20th Century Boys (20世紀少年)
difficulty 4/5 (no furigana)
This is an odd story about a weird cult / cult leader ("tomodachi") who seems intent on taking over and destroying the world. The plot revolves around childhood friends, now adults, who realise that they went to school with tomodachi and must use their childhood memories to try and predict his next move and thwart him. Unfortunately their memories are not very reliable, to the extent that even though they are sure they went to school with him, no-one can quite remember who he was or what his name was.
This is quite meaty, with more than 20 volumes and a lot of dialogue, so once you are at the right level it will provide a lot of material. The language is not that hard (comparable to death note, perhaps), but the lack of furigana could be a problem for some people. I wasn't able to enjoy it fully till I was at N2 level, maybe slightly above.
Despite the childhood theme, this is actually a fairly adult manga - most of the childhood stuff is through the lens of being remembered by various middle aged adults. It is quite dark in places and somewhat depressing.
I'm reading the second to last volume at the moment, and I'm going to miss it when its gone! If anyone has any suggestions of similar manga I would be grateful to hear them.
By the way, I think this is a good manga for people who don't actually like manga very much - a category I would put myself in.
difficulty 4/5 (no furigana)
This is an odd story about a weird cult / cult leader ("tomodachi") who seems intent on taking over and destroying the world. The plot revolves around childhood friends, now adults, who realise that they went to school with tomodachi and must use their childhood memories to try and predict his next move and thwart him. Unfortunately their memories are not very reliable, to the extent that even though they are sure they went to school with him, no-one can quite remember who he was or what his name was.
This is quite meaty, with more than 20 volumes and a lot of dialogue, so once you are at the right level it will provide a lot of material. The language is not that hard (comparable to death note, perhaps), but the lack of furigana could be a problem for some people. I wasn't able to enjoy it fully till I was at N2 level, maybe slightly above.
Despite the childhood theme, this is actually a fairly adult manga - most of the childhood stuff is through the lens of being remembered by various middle aged adults. It is quite dark in places and somewhat depressing.
I'm reading the second to last volume at the moment, and I'm going to miss it when its gone! If anyone has any suggestions of similar manga I would be grateful to hear them.
By the way, I think this is a good manga for people who don't actually like manga very much - a category I would put myself in.
Edited: 2013-06-15, 7:42 pm