Queries
 

I know very well what animow is, and the kinds of culture it's borne all over my e-neighbourhoods, but I know nothing about MANGA, other than that it is a Japanese novel form.

I've read from the highly reputable site Foure-Channe that manga is apparently far more established a cultural industry than animow, being consumed more regularly by a much wider agebase. This leads me to presume that manga is basically Japan's equivalent to our pop fiction industry: Dan Brown, Matthew Reilly, Danielle Steele, etc. but I'm curious now, and I want to dig deeper. I've read a lot of pop fiction; some of it's been really quite brilliant, so there must be something manga can offer me that's equally amazing.

Is manga exclusively or predominantly pop genre-oriented or what? Is there literary manga? Or critical manga, stuff that looks at sociology or politics or technology? Is virtually all manga based on, about, and/or situated in, Japan?

Stylistically, is all manga part of that same borg I've come to disdain simply from Internet oversaturation? You know, the eyes, the lolita portraiture, the kooky exclamation symbols. I'm bothering with this paragraph because I really don't care about the design technicalities of this stuff. I want red meat for the brain.

I know I shithang animow a lot; my disdain for what's been done with the medium so far's fairly well-known. But I think manga might actually have something in it for me.

So please refer me to some great manga, but take into account these exceptions:

--No symbologically convoluted post-apocalyptic NeoTokyo bosnian fagcon that goes nowhere worthwile.
--No 'harem' serials, unless they're megacreative.

Manga is graphic novels, but in my opinion, that is as far as the usefulness in definition goes.

Majority of the anime came out of the last 50 years are base on some sort of manga. However, only a very small portion of manga get made into anime. The type of manga that one would recommend depends largely on their availability.

Just what type of manga is available to you anyway?

Whatever's on the Internet and translated is available to me. Can't really answer that question any better.

If you can't read Japanese or another language where niche manga are being translated on regular basis (like Chinese) , stuff available on the Interment really isn't a lot. Speaking of which, do you have any specific genre that you like? Because I was about to recommend you something in Shujo/Slice of Life genre by Kyoko Hikawa. Unfortunaly, I have yet to find a net source for her works other then From Far Away.

Cal, here is a place to download tons of manga from:

http://www.stoptazmo.com/

Just sign up for a free account and download as much as you want. Since the downloads are just small chapters you should be able to sample stuff and find something you like.

Double Post:
Also, here's a shitload of torrents for complete manga series:

http://www.boxtorrents.com/browse.ph...=id&order=desc

Even while they are very different from one another and are still in progress, I have been enjoying Yotsubato!, Yakitate! Japan, and 20th Century Boys very much. They are very good examples of their respective genres. So if your tastes encompass hilarity, breadmaking, and awesomeness, I suggest these titles as an introduction to manga.

The problem with manga is that there's so much, that it's hard to seperate the good ones from the bad. The majority of it is shonen crap (action manga), but sometimes you discover a rare gem that really stand out.

My recommendations:
-20th Century Boys (Naoki Urasawa):
Easily my favourite. Iattracts me to this manga is the suspense that Urasawa manages to put in the storyline, and there are constant plot twists. You get a story full of flashbacks, flashforwards, which really helps out to flesh out the background of the characters. Really worth a read.

-Monster (Naoki Urasawa)
Another favourite, and one of the reasos I got interested in manga. The story is full of suspense, shocking scenes (not gory or anything, but just psychologically shocking), and as I've said with 20th CB, you just want to go on and on, to find out the eventual truth.

-Hikaru no Go
Call it one of my guilty pleasures, since I normally don't follow anything shonen besides this and OP. I really can't give a good reason as to why I like this one so much, maybe it's because of the incredible art, or just because you can grow so attached to simple characters. Aside from that, go matches in this one can excite me more than any generic shonen sword fight.

More to follow later.

If you'd like a science fiction manga that's more rooted in reality than giant robots and laser beams, try out Planetes. Keywords: space debris, rookie employee, corporate ladder, The Moon, terrorists, coworker romance, Jovian expedition -- actually, maybe I'll just refer you to the Wikipedia article.