Grand Comic Reading Project

[jbradfor]

Thanks!

On a different note, I was realizing the other day that the variety of types of comics is really useful in terms of learning vocabulary along a certain theme. Doraemon and Yotsuba, for example, teaches current domestic / children vocabulary, Ranma teaches fighting / martial arts, Animal Sense has a number of crime / gangster words, and some of the others more romance / dating type words; as for The Mercenary, well I'm sure some day I'll have a way to fit 妃嬪 into my everyday speech :o

[feihong]

Yeah, I came to the same conclusion. That's why I'm trying to find good examples of comics that focus on medicine, sports, music, food, business, and zombies.

[Gleaves]

Agreed and good idea. You might also want to find one on robot vocab so that we are prepared for both zombie and robot apocalypses.

[feihong]

I think I may have already covered that with BLAME.

Oh, and by the by, I don't think I'll be making any more comic profiles on the wiki. It's just too time-consuming to make those pages. We'll still use the wiki for word lists, though.

[skylee]

Hi, I have just finished re-watching the film "Persepolis" on TV and I enjoyed it very much. I am just wondering if you guys would be interested in reading the comics (at least book 1). The Chinese name is 我在伊朗長大. I can't find a copy on the internet. Maybe you guys are more resourceful.

[feihong]

I have read Persepolis in English and really enjoyed it. But I didn't have any luck finding it on any of the sites I usually frequent. Even in the West, Persepolis is not a very well-known comic.

[semantic nuance]

It's really a cool set of comics. I borrowed the set from my city library and finished in 2007. If you don't mind, try here. Scroll down to the bottom, there're simplified chinese pdfs to download. On the top of the page, it's a French version.

[Hofmann]

I don't think this was mentioned before. I liked the anime series of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion (Code Geass 反叛的魯路修) and having read the first volume, I think the manga would be good also. The language is probably around that of a third or fourth year level Mandarin class at a university.

Summary:

Summer of 2011, the Holy Britannia Empire declared war on Japan. Within one month, the country had fallen and with its defeat, lost it’s freedom and rights, renamed as Area 11, and it’s people the 11s. Lelouch, a successor to the Royal Family of Britannia who was living in Japan at the time, vows to destroy the Empire to his childhood friend Suzaku. 7 years later, both attending the same high school, Lelouch often skips school to play chess. One day, caught up in a 11s terrorist incident involving a stolen military secret, Lelouch is captured by the task force sent to recover the capsule. Suzaku, a member of the military is shot for disobeying orders and with nowhere else to turn, the young girl found in the capsule gives Lelouch the power of Geass, making anyone obey a direct order from him. At this point the two childhood friends path diverge, Suzaku becoming a military pilot in the Britannia Army and Lelouch the masked Zero, the leader of the rebellion to destroy Britannia.

A Simplified Chinese scanlation is available at dm5, but either it's really slow or some pages are missing.

A Traditional Chinese official translation is available on VeryCD. The quality is better and it's higher resolution, but it might take a long time to get them all. I can put them up on a file host if you want.

[feihong]

@Hofmann

DM5 seems to be missing the volume 1 scans. They do have chapter-by-chapter scans, though.

Another possible source is http://iibq.com/comic/82012124627/. I took a quick look at the volume 1 scans there, they are in traditional and are of decent quality.

[Hofmann]

Nice. I need to be a better searcher.

[jbradfor]

Finished a first pass at an index / summary for the comics. Please PM me any corrections or suggestions you might have.

I realize that "difficulty" categories is somewhat personal; what might be hard for me might not be hard for you, or maybe the other way around, based on how much vocab is new, being able to parse the sentence structure, etc. So if you don't agree, feel free to post here and we can argue about it and maybe come to some overall agreement.

[feihong]

I don't think Ranma 1/2 belongs in the "Very Easy" category. I think you may want to make a "Very Hard/Advanced" category to put Ravages of Time in. Not sure why Animal Sense is in both Easy and Medium.

But yes, "difficulty" is a rather subjective trait when it comes to reading material.

[jbradfor]

Fixed two of those.

I put Ranma 1/2 in very easy because even when there were words I didn't know, I could follow the story quite easily anyway. Plus the sentence structure was pretty simple. But, I'll move it if others think it's harder.

[feihong]

Apologies, very busy with various personal crap, tried to post the next selection but my computer crashed right before I could hit the "post" button. In any case, feel free to start the next reading project: Yamikagishi.

[Gleaves]

Something weird for your Friday. http://chinesesuperman.com/

[feihong]

That is oddly brilliant.

[jbradfor]

I was thinking brilliantly odd.....

[Gleaves]

Credit to chinesehacks.com for pointing it out. Here's a rundown by them on a few other web comics.

[feihong]

Am I posting the reading projects too fast? I admit I'm just blindly following the once-a-month schedule I basically laid out from last year.

[jbradfor]

I think it's good that you're providing a lot of options now to select from. Once there is a good critical mass, slower is probably OK. ["critical mass" == 10? 15? 20?]