Maken Ki!

this manga is drawn very well....

=d
i like how their eyes are drawn.

them are all lovely 2d ladies. ^^
I learned Japanese from the classes I took in college, however without any practice my Nihonggo is starting to deteriorate.
about books, have you started reading any harry potter books? ^^ heard that the golden compass series were good as well. these are probably considered children's book but still a good read. ^^

I love scanlators! I can download the manga right here, and do it guilt free cause I know the publisher will never send it to India :).

A brilliant book that I read a loong time ago is 'The Remains Of The Day' - By Kazuo Ishiguro. Was feeling a bit japanophilic at the time, so saw the name and picked it up. Plus, it didn't hurt that this one had won the Booker prize :).

Another informative piece, Danny, Thank You. It's really quite well drawn! I haven't managed to read/watch To-Love-Ru but, viewing the pics has motivated me to do so.

I tend to pick up terms from anime, learn how to spell and write them from RAW manga and increase my vocabulary from music and reading. I decided to learn Hiragana first, not sure if it's the recommended step but, it's going well.

I haven't read any good 'books' lately but, when I do, I'll recommend one to you :)

Hiromitsu Takeda does a lot of great H-manga too.

.... mmm why is rito's sister.... in that mix.... -.-

I check other, cos I learnt a lot of my japanese phrases from the internet/chat rooms lol
stuff like Hentai... Ecchi were one of the first few o_o; along with Kawaii etc eventually got to know of Otaku and actually took some japanese lessons but drop off due to it not sticking to my brains (argh) But now picking up more phrases if I watch anime ^^

gah, now i have another series to follow! :P time for a third bookcase...

I learnt Japanese at university, and found it quite easy and enjoyable. However, it was all quite formal (lotsa desu), and I learn most slang from watching Ranma 1/2 subtitled. It's been too long since I've needed to use it, so I don't recall how to read. Will have to recap someday.

You can try out "Tuesday With Morrie".

It is kinda soft, but if u are into the soft spot, like me, u will like it. It's about a true story of a professor Name Morrie, who is slowly dying.

I'll leave the rest to you :)

Nice art, but I've never liked super-big eyes >_<

I didn't enjoy Tenjou Tenge very much, and liked Ikkitousen even less (maybe something's wrong with me, heh) so I think I'll give this one a miss.

Mmm nice looking manga... will hunt for it soon at Kinokuniya... ^^

I learnt most of the Japanese phrases on animes and mangas, but most of the grammar and basics are from textbooks and online.

Definately on my must get list. ^_^

As for Japanese, I learned it from my mother, forgot it when we both started studying English, and got back into learning it when we moved back to Japan. The relearning happened because I saw Hokutou no Ken and Choushinsei Flashman, and I wanted to know what they were saying. Taught myself how to read, too, via Jump comics (especially Bastard!). Since then, it's been classes and self-study. ^_^

I always want to root for the h-mangaka turned professional mangaka for some reason ^_^

look good, will read it if have chance :).

I recommend Bernard Cornwell. He is by far my favourite author. Basically he has a huge load of historical novels, usually based around some tough guy fighting battles and winning maidens, yet exceedingly well written and not boring for an instant. Whereas in many books you have to read a while to get glued, here I'm stuck from the first page onwards.

Lately I've been reading a Sherlock Holmes book I got from the Harajuku library, but that's just because I love all the quaint Englishness.

Lovely manga indeed :3

Rather than to-Love-ru, it seems much closer to sekirei. Also, sekirei has pupils too ^_^

Thanks for the review danny I might check it out if it gets translated to chinese, time to go hunting in Kinokuniya

well if its more like Mai - Hime than ikki tousen.. things should be fine..

nice art btw.. excellent lines

one manga has the weeklies of to love ru uploaded.. so no pupils.. (sad sad)

btw.. Haruna-chan rules!.. and the anime needs to stop doin there own thing and stay to the manga.. dang it.. MORE HARUNA!

I think the only thing which could get me into mangas would be living in Japan ... geting mangas here... well it's more of a hassle then anything and it's old stuff too.
Geting them online... hmm nah, i don't like to reach much comics on my screens. Applegeeks is the big excuse, but it's only one strip once in a time and not a complete comic i have to dig truh.
As for the phrases, anime does most of it, doramas too.
It started with me being in a japanese EverQuest guild 10 years ago though.
Their english was rather bad and in guildchat it was only japanese, but one fellow did teach me most of the important phrases and i still recall them today.
The first was: w~ (lol) XD

lol MAKEN KI IN MY BUY LIST!!

lol. MAKEN KI IN MY BUYLIST FOR MANGAS!!!! thanks for the preview shots danny. now i can look forward to this manga

wow! that's a very beautiful artwork and those are equally beautiful and very cute girls *heart heart heart*

must...find...scanlations lolz

Konjiki no Yami~ *heart heart heart*

Try some good Science Fiction:

Diaspora by Greg Egan
Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter

(Most of their other books are good too, especially Reynold's Revelations Space series.)

Short SF is good too. You can't beat the yearly best short SF collection edited by Gardner Dozois.

poll lacks the eroge option

guess i'll click others then

More new ecchi manga to read! Lately I can't seem to get enough of them...

Danny can I ask one question?

Since your manga posts that I know of have only been about cute-some manga, do you read shonen manga like D.Gray-man, Bleach, Naruto, Hajime no Ippo and such? ^^

That's a must-get. Looks fantastic in every way. And that trans-fo-ma video made me lol for some reason.

You don't need a JQuery book to start using it away!! I've never understood people buying programming books when the best info i gotten in Internet and from practice!

I absolutely love JQuery to the point that plain javascript is sort of painful to use now.

First discovered Hiromitsu Takeda in Comic Megastore H 11-2007, which is still my favourite of all his hworks. After that I gathered all the things of his I could, I eventually stumbled onto Maken-ki too (which is now being scanlated by Hidoi-translations btw) which is basically a collection of all the different looking girls from his previous hentai works (in terms of character designs that is). So, if you like a particular girl's appearance in Maken-ki, it's almost certain there's an earlier hmanga story with a near identical looking girl in it by him too :p

Don't have links atm but some of his previous works are:

Doujins (under circle name "Shinjukai" or "Shinjugai" seen it typed both ways and since I can't read japanese not sure which is correct):
Mamatama 1-3 (eyeshield 21)
Ou-tama King Of Soul (Fate/stay night)
Sakitama (Arcana Heart)

Hmanga publications:
Comic Megastore H 11-2007, 10-2007, 8-2007, 7-2007, 6-2007, 12-2006, 3-2008, 5-2008
COMIC Unreal 2006-10 Vol.03, 2007-02 Vol.05
Comic Kairakuten Beast Vol.02 [19-01-2007]
COMIC Megastore 2006-04

Damn that manga looks good. Should really start reading, but as I spend all my time downloading anime, I've never taken the time to find the best manga channels. Plus I hate reading stuff off monitors; whish e-paper would become affordable, then I'd convert immediately. So to answer the question: anime.

catch 22 is a pretty good book.

Hmmm, looks like another to add to the "read it" list...

As for reading reccomendations.

Well, Terry Pratchett is always fun and good for a laugh. Fantasy for those who thought they didn't like fantasy. Sort of Monty Python-esque I guess, or in the same vein as the Hitch Hiker's Guide.

Matthew Reilly's an Australian author who does some sweet action airport fiction. Blast through a novel in a day or two easy. One of his books "Ice Station" was also at one point apparently being made into a manga. If anyone's seen it I'd be interested to know what it's like.

If you're in for something heavier, David Weber's got some great space-opera style Sci-Fi. I could highly reccomend the Honor Harrington series. Exciting and well written to boot with likeable characters, even those on the wrong side of the war. Think "Horatio-Hornblower-in-Space", or possibly "Starship Operators" with a technological edge and on a much grander scale. Start off with "On Basalisk Station" and work in from there. You could also probably start from "The Shadow of Saganami", which is more recent and was the start of a new character set.

Love it, might just read it!

Haven't been into those one guy+a thousand beautiful girls raping him kind of manga/anime. The last one I watched was Rosario+Vampire, my first would be Tenchi Muyo!

"Some dude gets a nosebleed - not sure if its from being kneed in the face or from the pantsu shot"
From the looks of the picture I'll go with option 1 as for me, I'd nosebleed from the pantsu shot....

Rito the luckiest anime/manga character? I believe so... Lucky bastard LOL

I've very little knowledge on Japanese... But I pick up some stuff mostly from anime...
And not to forget our beloved Danny who taught me the most useful of words...

my mom's took me to japan when i was younger so that's where i pick up my japanese from, i talk to my mom in japanese now, but i don't see it changing much, i do sometimes get thigns i don't understand in anime then go ask my mom what it means, sometimes i don't know if it's proper to ask if their from anime's like to love-ru =P

An excellent series to read is His Dark Materials if you want a good read Danny. Although you might have already, it is pretty well known.
Mmm, if its like To-Love Ru then I'll probably love it ^^

Me and my friend are being taught Japanese at school from a person who lived thier for 2 years. Its not an actual lesson we just asked her of she wouldnt mind and now shes teaching us it.

Just looking at the photos you've taken of the manga, those drawings are well-done and not too-over the top either. I can't wait for the English translated version to show up in the States! Thanks for the info!

Will get this manga when I go to Japan...Hope there would be more volumes by the time I go there...

Rito and a tub of girls...damn him...he's a lucky guy!!!!!!

Hmmm...I think I will skip the manga of Maken Ki and wait for its anime. I hope it has good amounts of comedy and not just boatloads of fanservice. I get alot of my phrases from manga and anime.

I think I will like Maken Ki although only few pages into the manga. Thanks for the link.

You should read Angels and Demons if you haven't. It is a story before the Da Vinci Code, but nothing is related; just the same protagonist, Robert Langdon.

I spot Yami-chan in da bath! Damn...
Fancy Wuthering Heights?

Here's some of the Japanese Language learning sites I use:

http://www.thejapanesepage.com/beginners/new_to_japanese

http://surrealu.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-to-study-japanese-japanese-tools.html

Going to try and read it, since I'm going to start to have more free time. I get most of the japanese I know from anime, since I haven't start to learn how to read, got to do that. I'ts going to start to get confusing after adding a 5ft language to my vocabulary.

It suck that none of this mangas arrives Europe... At least have anime versions of some of them...

"school: 3%"

ha ha ha

As blasphemous as this sounds, I'd prefer if manga heavy on the fan service stay as manga. Usually the transition to anime comes with a decrease in art quality . I'd also rather watch something with an intriguing storyline, something that most fan service oriented manga/anime don't have.

I started reading Maken Ki about a week ago. It definitely has a lot of potential to be a good one. Now that you mentioned To Love-Ru have to go watch the last few episodes. The artwork may suck, but it is still funny.

I pick up most of my phrases from anime. Can't read any Japanese except the first couple hiragana characters (especially "a" which seems to be used a lot in certain reading materials).

Sadly I forget phrases fairly quickly unless they are drilled into me by anime (such as "toshokan" meaning "library" as drilled into me by Toshokan Sensou), as I have no friends that are either fluent in Japanese or have an interest in it similar to mine, and as such very few opportunities to apply what I learn. If you don't use it, you lose it, etc.

Wow, Maken Ki does look pretty good. But what good is the artwork when the story may not be good? I don't like the sound of how this can be similiar to To Love Ru, since i gave up on To Love Ru after episode 7. It just started boring me for some reason. And it had such a good begining.

Nice art style, but it looks like just another one of those shallow ecchi manga, where the one guy has 10 hot girls who obsses over him, yet he just wines about it and gets nosebleeds. The only series like this that I ever cared for was Tenchi Muyo.

The cover look so nice!!!I like how they would put one character art on the cover...

I noticed that when I sweep my hair in one direction,, I start looking like Takeru. Obviously not an uncommon thing though, as I would expect many people to wear glasses and have similar hair styles.

I don't pick and use japanese phrases. I also bear quite a big grudge against weeaboos who do.

My policy:
Only use langueges you are familiar with and don't mix 'em up.
That's why I can respect you Danny. You don't violate languages.

Not to be hating but I don't like this series so far, reminds me of Ikki Tosen where I love the girls design but the story going no where from the beginning [And with Ikki Tosen nowhere afterwards]. Though maybe the second volume will do something to change that because I do love the 2D girls in it.
PS I really do love the art. ^_^;;

One of the few things you really have to read are Douglas Adams works (but I suppose that you already did read all of his works).

If you heven't read it yet, you should get yourself "The ultimate Hitchhiker's guide" featuring all of the Hitchhiker books: 'The hitchhiker's guide through the universe', 'The restaurant at the end of the universe', 'Life, the universe and everything', 'So long, and thanks for all the fish', 'Mostly harmless' and 'Young Zaphod plays it safe'.

Then there is George Orwell's '1984', which also a must read and Lovecraft is also worth a serious look.
And never forget 'The Lord of the rings', 'The Hobbit' and 'The Silmarillion'.

And then there is one thing i would like to recommend you in particular. It's the triologie 'Tales of the Otori'. It's a fantasy novel set in a fictional world based on feudal Japan, but it is by no means like a manga or an anime or a japanese light novel. Far from it, actually. It s very well written (as far as I can judge from the German version) and the author (A woman who lives in Australia, named Gillian Rubinstein) did some very deep research for those novels.
There are two other novels by her who take place in the same universe, a sequel and a prequel, but I've never read those. I heard that they don't reach the quality of the triologie

Oh, I also recommend ignoring all my typos here. I'm quite tired ;)

Just read the 1st 4 chapters, quite interesting I must say. Can't wait for the next chapter =D.

Now that I am done with a summer course I can finally pick up again on learning my japanese.

Thanks for providing a link to the English! I can't read Japanese x_x.

Looks like another fan service :O but still very hot Haha!

Wow amazing manga, maken-ki. Hopefully the scanlators and translators finish up the next chapter fast. I cant wait to read it !

If you liked Da Vinci Code, you should read Angels and Demons. Even though both books seem to follow an near-exact plot line, Angels and Demons is much more exciting IMO. Neil Gaiman's Sci-Fi/Fantasy Novels are really good too if you are wanting something more out there.

For non-fiction, I've been dying to get a copy of this, but I forget every time I'm in a bookstore:
http://www.amazon.com/Long-Way-Gone-Memoirs-Soldier/dp/0374531269/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213219263&sr=8-1

So I just started reading this manga, and I gotta say, the girls look awesome, but I have no clue what is going on in the story!

Does this manga actually have a good storyline, or is it just all fanservice?

I just read the first 4 chapters, after ch 1 I had no idea what that was about however the visual material was enough to make me read more. Now I kinda see some story in it plus the pictures are awesome. Bit like Ikki Tousen. Definitely on the 'to read (more) list'.

reading both mangas online courtesy of scanslators **sends love to them** as for books, the potter series are ok, actually had a class last semester based on them lol, rest of my friends were like "no way harry potter in college?"

Danny, have you read Dan Brown's other books? I would recommend it.

Interesting poll.

Reminded me of the time that I did my first Family Feud game at Anime North and the 2nd question was "Give me a Japanese word that you learned from watching anime?"

Man! Great Memories!

Arigato Danny-san!

Goood manga and very big eyes!

I like Hiromitsu Takeda's work, I found this as a good manga, I have fallen in love with this. I hope this would be good.

another battle manga... Do I need it? Well, I still need to find Azumanga, Aria, and possibly SkuRum.... Maybe afterwards... Find it at bookoff... =P

Looks good! I'll have to check it out.

alot of fanservice~^^

seems like alot like psychic academy..

Ahh. dragon age pure. That's where I found High school of the dead I think. I think it's about time for me to pick up another manga to read.

Mangas I'm currently reading are Claymore, Naruto, HSotD and Tenjou Tenge. heheh!

To Love Ru is great will look into Maken Ki! thanx looking out Danny. I bet Maken Ki will be turned into an anime like To Love Ru

Anything by Harry Turtledove is a good read if you're into sci-fi/alternate history

im gonna go buy a to love ru volem now...

I have to admit that I pick up my japnasse from Music and Anime mainly the opening and ending songs from the shows. I then go out and find those songs and listen to them.

Now, i want maken ki !!! >_<

Wow it does have the same yummyness as To-Love Ru, but I find it quite yummier ^^

Any decent online manga retailer that ships via EMS?

wow sounds like a book for me may have to check it out sometime

cool

How dare O'Reilly publish naked drawing of penguins (U_U)