It’s a quiet week this week with only one title coming out.\u00a0 Jason Thompson gets all the attention for his second volume of King of RPGs. So, with no real competition, our reviewers take a look at a genre of manga: sports.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The List:<\/strong><\/p>\n DEL REY<\/strong> Sports Manga<\/strong><\/p>\n John\u2019s Pick:<\/strong> Sports manga is a hard genre to talk about. So few titles make it into English because many of them seem to have a different appeal. The memories of one\u2019s high school volleyball team or baseball team seem richer and deeper to Japanese readers. The reason for this is that \u201cteam\u201d was often a way of life. Students in some school clubs live, breathe, die by the team, and graduation of sempai often brings as many (if not more) tears as smiles. Maybe it\u2019s an easy pick, but the most moving sports manga of recent memory is Slam Dunk<\/strong>. Obviously a basketball-themed book, Takehiko Inoue makes the court into a battlefield and the action off the court is just as vibrant and charged. One not need to be a baller to fall for Slam Dunk<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Amy\u2019s Pick:<\/strong> I\u2019m not a sports person. Whenever my coworkers at various jobs I\u2019ve had talked about sports I\u2019d get dizzy trying to keep up with the conversation (or just zone out.) The first sports manga that I have ever encountered and was unable to put down is Bamboo Blade<\/strong>! This kendo sports manga doesn\u2019t heavily focus on the sport which ultimately is why I didn\u2019t hesitate to pick up this title.<\/p>\n Justin\u2019s Pick:<\/strong> What\u2019s amazing to me is that the sports genre is so fixed, so strong a genre in manga, that there\u2019s lots of tropes and elements of the sports manga genre that appear in the manga that gets translated into English. As far as what we\u2019ve seen, it\u2019s these hybrid manga that I like the most, probably. Titles like Cross Game<\/em>, or even Club 9<\/em>, which take place in and around sports manga, but use the structure and the character types and the setting of sports manga to get at something completely different. However, my absolute favorite sports manga is unquestionably steeped in everything that makes a good sports genre manga. Unfortunately, it hasn\u2019t been translated into English. Ping Pong<\/strong> is a tabletop tennis manga by the great Taiyo Matsumoto, who is most famous for Tekkon Kinkreet <\/strong> (or, as it was originally released, Black & White<\/em>). He gets at the action and the gesture and the blood, sweat, and tears of the athletes better than any artist I know. Now that would be a great series to bring to English!<\/p>\n Alex\u2019s Pick:<\/strong> After spending a whole week discussing and praising the series for its greatness, I thought I would have a week or two to rest from the Cross Game<\/strong> praise, but apparently not! But that\u2019s okay, because, like Justin, I like the action that surrounds the game of baseball – the interpersonal conflict and the character development that makes the series such a joy to read. Add that to the fact that Adachi can also illustrate a great baseball game, and it\u2019s not hard to see why I would pick Cross Game<\/strong> for this week\u2019s list.<\/p>\n Lori\u2019s Pick: I haven\u2019t found a lot sports manga that appeals to me. I\u2019ve sampled a few through previews and random volumes, and only one series has impressed me enough that I would consider further volumes, and that\u2019s Slam Dunk<\/strong>. Inoue really knows how to portray the action with some really dynamic shots. And unlike a lot of shonen titles, this title is true to the sport, using real plays, and explaining them for the clueless (like me). Anyone can enjoy Slam Dunk<\/strong>, and might even learn to enjoy the sport of Basketball because of it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s a quiet week this week with only one title coming out.\u00a0 Jason Thompson gets all the attention for his second volume of King of RPGs. So, with no real competition, our reviewers take a look at a genre of manga: sports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[83,93,144],"class_list":["post-915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-picks-and-mix","tag-manga","tag-new-releases","tag-weekly-picks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2umma-eL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/manga.jadedragononline.com\/village\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nKing Of RPGs Volume 2 GN, $10.99<\/p>\n