Help this mama understand Manga!

[eswill]

Hi all, my son is 13 and into all this manga stuff, which I know NOTHING about. I hear the titles Bleach, Ultimo and Death Note quite often. Okay, "Death Note" just does not sound too nice to me. The libraries here do not carry any of these for me to look at. Does anyone know of a good site for parents to read up on this type of thing? To get a review of some sort? Any of you know about it yourselves? I don't want to buy them before I know more. They just seem dark to me. Thanks

 

[Perditamarie]

I don't have any personal experience w/this, but I find the reviews on Amazon.com very helpful.

 

[punkin]

Hi all, my son is 13 and into all this manga stuff, which I know NOTHING about. I hear the titles Bleach, Ultimo and Death Note quite often. Okay, "Death Note" just does not sound too nice to me. The libraries here do not carry any of these for me to look at. Does anyone know of a good site for parents to read up on this type of thing? To get a review of some sort? Any of you know about it yourselves? I don't want to buy them before I know more. They just seem dark to me. Thanks

Death Note is VERY dark. I should get my DD11 up here to write reviews for you. She is really into that stuff. Luckily her cousin (much older) sends her the books she no longer wants so our expenses for this stuff are low.

 

[punkin]

OK, this is what DD said Death Note is a book dropped by a shinigami (demon) and if you write the name of a person in it, the person will die. A high School student finds it and uses it to kill evil people.

Bleach also has to do with killing people but like a "grim reaper" sort of (DD said she didn't read this, just heard about it)

Ultimo is about ancient robots.

Out of all of these DD's favorite is Death Note. There are also a lot of much lighter "girly" manga that she reads.

 

[balletmom97]

I concur- Death Note is quite dark.

Manga are rated, much like movies and video games. Look on the back, near the ISBN/UPC and you will find a recommended age range.

I have found that while I might be comfortable with my kids "playing up" a notch with video game ratings, that is not the case with manga. A few times I have nixed "teen" titles due to drug and sexual references, so flip through the book, too!

You can now find all kinds of manga- even the Bible! If you look around, you will be able to find something upon which you both agree.

Feel free to get in touch if you want to know about a specific series. Between my son and his friends, they are familiar with it all-including the ones in Japanese!

 

[Evi]

Death note is dark but has good storyline.

Most Manga is rated and there is some that in my opinion is way to much and very very mature out there. Manga can range from kids shows to teens, adults and it also porn. So if hes watching it at home on cartoon network it can be violent but neutral for the most part but if hes dl off internet or getting it from friends I would monitor it to ensure hes not getting his hands on harder stuff.

 

[soccerchick]

Try reviews on Amazon, School Library Journal, and Booklist.

 

[RedPanda]

You can often find detailed plot synopses of manga, especially popular ones like you mention, on Wikipedia. Here's the entry for Death Note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Note

 

[JessRabbit]

You can read Manga online here:
www.onemanga.com or www.mangafox.com
and search Death Note.

You should find what you are looking for there.

 

[mdsouth]

Shelfari.com is a site that works a lot like Facebook. You can create a file and put in reviews of books you have read, make a list of books you want, and even friend other people to check out their lists. You can also review other books there too.

I teach middle school Language Arts and our school's librarian shared the site with me the other day. She is absolutely fabulous and is always up with all the latest trends and interests of the middle school students. We are so fortunate to have her on the staff.

I encourage you to contact your son's school librarian for information. Of course, your local library would be a good place to check out the books too - you can check them out for free instead of paying money for them.

 

[eswill]

Whoa, thanks for all the great responses. Off to bed now, but I will be checking into this tomorrow. What a helpful group you've been.

 

[deerhart]

I was also going to direct you to onemanga as well (thats where I caught up on Inuyasha).

Be aware that some manga can be much more sexually explicit then many Americans feel comfortable with, but not overtly sexual (they think nothing of nudeness or showing alot of skin, but the story lines vary with it so you do have to watch out.