Manga Rec Thread

[AkumaOuja]

I came across an isekai that I was actually immensely pleasantly surprised by with "The Exiled Reincarnated Heavy Knight Is Unrivaled in Game Knowledge" which might actually be the only time I've seen someone both explain why someone who played a game might have better system knowledge than a society that lived it [that being that making a lot of mistakes for your build can be crippling or fatal if you're going out to be an adventurer or a soldier or something, and those are the people who are gonna rack up the most levels and thus be able to actually try shit out, so experimenting rather than going with proven things is risky when you don't have the ability to just role a new character or click a button to skill reset or whatever and you can't consult an online guide made by data miners] that made a fair degree of sense, and also actually was honest about the whole thing of "This class is actually bad" because his own efforts to minmax it just resulted in him being about as strong as a 90s/2000s anime adventure protagonist so he still struggles a fair bit.

Bro literally just said "Look I think armor tanking is really cool so I'm gonna see if I can jank up a way to make the build serviceable, not great, maybe not even really good, just serviceable, because now instead of being really good at the worst kind of tanking, it can also do pretty respectable damage" and it's actually depicted that way pretty consistently rather than "Woe is me, weak class, lemme just use this super obvious immediately available exploit to become super strong." and it works out pretty well. Fights often end up coming down to nicely drawn out brawls and clever tricks with positioning or taking risks or the environment as much as anything else, and he relies a reasonable bit on his team mates who are all pretty great too without making the mistake of going too far in the opposite direct and just being kind of a loser or a gimmick.

It's not exactly high class fair, but overall once it gets rolling and gets a few of the mandatory genre things out of the way [getting kicked out for having a shitty class and having a weird yandere cousin who wanted his familial position didn't super bring much to the table...but it's also kinda irrelevant fairly quickly, just felt like the author was obligated to have it and got it out of the way], it's actually pretty great to follow this brick shithouse and a cute clown rogue and their friends just going on adventures.

Also for some inexplicable reason Dollar-Store Shikamaru is here and he's somehow better at being Shikamaru than actual Shikamaru despite being a flaky guy with a bow.

 

[Somebody]

cute clown rogue

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Sold me the moment I got to this.


EDIT: Okay, yeah, clown rogue is absolutely worth it. And honestly, I kinda wish there were more manga, especially Isekai manga, where the protagonist went for something as out-there as clown rogues.

 

[Digital_Devil]

"The Exiled Reincarnated Heavy Knight Is Unrivaled in Game Knowledge"

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Yeah, agreed whole heartedly. I really like the MC and his party (Luce especially) and the fact none of the party feels like an NPC follower. They have their own complex stuff going on and they're equally as important to what's happening as the MC. The fact a lot of major fights come down to the MC's info advantage and his ability to capitalize on small opportunities is great. Not a lot of protagonists in his position really need to think like that just to scrape out a win.

 

[AkumaOuja]

Sold me the moment I got to this.


EDIT: Okay, yeah, clown rogue is absolutely worth it. And honestly, I kinda wish there were more manga, especially Isekai manga, where the protagonist went for something as out-there as clown rogues.

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Yeah, agreed whole heartedly. I really like the MC and his party (Luce especially) and the fact none of the party feels like an NPC follower. They have their own complex stuff going on and they're equally as important to what's happening as the MC. The fact a lot of major fights come down to the MC's info advantage and his ability to capitalize on small opportunities is great. Not a lot of protagonists in his position really need to think like that just to scrape out a win.

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I'd actually say that it's less scraping out a win and more that he's "suited to the task at hand", shit's hard, not a cake walk and they do have to be clever, but it's really just immensely refreshing to have a protagonist who actually like...has to actually be in the fight so to speak. It's never a case of "Well let me just stomp the enemy into the ground and aura farm for a second" but at the same time there's never the problem of "The protagonist is completely fucking useless and just flails the entire fight or is a one note gimmick that's only helpful for [insert contrived reason]."

He's a tank with some CC and he can do some beefy damage if the fight goes the right way and he actually slugs it out and that is depressingly fucking rare these days across the board compared to "overpowered wank character" or "useless bitch who never actually improves."

Also yeah, Luce is peak. Honestly, there's a lot of peak. The most random fucking characters will be unbelievably great and super memorable.

When the plot decides to show up it's also super fun. The first truly big villain is a bit rough because IMHO it seems like the author struggled to hit his stride with a kinda "Detective Conan" style reveal that was a bit too ambitious but over all it was still solid on the fundamentals and the current arc shows a lot of refinement.

 

[Somebody]

I'd actually say that it's less scraping out a win and more that he's "suited to the task at hand", shit's hard, not a cake walk and they do have to be clever, but it's really just immensely refreshing to have a protagonist who actually like...has to actually be in the fight so to speak. It's never a case of "Well let me just stomp the enemy into the ground and aura farm for a second" but at the same time there's never the problem of "The protagonist is completely fucking useless and just flails the entire fight or is a one note gimmick that's only helpful for [insert contrived reason]."

He's a tank with some CC and he can do some beefy damage if the fight goes the right way and he actually slugs it out and that is depressingly fucking rare these days across the board compared to "overpowered wank character" or "useless bitch who never actually improves."

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I wonder how much of that owes to the types of games the authors enjoyed playing? It kinda feels like most of the "Isekai'd into a game" writers weren't actually all that big on playing games or were more used to MMO games.

Honestly, it was why I like Surviving the Game as a Barbarian—it genuinely feels like the guy was transported into a Darkest Dungeon-esque RPG instead of just the nth copycat of League of Legends or something.

...fuck, I dearly want a manga about a character reincarnating into a game as a ranger and becoming a sniper instead. It feels like there's a lot of potential there, especially if the ranger doesn't immediately get OP skills that lets them shoot arrows across the field and do infinite damage, and instead has to work to build up the strength to move up in bow poundage and skill/accuracy to land those hits.

EDIT: Mostly so that we have the eventual endgame of them sniping out a Boss using a Dragonslayer Bow or something similar.

 

[AckSed]

I Picked Up This World's Strategy Guide Vol. 1 (Manga): I read a fair amount of fanfic. Often I think, "You know, this could have been an email accomplished by dropping the books of whatever series this is on someone in-universe, and letting the story play out." (Not that there aren't fanfic like that, too.) And that's what we have here: Sana is a normal teenage girl working in her mother's item shop. She is out gathering herbs when she comes across a strategy guide for Eternal Story III. She doesn't know what a game is, she only knows that this "adventure novel" seems to depict her town and everyone around her with startling accuracy. She knows it's dangerous, but it's so pretty and full-colour and interesting...She tries to keep her head down, but when she reads the subquests- ah, spoilers.

Suffice to say, she tries to thread the needle between changing things and letting the status quo happen, and ends up standing in as a fortune-teller and then stumbling across the protagonist as he begins his journey.

It's good fun so far, and there are two things which especially stand out. First, I was struck by the vision: the game doesn't exist; neither in the story nor in real life, but the manga-ka had an idea of what their ideal swords-and-sorcery adventure game would look like and set out to make it in manga form. I respect that. Second, this is beautifully illustrated in full colour throughout, almost unheard-of for manga.

 

[Megaolix]

I came across an isekai that I was actually immensely pleasantly surprised by with "The Exiled Reincarnated Heavy Knight Is Unrivaled in Game Knowledge" which might actually be the only time I've seen someone both explain why someone who played a game might have better system knowledge than a society that lived it [that being that making a lot of mistakes for your build can be crippling or fatal if you're going out to be an adventurer or a soldier or something, and those are the people who are gonna rack up the most levels and thus be able to actually try shit out, so experimenting rather than going with proven things is risky when you don't have the ability to just role a new character or click a button to skill reset or whatever and you can't consult an online guide made by data miners] that made a fair degree of sense, and also actually was honest about the whole thing of "This class is actually bad" because his own efforts to minmax it just resulted in him being about as strong as a 90s/2000s anime adventure protagonist so he still struggles a fair bit.

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Interjecting a bit on this, but I've seen it done before in a way. In Isekai Maou, adventurers favor the Summoner class over the Mage class for magic because well, between putting up bodies that can fight between you and monsters and standing and chanting in weak armor as monsters charge you, which one would you normally do with your life on the line? Who's going to take the risks to your life levelling that even if the power is heavier at high levels?

 

[evildice]

Interjecting a bit on this, but I've seen it done before in a way. In Isekai Maou, adventurers favor the Summoner class over the Mage class for magic because well, between putting up bodies that can fight between you and monsters and standing and chanting in weak armor as monsters charge you, which one would you normally do with your life on the line? Who's going to take the risks to your life levelling that even if the power is heavier at high levels?

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Sounds like an extrovert / introvert split.

If I have strong friends that I trust? Then Mage might be better because I've got bodies between me & danger already.

If I need to do everything solo? Then Summoner sounds a lot more likely.

 

[Deathwings]

Interjecting a bit on this, but I've seen it done before in a way. In Isekai Maou, adventurers favor the Summoner class over the Mage class for magic because well, between putting up bodies that can fight between you and monsters and standing and chanting in weak armor as monsters charge you, which one would you normally do with your life on the line? Who's going to take the risks to your life levelling that even if the power is heavier at high levels?

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The problem with that one is that the MC is Isekai-ed as his game character, including his maxed out levels and OP gears, so it immediately goes into full Power Fantasy mode.

 

[Megaolix]

The problem with that one is that the MC is Isekai-ed as his game character, including his maxed out levels and OP gears, so it immediately goes into full Power Fantasy mode.

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I wasn't commenting about that. I was commenting about things in a game that would normally be used or popular not being used in a IC setting.

 

[Somebody]

I wasn't commenting about that. I was commenting about things in a game that would normally be used or popular not being used in a IC setting.

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Honestly, you'd imagine in a setting where people ran on video game logic, everyone would min-max for Constitution/Vitality/whatever the HP determining stat is. When all that stands between you and death is a single number, you'd want that number to be as big as possible.

 

[Amazon Climber]

Honestly, you'd imagine in a setting where people ran on video game logic, everyone would min-max for Constitution/Vitality/whatever the HP determining stat is. When all that stands between you and death is a single number, you'd want that number to be as big as possible.

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Okay, but how much cardio are you grinding right now?

 

[Somebody]

Got a rec for a Manhwa: The Knight of Embers. It's a sequel to Epic of Gilgamesh by the author Hwandaeng, and while Gilgamesh isn't required reading for understanding the story, it does help a lot in understanding the background...and is a good story besides. Gilgamesh is available on Lezhin, while Webtoon and Tappytoon have Ember Knight.

Knight of Embers, or Ember Knight, is a story about a boy named Nagyun and his quest for revenge after his brother was murdered in front of him. Taking on his brother, Najin's, identity, he joins the Knight Order of the Central Continent in order to drag out the ones responsible, while also building up his strength for the inevitable fight. There's just one problem...

Nagyun...is weak as fuck.


The best way to describe it is Gaslight: the Manhwa.

Nagyun starts as weak and stays weak, in a story where the average combatant makes Cap America look like his pre-supersoldier self. The main characters, Knights-in-training, include people who can shatter or cut down trees in a single stroke, and take boulder-shattering attacks without exploding like a Pinto...and they're the underdogs.

Their trainers, the Knights, are people of mass destruction, who are basically qualified as living weapons with moral codes. Fights between Knights can level entire villages, and anything less than a Knight trying to fight one is basically just commiting an extremely expedient suicide. Even a dozen Knight trainees trying to fight a single Knight isn't enough to even begin to challenge the Knight.

And most of the enemies are at that level, at least. And Nagyun is a normal human—which means he's basically a coughing baby in a fight against hydrogen bombs.

Forget winning, his only way to survive is basically gaslighting his way through every fucking fight. And he does. And it is glorious. Oh good Lord is it fucking glorious.

Half the fights are basically mindscrews where half-a-dozen different factions are scheming and scamming one another, which sometimes makes it a bit hard to follow along, but the fight choreography makes it fun nonetheless.

Also, the manhwa very much does not hold your hand through the story. You either figure out what's going on or flounder.


Also also, the series has my favourite depiction of the "Strongest", and I'm including both Saitama and Gojo in that list. The Strongest Knight, Candentia, the Pure White Elephant. A monster amongst monsters, a beast that even other monsters check themselves around. Half her time is spent farming aura, and the other half is her brutalising her enemies and establishing why the fuck exactly it is that she fucking earned that title.

To give you an idea of how fucking OP she is, there's only one fight in the entire series, both Gilgamesh and Ember Knight, where she's been put in a situation where she can be said to have lost. And even then, it was only her being forced to allow her opponents to withdraw instead of outright crushing them into fucking dust. She's fought normal people, Knight trainees, Knights, demons, Generals (warriors who can match and even surpass Knights in combat), fucking Dragons, in one-on-ones, 1v2, 1v3, 1v5, 1v10...and she's never lost. And, it should be noted, she was fighting barehanded, against people who were basically wielding Moonlight Greatswords (technically a Bluemoon Greatsword)...and she won.

And she crushed them.

And she doesn't have a gimmick. No magic. No super-powerful weapon. No Limitless. No One Punch power.

She's just a hands merchant. She's just really fucking strong. She just has a monstrous instinct that makes her an unstoppable weapon.

She is. The Strongest Knight.

...but she's not the Greatest Knight.

Because a Knight isn't a weapon. A Knight is a Hero. A Hero who fights for justice, a Hero who fights with honour.

The Greatest Knight is not necessarily the Strongest Knight. The Greatest Knight must be strong, because without strength they must bow their heads and allow injustice to run rampant. But they are not necessarily the Strongest Knight.

The Greatest Knight is the Crimson Hippo, Hinshur, the embodiment of Knighthood. The Strongest Knight is the Pure White Elephant, Candentia. Candentia can defeat Hinshur, but she can never win against her, because by placing herself in opposition to Hinshur there is no outcome where she can win.