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Grand Comic Reading Project


feihong

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I'd be very interested. I am planning on starting to read more soon, so I'd like to be involved in this.

Regarding the tradiational vs simplified, two thoughts. First, I'm not sure two per month is a good idea. Picking one per month, and having lots of participation for it, already seems to be a good goal. Rather, I would suggest alternating simplified/traditional each month. Second, once one is at the level that one starts reading native material, in my personal opinion one should also learn to read both simplified and traditional anyway. So I would suggest not getting too hung up on the simplified vs traditional.

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很好的主意. Count me in. I have a pretty full reading plate at the moment, but I've been meaning to get back to reading some comics/manga/漫画. A separate sub-forum would be nice, but I leave that to the moderators to weigh in on.

I think there is enough simplified stuff out there to make this work. I've seen a fair amount on verycd.

I would also suggest alternating simp and trad as opposed to having two comics a month. At least initially, I think focusing on one title makes sense.

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OK, it seems like people prefer one title per month, alternating between simplified and traditional. I have no problem with this, and in fact I think the arguments for it are really good.

Regarding how much material is available in simplified, I'd say that there's quite a bit of it, but not very much Japanese stuff. Typical simplified stuff would be translations of American comics, like Justice League, Avengers, X-Men, Mouse Guard, Y: The Last Man, Walking Dead, etc. I've also noticed a few European comics like A Communist Jew in Prague, Indian Summer, Necrowar, etc. So if you don't like any of that then you won't like reading comics printed with simplified characters. I know that there are comics created by mainland artists but not many of them are good.

I don't think hentai or other very niche genres should be considered. I don't mean that all comics with adult content should be rejected, I just mean that if we want high participation we should select titles that have more mass appeal.

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Sure, good idea. I like comics for pretty much the same reasons you cited, and found them useful to get reading practice before I was ready to tackle real books.

As far as setting something regular up, the best way to approach it is to suggest something that's easily accessible, and start a thread in the Book/Story of the month subforum. Looks like there are enough interested people. If it becomes a regular thing, maybe roddy will rename the subforum to include comics. I don't think that a forum dedicated only to comics is justified right now, but it might be if there is enough activity. The best way to do this is to be active.

I haven't read too many comics in Chinese, these are my experiences:

Doraemon / 机器猫 / 哆啦A梦 : good for beginners, very short stories, cute

Ranma 1/2 / 乱马 1/2 : for intermediate learners, longer, with kung fu and love stories, aimed at teenagers. Really funny

Urusei Yatsura / 福星小子 : for intermediate learners. I didn't like the first few books of this. It gets much better in later books

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Ranma 1/2 / 乱马 1/2 : for intermediate learners, longer, with kung fu and love stories, aimed at teenagers. Really funny

Oh, I didn't know about that...I'd be interested in (of course) the kung fu themes. Both trad and simp are fine with me, love 'em both.

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Lelan, I know you're a kung fu practitioner, so don't expect anything realistic, or having to do with actual wushu techniques. The comic is full of obscure and silly martial art "styles", and the titular character changes into a girl when he gets wet ;)

That said, it's hilarious. You can have a read here (be careful, it's read Japanese-comic style, right to left, right page first). I finished all 7000+ pages of it. More info on wikipedia.

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I recommend Azumanga Daioh (笑園漫畫大王, 校園漫畫大王, 阿滋漫畫大王) for beginners. It has short and shallow dialogues spread over many frames, kind of like 老夫子, with no real story, so you don't have to start at the beginning to "get it." One an read it online here.

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By way of a quick note - I would suggest not doing this as 'of the Month', as people who come along later will be put off by the idea of doing the old ones which are already 'finished' - just refer to it as the Grand Comic Reading Project or something, and it makes it more likely that people will dip in and out.

I think we've seen this with the TV watching project, as opposed to the Book / Story of the Month.

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Reading that first page of Doaemon reminded me of why I don't read comics more often. The writing style is often *much* more colloquial than what I would find anywhere else. That's not a bad thing, and I've heard lots of anecdotes of people learning Japanese through manga. But it's something to be aware of, especially when comics are billed as "for beginners" -- from the Doraemon pages I read, the characters were all well-known, but I still had to work to comprehend the page.

This subforum could actually be a good resource, though, in the same way that the numerous "learning Japanese through manga" series are useful, by pointing out specific vocabulary and grammar.

I agree with Roddy's point, as the Grand Episode format works exceptionally well. I don't have much luck with the Book of the Month topics, as it takes me more than a month to finish a story :rolleyes:

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Now that the first Comic is out, any thoughts on generating a vocab list, similar to what is done for the First Episode project? I figured out 杰克 on my own, but I haven't gotten far enough on it to know if this is necessary for comics.

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I "read" only the first story of that color doraemon book (I didn't look up anything, so basically 1/2 was guesswork) and got stuck mainly on the bird names and onomatopoeia...

Perhaps we could have one list for things that are common to lots of comics (onomatopoeia) and other lists for story-specific words (bird names here).

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After reading through swaths of the Grand First Episode Project, I've decided to throw away the Comic of the Month plan. I think I will just start another thread called "The Grand Comic Reading Project" and let people suggest titles there.

There are still some questions about the format. I think a twice-a-week schedule is too rushed. And reading only one chapter of a comic often doesn't give you a good idea of what a series is like (anyway chapter lengths vary widely among series). I'll just play it by ear and see how people respond.

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A comic I started reading a while ago, put down due to time constraint issues, and have recently picked back up is "rabbit doubt" or 谎言. It is in traditional, but I have found it to be pretty simple to read and entertaining. I would say I'm somewhere in the HSK 5 range to give you an idea of my level (I haven't taken it yet). So I'm guessing you'd consider the series beginner-intermediate?

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