25 Days of Manga: The Conclusion

Well, 25 Days of Manga is now officially over and this will be my last post about it. Looking back on the month it's been pretty hectic; I've spent most of the month with my head glued to my iPad devouring volume after volume. Plus, with the inclusion of working on the holiday badges for Anime-Planet, writing the 12 Days of Christmas blog posts, and doing real life preparations for Christmas (Yule Log anyone?), it feels like I haven't had much time to myself. But you know what, if I could do it all again, I totally would! Setting aside the sense of acomplishment I feel from getting to all the accepted requests, I've experienced and enjoyed manga I never would have thought possible.

So, in order to give something to look back on, I thought I'd do a round-up of the manga I've read and since the A-Level Maths nerd in me loves statistics, expect some visual aids!

Total Number of Requests Made: 38
Total Number of "Bonus" Manga Added: 9
Total Number of Manga Read: 47
Total Number of One Shots Read: 4
Total Number of Volumes Read: 76
Total Number of Chapters Read: 543

At the beginning of 25 Days, I'd have imagined the dropped slice to be a lot bigger than it was.

It turned out that I had a decent mix of middling to good series and luckily, few rubbish ones.

The two unknowns were shounen-ai titles, likely Josei but couldn't find a definite answer.

With most of the 25 Days manga being Seinen or Shounen, it's no surprise that action comes out on top.

Had to split the tags up into two charts for it to display properly.

Seems like Supernatural, Fighting, and Violence came out on top tags wise.

Favourite Manga: This is actually a bit of a toss-up between Yuki Urushibara's Suiiki and Kaoru Mori's A Bride's Story. It's no great surprise to me that these two came out on top since I love both of these authors and I genuinely can't pick a favourite. A Bride's Story showcases Mori's lucious artwork and is a gentle, easy read that focuses on 19th century customs, which adds to the interest factor as we learn about ways of life that are unfamiliar to us. Meanwhile, Suiiki is exactly the type of thing that Urushibara does best, a gentle, quiet and ultimately quite meaningful supernatural story. Well worth the read and probably the one title from 25 Days that I'd recommend most to others.

Least Favourite Manga: This award goes to Zetman (1994). While I was surprised at enjoying the main series of Zetman I was more than underwhemed by its predecessor - which incidentally got the lowest rating I gave anything during 25 Days. For me, the story was kind of naff by comparison, but luckily it was only a oneshot.

Biggest Surprise: During the last month I've read quite a few manga that I've surprisingy enjoyed, but I think the biggest shock of the lot was Vinland Saga. Not only was I not intending to find a tale of Viking revenge all that gripping, I was also utterly unprepared for just how much I got into it. I found it a total wrench to have to stop reading so that I could continue on with the other 25 Days titles. Have yet to read any more, since I've been a little... "manga-ed out", but should be great to continue on.

Biggest Disappointment: I admit that I was expecting to enjoy Kingdom Hearts more than I actually did. I figured that Disney + Manga would equal awesome, but I wasn't all that enamoured with it. had I played the games, then maybe I'd have enjoyed it more, but the whole thing felt kind of repetitive and didn't seem to like explaining things very much. Ended up powering through the entire manga franchise in the space of a day or so and am not too fussed with continuing it - though if they ever brought out another, I'd likely read it for the Anime-Planet database.

Oddest Manga: I didn't actually get too many odd manga this time, so without a doubt the award for most bizarre manga goes to Boukun Tyrano-san. A oneshot focusing on a dinosaur who wakes up 65 million years later in the body of a high school girl is pretty barmy and seems like a concoction for hilarity, and at first it is. However, the humour falls by the wayside and drifts into full-on sciency sci-fi. Ah well, I'll certainly remember this one for a while to come!