those at school.

Despite this, insults towards Hibari are common by those that know of her situation , “Pervert” being the most usual one. Yet the story carefully never sides with those insults, instead it always presents Hibari as a normal and well adjusted girl, while those that insult her are often made into the butt of the jokes.

During the series we can catch glimpses of more of Hikari struggles as a transgender girl. She feels uncomfortable to be with other girls both in locker rooms and baths due to her own body. We see her expressing wishes for having a biological female body.
And while she often justifies not joining a sports club due to lack of interest, there’s a general feeling that she doesn’t do so due to her gender of birth.

Kosaku attitude towards Hibari changes through the series, while is he taken by her from the start, the realization that she’s a male by birth makes him go into a defensive position. As the series progresses, he slowly eases up on his defenses against Hibari, and while he never fully “gets there” (partly due to the series early cancellation) you can notice small changes in his attitude.

As an example, there are a few scenes in which Hibari kisses Kosaku, and every-time it happens he seems less reluctant about it, even going as far as nearly initiating the kisses in a few situations.
The series also doesn’t present these kisses as bad or even as funny, at worst the series presents them as unexpected.

While it’s treatment of transgenderism is surprisingly progressive, the series isn’t without issues. It occasionally enters uncomfortable territory with stereotypical caricatures of certain groups, and while these caricatures likely do not come from malice but from ignorance or a misfired attempt at humor, they are never the less uncomfortable to read.
This is unfortunate blemish in an otherwise surprising progressive work, thankfully these are rare situations which are best ignored to appreciate the overall experience.

Unfortunately the story came to an early ending, canceled with only 53 chapters due to the author inability to write weekly chapters(including not finishing the last chapter), due to this Stop! Hibari-kun ended in a relatively ambiguous way, with the only thing of note being the introduction of a male transgender character to the mix.

While reading the manga I often wondered if the author had purposely written a realistic and well researched transgender character, or if this had happened by mere chance.
However, the male transgender introduced in the last chapter goes as far as stating that he was taking male hormones supplements, which makes me think the author might deserve more credit for being informed than I initially assumed.

There is a very thin-line between having ignorant characters and having an ignorant story, yet Stop! Hibari-kun manages to walk this path, laughing at those who are ignorant, rather than being ignorant for the sake of humour.


Stop! Hibari-kun premise and context had everything to go wrong, and while it doesn’t particularly succeeded as a gag manga, it does something far more important, it manages to tell the story of a young transgender girl.
This would had been an achievement even for a manga written today, the fact that it did so in 1981-1983 makes Stop! Hibari-kun a remarkable work on it’s own merits.

IrocFoa.jpg
 

striferser

Huge Nickleback Fan
Good write up Dani. Most surprising thing is that hibari-kun was published in weekly jump... i mean, wow... how often mainstream magazine handling that issue?

Shokugeki no soma
About time Takumi stop being a jobber and actually contribute to the team

My hero academia latest
Man, i always love this kind of powerup scene. Great stuff
 

dani_dc

Member
Good write up Dani. Most surprising thing is that hibari-kun was published in weekly jump... i mean, wow... how often mainstream magazine handling that issue?

I imagine they took it at face value, even in the exposition summary they referred to it as a "comedy series about a crossdressing boy".

It's easy to miss the underlining themes if you're not aware of them.
 

Articalys

Member

Chase17

Member
Shudan 16
He just wants to be a doctor!

Astra 44
Alucard/Dracula naming sensibilities.

"I don't need a bodyguard"
*gets pushed off a cliff*

Not a full on setting up redemption for the traitor backstory, but I'm not ruling it out.

166. We're a fair bit behind. All I can say is shit just got real, Kuze vs Tennouji real.

Oh. That is pretty real.
 

Lain

Member
Horimiya is good, but what we need is a Kase-san and... anime. I need to see a well animated Yamada watering those plants.
 

Busaiku

Member
While it’s treatment of transgenderism is surprisingly progressive, the series isn’t without issues. It occasionally enters uncomfortable territory with stereotypical caricatures of certain groups, and while these caricatures likely do not come from malice but from ignorance or a misfired attempt at humor, they are never the less uncomfortable to read.
This is unfortunate blemish in an otherwise surprising progressive work, thankfully these are rare situations which are best ignored to appreciate the overall experience.
Occasionally is putting it lightly.
It happens too frequently, and is absolutely obscene.
 

Arabesque

Member
Yeah, discord sounds really cool, Would be a shame to lose a place to talk about manga regularly.

Even though I hadn’t been able to read much these past few weeks.
 

Shouta

Member
Oh hey! Manga-gaf! Neat.

I just found out a new manga by my favorite author Taku Kitazaki, It's part of of his Cupid's Prank series with the main title being "Madoi no Reiko" or Reiko of the feeling perplexed. It's currently untranslated but it's pretty easy to understand until the last twist at the end of the 1st chapter. Always great to get a romcom with adult elements to it, especially from Kitazaki, lol.
 
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