Personally-followed manga, under-the-radar for everyone else

That depends, actually. Someone with certain fetishes/ interest with enough brain space will have, basically, full-on knowledge on said fetish. The same can be said on porn production house or porn actors/ actresses.

Anyone who regularly searches out pornography needs to remember whose work they like for the simple reason that sexual fetishes are very subjective, and those who don't like any one will often be disgusted by it. So you need to find artists who match your preferences.

Anyway I would like to talk about the minor manga released in English as "Idol Dreams", but not really to recommend it. It has quite a few flaws. Is this still the right thread for that?

And now back to non-hentai.

Kaguya Wants to be Confessed To: The Geniuses' War of Love and Brains (Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai ~Tensai-tachi no Ren'ai Zunou Sen~)

In a high school only for those with rich or important backgrounds, we follow the story of a student council president^note Descended from 200 years of predisents. and vice-president^note Heiress to a multi-trillion dollar corporation. They both like each other, but they're of the belief that whoever confesses first will become the submissive one in the relationship. Half a year passes and they haven't progressed at all. This is the story of both of them carefully attempting to trick the other into confessing.

I'm also following Lim Dall-Young's Ark Romancer.

@burnspy: That was mentioned a few pages ago. I'm personally mixed on the pitch. It sounds like a good laugh, but not something I stick with for more than a few chapters. I could be wrong though.

Sasuga Kei's Domestic No Kanojo is actually a fairly popular series, but it's not hot in the circles I go to, so it maybe counts.

It's a steamy love triangle between a good-looking aspiring writer, and his two stepsisters. One happens to be his teacher and first crush and the other his first sex partner and isn't it funny how the world turns around!

If it sounds shameless on paper, in many ways...Err, it really is. It shares a lot of the strengths and weaknesses the author's previous work, GE: Good Ending, had. It can be a genuinely sweeet, and nourishing story when it wants to be. I especially like it when it explores what it means to pursue your dreams, and how integral personal experinces and failure is to the creative process. That I'm a sucker for

Those turned off by that admittedly iffy set-up, and those with a terrible tolerance for romance melodrama, love triangle bullshite, and the "things gon' get fucked in 10" Rube Golberg machine might want to steer clear of this one, though. Like GE, this is a series with as many substantial little moments as it does unintentionaly hysterical ones.

You're also missing the fact that the vice president still considers herself nobility, so irregardless of whether or not the president is a genius and handsome, he's still a heimin, which is... pretty sad, all things considered.

Uhm, you're also forgetting the pretty BS setup on TOP of all of this: his father was remarrying, and at first it was thought it would be said teacher he was dating... except the guy ends up marrying the MOM of the two girls, which adds even more melodramatic complications. It becomes a clusterfsk close to the end, with a whole lot of unlikeable characters trying to be "nice" to each other.

I'm not gonna argue with you there. It's a series with a lot of holes, but it's under my favorite flavor of jam at the moment. Even if it's a cheap budget substitute, it's still strawberry.

It's nowhere near the finish line as well, it seems. Considering it's at the chapter mark where GE started recycling the same notes, and the hero is now macking it with his second stepsister after being forced to break it off with the teacher one..This melodramatic gravy train won't stop chugging anytime soon.

Kei Sasuga's short stories tend to be a lot better than her long ones. GE's oneshot and the first two volumes were great rides, but when things drag out, they drag out super hard (Kurokawa's downwards arc from best girl to worst thing was deflating).

edited 29th Feb '16 3:31:03 AM by mrsunshinesprinkles

I'm currently following two boxing mangas by the name of Money Fight and Rikudou l. Both series discuss the corruption injuries and other risks boxers take with their lifestyle in different ways. Rikudou is a much more darker and grimmer take on the sport while Money Fight has more a dark comedic element mixed in the with excessive violence.

It's...probably not under the radar, but I'm reading the manga adaptation of "Kumo desu ga, Nani ka?" (roughly "I'm a Spider, So What?"). Or rather I was; I couldn't wait for the next chapter and binged on the translation of the WN.

I also ordered volume 1 of the LN, and am currently waiting for it to arrive...basically, I love it. I'll just leave my translation of the LN vol 1's blurb here:

p.s. Yeah, I can read Japanese. Just usually a little too lazy to read it. :x

edited 29th Feb '16 7:09:34 PM by HanabiraKage

I personally reccommend Majime no Jikan, it's a manga about a high-school girl dying from a traffic accident and coming into terms with her death, as well as helping other people (dead or alive) do the same thing. It's really good at discussing how people react to death, pretty short, and above all, a finished story.

edited 29th Feb '16 9:37:17 PM by FlowingCotton

In the category if you like "x", you're sure to like "y": for those who do like Domestic na Kanojo, Seishun Pop! has the same sort of vibes. Loner high school boy is obsessed with the rock band Incest and ther lead singer Ive and surprise, surprise, when he goes to their first live concert it's revealed that not only does she go to his high school, it turns out she's his long lost sister. Cue uncomfortable romance story.

Great art, lots of melodrama, complete thrash.

Not so much under the radar perhaps, but under discussed, largely due to its subject matter: Nana to Kaoru. Kaoru is a loser high school student with an obsession with bondage and an unrequited love for his neighbour, the perfect student Nana. Thanks to reasons she ends up locked up in the bondage corset he had bought with her in mind and because of that she finds out that being tied up does wonders for her stress levels. Cue a secret pact in which she comes to him for "breathers" and he gets to indulge his fantasies.

What struck me about this series, in a medium that has ofted fairly messed up ideas about romance, sex and relationships, was how sweet and realistic it was. Kaoru is a believable loser, an ugly shrimp with massive confidence issues, who knows he can never heave a real relationship with Nana because she's too good for him and therefore agrees to the breathers as much out of a desire to connect with her in some way as to realise his fantasies. Nana meanwhile for all her perfection has a tendency to overwork herself and try and handle her problems on her own, has no clue about Kaoru's feelings and is somewhat selfish in approaching him for her breathers.

Their relationship, such as it is, progresses at a natural and believable rate, the bondage is handled well and realistically and on the whole it has an emotional punch you don't often find in romance manga.

I have no idea why I stopped reading Nana to Kaoru actually. It's not like I disliked it or anything.

I remember thinking they made a great couple, no matter what Kaoru thought of himself.

It's definitely one of my favorite manga. I've been following it for a few years now, ever since I first found it via TV Tropes.

Although I thought the previous arc was a little weak, the current one is excellent. The manga seems to be rapidly closing in on the break Black Label took place in.

I've always loved how large an impact Kaoru's self confidence issues have on the plot and his relationships. Too often they can be used as an Informed Attribute.

edited 1st Mar '16 4:47:59 AM by 32ndfreeze

So I read Immortal Hounds and was more than slightly disapoointed. Having watched it (and liking it) recently, I came from expecting a reversal of Ajin and got kinda-subpar romance instead.

A romance? If you refer to Rin and Kenzaki, calling it a "romance" is a big stretch. .−. I personally like the concept of "making the other fall in love with you to kill them". And the fact that both of them are thoroughly unable to accomplish such a thing. I usually don't like characters that are blocks of ice, but in Rin's case that's a part of what makes her intriguing (I still don't like Kenzaki, though. >.>)

Sorry for the double post.

So after reading chap 25 of Soredemo Boku wa Kimi ga Suki, I tried to continue with the raws, and found myself extremely confused. Turns out the magazine chapters are very different from the volume ones. I'm not talking about one or two pages modified here: there are entire scenes removed (yes, removed) or changed, and the cut-off between chapters is completely different. The final scene of a chapter in the mag raws is in the middle of a chap in the tanks, and vice-versa. Even the chapter numbers don't quite match.

Are there other series were the changes between mag and tank are that drastic? ò.Ô

It's not as uncommon as you'd think. It's just that most scanslators work on the release versions of the manga that they translate, and rarely go with the tankoubons.

Just stumbled onto a new series today, Heroine Voice by Tsukudani Norio. It's very new, just 3 or 4 chapters in, but it's interesting to me so far.

Main character is Otome, a girl who loves acting and dreams above all else to play a "heroine" in a fairy tale. However, her acting desires are hampered by what other characters call her "anime voice." When she mixes up which building she's supposed to go to, she winds up at a voice acting audition instead of the play audition she thought she was going to. Despite causing a bit of a mess, she makes an impression and gets scouted into the VA world and paired with an actress-slash-idol still reeling from a recent scandal and rendered just a bit tsundere as a result.

Demi-chan wa Kataritai: high school biology teacher originally went to study biology because of his interest in ajin/demi humans but because they're so rare. Now it's the new school year and who ends up being part of the new first grade intake? A vampire, a dulluhan and a yuki onno. Not ot mention his new succubus co-worker.

Mellow harem shenanigans, with only a couple of chapters out so far and it manages to stay on the right side of innocent vs creepy.

Heh, sounds kinda fun.

Wow. Mommusu really launched a trend, didn't it…

…In the romcom department, I found myself enjoying Hatsukoi Zombie more than I expected. Basically, after an accident that opens a wound on his forehead, the MC, Tarou, starts to see "Eve", a sort of (scantily clad) ghost that reminds him of the girl he liked as a kid. Incidentally, he also starts to see the same thing for all the guys around, and decides to call these girls "first love zombies".

It's quite fanservicey and doesn't spare us some clichés, but the blasé main character has more personality than most of his peers and the concept of FLZ is explained and expanded bit by bit. It's well executed overall. It's also a bit refreshing to have a romcom where the MC isn't (yet) the focus of the romance, but rather the matchmaker (it helps that after a "little incident", the whole school thinks he's gay). Only 11 chapters out yet, so it's worth a try, I think.

edited 4th Mar '16 3:02:50 AM by Lyendith

Read Heroine Voice: nice story, somewhat of a shame that it buys into that idol mindset of having to live for your fans and not date or you've betrayed them.

That's not just a "mindset", it has held up in court. (Though it has also not held up in court.)

Yeah, Hatsukoi Zombie is pretty good for an ecchi romcom. Quite refreshing that the focus is on the mystery of the zombies rather than silly harem shenanigans. Even the ecchi isn't overbearing, only in the early chapters. And it's justified due to them being teenage boys' delusions.

One thing I liked about Heroine Voice I forgot to mention is a detail I like about its protagonist, Otome.

Mainly that she's something I personally like a lot in that she's The Ditz without being an idiot. She's bubbly, hyper and, at worst, Book Dumb (the reason she goes to the wrong audition was misreading the kanji for the name) but clearly knows her stuff as she's able to give her more experienced but less talented partner solid advice that also works.

I'm 9 chapters in Rin by Harold Sakuishi.

It's about a dork that aspires to draw manga, and extremely talented prodigy, and a fortune teller/empath. The empath predicts the two will write a manga centered around the same concept; a "torus", which was the last words of a famous mangaka that died two years ago. From where I am, it looks to be a race for the two to both continue improving, and to uncover the mystery behind the "torus" ,though that's taking the backseat to the main character's growth as a person and as an artist.

I really like what I see so far. The art really gives off those Great Teacher Onizuka vibes. The main character's determination to become an artist is endearing (I'm also a sucker for that aspiring artist trope, myner), and this blend of the supernatural and the mundane is my kind of scene.

edited 7th Mar '16 4:47:27 AM by mrsunshinesprinkles