How to improve manga discussion?

[Munsu]

For a while I've been trying to improve the discussion in the manga section. I tried the "Gotwoot reading the same manga" effort, and it got a pretty good response at first, but after a couple of weeks it stopped working. So I'm wondering if you guys have any ideas on how to improve the discussion in the manga forum, or if you think we should revive the "Gotwoot reading the same manga" effort, with maybe some changes?

Just post anything you can think of.

[samsonlonghair]

A noble effort Bud.
Here's a thought I just pulled out of my ass (where all my thoughts come from). Maybe all of GW can be reading two similar mangas at the same time, and then we compare the two. For instance, how does Berserk compare to Hellsing? It could make some interesting discussions, but things may get disorganized.

[bagandscalpel]

Like samsonlonghair said, this is a noble effort, and deserves to be commended (by me, at the very least).

However, not to be a pessimist, but no matter what emerges from this thoughtpool, it shall be short-lived, much like what the GW common manga reading. The reasoning behind this is that the trend appears to be more in the favor of anime being a more popular medium. I think it must be the additional brainpower actually required to flip pages either in reality or electronically...

Regardless, I also wish there was improved manga discussion (FMA being one of them; why doesn't anybody read Hokuto no Ken?). However, at the moment, I have no inkling as to how to improve the situation in the long run.

[Honoko]

The biggest differences that jars discussion on manga as opposed to anime is that 1) everyone reads at a different pace (while an anime ep automatically takes up 20 min of everyone's life), and 2) weekly outputs of manga is a bit more fickle than weekly outputs of anime.

If there's a way to regulate manga discussion like, "discuss up to chapter *** here!" and change that weekly or something, especially for existing mangas that have a lot of chapters that newbies need to go through, then maybe it's plausible. Sounds like a kind of book club to me so it'll take everyone who's participating to agree. I don't know about you guys, but if we had something like that, I would probably restrain myself and not rip through hundreds of chapters in mere days just for the sake of a bit of discussion and speculation.

[Death BOO Z]

We need a manga that has steady chapters on a normal pace, and is on going. Berserk and HxH disscusions went well, until the releases died out. Bowling King and Zetman could work, and maybe Dr.Gray man if all had more steady release pace.

anyway, we Could always start up an Inuyasha manga topic, Kikyo died once again, and this time she's fallen from an icy cliff into a muddy river!

[Munsu]

The biggest differences that jars discussion on manga as opposed to anime is that 1) everyone reads at a different pace (while an anime ep automatically takes up 20 min of everyone's life), and 2) weekly outputs of manga is a bit more fickle than weekly outputs of anime.

If there's a way to regulate manga discussion like, "discuss up to chapter *** here!" and change that weekly or something, especially for existing mangas that have a lot of chapters that newbies need to go through, then maybe it's plausible. Sounds like a kind of book club to me so it'll take everyone who's participating to agree. I don't know about you guys, but if we had something like that, I would probably restrain myself and not rip through hundreds of chapters in mere days just for the sake of a bit of discussion and speculation.
I actually think that the main problem is that we don't have many manga readers in GW for one, secondly there's too many manga series out there so people are reading different things.

I really think that the best way to get more discussion is to pick a manga for all of us to read, but this time make the voting less frequently and with less restrictions. Also limiting the voting choices would work. Maybe pick a manga every two months or something. I'm not really sure, the other alternative I see is to lure more people into reading manga, but I don't know how to go about that.

[woofcat]

lure? easy. no fillers and use examples were the manga was WAY better than the anime. Such as the Sasuke getting his Sharingan. In the anime it was a 2 second thing the manga explained it. Also i think it would help if you picked a "newer" manga, that way i would not need to read 200+ chapters to talk with the people who already had been reading it.

[LaZie]

I like mangas with 100+ chapters and I get to read them all in one day. It fills me up wanting more.

[Munsu]

What really saddens me is that none of you have given Shin Angyo Onshi a chance, it's probably my favorite manga at the moment, so you guys should go read it! There's also a movie based on it that came out last year, you guys should check it out also if you haven't.

"An excellent action story set in a 19th century Korean era. Yang Kyung-Il art is very nice. His drawing of women is very attractive.

In an old country named Jushin, there were secret agents called Angyo Onshi, or Amenosa, they had the power to create armies of dead with the help of their Mahai. They were dispatched by the king, and went around the local regions secretly to save the peoples from their misleading governors or other great threats.
However, one day Jushin fell to ruins because of a man. Munsu, an Angyo Onshi, continues to wield is Mahai wondering in those turbulent ages of chaos in order to restore Jushin and look for the man who destroyed everything he knew."

http://forums.gotwoot.net/showthread.php?t=12141

[woofcat]

I would but but i got caught up in Homunculus. Great manga, read it!

[Ikepuska]

One of the problems with the manga discussion is since each manga is in a thread, and people don't have the opportunity to discuss the topics seperately it tends to degenerate. Having a seperate minor forum, or a child forum for just the series that are being read by the book club like effort would fix some of that; that way the different topics of discussion have a place to separate out and not get congested. Another idea is to either separate genre's or to actively describe the genre's of the series in the description. A lot of the descriptions are pretty misleading if you don't know what the genre is. It isn't obvious from Mx0's description that it's an action/fighting heavy manga. Just a thought, since I know I overlooked a lot of series because the description made me misidentify the genre and only because I got bored this summer did I end up reading any of them.

Also picking series where there actually is something to discuss helps.Mmm, that's not to clear; I mean non popular series might be interesting to read, but for them to constantly generate speculation and discussion requires they have a certain degree of sophistication in the way they build up and portray themselves so that serious discussion on ideas where there can be a genuine difference of opinion can occur. Naruto is so popular that there's tons of speculation but a series like Death Note, which while popular isn't exactly mainstream can consistently produce an equal or greater amount of meaningful discussion, course the big problem will be finding a vocal and interested enough minority who are willing to read such plot and thinking heavy series. [Edited to add genres idea]