Blog #65

      I think I will write about the other parts of Wheel of Time at another point. Tonight I will instead blog about my last hobby, aside from reading high fantasy and playing video games, which is reading manga! Now, most people probably don't know what manga is, and those who do are probably just asking, “Really, Cody, you're such a nerd that you'll blog about something so weeaboo-ish?” Well, yes.

      I can't really remember when I first got into reading it, but I know that watching anime came first. I only really got into that because you can only watch so much Toonami before you get hooked on Dragonball Z (and Sailor Moon, if you're an eight-year-old me). Anyway, some of my favorite online readers recently got into some legal trouble due to increasing copyright issues, so they just up and quit with posting manga. Thankfully, most sites are still up, although they tend to be virus-infested. I tend to use a secure download site that stays mostly legal by removing licensed series. Mostly legal means that posting manga for free is still technically illegal, but is basically considered to be in a grey area of legality due to lack of other means for any non-Japanese audience to get hold of the manga. This means free manga that isn't licensed by poor American companies!

      Sadly, the ones that America publishes are heavily censored or changed to suit a typical American reader. Sometimes, companies refuse to even pick up series due to controversial content. Seven Seas was going to pick up Kodomo no Jikan, which was a fantastic social commentary about pedophilia in Japan (it has deteriorated with the passing of certain recent laws prohibiting it being sold to younger audiences...), but they decided it might be touchy, so they simply passed it up.

      I've recently started reading Hayate no Gotoku. It's really one of the better manga I've read, despite it being of the parody genre. I've really been at a loss for what to read nowadays though, so I just stick to my high fantasy novels and weekly updates. I read Bokurano awhile back, and despite it's very interesting story, it was easily the angstiest plot that I have ever read. I think when a character actually says “Oh no... I have to kill every single person in the entire world,” that's when you should try to tone it down a little.