Meme, and animanga recs?

[sarashina]

THE CHARACTER ASSOCIATION MEME

Also, I have a vacation coming up, and I am beginning to fear that I have seen/read all the animanga worth seeing/reading, which I'm sure is not true. What are some of your favorite series? The more obscure, the better. Series with a creepy atmosphere, gorgeous art, and/or adorable characters are definitely a plus.

Comments

[ruffwriter.livejournal.com]

I don't mind at all! ♥

[ivory-and-horn.livejournal.com]

Gunnerkrigg Court sounds like it'd be right up your alley. At the most basic level it's about two girls going to a very strange school. But it's way more than that -- the atmosphere is, while maybe not completely creepy, definitely mysterious and strange. The characters are lovely, from the main two (Kat and Annie, who have such a wonderful friendship with each other) to all the side characters. The way the author builds his mythology behind the story is just fantastic. The art's a little odd in the beginning but it rapidly gets better, with just the right mix of detail and stylization for the story being told.

Guilded Age is a really funny send-up of basic sword-and-sorcery tropes. It does some interesting things with the basic character types and plays around with the basics of sword-and-sorcery RPG games. The art is fun and the characters so far have been pretty awesome.

Digger is a black-and-white comic with many interesting characters and an interestingly absurd world (vampiric vegetables!). I love the art in particular, because the artist uses the black-and-white of her comic to such great effect when the creepy stuff goes down, and if you're familiar with the Discworld books, there's a definite Terry Pratchett sort of feel to her writing at times, but without aping it.

Family Man is kind of like that manga you recced a couple posts back, Otoyomegatari, in that it's obviously a meticulously researched piece of historical fiction, though in this case it's 18th century Germany. The art is fabulous, the writing is fun, and the storyline is starting to get interesting as hints of the supernatural are showing up. There's also this feature the creator does, where she'll put up explanations for some of the historical references and objects in the comic every ten pages or so, which makes it both educational AND entertaining (though the educational bits are entertaining too).

The author also has a kind-of-but-not-really sequel comic called Bite Me!, which is basically the French Revolution on crack and with vampires. It's funny and makes fun of vampire cliches and I love the art for all the lulzy expressions the characters make.

That's all the recs I can think of for now, hopefully there will be something there to you taste. :3

[ivory-and-horn.livejournal.com]

ALSO I JUST REALIZED the link to Family Man leads to the first page where there's a guest comic currently up; the actual art in the comic is in a very different style.