There are good manga and then there are bad manga. What manga scared you for life and why?

The worst manga that I've read so far was Soul Eater, for it's poor art decisions, sub-par writing, annoying characters, and the gimmicks, My GOD THE GIMMICKS!!!!!!!

-HEN
This is quite possibly the worst manga in all existence, and it manages to get worse with every single chapter. Only masochists can make it into the 30's chapters.

-to~love~ru
It's shit, un-salvageable panty-shot shit.

-Beserk
I had high expectations of the manga so maybe if i kept them at bar none i wouldn't have been disappointed. Just meh, nostalgia must have been talking for them, or maybe later volumes.

-Bakuman
Ironically this is my favorite manga, the author is so horrible at writing romance it's not even funny, if he would have left those parts out it would have been better.

-Octave
:gem:

-Code geass manga
:gem: :gem: :gem:

-SWEEEET
I hope the author gets shot, the story makes no fraking sense and it's just--graaahhhh
Mreeeeeeh *dies in negativity overload*

It's obscure, but Kagerou-Nostalgia. Something about mystical samurai and shoguns, I don't know. Completely mediocre content and writing.

Less obscurely, Tegami Bachi, a current manga featured in Shonen Jump. I don't think this one deserves being in Jump, let alone identifying itself as a shonen style series. The whole theme about the heart is too touchy feely, as if someone gave Ma-Ti from Captain Planet a whole series, except the power of his heart makes a gun work. And what's with the naming convention? Jiggy Pepper. Gauche Suede. Lag Seeing. That's just rancid.

Of notable manga, Bleach. There, I said it. Why this is so popular eludes me. It's not that the art is actually bad, but it may be the worst written series I've ever seen. Maybe because it follows the DBZ formula stronger than any other?

Techically this isn't an actual Japanese comic, so maybe it doesn't count as much, but it was manga-ish. Ever read the vampire comic Dark Hunger?
No?
Good.

I randomly picked it up one day because it had a bitey vamp on the cover. BIG mistake.

Here's the plot: A vampire finds his "life mate", which basically means they automatically are in love when they meet and already know each other well because they're destined to be together, because who needs character development or relationship building? Psshaaww! With this they can just start smooching right away without all that boring stuff. >_>

Also, I really have nothing against stories with furries, but the vampire's life mate happens to be a shapeshifting leopard girl, and when she gets bit by him she basically becomes a VAMP-CAT! I don't know, that on top of it made the story that much more dumb to me, like a really bad fanfiction.

The characters were uninteresting, the plot was ridiculous (we must save my cat sister from the rapist cat men!!!), ect. ect.

Turns out the writer IS behind a bunch of cheesy vampire romance novels though and Dark Hunger was just one turned into a manga by someone else, so....hm. Yeah. That's what I get for being daring with the moneys.

Berserk
Credible ppl would actually argue that it's an excellent manga. It has its faults but also its good points.

Bleach
Its storyline was awesome, all the way through the end of the Soul Society arc. And the art is of a more expressive grade than DBZ ever was.

Skullbie
-to~love~ru
It's shit, un-salvageable panty-shot shit.

When I heard Tu-love-ru ended, I peeked at the ended just to see what they did, y'know, curiosity. Nothing happens in the end, it just continues on. It's a soprano's ending in a ecchi manga.

So yeah, shit.

Skullbie
-Bakuman
Ironically this is my favorite manga, the author is so horrible at writing romance it's not even funny, if he would have left those parts out it would have been better.

I don't mind the romance in this, as for Takagi's character its mostly there for comedic effect, and Mashiro's relationship with Miho is a much more old-fashioned type of romance. Does get a little weird every now and then now that I think about it.

(prepared to be shot)

Death Note

I just couldn't stand the fact that that comic takes itself WAY too seriously... I mean, it started with an interesting concept, but somewhere along the lines when L and Light were trying to figure out what each other were thinking from how they hit an Fing tennis ball!? And of course I tried to continue reading it because everyone was like "nooo, it's soooo good, trust meeee..." but I just couldnt. Why does that manga have to have so many explanations!?

And actually, with bakuman, I do enjoy the story, but at times I wonder why the hell they have to over analyze EVERYTHING in life. "well the key to success in a jump comic is swords..." "the percentage of success after being an assistant is..." all I hear is BLAH BLAH BLAH after a while. But I guess its working for some people since these 2 have been so successful... unfortunately.

Shaman King
Shaman King, in a lot of ways, was sort of spiritual successor to the mostly enjoyable YuYu Hakusho but that didn't become clear until later on. Like YuYu it starts of with some sort of random ghost related stories which introduce us to the main character, the rules of the world and were mildly amusing. Then suddenly like YuYu Hakusho it took a turn toward left field ripped off its shirt and started tournament fighting. Unlike YuYu Hakusho which at least at first made the prospect of a long fighting tournament dramatic and enjoyable Shaman King makes it painful and boring. It was like they have captured the essence of Warriors of Virtue and printed it in dead tree form. The fights are awful, the character all over themed, annoying, over the top and ridiculous, worse they have things like magic spirit pagers and, I'm not making this up, spiritual totem pole cannons which shoot soul lasers! It sad when a comic makes me long for the quiet dignity of Majin Boo.


Batman - Death Mask

After Batman's excellent first trip to the pages of Manga Japan....they made this crap. If Batman - Child of Dreams got what made American Comics great and why their adventure have endured the Batman - Death Mask managed to tap into everything that sucks about that. Contrived plot, so-so art, no character development that wasn't scooped out of a can of ham and terrible pacing between action and story. It read more like a parody of a comic then a real story I'm sad to say and as it was billed as a follow up to Child of Dreams, which it wasn't in anyway, it only made it the more disappointing.

Some Random Horror Manga I was given

I really wish I could remember the name of this free manga sample I got back when I worked at Suncoast but let me sum up the plot this way: Fish Grow Spider legs and then sneak onto land and secretly kill people with their new legs. Not giant fish mind you or some of those horrific monster fish like the Gar or the Angler Fish which already give people bad dreams but just normal old fish with like carp except spider legs.

Evil Emperor Nick
Unlike YuYu Hakusho which at least at first made the prospect of a long fighting tournament dramatic and enjoyable Shaman King makes it painful and boring. It was like they have captured the essence of Warriors of Virtue and printed it in dead tree form. The fights are awful, the character all over themed, annoying, over the top and ridiculous, worse they have things like magic spirit pagers and, I'm not making this up, spiritual totem pole cannons which shoot soul lasers! It sad when a comic makes me long for the quiet dignity of Majin Boo.

I heard that to make it worse the ending to this manga was so sudden and horrible that it was obvious that it was cancelled. RIP Shaman King!

Some Random Horror Manga I was given

I really wish I could remember the name of this free manga sample I got back when I worked at Suncoast but let me sum up the plot this way: Fish Grow Spider legs and then sneak onto land and secretly kill people with their new legs. Not giant fish mind you or some of those horrific monster fish like the Gar or the Angler Fish which already give people bad dreams but just normal old fish with like carp except spider legs.

Ah, I believe you're referring to Junji Ito's 'Gyo'. Same guy who did Uzumaki. Gyo is... hrm, bizarre. I generally love Ito's work, but my initial impression to Gyo was more akin to derision. I used to call Gyo the 'the horror of intense fish stench' since the lead female wouldn't stop whining about how bad everything smells at every turn. It gets vaguely better, but I wouldn't call it good horror. It's more to be appreciated for how bizarre it is, I think. The whole plot line was more strange (and convoluted) than scary. Heck, the infected fish flat out ignore the main character half the time for no apparent reason. I never felt he was really in THAT much danger compared to everyone else. Still, great white shark on a mechanical chassis... it's imaginative, to say the least.

As for Shaman King, I still read it, but I can accept your point. The story is kind of all over the place and sort of in love with being too quirky for its own good. As for the extremely thematic side characters, we can see that in many modern manga/anime featuring an excessive amount of trivial characters (ex. Bleach, Naruto, & One Piece). I think the distinction is made so readers will remember them, but there's something to be said for how necessary the idea of those side characters even is.

I have it on decent authority that Ghost in the Shell, Samurai Deeper Kyo, and Full Metal Panic are awesome. That said, I hated them.
I've already mentioned in some other thread that I thought Ghost in the Shell's story tended to jump around to much and I thought it felt really incoherent. Also for an artist as technically skilled as Masamune Shirow it just annoyed me that nearly all the women had the same face and same body-type.
Samurai Deeper Kyo I didn't like for mostly superficial reasons, the panel layouts mostly. I'd see shots that should be done more dynamically stuck into tiny cramped panels. Like in the first book the main character managed to burst through ropes he was tied up with and runs off and it was drawn flatly in a really small panel, I get that it was supposed to be kind of slapstick and silly but it would've worked better with a more dynamic layout. If that wasn't obnoxious enough this guy would devote a two-page spread to the female lead bathing and large, dynamic panels to panty shots. Not that there's anything wrong with fanservice on its own but in Samurai Deeper Kyo it almost felt like the story was secondary to the fanservice.
In the case of Full Metal Panic I thought that my expectations might have been set too high. I was told that it did a lot of things differently than most manga though I'm not sure what. It seemed kind of generic and the characters I though were flat and boring.
Whew! Why do my replies for worst *blank* always end up so long?

Jonko
I heard that to make it worse the ending to this manga was so sudden and horrible that it was obvious that it was cancelled. RIP Shaman King!

Oddly it was canclled just before the end of the story but still I'm not crying over Shaman King getting cut short.

Chernobog
As for Shaman King, I still read it, but I can accept your point. The story is kind of all over the place and sort of in love with being too quirky for its own good. As for the extremely thematic side characters, we can see that in many modern manga/anime featuring an excessive amount of trivial characters (ex. Bleach, Naruto, & One Piece). I think the distinction is made so readers will remember them, but there's something to be said for how necessary the idea of those side characters even is.

Well overly themed characters isn't restricted to manga, certainly western comcis and video games engage in this as well sometimes, I just felt Shaman King was particularly bad on this point.

Nick: Valid. Shaman King probably doesn't help itself with the extended number of personable spirit companions each one has atop the large cast.

patrickdevine
Samurai Deeper Kyo

Samurai Deeper Kyo felt like a much less good Ruori Kenshin

Black Cat is pretty godawful.

The worst I've ever read is Love & Collage Its.... It's just so bad and it's almost 100 chapters long

kingofsnake Said:

Black Cat is pretty godawful.


Though I can't speak much for the manga, even though I own the first volume, the Black Cat ANIME started off pretty interesting. Then after five episodes, everything changed? The story, the characters, it was like watching two versions of the same story. I looked at the manga and discovered that it's different too! I mean what the hell, was there no communication between the anime staff and the manga creator? In the first part of the anime Train, are main character, had a Cloud from Final Fantasy characteristic to him. Sure he was dull but at least he was consistant. Then he adopts a more care free and some what silly personality for most of the rest of the story. It was like he was a completely different person!

Any way, it may just be me, I don't know...

ok first...

Ghost In The Shell, Berserk, Death Note, Gyo and Black Cat? Liked or loved all of them.
GITS is great, much better than the movie. Actually the original serialized manga was even more varied as a lot of chapters were dropped from the book edition because they weren't "relevant" for the main plot (this is what GITS v1.5 is, the collection of these omitted chapters). As for way women are drawn. Well... whatever :D
Love Berserk, especially the bits with the intrigue, but good old "battlefield slasher" bits are fun too. Also, it's amazing how the art evolved. It starts good, but at this point it's amazing. Rather than screentones, everything's shaded by hand, yet remains perfectly readable.
Gyo is totally messed up and WTF and that's why I love it.
Death Note was somewhat wordy and I had to take a month or three off at some point in the storyline, but in the end it was worth it. Still, anyone claims that you can read any manga in five minutes? Give them Death Note, haha.
As for Black Cat, I'm slowly making my way through that (slowly as there's no hurry) and after 4 volumes I like the cast.

Now, I generally get along with manga quite well and don't have a lot of problems with most ofthe books I've read. Except...

game tie-ins/game related mangas.

Ugh. I've read a couple, among them Himiko-Den and Maken X. THE PAIIIINNNNN. Now, both titles were scanlations, so maybe it was the translators' fault, but both made no sense at all. The kind of a plot that could work in a game (where plot is just an excuse for mayhem/platform jumping/puzzle solving/punching others) but doesn't work on paper at all... or so they felt. As a result I try to avoid these. Not worth the time.
...although I must say Maken had some nice "shaky" art, sort of Tsutomu Nihei for the poor, haha.

I got up to the part in Black Cat where he sacrificed his hand so he'd know where the invisible sword blade was of the bad guy so he could kill him.

...and then they reattached his hand and brought the bad guy back to life

At that point I called bullshit and stopped reading. There's no sense of danger or urgency if he's just going to Deus Ex Machina his way out of every situation

There's a GITS v. 1.5??! OMG I WANT.

Is it just the omitted chapters? Or are they ripping you off by also including the original GITS chapters in this?

Galaxy Angel(s?). Not only did it suck, but the book was also really stiff and hard to turn pages on. FAIL.

mlai
There's a GITS v. 1.5??! OMG I WANT.

Is it just the omitted chapters? Or are they ripping you off by also including the original GITS chapters in this?

I think it's just the omitted chapters. I believe dark horse published it so you might have to look around for a copy as Kodansha pulled all their licenses from them (and everyone else), apparently they're going to enter the American market by themselves.

OK, here's the shittiest manga I have ever read:

Full Moon o Sagashite- the main character is a horrific "everyone loves me I'm so perfect YAY ME" Mary Sue. Because of the cute art, I read about 3/4 of volume one (hoping it would get better) but it simply infuriated me. How this drivel could be produced is beyond me.

Pretty Face- I don't know why (boredom?) but I read about five volumes of this series about a boy who gets into a bus crash and wakes up and a mad scientist has made him look like the girl he has a crush on. She luckily has a long-lost runaway twin, so...! Seriously, it was vaguely funny but mostly disturbing.

There are so many bad ones, but those are my all-time worst.

I know its online, but MegaTokyo. I'm not saying that to stir the pot, really. When I first started reading it I actually liked it. I found the dualism between the two characters interesting and I liked how it showed different versions of reality. As largo left though and the 2 characters started melding in similarities and Piro started taking the ridiculous concepts within the story seriously, I lost most of my interest. Finally though, this strip broke the camel's back:

http://megatokyo.com/strip/1219

The 2nd row of panels is the epitome of useless dialogue, and the 4th row is supposed to be taken as a joke, but then they actually go clubbing, which is just so far from Largo's original character. Deleted it from my favorites, and I've been a happier person since.

Your question implies there is good manga....

(kidding!)

harkovast
Your question implies there is good manga....

(kidding!)

Not really. There can be a worst without being any good.

~The worst dictator who ever lived.
~The worst war in human history.

Just as "the best" doesn't imply that any in the category are bad nor does "biggest" imply that any are small.

Now study your grammar lessons, and you can take a make-up quiz tomorrow.

usedbooks

harkovast
Your question implies there is good manga....

(kidding!)

Not really. There can be a worst without being any good.

~The worst dictator who ever lived.
~The worst war in human history.

Just as "the best" doesn't imply that any in the category are bad nor does "biggest" imply that any are small.

Now study your grammar lessons, and you can take a make-up quiz tomorrow.

Although I would say the least bad war or dictator would still have to be considered the "best," which would make it sound good. lol funniness

I ended up reading Love Hina a while back. I have no idea why.

Inkmonkey
I ended up reading Love Hina a while back. I have no idea why.

I actually did that too! My conclusion at the end was: "why is this famous?"

Usedbooks, okay so manga is equivelant to wars and dictators?
At last! Something we can agree on!

harkovast
Usedbooks, okay so manga is equivelant to wars and dictators?
At last! Something we can agree on!

Have you read a manga before and if so which was the worst. That's all I'm asking. I'm not asking you to come in all sarcastic about it.

Jonko

Inkmonkey
I ended up reading Love Hina a while back. I have no idea why.

I actually did that too! My conclusion at the end was: "why is this famous?"

The answer to that question is: THE FAN-SERVICE!
I mean talk about a manga who's only purpose was soft core porn.