Submitted 5 days ago by wjs018@ani.social to manga@ani.social
Another week in the books. Let’s chat about manga in the general discussion thread! Feel free to use this thread for questions, comments, recommendations, etc.
Like normal, please be careful with spoilers. I wrote a guide about spoilers in case you need a refresher on how to handle them (also linked in the sidebar).
I spent some time looking for a desktop alternative to Mihon since I prefer the big screen when reading (digital) manga and have more space for offline backups on my PC. Finally landed on Komikku - works fine as a reader, dunno about having access to all the series I want since I’m still in the process of adding them there but it’s alright at the moment. I just wish it had modular source adding like Mihon so I could add things on my own if necessary.
Now for reading updates!
I caught up with The Perks of Being a Villainess - love it more and more with each chapter. I was worried it could become stale considering its almost singular focus on bringing Korean turbo capitalism to the novel world but it hasn’t worn me out yet so that’s good. It’s a real gem.
I also caught up with May I Ask for One Last Thing? though I’m less happy with that one.
I think I figured out the cause of why I don’t love this series as much as I expected to - it’s stakes (or rather lack thereof). Scarlet doesn’t face any difficulties or challenges - she comes in, beats people up and proceeds to her next adventure. There’s absolutely nothing that suggests things might not go smoothly.
While I don’t need characters to struggle in a constant battle between life and death, having a non stop power fantasy with no twists or surprises can get very repetitive, very fast.
Series like The S-Class Hunter Doesn’t Want to Be a Villainous Princess at least have other things to fall back onto (charming characters, better presented humour) while here… I can’t really find anything beyond cool concept and some neat panels. I don’t think there’s one character I really like here either (even Scarlet being unhinged towards combat can get kinda boring).
I hate being so negative towards art but man, there’s nothing worse than being disappointed at something you’re excited for.
Finally, I just want to say I really appreciate the The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy At All is still going. It would be so easy to finish it right after the confession so seeing more of these dorks is always a pleasure.
Finally, finally: I’m at the point where I’m a bit scared of starting new series right now - not because I’m worried they’re bad but because I know that if any of them clicks I’ll be binging them like meth and I’m not sure I have the energy for that at the moment. So many things to do, so little time…
desktop alternative to Mihon
I have been experimenting with Suwayomi after @PrincessKadath@ani.social mentioned it among all this Mangadex drama. It isn’t strictly a desktop alternative, but it is accessible via a web ui in the browser.
So, if you don’t want to mess with DNS, VPN, proxies, port forwards, etc. you could just run it on your local machine and just access it from that one machine. Alternatively, if you already know/want to learn selfhosting, then you can put it on a publicly accessible domain or behind a VPN and access it anywhere on any of your devices. The nice thing about it is that it is essentially the same as Mihon. It has a similar UI, uses the same exact extensions, and can even import a backup you make from mihon to transfer over all your series and read history. The main drawback is how it interacts with Mihon. They advertise that it can be added as a source to Mihon itself and can sync things back and forth. I found that syncing things from Suwayomi to Mihon works really well. However, syncing from Mihon to Suwayomi doesn’t. Also, in my use case when I am trying to share a link to post to this community, getting that from Mihon doesn’t work. That’s because accessing a series in Suwayomi from Mihon’s webview doesn’t work, so I can’t really grab a url to share. So, instead, I have lately been running Suwayomi on my homeserver to basically just download and back up a bunch of series while I do my reading still from Mihon. This means that if stuff is removed again in the future, I would have an archive still that I could go back to instead of resorting to sketchier and sketchier aggregator sites.
Totally agreed about The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy At All. I was positive that the prom arc was going to be a finale, but I am happy to be wrong.
I thought about Suwayomi as well but decided against it for now - partially because I of my weird aversion towards web UI for apps running on my PC and partially because I’m just too lazy to play around with it at the moment. I still want to try it out when I have more time though.
I don’t really care about it interacting with Mihon to be honest, I’ve been syncing by hand already since I prefer PC from using a phone anyway. Still, thanks for the info!
After the disappointment of a chapter from Boyish Girlfriend the week before, I needed a palate cleanser.
Usually, this role falls on 100 Girlfriends but unfortunately, it was on a break.
Thankfully, 3 romcom manga stepped up this week:
Is anyone reading Embers? I am really loving this one. I am not very much into sports manga, but thus is pretty great.
wjs018@ani.social 5 days ago
So, a bit of a meta update from me after the mangadex dust is settling a bit. I plan on making a full post about this in the near future when I get a chance, but wanted to give a tl;dr version now to give people an opportunity to provide some feedback.
Pertaining to acceptable sources to post to this community. Previously aggregator sites were not really allowed because of how they also host scans of official releases. However, in a post-mangadex world, I don’t think this rule is really enforcable any longer while still allowing discussion of most of the series that get posted here. So, here are the guidelines to follow going forward:
Basically, don’t post scans of official releases or stuff that is behind a paywall.
Like I said above, I welcome feedback on this before making these rules more final and adding them to the sidebar.
astro_ray@piefed.social 5 days ago
What about links from official sources? I posted a link from Viz today. The latest chapter is free to read for 3 weeks, then it will be behind a paywall.
wjs018@ani.social 5 days ago
Yeah, that is fine as long as it is available when you post it. I similarly post Viz chapters from time to time as well (Tsumiki mainly).