manga thread

I just caught up to "Mudameshi Kurai Nintei Sareta node Aiso o Tsukashi, Teikoku ni Utsute Shusse Suru". I find it fascinating how in the fantasy landscape there's a noticeable intersection between pseudo-historical politics and the frustration with contemporary capitalist structures. For example, in a lot of manga there's clear inspiration from what reads to me as the history of the HRE, where local nobles and princes are mistreating their citizenry who then have no choice but to hope that the central government comes to their aid.

This manga isn't quite an example of this as the governance system of the unrighteous kingdom isn't really fleshed out, but the escape to the notably centralized empire still reflects this attitude somewhat. There's also obviously inspiration from historical asian politics where the mark of a good ruler was often having appropriate 賞刑 (translated to rewards and punishments). But the story at it's core is still about modern economic systems where working harder just means more work and more blame.

As society descends further into barbarism, seeing more allegories to medieval structures in popular culture is endlessly fascinating to me. Even though the manga is mostly just complete ass and has nothing worthwhile to offer other than a couple hours of lighthearted reading, it still reflects something that in different times would have been only seen through pointed allegories made by learned men.

Read "Ikusei Skill wa Mou Iranai to Yuusha Party o Kaiko Sareta no de, Taishokukin-gawari ni Moratta "Ryouchi" o Tsuyoku Shite Miru" and it was pretty alright. It exists at the intersection of the exile gimmick, town building storyline, and a shift towards an 1800s themed fantasy world. While seeing these developments together was fairly interesting by itself, the manga wasn't particularly groundbreaking in any regard other than giving a fairly novel twist due to having a fairly novel combination of sub-genres.

The part that I found very fascinating is how the author is clearly into monetary history and monetary theory. Firstly, it's outright stated that bartering doesn't exist in primitive societies, which is fairly advanced for what is otherwise just native isekai slop. But then that gets expanded into the idea that debts and credits are really what give money their value, and that a system of ledgers and memory is really the basis behind all money. And then even further, it explains that money mostly has it's value from being a means for people to pay their taxes instead of paying in grains or other resources. So the author just put a comprehensive course to 21st century monetary theory into their mediocre fantasy story.

The history doesn't even end there though. More than just going through monetary theory, it tries really hard to mostly reflect historically based societies and conflicts. The character moves from what is magitech 1800s england to what is clearly an allegory of japan at the cusp of the meiji era. If this manga was anything other than just kinda bad in a fun way, I think the worldbuilding and economics would be seen as genuinely impressive. But for me personally, the fact that it has as much of the authors interests as it does makes it really fun and unique in a landscape where people are otherwise expecting better stories instead of stories that are more fun to read.

Currently reading "I like you who can have sex anyone" and instead of using the japanese title I'm gonna use the butchered english translation because it's funny. From the description, I kinda assumed it would be a riff on nagatoro or meguro-san but no it turns out it's a batshit sex comedy. For people just coming into manga, it doesn't take very long to find out about onani master kurosawa since it's a highkey underground classic. The only other manga with a similar pathos I've read has been molester man, which is another underground classic.

So while "have sex anyone" has the type of gloomy sex comedy vibe those older works have, it's also tied to the contemporary gyaru wave that was really popular for a while. Overall leaving it as mediocre pornography with some really screenshottable panels. With manga that reminds me of older, far better work, it's easy to think about it in terms of how few steps it really is removed from also being on par with them. But to an extent, the role of any otaku deep enough in their subject, observing the changing tides and developing a genuine interest in odd mutations of the medium is as important as experiencing profound work.

bought me a copy of "My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness", remember reading this back in like 2015 and im pretty sure it completely derailed my life but also its the first time i had even heard of an lgbtq, ontop of that its an amazing depiction of the type of shit we denpa go through, i had been wanting to renounce said denpaness and just live normie style but seeing this at the library while i was nearing a panic attack made me think about how futile it is for someone like me to even try to fit in, if you are a denpa and havent read it then read it, its practically a denpa vlog in manga form.

I read "the holy grail of eris" a couple days back because someone recommended it to me but it never ended up as a discussion so I'm posting my thoughts here. The manga itself was really cool when it came to the way it mixed characters and settings. The main character is your average otome game inspired manga heroine, but the setting is just straight up game of thrones. Which I feel is the best way to experience a setting like that, since I feel like a part of the reason why I couldn't super into got when it was big was because it didn't really have a good perspective character. The shock value is fully retained because you get to see a character actually being shocked at the things going on in the world.

But more importantly, it made me wonder where all the otome game type stories come from. I've attempted to research this and see where common tropes like denouncing a villainess are from in the first place, but there's just no game like that. The prevailing theories I've seen is that it's either from some mobile game series that was exclusive to japan since that was the main medium for otome games when the trope was introduced to manga and webnovels, or that it was made up by some webnovel author specifically as a fictional trope that wasn't tied to any specific game that was inspired by rough plot outlines.

And since the closest genre contrast is isekai, we know exactly where the tropes came from there. It's all dragon quest and years of iterating on the basic themes of it. You see anything in an isekai and you can probably either trace it back to dragon quest, or some type of asian MMO that isn't super popular in the west and is the most hardcore game ever that also requires a substantial amount of microtransactions. All that being said, it's fascinating how a trope of a game genre can be invented just for characters to either be isekaid into otome games, or to make for native otome isekais.

>>6
I just wrote a long response to your post and afterwards I realized I could just point you to subreddits where this has already been discussed in depth.
There are some very thorough posts about this on r/otomegames and r/otomeisekai

>>7
I've seen those posts but I haven't found anything that's conclusive. I think in large part because the main audience on those subreddits is western so some cultural elements that never made it over here might be completely lost. I just really wish the genre got more attention and international collaboration since it seems relatively underappreciated compared to how deep the appreciation for other genres is.