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New Poll - How Much Is Too Much?
This week's poll was suggested by MaxieMan. Did you ever feel that it was too daunting to start a long series? What length is just too much?

I have a confession to make. Back in middle school, my friends tried to get me to start reading One Piece. There were maybe 5 official English volumes released. That's only around 50 chapters. I didn't pick it up, as I thought it was too much. As of today, there's 960 chapters. Still haven't read it.

You can submit poll ideas here
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results:
Question: Do you prefer original works or adaptations?
Choices:
Original works - votes: 2211 (89.4%)
Works based on pre-existing fiction - votes: 200 (8.1%)
Works based on real events - votes: 62 (2.5%)
There were 2473 total votes.
The poll ended: October 26th 2019

One of the most lopsided polls we've ever conducted
Posted by lambchopsil on 
October 26th 12:28am
Comments ( 42 )  
[ View ]  [ Add ]

Comments (limited to first 100 replies)

» zarlan on October 26th, 2019, 12:46am

Completely depends on the series.
I went with "There is no such thing as "too many"", as a series can go on for ages, without it being a problem, but...
There are many series that shouldn't have gone on, for nearly as long as they did.

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» residentgrigo on October 26th, 2019, 12:53am

There is no such thing as "too many". There were 4000+ pages waiting for me when I went through book 1-5 of A Song of Ice and Fire and it´s spin-off back in 2011 after S01. I did it in like 3 months. I powered through Dune 1-6 in about the same timeframe. IT the book (it´s a mess... HaHaHa) is over 1000 pages long but I just look at those sales.
The 127 volumes of Hajime no Ippo will fly by in comparison. JoJo is up there too. Seriously, reading them all is less of a timesink than one of King´s major door stoppers. So no, a too-long comic, tv show, etc doesn´t exist. Only ones that aren´t worth your time anyway do.

Good luck with The Wheel of Time Amazon. No really. It´s only the most ambitious tv show of all time if they go all in.

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» hkanz on October 26th, 2019, 9:39am

Novels and manga aren’t comparable IMO, since a basic (or at least predictable based on the first few chapters) level of quality can be expected from novels, whose authors aren’t coming up with new ideas weekly/adding new chapters and dragging it on just because it’s popular. Yeah a long novel takes a lot of time, but finishing War and Peace is easier than finishing a 500 chapter manga that becomes boring at chapter 200 because its mangaka ran out of ideas. That being said, I’ve never read a really long series of novels, so maybe they have similar problems with authors writing inferior sequels because initial books are popular?

Also wow, I googled Wheel of Time and see that it finally ended. I remember a friend reading those in elementary school and saying that they continued forever haha.

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» lambchopsil on October 26th, 2019, 1:09pm

The Wheel of Time is actually one of my favorite fantasy series. I just hope Amazon's adaptation does it justice. At least it's complete, so it won't run into the same problems that Game of Thrones did at the end

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» hkanz on October 27th, 2019, 8:35am

What did you think of the last three books written by a different author, were they just as good or was it a disappointing end to the series?

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» lambchopsil on October 27th, 2019, 5:39pm

Quote from hkanz
What did you think of the last three books written by a different author, were they just as good or was it a disappointing end to the series?

I love Brandon Sanderson. I've read all his Cosmere works. He did change the character of Mat quite a bit in his version though...

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» residentgrigo on October 27th, 2019, 11:48pm

Who here is looking forward to reading Brandon Sanderson´s A Dream of Spring (ASOIAF 7) and maybe even a The Winds of Winter finished by him if we get really "lucky". Or how about Brian Herbert´s and Kevin J. Anderson´s expanded ASOIAF universe with more Tales of Dunk and Egg and Fire & Blood 2 (of 2). They have the experience after all. 😀 😕 😐 😢 🤢
Dear HBO: Fire & Blood is only half-finished, why are you adapting it NOW? GoT S05-06 were a mess and S07-08 are mostly unwatchable. Just wait or you will kill your own Golden Goose!

Sanderson ain´t the only one to finish an unfinished genre epic. Dune 7 (of 7) never came as Frank Herbert died at the age of 65. Guess who stayed very far away from all of it but their adaptation of the outline to Dune 1 in the making-off/companion book The Road to Dune.
I would never seriously consider the further works of another person in a closed-off and unfinished series as worthwhile literature if said person wasn´t part of the writing process from very early on. Penny Arcade nailed why. Most expended fiction of fished works as Boruto is mostly the same to me. Some good Star Wars books broke the mold but how many SW books are there again? At least over 1000? It´s a miracle that Blade of the Immortal: Bakumatsu Arc reads like vol. 31.
To think that this only exists to promote the new anime "adaptation". Lol.

Christopher Tolkien´s way of doing it is the best practice. He edited his father´s often unfinished works into a cohesive structure or published them as is, with stories ending in the middle of a sentence but his stance of the films is pretty wild.

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» Transdude1996 on October 28th, 2019, 5:51am

Quote from residentgrigo
Dear HBO: Fire & Blood is only half-finished, why are you adapting it NOW? GoT S05-06 were a mess and S07-08 are mostly unwatchable. Just wait or you will kill your own Golden Goose!

Buddy, HBO made over $2.3 BILLION on subscriptions alone. Imagine how much more was made from marketing and licensing across the globe with the comics, the video games, the radio shows, the toys, the prequels, the sequels, the inbetween-quels...they don't care, and that shouldn't have been more evident than how the series literally ended with the entire cast going, "Democracy, LOL!"



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» HikaruYami on October 28th, 2019, 3:39pm

Wait, lambchopsil, you've read The Wheel of Time but not One Piece?? It takes way longer to read the former from start to finish than the current volumes of One Piece.

One Piece is closing in on 100 volumes in a couple years. Let's say generously that each volume has 200 pages (it's closer to 180 pages of actual content). That's 20,000 pages total at 100 volumes.

According to https://sites.google.com/site/batuhanswebsitecom/wheel-of -time, the Wheel of Time has over 11,000 pages.

So, more than half the pages, but now compare the text on one page of each series. I think we can easily say that the most dense possible page of One Piece has less than 1/4 the text of a page of The Wheel of Time (and yes, I know that it's one of the denser shounen battle manga... but it's still a shounen battle manga).

So it should literally take less than half the time to catch up on One Piece than to read The Wheel of Time.

Read One Piece already 😛

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» lambchopsil on October 28th, 2019, 5:35pm

Most of my reading nowadays is through audiobooks though. Gotta make that commute more productive instead of only listening to music

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» HikaruYami on October 29th, 2019, 6:35am

Ah, fair enough. Just listening to One Piece definitely wouldn't be enough 😛

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» zarlan on October 27th, 2019, 1:34am

Quote from hkanz
Novels and manga aren’t comparable IMO, since a basic (or at least predictable based on the first few chapters) level of quality can be expected from novels, whose authors aren’t coming up with new ideas weekly/adding new chapters and dragging it on just because it’s popular.

Like many others here, the only long manga you appear to have read, are generic (and, generally, mediocre) Shounen Jump-style shounen manga. Basing ones opinion of all long series, purely on the likes of those, is ridiculous. (yes, they are the most common series, to get to such lengths, but...)

Also whilst, granted, manga usually have to be done weekly or monthly, whereas books usually have to be done as a complete book ...but both tend to have to be done to a deadline, either way. Book need to be a certain length, within that deadline, as well.
Not to mention that books being initially published one chapter at a time, in a magazine, used to be the norm. (dunno if some are still published like that, or not)
Quote
That being said, I’ve never read a really long series of novels

So why do you think you have any grounds, for saying how they compare to long manga, then?

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» hkanz on October 27th, 2019, 8:53am

Yes, I don’t think I’ve read a 300+ chapter series outside of shounen. What would you recommend for a non-shounen series of that length? I’m pretty open to subject matter.

Re book production, I just don’t find it comparable.

Re the series comment, I’ve read single books with high page counts and I’ve read long trilogies. What I was referring to with my ‘long series’ comment was the phenomenon when something is dragged on against the writer’s original intentions simply because of the popularity of initial releases.

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» residentgrigo on October 27th, 2019, 4:29am

There is no way in hell that you read War and Peace (1200+ pages) with that statement. Almost any neverending comic ever is easier to read in marathon sittings than Leo Tolstoy´s epics. There are some crazy dense comics like Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (the later issues are WILD), Maus, some of Urasawa´s works, Berserk (it will pass 400 eps.) biographies, etc. that read slower than anything else but you can read all of Kenshin or FMA (27-28 vol.) in exactly one day with nothing else going on without melting your brain. Good luck finishing Crime and Punishment (500+ pages) in one sitting on the other hand. The horror! The horror... Something as mundane as Harry Potter is easy to plow through. I, for example, read 90% of book 6 during a night watch when I was in the military and finished the rest the next day as I had to pass my duty and get home.

I know someone who read all of Naruto in 2 days and he only started to speed up around vol. 50, as that´s where the story naturally collapses. I myself re-read all of JoJo (about 120 vol.) earlier this summer in 3 days, with the creative peak being vol. 81 to 104 (SBL). Vol. 105 to now is still amazing and that is past the 1000+ chap. point if we go by the silently assumed 20 pages = 1 chap. rule. The historical Golgo 13 through wasn't even good at vol. 5 so I mostly stopped there despite it now reaching for vol. 200. A chosen few can go for 100 vol. of comics, they just can, even if I think that 30 to 50 vol. is a good sweet spot for the decade (+) method of long-form storytelling. Others can´t even put together a coherent single chapter to save their lives.

The infamous Dave Sim´s set out to write 300 issues of creator-owned material of 300 issues worth of comics between 1977 - 2004 that "made sense". He wrote, drew and self-published (!) all of Cerebus the Aardvark but got a background artist starting with issue 65. Issue 25 to let´s issue 186 are as good as they say but he single-handedly killed his reputation with that issue. Read about it here and watch The Controversies of Cerebus' Dave Sim to learn about essential comic history. I would joke that the madness of his endeavor took him but he was outed as an actual child groomer and pedophile later. To think that a pedophile would hate women, who knew... But him bitching that his child bride ran his life and reduced him to a "housepet" is something else.
I went through all 300(+) issues in 2 days in the late 00s (half of the time at work). Day 2 was a VERY special day. Those 9/11 essays... ho boi. Start your journey into unfiltered madness today, as it´s the journey of a lifetime 😀 ! Almost every genre and lunacy under the sun gets covered.
It´s a miracle that all the work-horse mangaka that lasted for 30-50 years with little time off haven´t started to eat people yet. Some diddled kids though. Hm, hm.

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» hkanz on October 27th, 2019, 9:11am

I have lol, War and Peace used to be one of my favourite books (mainly because of the Andrei and sky scene...) before I discovered Nabokov. I’m not as high on Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment was fine but The Brothers Karamazov was a real slog for me. That being said, I can’t read manga with the rapidity you describe, even if I like it. So maybe I’m unusually quick at reading novels and unusually slow at reading manga.

I love the mention of Maus, I read that ages ago and remember really liking it.

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» HikaruYami on October 26th, 2019, 5:21am

Easy.

There is no such thing as "too many"

When I picked up One Piece, there were 400 scanlated chapters available.

When I picked up Detective Conan, there were around 600 scanlated chapters available.

When I picked up Hajime no Ippo, there were around 890 scanlated chapters available.

Also, dude, you should read One Piece, there's a reason it's the most-sold manga in history.

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» VawX on October 26th, 2019, 5:30am

To start a new series, 300 chapters is too much for me now, but if I already following it even 2000 is okay as long as it's still good mmm...

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» calstine on October 26th, 2019, 6:32am

It really depends on the genre and categories, as well as the specific series, but I guess 1000 chapters would definitely put a damper on my enthusiasm. The actual answer would be anything more than 500+ chapters, though.

The longest-running series I'm reading is Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken. I do wonder how many chapters total it has/is going to have...

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» Transdude1996 on October 26th, 2019, 7:04am

There is no such thing as "too many"
Basically it depends on what I feel like I want to take the time to read. Started up 3x3 Eyes because I actually wanted something that was long-running. The only time the excessive chapter amount becomes a problem is when the story is already dropping in quality and it just isn't going anywhere in direction and flow.

Quote from HikaruYami
Also, dude, you should read One Piece, there's a reason it's the most-sold manga in history.

I wasted an entire week binging the entire anime a couple years back, and it is a great series, BUT I ended up dropping it because:
Spoiler (mouse over to view)
It just doesn't fucking END.

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» hkanz on October 26th, 2019, 9:08am

I said 300 chapters. Generally if a series gets too long it experiences a drop in quality and I lose interest. Shounen is my least favourite genre to begin with, so it has to be good to engage me, and shounen is almost always the genre of a series reaching 300+ chapters.

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» blackluna on October 26th, 2019, 3:08pm

Doesn't it completely depend on a bunch of specifics? Chapter length, plot, the way the author handles it, etc. I've read long oneshots which would be better as single volume works and vice versa, for starters. There are also works which end up being 200+ chapters but would have been better with 150–175 chapters, works which are 500+ chapters but would have been better with 700+, and works which are perfectly executed with 100+ chapters. The examples could go on and on. It completely depends on the individual work, so I find that I can't honestly choose any of this poll's options.

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» Lorska on October 26th, 2019, 4:41pm

300+

Considering not a single manga I read that had more than 200 made it to my top list and only very few had above 100, the answer is rather obvious.

Adding the fact I read romances almost exclusively, if it's something with substantially more than 100 chapters it's pretty much guaranteed to end up bad. All these neverending Shounen were boring the hell out of me so they all ended up being dropped.

The biggest problem I have with manga length is, if it's substantially longer than 100 chapters there's usually a problem with either the story that's being told or the way it's being told. I consider Baby Steps a rather good manga for example but it just drags too much at times.

I haven't seen a manga with 200+ chapters without some kind of issue...

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» fizhsmile on October 26th, 2019, 4:47pm

I haven't read OP either. I watched the anime when I was in grade school up to the floating restaurant on the sea and that kicking chef, that was the last time I watch it. A Friend told me that was around chapter 45 in the manga.

I personally think 10+ vol is considered too much. I rarely read manga with 10+ vol, unless the anime was soo good and it made me to pick the manga out of the curiosity of the continuation, like SnK, Demon slayer, Promised Neverland.

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» Majinvegetables on October 26th, 2019, 10:24pm

This is how I feel about ONE PIECE , KENICHI STRONGEST DISCIPLE , KINGDOM , CASE CLOSED ... the main factors to me that are a turn off is ...

You have to start reading from a manga that was started over a decade ago ... so I automatically feel like it’s an irrelevant topic (at least the chapters I’m on) while Hundereds of thousands of manga are being release with more up to date references and just over all “in the now” ....

So to answer the question . For me , too much is about 75 chapters ... I just find it such an inconvenience to read a manga that started in 2001 and try to keep a decent level of excitement, knowing I missed the actual hype of it . It feels like I’m trying to force myself to fit in so I can know what every body is talking about.

Also for me to read 75 chapters , it has to be ongoing ... I am not really interested in reading completed series unless it’s just that amazing ... I like to be “in-the-now” but not spend too much effort getting there ...

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» Transdude1996 on October 27th, 2019, 11:32am

You guys DO realize that you're comparing sequential art books with descriptors (Which comics are) to a collection of papers with thousands of fancy words printed on each page (Which books are), right? Both mediums are aiming to do different things.

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» residentgrigo on October 27th, 2019, 12:25pm

The List of manga series by volume count isn´t a perfect list due the weird schedules and sequels many entries have but it´ the most convenient source out there. Let´s make this a though exercise. Here are all the good (7/10 or above) entries on it with the vol. count:

Seinen: Azumi - 66 (reboots after vol. 48), Berserk - 40+, Ryuu - Ron - 40, Yamikin Ushijima-kun - 46 and Wangan Midnight - 56.

Shounen: Baby Steps - 47, Dragon Ball - 42, Hajime no Ippo - 126+, Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken - 124+ (Seinen after vol. 80), Major - 78 (skip the sequel), Rokudenashi Blues - 43, and Naruto - 73.

The list features an actual Yaoi manga and there is an equal amount of manga for adults as for teens/kids. The theory that Shounen manga typically lasts the longest is disproven and 2 mangaka made it past vol. 100 without running out of ideas. The entries for women are sadly sub-par, somewhat rare too.

I can´t believe I have to say this but the medium book and comic BOOK are directly connected. So are movies and written tv, as you have to write scripts and so on, but comics come closer.
The Count of Monte Cristo (1200+ pages), it may be the best booke ever, was sequentially published in a newspaper. Some of the most influential books of all time and some of the most influential genre-books (for example Dune) were published in a similar manner until things gradually changed in the 2nd half of the 20th century. The standalone publication of books as we do them now isn´t as old as many here apparently think and how many sequential web publications that were turned into manga exist on this site alone? Tens of thousands of manga and comics are based on prose novels and the point of writing Light NOVELS is to get a direct manga and even better an anime adaptation green-lit. The 2 sequels to Fight Club are both maxi-series comics written by Chuck Palahniuk himself! His first comic work btw. He just read a how-to guide to comics and keeps banging out comic scripts on time. That´s why many film scriptwriters are also novelists. Watchmen was on Time's List of the 100 Best Novels in 2010. Am I taking crazy pills here? Both have chapters (at least as TPBs/tankoubon). Both have editors. Book authors have publishers and a schedule to keep, so do comic writers/artists. Both have ISBNs (the B is for book) and book shops sell or can get you comics. Both are read. We ain´t comparing comics with video-games, recepts, ballet or architectural plans here people.

Let's close off with Comic Writing 101, how fun. Comics are first written like a (prose) novel with a ton of direction for the artist. The 12 issues Watchmen script is longer than most books and works without pictures as it took Moore 1 PAGE to describe page 1 panel 1 🤣 . Page 1 has 7 panels as seen here. So uncle Moore may have written 1000+ pages without paragraphs. Poor Dave Gibbons. Moore was likely on drugs, he just had to be. Then came the drawings, the inking, the coloring, etc. Which is how 99% of all comics are constructed. Manga scripts are called a "name". You know what, just read Bakuman..

PS: HBO´s Watchmen show is a tour de force btw. and I love how it triggered racists. Thx Lindelof.

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» Transdude1996 on October 27th, 2019, 12:56pm

Quote from residentgrigo
I can´t believe I have to say this but the medium book and comic BOOK are directly connected. So are movies and written tv, as you have to write scripts and so on, but comics come closer.
The Count of Monte Cristo (1200+ pages), it may be the best booke ever, was sequentially published in a newspaper. Some of the most influential books of all time and some of the most influential genre-books (for example Dune) were published in a similar manner until things gradually changed in the 2nd half of the 20th century. The standalone publication of books as we do them now isn´t as old as many here apparently think and how many sequential web publications that were turned into manga exist on this site alone? Tens of thousands of manga and comics are based on prose novels and the point of writing Light NOVELS is to get a manga and even better an anime green-lit. The 2 sequels to Fight Club are both maxi-series comics written by Chuck Palahniuk himself! His first comic work btw. He just read a how-to guide to comics and keeps banging out comics scripts on time.
Watchmen was on Time's List of the 100 Best Novels in 2010. Am I taking crazy pills here? Books have chapters, so do comics. Books have editors, so do comics (or at least TPBs/tankoubon). Book authors typically have a schedule to keep, so do comic writers/artists. Books have... argh.

Let's close off with Comic Writing 101. Comics are first written like a (prose) novel, the 12 issue Watchmen script is longer than most books and works without pictures, with a ton of direction for the artist. Then comes the drawing, inking the colors, etc. Manga scripts are called a "name". You know what, just read Bakuman..

What's the actual argument that you're trying to make here? I genuinely have to ask because, if I'm reading this right, you might as well classify video games, tv, theatre, and books as all the same media simply because their delivery of the product is broken up into segments and because a character of the media is able to say a word.

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» hkanz on October 27th, 2019, 1:23pm

Quote from residentgrigo
The standalone publication of books as we do them now isn´t as old as many here apparently think


Books were written and distributed before the invention of the printing press, and continued to be produced as standalone items after the invention of the printing press. The serial form was just a fad in certain countries during a certain time period and was based on factors like price and availability, not a belief that it was the ideal way to read a novel. Books published in serial form also may or may not be episodic - Pnin is a good example of a book that was published serially and is episodic, but none of Nabokov's other books are episodic and many were published serially.

As for comparing novels and manga, I think it really depends on the work. Some mangas are very episodic (with the most extreme being something like 4-koma...) but others are more novel-esque with complex and consistently moving plots (something like Monster).

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» residentgrigo on October 28th, 2019, 3:30am

I have to correct this or I will lose my mind and my professional credibility My vocational education and university education have to mean something and the idea that a private person could own a book before 1493 or before even the 18th to 19th century is as unlikely as any MU user casually owning a 1kg of Platinum. Or knowing how to read for that matter. No offense to Genji monogatari and the greeks but Don Quixote (1605/1615) is known as "The first modern novel". It clearly traveled the world in a way Genji never will. I silently assume that everyone understands that I mostly talk about novels here when I say books as A. J. Jacobs´ quest to read all 32 vol. of the Encyclopædia Britannica was so worthwhile that he wrote a book about it. It´s a solid read.

The "serial" lasted for easily 400 years, until let´s say the middle of the 20th century. Which ain´t a fad unless you think that the currently popular way of publishing books is a fad as it is maybe half as old. (The process is always changing of course.) The old format never went away too. I don´t even mean the novel releases by let´s say Stephen King that we published in the classic way. Genre (sci-fi/fantasy) anthologies and LN anthologies still exist and web publication/fan fiction lead to arguably way more serialized fiction than at ANY point in history. Look up the publication history of Fifty Shades of Grey. The 150 million copies wouldn't have sold if the then-unknown author didn´t serialize her trashy rape pr0n first. Her 3 books (now 5) outsold all of ASOIAF (yes, she really did), Bond, Discworld, Hunger Games, The Wheel of Time and is about on par with Star Wars. A fad you say? Listen up party people. Any of your internet fan-fics can theoretically sink any of these entries that ain´t the bible. Peddle your smut today. I rest my case/Ted Talk.

No one here is saying that this is the ideal way to read anything, as it´s not mean to be. It´s the cheapest way to publish for a reason. The concept of "writing for the trade" is infamous in the US comics scene and manga anthologies are equally an inferior experience. There are lost manga anthologies or even never re-released manga after all as you are supposed to chug Jump and friends in the trash after your train ride and get the revised/uncensored and most importantly (semi-)properly printed tankoubon of the ones you like. Ah magazine scans, you are the worst.

No one is comparing 4-koma works (100 ch. is already pushing it there) or Dilbert to The Brothers Karamazov (a newspaper serial), Das Kapital or Atlas Shrugged (stay FAR away from Ayn Rand kidZ) for the same reason you wouldn't compare the official Game of Thornes cookbook to Game of Thornes despite both being books. I wonder, how many cook books can a person read per day... 🤣

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» hkanz on October 28th, 2019, 9:35am

I never stated/implied that the circulation of books in earlier times was as prolific as it is today. Nor was I talking about novels in particular, I was responding to your comment about 'books'. If you mean novels, say novels, the words aren't interchangeable - it's like saying 'pet' and then being like 'oh, I meant dogs'. My basic point was that books originated and have continued in the standalone form and IMO that shows itself in our idea of what a novel should be, as compared to a manga series that doesn’t know whether it’s going to be cancelled after 10 or 500 chapters and wants to sell volumes regardless of when it’s cancelled. Most manga shows an awareness of serialization, most novels don’t - that structural difference is what I’m trying to get at.

Fanfiction... is a different realm IMO, since it’s piggybacking off the success of an established author or television show or whatever and the intent is probably not to form a cohesive whole but rather to satisfy readers of the original book by introducing or continuing storylines? I’ve read very little of it and can’t say whether any of it has literary merit, certainly Fifty Shades of Grey doesn’t despite its massive sales.

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» zarlan on October 29th, 2019, 6:54am

Quote from hkanz
Yes, I don’t think I’ve read a 300+ chapter series outside of shounen.

As I've implied before:
Your opinion on this matter, is completely invalid.
Quote
was the phenomenon when something is dragged on against the writer’s original intentions simply because of the popularity of initial releases.

The topic here is long series. You talked about long series.
At no point, was there a requirement that series get long, because authors are pushed to make it longer than they intended.
Quote
The serial form was just a fad in certain countries during a certain time period

...
Aside from residentgrigo's excellent response, and setting aside how you're utterly wrong:
Couldn't you, given that logic, say the exact same for manga?
Just that we're still in this fads heyday? (manga has not existed for anywhere near as long, after all, so...)
Quote
was based on factors like price and availability, not a belief that it was the ideal way to read a novel.

...and you're seriously saying that, that isn't the exact same reasons, for why manga is released chapter by chapter?
Seriously?
Are you kidding me?
Quote
Nor was I talking about novels in particular, I was responding to your comment about 'books'. If you mean novels, say novels, the words aren't interchangeable

Non-novel books, are nowhere near long enough to be relevant to this discussion, so your argument here is pure nonsense.
Quote
Fanfiction... is a different realm IMO

...says the guy that complained about how "novel" is too specific?
Fanfiction is literature. Literature is literature.
Quote
I’ve read very little of it and can’t say whether any of it has literary merit, certainly Fifty Shades of Grey doesn’t despite its massive sales.

He wasn't claiming that it did (quite the contrary!), nor does it need to, for what he was arguing, there.

I would have had more to say in reply to you, but what with residentgrigo's replies...

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» hkanz on October 29th, 2019, 10:58am

Quote from zarlan
As I've implied before:
Your opinion on this matter, is completely invalid.

The poll doesn't state 'if you've sampled a wide array of different genres of long manga, what is your opinion...' and my initial post you responded to is only commentary on what I've read - i.e. the level of quality is more predictable in a novel and that opinion is based on the fact that I *have* seen manga nosedive and I *haven't* seen the same decline in quality in an novel. I'm not saying that *every long manga* is trash, which appears to be your interpretation. I'm not claiming to have read everything and neither is anyone here.

Quote
The topic here is long series. You talked about long series.
At no point, was there a requirement that series get long, because authors are pushed to make it longer than they intended.

I never said that was a requirement. That's a potential explanation for why a series is long.

Quote
Aside from residentgrigo's excellent response, and setting aside how you're utterly wrong:
Couldn't you, given that logic, say the exact same for manga?
Just that we're still in this fads heyday? (manga has not existed for anywhere near as long, after all, so...)

1. Not wrong, books have always been published as standalone entities, even during the period when serialization was popular in some countries. 2. What's the point of speculation about the future of the manga industry? Sure, it's conceivable that methods of publication could change and the structure of your average long manga could shift to become more like the structure of your average novel. It's also conceivable that the entire industry could be decimated. Zero point in discussing this.

Quote
...and you're seriously saying that, that isn't [u]the exact same reasons[/u], for why manga is released chapter by chapter?
Seriously?
Are you kidding me?

I didn't say anything about why manga is released chapter by chapter. But my (very vague) notion about the history of manga is that it's always been released in serial form.

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Non-novel books, are nowhere near long enough to be relevant to this discussion, so your argument here is pure nonsense.

FACEPALM. The comment that I was responding to was specifically about the publication of 'books'. 'Book' is different from 'novel'. Given that they were 'invented' at different times, and the issue at hand was the history of publication, it's absurd to claim that distinguishing the two doesn't matter. You've also obviously never read some of the ridiculously long history books out there.

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...says the guy that complained about how "novel" is too specific?
Fanfiction is literature. Literature is literature.

1. Woman 2. Where did I complain about how novel is too specific? I've generally only been referring to novels. I only mentioned 'books' in response to the aforementioned discussion about the history of publication.

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» zarlan on October 30th, 2019, 4:41am

Quote from hkanz
The poll doesn't state 'if you've sampled a wide array of different genres of long manga, what is your opinion...' and my initial post you responded to is only commentary on what I've read

True. Fair enough. I take back my statement that your statement was invalid.
It is valid for stating your opinion, based on your experience. (but not on stating if it's correct)
Thanks for the correction.
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I never said that was a requirement.

You very clearly implied it.
You did not state it as a potential explanation, but rather as the reason for why series become long.
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books have always been published as standalone entities, even during the period when serialization was popular in some countries.

No. Serialized literature is (note that I use present tense) published chapter per chapter. These are later collected together, and sold as a full book or books.
Technically yes, that later collected entity can be said to be the book being published as a stand-alone entity, but only in the same sense that manga volumes, are published as stand-alone entities.
...but how you can refer to the Dune/TwoT/ASOIAF/Harry Potter/Whatever book series as being published as a stand-alone entity, is beyond me.
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What's the point of speculation about the future of the manga industry?

Clearly invalidating your argument ...which is invalidated in other ways as well, as has been explained to you.
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I didn't say anything about why manga is released chapter by chapter.

Yes you did.
You were contrasting books with manga, by saying "The serial form was just a fad in certain countries during a certain time period and was based on factors like price and availability, not a belief that it was the ideal way to read a novel."
Hence you stated that:
1. Serial literature only occurred in a limited time (false) and only in some countries (false) and isn't used anymore (false)
2. It was used due to factors such as price and availability, in the case of literature, as opposed to manga. (false)
3. Manga is published in chapter by chapter, because it is believed to be the ideal way to read manga. (so obviously false, it hurts)
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FACEPALM. The comment that I was responding to was specifically about the publication of 'books'. 'Book' is different from 'novel'. Given that they were 'invented' at different times, and the issue at hand was the history of publication, it's absurd to claim that distinguishing the two doesn't matter. You've also obviously never read some of the ridiculously long history books out there.

None of that, explains why the distinction has any relevance to this discussion.
Novels are a type of book ...and any mention of "book", in this discussion, is obviously understood to be novels (or, rather, novel series), given the context (i.e. very lengthy narratives)
Any talk of shorter works, is completely irrelevant, and has no place in this discussion.
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1. Woman

Ah. Terribly sorry.
I know one shouldn't assume a persons gender ...and yet I still often just assume that a random person on the internet is male, for some reason...
Thanks for the correction.
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2. Where did I complain about how novel is too specific?

You said, and I quote:
"Nor was I talking about novels in particular, I was responding to your comment about 'books'. If you mean novels, say novels, the words aren't interchangeable"

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» hkanz on October 30th, 2019, 9:22am

Quote from zarlan
Quote from hkanz
The poll doesn't state 'if you've sampled a wide array of different genres of long manga, what is your opinion...' and my initial post you responded to is only commentary on what I've read

True. Fair enough. I take back my statement that your statement was invalid.
It is valid for stating your opinion, based on your experience. (but not on stating if it's correct)
Thanks for the correction.
Quote
I never said that was a requirement.

You very clearly implied it.
You did not state it as a potential explanation, but rather as the reason for why series become long.
Quote
books have always been published as standalone entities, even during the period when serialization was popular in some countries.

No. Serialized literature is (note that I use present tense) published chapter per chapter. These are later collected together, and sold as a full book or books.
Technically yes, that later collected entity can be said to be the book being published as a stand-alone entity, but only in the same sense that manga volumes, are published as stand-alone entities.
...but how you can refer to the Dune/TwoT/ASOIAF/Harry Potter/Whatever book series as being published as a stand-alone entity, is beyond me.
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What's the point of speculation about the future of the manga industry?

Clearly invalidating your argument ...which is invalidated in other ways as well, as has been explained to you.
Quote
I didn't say anything about why manga is released chapter by chapter.

Yes you did.
You were contrasting books with manga, by saying "The serial form was just a fad in certain countries during a certain time period and was based on factors like price and availability, not a belief that it was the ideal way to read a novel."
Hence you stated that:
1. Serial literature only occurred in a limited time (false) and only in some countries (false) and isn't used anymore (false)
2. It was used due to factors such as price and availability, in the case of literature, as opposed to manga. (false)
3. Manga is published in chapter by chapter, because it is believed to be the ideal way to read manga. (so obviously false, it hurts)
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FACEPALM. The comment that I was responding to was specifically about the publication of 'books'. 'Book' is different from 'novel'. Given that they were 'invented' at different times, and the issue at hand was the history of publication, it's absurd to claim that distinguishing the two doesn't matter. You've also obviously never read some of the ridiculously long history books out there.

None of that, explains why the distinction has any relevance to this discussion.
Novels are a type of book ...and any mention of "book", in this discussion, is obviously understood to be novels (or, rather, novel series), given the context (i.e. very lengthy narratives)
Any talk of shorter works, is completely irrelevant, and has no place in this discussion.
Quote
1. Woman

Ah. Terribly sorry.
I know one shouldn't assume a persons gender ...and yet I still often just assume that a random person on the internet is male, for some reason...
Thanks for the correction.
Quote
2. Where did I complain about how novel is too specific?

You said, and I quote:
"Nor was I talking about novels in particular, I was responding to your comment about 'books'. If you mean novels, say novels, the words aren't interchangeable"


You seem to be misunderstanding many of the things I've said, so here is my attempt to clarify them:

1. I don't and will not assume that when someone says 'book', they mean 'novel'. Doing that is bizarre IMO, they're words, they have meaning. If you're going to use them interchangeably, don't @ me, because I'm going to take them for what they are.

2. I understand what serialized literature is. What I was saying was that throughout the period when serialization was popular in newspapers etc., separate works were being published as volumes. My previous comments on this topic have been about books because that was the term initially used, note comment above, but the same goes for the category of novels. To name a well-known one: Wuthering Heights.

3. Maybe my post regarding the reasons for serialization was badly worded. What I was trying to say was that novels were originally published as volumes - if you take Don Quixote as the first novel, that was published 200+ years before serialization became popular - and serialization became a trend for so-and-so reason, not because the structure of novels was suited to serialization. To my (limited) knowledge, manga has always been published in serialized form, so 'why did the industry switch from publishing volumes to serialization' isn't a question that can even be asked. You could ask 'why does the industry not switch from serialization to solely volumes' and that's an issue that I with no inside knowledge of the industry have no information on.

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» zarlan on October 30th, 2019, 12:27pm

Quote from hkanz
1. I don't and will not assume that when someone says 'book', they mean 'novel'. Doing that is bizarre IMO, they're words, they have meaning.

There is a thing called "context"...
For example:
In the statement "he reached for his weapon", in regards to a policeman, "weapon" is understood to mean his service handgun ...or, in the case of a swashbuckling swordsman, his sword. (or a jedi, his lightsabre)
A term can refer to a more specific sub-type of what the word, strictly speaking, refers to, depending on the context.
This is a basic linguistic fact, that even little children tend to grasp, quite automatically.
(and sometimes also the opposite. There are also many other similar/related phenomena, that are equally basic, and equally intuitively understood at a kindergarten level)

Your statements, in regards to this "book" vs "novel" issue, make no sense.
You don't appear to understand what the terms mean, or even the very most basic fundamentals, of how language works.
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separate works were being published as volumes.

That may be so, but... How is that, at all, relevant? Serialized books are still published chapter by chapter, are they not? (also, are there no examples, at all, of a manga volume that was published as a complete volume, rather than chapter by chapter?)

Furthermore:
Book series are published, book by book.
As I've said.
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Maybe my post regarding the reasons for serialization was badly worded.

No, it was simply wrong. In severally different ways.
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What I was trying to say

Your credibility in this regard, especially given how you repeated and clarified your points, and still said what you said, which is completely different from what you now claim you tried to say. (but expressed badly, so that you said something else)
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To my (limited) knowledge, manga has always been published in serialized form, so 'why did the industry switch from publishing volumes to serialization' isn't a question that can even be asked. You could ask 'why does the industry not switch from serialization to solely volumes' and that's an issue that I with no inside knowledge of the industry have no information on.

...or you could just ask: Why do they publish through serialization?
A question that you answered
You did not state that you did not know, but that you knew.
That you knew that it wasn't for the reasons that books were serialized.

Also, to deal with the issues you've chosen to ignore:
You did say that manga series only get long, because the authors are pushed to continue them, because they are profitable. This is clear, if one reads the relevant comment.

You contrasted books with manga, by saying "The serial form was just a fad in certain countries during a certain time period and was based on factors like price and availability, not a belief that it was the ideal way to read a novel."
That was a clear statement that:
1. Serial literature only occurred in a limited time (false. Something that went on for centuries, is hardly a fad ...and it still continues today) and only in some countries (false. It may [and I'm not sure about that] have mainly been in "the West" [all of it!], at first, but it later went world wide) and isn't used any more (false)
2. It was used due to factors such as price and availability, in the case of literature, as opposed to manga. (false. That is always the reasons. Well, on free online sites, it may partially/exclusively be because readers get to read stuff more often, which may keep them more motivated to continue, but that would be the one exception, and only applicable for that kind of situation. Not counting mere comic strips, of course, which are built on being published strip by strip, and which are not relevant to this discussion)
3. Manga is published in chapter by chapter, because it is believed to be the ideal way to read manga. (so obviously false, it hurts)

Edit: also, what was the point of including a quote-block, of my whole complete comment? It neither communicates, nor contributes anything. Citing a specific bit, to indicate what specific thing the following text is replying to, helps in making sense of ones comment, but that...?

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» hkanz on October 31st, 2019, 9:30am

I suggest that we agree to disagree ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ For multiple reasons, but ultimately we just seem to be on different wavelengths in how we see things, and continuing this exchange is unlikely to be fruitful.

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» zarlan on November 1st, 2019, 4:04am

Yeah, I guess trying to argue with someone far too stupid and/or dishonest (I can't possibly tell) to make anything resembling a coherent point, is fairly pointless.

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» zarlan on October 29th, 2019, 7:01am

First off:
Excellent comments. You made a lot of things I wanted to say in response to hkanz redundant, and responded far better and with more knowledge and depth than I would have ...and then some.
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and the point of writing Light NOVELS is to get a direct manga and even better an anime adaptation green-lit.

Not necessarily and most certainly not originally
...but, yeah, in a great many cases, nowadays, that is fairly obviously the purpose/goal. Sadly.
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Her 3 books (now 5) outsold all of ASOIAF (yes, she really did), Bond, Discworld, Hunger Games, The Wheel of Time and is about on par with Star Wars.

Man, that's depressing.
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I wonder, how many cook books can a person read per day... 🤣

🤣

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» dreamer00013 on October 27th, 2019, 8:12pm

Voted 500, because usually by then there's a massive quality drop. However, it really depends on the series. Some are still brilliant, some just have less interesting arcs and get better, some should have been closed after max 200 chapters, looking at you, Bleach!
To be honest though, I prefer shorter mangas nowadays, with fewer volumes. It makes it more likely for me to actually read and finish them, if they aren't over ten, twenty volumes...

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» ceruleantear on October 27th, 2019, 9:53pm

I usually think of my manga in terms of volumes. So, I decided to average one volume as having 5 chapters.

With that in mind, I selected 100 chapters (about 20 volumes) as being too long for me. I have read longer series, but I will have to strongly consider the title before I'm willing to dive into such a long series.

I have a few reasons for this aversion:
- It's big time and financial commitment to keep up with a long series.
- Some big series are still unfinished and you have no idea when they will end.
- Several English language publishers have dropped a long series before it was finished (or went out of business).
- Several long series that I've read have dropped in quality as the story progressed.

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» dreamer00013 on October 30th, 2019, 5:23am

I so agree. And well, maybe the poll should have been done with volumes, chapters can be really diverse in page length.

Also, adding to your list: sometimes you've got manga you want to finish, but they are taking decades to complete! Just see Skip Beat and Onepiece.
I'm sure I'll be around long enough in the manga scene for the first one to finish, but the second??

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» Transdude1996 on October 29th, 2019, 12:03pm

Again, why are you guys comparing the sale of Japanese comic books to the sales of novels worldwide? Why not compare how how Japanese comics are structured and sold in comparison to American comics, European comics, Korean comics, and Chinese comics?

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