this has been sitting in the drafts for months because I keep forgetting to add to it so I'm just posting it now

A Man and His Cat Vols 2-9 by Umi Sakurai was not expecting a manga whose set up is 'what if an old guy adopted an ugly cat' to make me cry. I love how this manga shows processing grief and learning to reconnect with the world after isolation interspersed with chapters about cats doing dumb cat stuff. It's a good mix! also like that the main guy is an older middle age man who actually looks like an older middle age man.

Martial Master Asumi by Kawada didn't realize this got canceled so my reaction to the final chapter was 'cool we're getting some interesting backstory and Nito's pov though seems like we're moving through it a bit quick oh its over' I'm honestly not too surprised it got dropped though this the now the 2nd shonen jump series that got canceled right as I thought it was finally picking up steam

My Love Mix-up by Wataru Hinekure and Aruko hilarious comedy of errors romance. genuinely had me laughing out loud at the reveal at the end of volume 1. also (minor spoilers) the dream sequence fake out toward the end got my ass good.

MaMaYuYu by Yoshihiko Hayashi another one for the shonen jump graveyard. I liked the art and there's a few good set pieces, but it became obvious early on that the author didn't have a clear idea of where they were going or what kind of story they were trying to tell. The ending makes me think Hayashi wants to be able to come back and continue someday which I'd be down for. Tighten that outline up and get a 2nd draft of the world building and I think this would be a solid action manga.

shonen jump reads edition because most of manga reading has been while I'm killing time at work

One Piece Vol 80 to 90ish by Eiichiro Oda
sighs Fine I like Sanji again his tragic sad boy backstory got me.
Things were getting shaky but this manga picked itself back up towards the end of Dressrosa and into Whole Cake Island. I think Doflamingo might be my favorite 'guy who sucks' character. what a piece of shit I love him.

One Piece Vol 90ish to current chapter by Eiichiro Oda
alright so I did that thing again where I found a good stopping point to take a break and read something else and then I just kept reading. A potato chip manga in that I tell myself I'll have a few before looking down and realizing I've eaten the whole bag. I started reading this in February, so I read 1000+ chapters in about 9 months.
I enjoyed Wano for the most part! My take in the great 'is Yamato trans' debate is that I don't believe Oda intentionally wrote a trans male character, but he sure did write a character who was assigned female at birth who views himself and wants to live as a man. My most cynical take is Oda realized if he wrote a "woman who thinks she's a man" he could write a cool male character and draw titties. My 2nd most cynical take is the evidence that Yamato is a trans man is that he has a character outside of Sexy Lady, crybaby, or comedic old hag. All that aside it is extremely funny that Kaido is fine with Yamato being a man, but draws the line at him being an Oden kinnie.
While I had the design and generally vibe of Gear 5 spoiled, I didn't know the full details which lead to a very fun time reading and going 'huh the Nika silhouette looks like Gear 5 Luffy wonder if that means anything' I love his looney tunes ass powers. It does feel like things are wrapping up for this series and it genuinely impressive how well Oda is able to keep plates spinning and bring back old threads without getting confusing. Very rarely have I reacted to a character getting reintroduced with a 'wait who was that again?', it's almost always a 'oh sweet they're back!' (with the exception of Caribou, who I do unfortunately remember, but wish he would stop showing up) I am very excited to see what happens next.

Mashle: Magic and Muscles by Hajime Komoto
Your enjoyment of this series is going to depend heavily on how funny you find the gag of a villain doing a long monologue about how they're the superior evolution of humanity or whatever before immediately getting their ass beat in seconds by the protagonist. Overall this is a pretty standard action comedy about the power of friendship and not being a fantasy bigot. The deadpan, "well that just happened" style humor keeps it from ever really having any tension or stakes, but the goofiness of all the characters kept me entertained. I do enjoy a manga where most of the fights can be summed up with

Martial Master Asumi by Kawada
Excited to see where this one goes! This manga captures the weird ass people combat sports attract perfectly. Kazuro is a great shithead older sibling while still being a decent dude and I think his back and forth with Nito makes for some great family drama without being too heavy. Really hoping Nao doesn't get sidelined because she's great.

Dogsred by Satoru Noda
Still feeling this one out, my main reaction is realizing that despite coming from a hockey fan family and having gone to several hockey games myself, I don't actually know like any of the rules of this sport. Noda is one of the artist's who draws Fully Grown Adults or Prepubescent Children, but nothing in between which leads to his mostly 15-18 year old characters in this looking the same as his mostly 25-30 year old characters in Golden Kamuy. As someone who was regularly mistaken for a college student as high schooler, this is not a critique but just a thing I find funny.

gotta make this one count bc the title kinda almost rhymes

One Piece Vol 45ish to 60 by Eiichiro Oda
not really sure why I've seen people call out transmisogyny specifically for this series like it's there but I wouldn't say its any worse than most shounen- gets to Kamabakka Kingdom Oh Okay I Get It Now ¹
that being said and acknowledging that his character is based in awful caricatures of transwomen and gay men I kinda love Iva?? He's up there as one of my favorite side characters. Every time he made his face huge I lost my mind. I had a blast reading the Impel Down and Paramount War arcs. I refuse to accept that [SPOILER RETRACTED] is dead. He's fine they didn't show every single detail of his burial which means he could have survived his face is on the cover of a volume I haven't gotten to yet he's fine

Cat Eyed Boy by Kazuo Umezu
this reminds me of a screenshot of The Twilight Zone I saw on tumblr where the subtitles had been changed to say something like "Did you see that? That was fucked up. That was some Twilight Zone shit" I'm finding myself not being a huge fan of Umezo's work though I think it's more a case of needing to be more familiar with horror manga overall in order to appreciate the classics and foundational works of the genre. Right now it just feels like it's an important manga because it was one of the first rather than because it's actually good. What if a little boy was also a little demon

The Way of the Househusband Vol 2 by Kousuke Oono
One of my favorite types of comedy is 'person doing mundane thing presented in an extremely dramatic fashion' which is good because that's 80% of the jokes in this manga. The other 20% are 'it sounds like they're talking about a crime thing but actually it's something totally normal and boring' which I don't find as funny but is still pretty solid.

One Piece vol 60 to 80² by Eiichiro Oda
not really sure why I've seen people call out misogyny specifically for this series like it's there but I wouldn't say its any worse than most shounen- gets past the timeskip Oh Okay I Get It Now
Too many comedy pervert characters! Sanji was (emphasis on was) fine and Brook had enough cool skull musician motif going on to be tolerable, but it seems like every other guy introduced has got to be a creep whenever a woman is on screen. Also really makes it obvious that the female characters in this story exist to be objectified or mocked (often both!). None of this is helped by the fact that Oda is the most normie boring pervert imaginable. I know you've seen a boob before dial it back man

Jujutsu Kaisen (current chapter as of 9/30/23) by Gege Akutami
My current favorite thing relating to JJK is seeing people make posts along the lines of "I know this will get hate but this series has been kinda mid since the Shibuya Incident arc ended" as if that's a hot take and not the general opinion of most people reading including me, the only person who liked the culling game apparently

Nana and Kaoru vol 1 by Ryuta Amazume
I have a theory that everyone has one ecchi³ series that for whatever reason hits just right but they cannot recommend or even talk about without a 5 minute "Listen I know what it looks like but I promise" preamble. What kind of series that gets attached to varies person to person and is often dependent on how into the genre they normally are, but there's always one. This manga is mine and my excuse is that I first read it when I was in middle school. I appreciate this series for being by someone who clearly knows and cares about BDSM, but isn't up their own ass about being into BDSM.

1.  also on the topic of problematic elements would like to take an aside to mention the racism and fatphobia in Usopp's and Chopper's side island adventures. it's bad!

2.  I've been writing this post as I read and I figured the time skip would be a good spot to take a break and read other manga and then I didn't do that. whoops!

3. You could also apply this theory to basically any genre fiction, see: positive horror movie reviews by people who don't like horror movies

didn't even come close to finishing my to-read pile before I moved but I still want to post little write ups of what I've been reading

Sweat and Soap Volume 1 by Kintetsu Yamada
most of the conflict in the romance manga I usually read comes from the characters refusing to just talk to each other so it's a nice change of pace to read one where the couple communicates like actual functioning adults. as a fellow sweaty person who's paranoid about smelling bad bc of childhood teasing I relate to Asako's huge collection of toiletries and keeping spare clothes around in case you gotta change

One Piece Volume 1 to like 45 at this point by Eiichiro Oda
Probably shouldn't count as a part of this project since these aren't physical volumes and I'm reading them on my phone at work but I'm going to anyways because this had been most of my manga reading the past couple months. Boss makes a dollar I make a dime that's why I'm reading the pirate manga on company time

I'm Kinda Chubby and I'm Your Hero Volume 1 by Nore
cute! not a whole lot to say, it's a lighthearted read. I like how soft the art style is, everyone is very round, even the nonchubby characters