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<\/a>And this is when my camera batterydied.<\/p><\/div>\n
The second panel I attended was a Best of\/Worst of Manga 2013, where some of my favorite manga correspondents talked about series they liked and disliked. (It was great to be able to put faces to familiar names, like Shaennon Gaerrity, David Brothers, Brigid Alverson and Chris Butcher, and saying hello to Deb Aoki) Knew (and cheered) most of the series mentioned, and made note of the ones I did not. Funny moments included\u00a0Attack on Titan\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Heart of Thomas\u00a0<\/em>appearing in both “Best of” and “Worst of” sections. Deb made a compelling case for why\u00a0Attack\u00a0<\/em>works and does not. Brigid was unafraid to knock on Moto Hagio a bit, even as Shannon vehemently disagreed. Much fun. You can read details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n When the panel ended, I asked some of the panelists a question that had been bothering me the last day. Aditya Gadre<\/a>\u00a0had asked me on Twitter about what \u00a0title he should start reading if he wants to get into manga. My standard response to that is to figure out what kind of books and movies the person likes, instead of thrusting whatever is the core “best-of” list. He said he was a Neil Gaiman\/Alan Moore fan, which got me really worked up about suggestions. And since San Diego was on, why not go to the Recommendation Mothership?<\/p>\n Chris took about 5 seconds to recommend\u00a0Pluto<\/em>, which I had thought about but dismissed because I felt it was kind of like giving\u00a0Watchmen\u00a0<\/i>to someone who has not read superheroes. A lot of the charm of\u00a0Watchmen\u00a0<\/em>comes from recognizing how Moore subverts familiar superhero tropes, and similarly, you enjoy the beats in\u00a0Pluto<\/em> much more\u00a0if you have a working knowledge of the original\u00a0Astro Boy\u00a0<\/em>stories on which it was based, and a decent knowledge of the characters in that\u00a0universe. I stopped reading\u00a0Pluto\u00a0<\/em>myself around volume 2, made sure I reread ‘The Greatest Robot on Earth’, and enjoyed the story much much more. But Naoki Urasawa is a fantastic writer\/artist, and\u00a0Pluto\u00a0<\/em>is really one of those series that is a perfect combination of art and story, without any of the manga tropes that pisses off non-manga readers. It’s more fun when you know who the kid is<\/p><\/div>\n Deb took some time to come up with two choices –\u00a0Black Lagoon<\/em>, which I agreed with but was a little skeptical about the bad-girl violence, and\u00a0Dorohedoro<\/em>, which I heartily agreed with.\u00a0Black Lagoon\u00a0<\/em>is about a band of mercenaries called the Lagoon company, operating somewhere in South-East Asia. The story begins with them kidnapping a young Japanese salaryman who ends up joining them, and the series is an excellent mixture of no-holds-barred, stylish action mixed with moments of quiet contemplation about the nature of crime, killing and existence.\u00a0Dorohedoro\u00a0<\/em>is a series I read a few months ago, about a man with a reptile head who fights wizards from another dimension, and this has to be the most underwhelming explanation of one of the most fascinating manga I have read in recent times. It has laugh-out-loud humor and strange secrets-behind-secrets, even as Q Hayashida, the lady who writes and draws this series, slowly draws back the curtains on both the wizard and human worlds. It is also a series where you would be hard-pressed to take sides.<\/p>\n Two of the bad-ass ladies of Black Lagoon<\/p><\/div>\n
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