Hi everyone! This seems like a pretty cool, active community, and I'm glad because I just got back into reading manga and I want to talk with people about it.
I'm usually just an anime guy, and it's how I've been keeping up with a lot of current stuff like My Hero Academia. However, I thought both the Shonen Jump online app, and their initiative to launch several new manga for the beginning of the Reiwa era, was so neat that I've been reading each of the new SJ manga for the past month.
Samurai 8: The Tale of Hachimaru 1-9
I like Naruto a good deal. I've been watching through the anime with my girlfriend for the first time, and it has made me very interested in seeing what Kishimoto would do next. It's been... a slow start. The setting is fine but hasn't dazzled me. The action scenes have actually been really difficult to parse, the visuals are so complicated that I've had trouble figuring out what's happening sometimes. And honestly, it's just kind of boring. If this wasn't made by the Naruto guy I definitely would have stopped by now, and I feel I may not be alone in that sentiment. The one reason I haven't quit yet is because even Naruto took a little time to really get going. I want to give Samurai 8 at least a volume's worth to see if it kicks off later. But I'm not having a great time.
Double Taisei 1-8
This one's kind of weird. I really wanted to like it because the idea of a Shogi sports manga is really great to me. Hikaru no Go was one of my favorites in high school, actually got one of my friends so interested in Go that he was playing it at a pretty respectable level for a while. I was hoping for Double Taisei to make Shogi feel really cool in a similar way. It instead focuses on the characters more than it does on exploring the game, and none of said characters are incredibly likeable to me yet. It's hard to get invested in the conflict and root for the protagonist. I don't hate Double Taisei, but it definitely hasn't captured the magic of HnG for me. It's been a little underwhelming and I'm starting to tap out.
Beast Children 1-7
This is another manga that I was actually excited about, because Eyeshield 21? Underrated as hell. If an American football sports manga could be as good as it was, maybe a rugby sports manga had some untapped potential as well. And you know what? I actually really liked the first couple chapters of Beast Children. The protagonist is pretty likable, and his supporting cast in those initial chapters, specifically the Beast, were fuckin great and brought a lot of charm to the story. When Sakura was introduced to his rugby team though, it started to lose me. A lot of similar looking characters were introduced in a very rushed fashion, and nearly none of them seem to have standout personalities, or character designs as memorable as the first few characters. The pacing already feels compromised, I don't love the current cast as much as I'd hoped, and... I dunno. The opening got me interested enough that I hope Beast Children can rebound, but I just have a feeling that it and Double Taisei will be the first Reiwa era mangas on the chopping block.
Tokyo Shinobi Squad 1-6
I have such mixed feelings about this manga. The "globalization of Tokyo made all the thugs come here and now it's a dystopia" hook is super xenophobic. Makes me really uncomfortable. But then the Thai protagonist is a really great, likable character, and surprisingly progressive for Japan? The other protagonist, Jin, goes out of his way to be multilingual and multicultural and keeps saying that he "doesn't care" about nationality and never factors it into his judgement of a person. So now there's this chance that maybe the message of the manga overall will actually be pro-globalist, and there's no real way to tell yet. And I actually like almost every other thing about it! The action scenes are cool and easy to follow, and I really like the powers displayed so far and how they all take time to master. I sense the potential for a really great shonen progression. But I also don't want to have wasted time reading this if it turns out to have an explicitly nationalist message. So I've been taking it chapter to chapter, wondering when or if the other shoe is going to drop. It's actually making me slightly anxious, which is probably a sign I should stop reading it, but here I am!
So even though there's nothing in my current reading list that I love yet, I'm really glad that I'm back on the manga train! I'd actually love any recommendations for what I should read, especially if it hasn't been adapted into an anime yet. It doesn't have to be on the Shonen Jump app, but that'd be a plus for sure since I'm probably going to cave in and get the subscription any day now. Also, the thread keeps mentioning a Discord ; I'd love an invite since I've been on Discord a lot lately. Looking forward to talking more manga with everybody.