Abara: Complete Deluxe Edition

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Kind of reminded me of Angel's Egg as well - one of my favorite anime movies and another example of way more show than tell.

Another point worth noting is the characters in this story. They're just kind of there. Sure they do stuff and progress the "plot" with their goals, but it's irrelevant for the most part. You don't get attached to nay of the characters, their goals in the short time you're reading, or frankly what happens whatsoever. It's enjoyed predominantly for the visual and atmospheric spectacle Abara inhibits. That said, while Abara is a mess, it's an utterly gorgeous mess. Nihei's art is always distinctive, with its sprawling mega-cities, horrifying bio-mechanical monsters, and rough, stark line work that really makes the environments pop. It's a striking counterpoint to the confusing narrative (even if a few of the fight sequences could've been clearer, too).Denji, along with another girl named Nayuta, were the first to be experimented upon, with a control device implanted in the latter due to her being the first to be experimented on. Denji, however, was able to escape before having a control device implanted, killing several people in the process. Already, the inspirations for and similarities to Chainsaw Man are clear. We are thrown into a world far into the future--when plant-life is nowhere to be seen and humanity is on the brink of extinction. A sprawling city lies beneath the constant fog with a few mausoleums thrusting their flan-shaped chests into the sky. Winding staircases and walking platforms hug the walls of the buildings overlooking precipitous dropoffs. Clutteredand with excessive pipeage and metal plating, the entire city feels more thrown together than planned, industrialization taken to an unhealthy extreme. Even the phones have excessive ridges and bumps. One is more likely to see empty corridors and streets than ones filled with any pedestrians. And certainly no cars. Moreover, the Observation Bureau (Kagen House) is created to safeguard the true purpose of the mausoleums, so as to prevent further conflict. Abara: Complete Deluxe Edition is a single-volume story from cyberpunk manga creator Tsutomu Nihei, and if you know Nihei's work, you won't be surprised by the crazy, violent Science Fiction action collected in a gorgeous hardcover book. The attached Digimortal is much the same, but I think it might be from slightly earlier in Nihei's career. I couldn't find any information in English on when or where it was published.

Nov 27 'Tis Time for "Torture," Princess' Anime's Ad Unveils shallm's Opening Song, January 8 Debut I'm putting these two together because they both make little sense. The mangaka knows how to draw, and I can see that, but the extra lines almost hides the story behind them. There were times when I had no idea what was going on because the weird lines were everywhere. The characters were good, but what they looked like confused me to no end. A good many of the "normal looking" characters looked identical to each other. On the other hand, the "bad looking" characters were all had disfigured faces and wrinkles where there shouldn't be. If you want to read something where the "good guys" and the "Bad guys" can easily be identified by how awful they look, then this is the series for you; that is if you can find the minute details that make each "normal" character unique(I've yet to find them).is the closest that will fill the void. Saying that on one hand feels good, while on the other... Disappointing, as I think there is a big discrepancy between the two. Ultimately, Abara is an interesting and unique experience, but unfortunately not much more than that. I still like it, but... Yea... It was a little over two months from initial idea to the final design getting sent to press, though that includes things like editing, getting approval, etc. My initial idea that turned into the final cover came very early on in the process, though there were some other contenders that we ultimately decided against.

Abara” és el primer manga que llegeixo de Tsutomu Nihei i m’ha deixat amb ganes de provar amb “Blame!” o amb “Biomega”, dues de les seves obres més aclamades. I understand that withholding information is a plot device, but Tsutomu keeps everything to himself but names and basic terms, leaving the reader with little beyond cryptic drawings to unearth some motive along the way. While people praise this as a “deep, psychological” manga, the reader simply has to work harder to uncover why anything is happening, hiding an exhausting guessing game behind psychological intrigue.Many years later, the rest of humanity has been killed off either by the White Gaunas or by infighting. The world is an empty landscape, and lush greenery has taken over the House's rooms. Tadohomi and Sakijima run out of the House and look up into the sky. It seems like, after BLAME!, Nihei took a couple of reference points to sketch-out his next long[-er] series: The story of Abara is strange and for the first time in my life I'm not sure that's a good thing. The introduction to the story seemed really cool but after that I got lost in basically a lot of talking that wasn't all that interesting and didn't help me figure out at all what was happening til I was about done. The art conveys the atmosphere of the story decently and is great, but it does suffer from some problems. The art may be beautiful, but it misses some detail, which causes the implications of the concept and story to be only partly visible. Especially since about 95% of the panes don't have any dialogue and where dialogue appears it's not comprehensive enough to paint the full extent of the story.

The problem is the fragment of the "story" - Something like this needs a lot of explanation and an actual story. This has neither - It's more like a dream... or nightmare - while events are presented in a linear fashion and sort of follow, there's zero explanation or set-up to put this in context.Alice Lewis: This is the first time Tsutomu Nihei’s Abarahas been available and translated in English! It’s an earlier work of his, and fans can probably see hints of things that tie into his other stories. We’ve collected the complete story into one deluxe edition (and also included an early short story of his, “ Digimortal“). Not much to say about the art. It's great, although some fights are a bit confusing. The flow could have been fixed with 2-3 bonus panels here and there. The pacing felt off because of this and the earlier mention of the fact that too little time was taken to develop the plot and the world. I said either more art or more dialogue would've been fine and I stand by that, but more of both would probably work way better than the addition of one of the two. There’s even the pure, unadulterated CREATIVITY of introducing a few not-exactly-human characters, with more than a dash of humor to them, and still using them as & insisting the reader treat them as Perfectly Serious Characters. Nihei, firing on all cylinders!