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aspiring-holistic-otaku · 1 year

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Season 2 Ramble#5 - Mystery, Madness & Mayhem ver. 2

This episode is about mystery, madness and mayhem. And I love this stuff regardless of medium so I pretty much assumed I was gonna be enjoying this month's reads, and even though there weren't as much of certain tastes I was looking forward to there was still much to be enjoyed.

Anyways as I said I love this stuff, definitely the earliest thing I thought I'd want to make a little mini series out of and do continuously, definitely something i’ll be consuming podcast or no podcast. manga or no manga..

Now the setup last time was me giving some definitions of mystery, madness and mayhem then sharing my top 1 manga read in each of those three categories + a grab bag of titles at the end which you can check out below..

This time is pretty much the same but skipping the Google definitions and giving my own "definitions", which you can completely disregard if you so choose tbh, like i know words mean stuff but all stuff is bound to change anyways yk so,,,yh,,, also this time instead of one big grab bag with everything I'm gonna try and split them into their respective categories, loosely ordered from least to most enjoyed. the reads are split the usual way of stuff read this month first then older stuff after.

So definitions quickly:

mystery - the why?

madness - the what?

usually has cast vs some largely unseen thing. can be normal everyday stuff like trying to get a functional ac remote to the paranormal escapades of a microwave scientist fighting assassins through spacetime

usually has cast vs some seen but unbelievable thing. And again can go from normal everyday society™ to the paranormal blood bending psychic mass murderer

mayhem - the everything, everywhere, all at once. To lean on the google definition a bit, chaos.

Just to be clear these aren’t some clear cut genre borders or anything just some themes/motifs i like in my media. and in fact i tend to find where there’s one at least one other follows, so these splits are based on which of each seemed to be the primary focus in the manga.

Getting into it now,, top mystery madness and mayhem read this month go!

Top Mystery:

The decagon house murders (Original Book Author - Yukito Ayatsuji, Manga Adaptation - Hiro Kiyohara | 31 chapters)

This is a mystery story revolving around a club for people who enjoy mystery stories,, visiting an island where a house recently burned down and people died under mysterious circumstances… surprise surprise, play stupid games, win stupid prizes,, but even though it was a classic whodunnit, the cast being all mystery buffs meant they pretty much knew all the dos and don'ts and yet… life comes at you fast…

The title alone was a pull because sacred geometry is really cool to look at and see,, if you don't know what that is don't get sucked in just hail the helix and move on + sacred geometry didn't play any obvious role in this anyways. art was nice, really easy on the eyes, pretty cool cast and as I said they were all mystery buffs so that created this almost cast vs plot situation which was really cool. watching them go back and forth amongst each other trying to figure it all out and avoid tragedy was nice, and it didn't take too long to get started or wrap things up. just 31 chapters as I said.

Didn't see the end coming at all and it's actually really crazy how simple it was,, almost cheating and bordering on cheap… but it was something that the original book author admitted relied heavily on being in a written medium and so was still a challenge to pull off in manga.. all that being said I clearly still dug it as it was my top mystery read this month.

mystery grab bag:

the night fish, another , dead man's questions and thus spoke Rohan kishibe

Top Madness:

Memories of her… (Katsuhiro Otomo | 16 chapters )

This is actually the basis for my favourite Otomo animated work called Memories, a three piece anthology that I will continually highly highly recommend. if the name Katsuhiro Otomo doesn't mean anything to you he's the guy that did Akira… if the name Akira doesn't mean anything to you then check that out and thank him for the bike slide.

This work is also an anthology but with about 10 pieces of varying lengths. manga anthology pieces tend to be short and usually surprisingly good, even when I’m accounting for how good I tend to find them and even though I went in with extra heightened expectations, because Otomo, they were thankfully pretty well met.

Individual anthology pieces tend to be short and impactful in some way. Having now been through a bunch more Otomo stuff since starting this podcast I can honestly say his stuff generally does have that punch, does have that impact and that was thankfully present here. again they're all super short so it doesn't make sense to go into them too much more than that, but what I will say is that the impact of otomo's works, at least for me, comes out of a great balance of dramatic environmental storytelling and thoughtful natural dialogue that makes you look more critically at the world,, even if they're usually packaged with a healthy dash of humour. for the record, Akira is my least favourite animated work by him and though i’ll definitely admit it’s the most famous for its impact in terms of art direction for a reason fr, I still highly recommend checking out his other stuff to really see the range of his greatness outside just the one movie, Akira.

Anyways this had great art nonetheless, pretty much expected from him tbh, pretty much every story held my attention, the only thing is that it was a milder madness so to speak rather than the spicier types I tend to prefer.

Quick examples of each so I'm not just saying words that don't connect, a spicier madness would be like Berserk, Elfen Lied, Tokyo Ghoul, Deadman Wonderland, etc., usually based on some set of perpetually unfortunate events, that drives the cast to take extreme actions.. though I also like when the mc and world is already just like that, like in Dorohedoro how extreme absurdities were just everyday routine. lots of messy spaghetti situations in the spicier types…. a milder madness would be like Goodnight Punpun, Welcome to the NHK or even Serial Experiments Lain The Nightmare of Fabrication, where it's almost as if the existential mundanity of life is deafeningly scratching on a whiteboard and slowly pushing the cast to the brink.

madness grab bag: MPD Psycho, smiley, 6000, world apartment horror, Usuzumi no Hate, denjin n, tekkonkinkreet

Top Mayhem:

As the gods will 2 (Muneyuki Kaneshiro on story and Akeji Fujimura on art | 186 chapters)

This is the sequel which is pretty much death games, death games and more death games. since reading part 1 last year I'd been told that it fell off in part 2 which I definitely agree with but maybe even because of my lowered expectations it held up better than I thought it would.

I read part 1 last year and it was my top 1 new manga l read that combined mystery, madness and mayhem, 21 chapters, I definitely highly recommend.

I say it all the time but survival/death games are simple. what you see is what you get. they're all pretty similar, group of folks find themselves in some inexplicable situations that they can't get out of without completing some usually wild challenges. what really defines one from the other is the nature of the challenges, the more unique and roundabout, usually the better. see squid games hype and the saw series somehow still running to this day, 10th one is dropping this year apparently,, Google it if you think I'm messing with you.

In any case the games were definitely unique, I think I really dug it because the game setups were very whimsical and almost childlike in nature but then it turns out the reason the chicken crossed the road was to kill you… the art was okay, the cast was really enjoyable and felt pretty real and not too contrived for the situation like "oh I'm the smartest guy in the galaxy" or "I'm the girl with a horribly timed bad attitude" etc, it was just folks trying to survive and getting wrecked randomly, such is life and that's what I was there for.

Admittedly the end was weak, and it was petering off a little before but yh the end was definitely weak but not to the point of regretting the read. we finally got an up close look at the mastermind behind the whole thing,, though they themselves were also a little disappointing but again not enough to make me really regret reading,, the final face off was close tho… especially after they went on for so long. like I said last season, part of part 1's charm was hitting the nail on the head with story length and not overstaying its welcome, part 2 only got away because the games were so wacky as obvious as the deadly outcomes were…

mayhem grab bag: as the gods say 0, after god, shibatarian

that's it for stuff this month

now older stuff, a lot of the same names as last time but some shifts in order + the grab bags have a bit more stuff and ofc it's split this time

Old Top Mystery:

Soil vs Billy Bat (really tough call I'm sorry)

spoke on soil properly in season 1 ramble 1, it was my top read for the year of 2021, the closest thing to a pure mystery I think I'll ever read vs the real world paradigm shifting conspiracies of Billy Bat, spoke on for the first time at length in season 1 ramble 11 where I focused on Naoki Urasawa, all I'm saying is Naoki Urasawa is a living legend and the moon landing is dubious at best

Old Mystery grab bag:

20th century boys, pluto, monster (Urasawa in general tbh), acca 13, Eden: it’s an endless world, liar game, junji ito works in general, butterfly storage, toilet bound hanako kun, ptsd radio and the ihon series which tied last episode, summer time rendering

Old Top Madness:

Fire punch

chainsaw man is soft. enough said.

Old Madness grab bag:

homunculus, welcome to the nhk, soul eater, made in abyss, cigarette anthology, hellsing, Alice in borderlands, dolly kill kill, junji ito works in general, shuzo oshimi works in general, inio asano stuff ,shigahime, deadman wonderland, takopi’s original sin, believers, gogo monster, alien 9, tokyo ghoul series, to my dearest self with malice aforethought

Old Top Mayhem

JJBA vs Omniscient Reader

I dare any Jojo fan to deny it's chaotic, I want any non fans to do a double take on that title and this young man's figure and tell me you think there are any normal events in this story (spoiler alert, there are none)

Omniscient reader is actually from just this year season 2 ramble 1 new year new worlds,, an isekai,,, manhwa even,, but my first top new read of this year nonetheless, def got v crazy, for less ramble and more words check out the ramble but also trust and just go read lol

Old Mayhem grab bag:

Chainsaw man, Berserk(rip Miura one time every time), parasyte, jujutsu kaisen, as the gods say pt1,terra formars blood lad,inuyashiki, jackals, junji ito works in general, choujin x ,ajin, magical girl apocalypse, bokurano, tougen anki, jagaaaan, origin, raqiya, ddddd(anime), akumetsu top for last seasons

The peak of all this in my mind though is still dorohedoro…

this is literally the first panel of the manga

and yh... that's the ramble 😅😅, thanks for checking it out this far, hope you find a good read o/

#just another day #mm..manga #writeup #the decagon house murders #memories of her...#as the gods will 2 #as the gods say 2 #ps: if you're not into all this podcast stuff the link in my bio has transcripts for every ramble I've ever done #can't believe it was so late but man people sure do love watching tv huh?

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