[0:00] - Hi, my name is Tazmyn May
[0:02] from the channel TeaBooksAndTazmyn,
[0:03] and welcome back to Penguin Platform.
[0:05] I have recently been
really getting into manga.
[0:08] And as I didn't know where
to start on my journey
[0:11] into such a vast, vast style of art,
[0:14] I thought I would do a little introduction
[0:17] for you based off of my
introduction to manga
[0:20] as to where to start, which
genres equals which mangas
[0:24] and give you a few little baby reviews
[0:26] about which ones I have loved so far
[0:29] and some that are on my TBR.
[0:31] There are three sort of categories.
[0:32] There are going to be
the contemporary ones,
[0:34] the lighter fantasy ones,
[0:37] and then the dark, sort
of, more gory fantasy ones.
[0:40] All the timestamps are gonna be down below
[0:42] and I'm also gonna put
some more recommendations
[0:44] and other ones on my
TBR that I unfortunately
[0:47] will not have enough time to talk through
[0:48] in this video today.
[0:49] So make sure that you
check out the description
[0:51] for even more books so you
can sink your teeth into.
[0:53] The first genre that I
want to dive into today
[0:56] is the fantasy books.
[0:58] The first manga that I want
to recommend to you today
[1:00] is one of my all time favorite
stories, just of all time,
[1:04] regardless of any genre, any art form,
[1:07] any way of consuming it.
[1:08] This is just one of my favorites
[1:09] and the manga is far better
than the anime I can confirm.
[1:12] And that is "The Promised Neverland."
[1:14] I read the first two volumes so far
[1:16] and I've watched the first
season of the TV show,
[1:19] but people that have watched
both seasons have said
[1:21] that the second season
just isn't that great
[1:23] and that you should just
read all the books instead,
[1:25] so that's what I'm doing.
[1:26] I couldn't find the first few
volumes anywhere, physically,
[1:29] which is why I've got them on Kindle.
[1:31] And I'm not mad about that
because when I finished one
[1:33] at 3:00 AM in the bath,
[1:34] I can just download
the next one instantly.
[1:36] It's working really, really well for me,
[1:38] not for my bank balance.
[1:40] Volume one of "The Promise Neverland"
[1:42] follows predominantly
three young kids who are 11
[1:45] within the next six
months about to turn 12,
[1:47] and they, and all of their
other siblings, siblings,
[1:50] have been brought up in an orphanage
[1:52] in a sort of care home,
[1:53] and they just have the
best time god damn time
[1:54] of their lives.
[1:55] One by one,
[1:56] they start to get fostered
by different families,
[1:58] varying ages, but no one stays
longer than the age of 12.
[2:02] And one day two of our main three discover
[2:05] that there is a dark, dark secret,
[2:08] and they are not happy about it.
[2:12] I watched the first season of the anime
[2:14] before I read the books,
and I have to say,
[2:17] fucking, shitting, god,
I didn't see it coming.
[2:20] I did not see it coming.
[2:22] It's so lovely and fluffy and nice.
[2:25] And everyone love, no.
[2:27] Oh, I mean, I guess
look up trigger warnings
[2:31] for all of these because
there's a lot of horrible stuff
[2:35] that goes on in these books.
[2:36] They don't know anything
outside this world of theirs
[2:38] and suddenly it all comes shattering down.
[2:40] And one of the things that I
love, love, love about this
[2:43] is that the children are written so well.
[2:46] Somebody that I hate about
poorly written young adult
[2:48] is that a lot of the time,
[2:50] it very much feels like adults writing
[2:52] what they think teenagers
[2:53] and young people should think about.
[2:55] Like, oh, it's the end of the world.
[2:56] Let me find my makeups
so I look nice for photos
[2:59] for the end of the world selfies.
[3:01] I know, and that's genuinely
something that I have read,
[3:04] but this is excellent.
[3:05] There are so many different reactions
[3:07] from these different characters
as they uncover the truth.
[3:10] They're not all stable,
[3:12] but they all work and they work together
[3:16] and they use their intelligence
[3:18] and they try to outsmart
people and it feels so real.
[3:22] I can almost imagine like
some adults reading the books
[3:24] and being like,
[3:25] that's ridiculous, children
aren't that intelligent,
[3:27] children would just cry,
[3:28] but children are capable of
so much more than the majority
[3:31] of adults believe them capable of.
[3:33] And I feel like this story
deals with it so, so well.
[3:37] I'm so excited to keep on reading
[3:39] and then I'll probably go
back, once I finish the books,
[3:42] watch series two and be depressed
[3:43] at how badly it was adapted.
[3:46] The next manga that I
want to recommend is very,
[3:48] very different from that one.
[3:49] It's more of a, I'd say
middle grade fantasy,
[3:53] and that is "Cardcaptor Sakura."
[3:55] So I've heard about this
for a very long time.
[3:57] The version, again that I got on Kindle,
[3:59] is a kind of collectors bind up of,
[4:01] I think the first three volumes.
[4:03] Since then, that has been
like a sequel series called,
[4:06] "Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card."
[4:08] I don't know when that
happens chronologically,
[4:10] but I'm just so glad that there is so much
[4:13] that I can devourer.
[4:15] Sakura is, I think, either eight or 10,
[4:18] like she is a kid.
[4:19] And she discovered one day a massive
[4:21] old tome in her father's attic.
[4:24] And it used to keep sort of
like these taro card like things
[4:28] in which they contained spirits,
[4:31] some of them good, some of them evil,
[4:32] but they were escaped.
[4:35] And Sakura is one of the only people
[4:37] who can help capture them.
[4:39] She's the card captor, Sakura.
[4:41] Now this is the second
manga of this sort of,
[4:44] I would say, specific genre
of sort of middle grade,
[4:47] young girls saving the
world against these aliens
[4:50] that's never quite
explained how they got there
[4:52] in the first place.
[4:53] And this one does it so much
better than the other one.
[4:56] And the other one is "Tokyo Mew Mew,"
[4:57] which is my entire childhood.
[4:59] If anyone's coming from my channel,
[5:00] you know how much I love "Tokyo Mew Mew."
[5:03] But "Cardcaptor Sakura" is
just written so much better.
[5:06] The characters are so
much more fleshed out.
[5:08] The family relationships are existent.
[5:11] Whereas in "Tokyo Mew Mew"
it's just like, ah, a fight.
[5:15] Oh, another fight.
[5:16] Oh, a crush.
[5:19] Oh, another fight.
[5:20] Whereas this actually makes sense.
[5:21] There are arcs.
[5:22] There are things going on at school
[5:24] that impact her in her card capturing.
[5:27] Of course, it's a bit ridiculous
[5:29] when she has to get changed
and get all dressed up
[5:32] for when she's gonna capture cards,
[5:33] but even then in the translation,
[5:35] it's done sort of tongue in
cheek where she's like, well,
[5:38] obviously I've gotta
look amazing for this.
[5:41] It feels a lot more self-aware.
[5:43] I love Sakura.
[5:44] I love her dad.
[5:45] I love her brother.
[5:46] She doesn't have a mom.
[5:48] Her mom, I think she died when
she was really, really young.
[5:50] And that sort of grief,
[5:52] the emptiness of not
knowing one of your parents
[5:55] or not remembering them very well
[5:56] is also very, very well-written, mm.
[5:58] Content warning for the fact
that her mom was a student
[6:03] and her dad, I believe, was her professor,
[6:06] and they got married, I think
as soon as she left school.
[6:09] So that is not cool.
[6:11] I like to think that we over
here at Penguin Platform
[6:14] all know that it's not okay
[6:15] for teachers to seduce their students.
[6:17] That is actually capable of
being locking up in the prison
[6:21] and times, so we don't like that.
[6:23] I like everything else though.
[6:25] The next contemporary fantasy
that I want to recommend
[6:28] is actually my current read.
[6:30] I've only read the first that much of it.
[6:33] And that is "Fruits Basket."
[6:34] Again, I've got the collector's
edition, volume one.
[6:37] Like I mentioned, I'm only in
the beginning of this so far,
[6:40] but I am really, really enjoying it.
[6:42] It follows our main character, Tohru,
[6:44] who after many, many family tragedies,
[6:48] is now living in a tent.
[6:49] Something that I think
is quite interesting
[6:51] that a lot of Western people
reading manga may not know
[6:53] is that in at least East Asia,
[6:56] there isn't such thing as child services.
[6:59] So in things like this,
if the kid is homeless,
[7:03] they're homeless.
[7:03] If they can't be taken
in by anybody, that's it,
[7:06] they just live on the street.
[7:06] Like in England, you'd be like,
[7:08] yo, I think this 15 year
old kid doesn't have a home,
[7:11] and the police would come
in and try and help them.
[7:13] But in these situations, they can't.
[7:15] So luckily for Tohru, her
tent was accidentally pitched
[7:18] on the land belonging to the Sohru Clan,
[7:22] and she goes to school
with a couple of the boys.
[7:24] I was gonna say the thing that
happens might be a spoiler,
[7:27] but it's in the literal bub,
[7:28] so that's fine, I can say it.
[7:30] The Sohru Clan can turn into the animals
[7:34] of the lunar zodiac.
[7:36] In this, they call it the Chinese Zodiac,
[7:38] which is just generally
what that has been called
[7:41] for a long, long time.
[7:42] But to be more inclusive of, of course,
[7:44] all East Asian cultures or Asian cultures
[7:47] that celebrate the lunar calendar.
[7:49] We now call it the lunar
cycle and the lunar animals.
[7:52] But so, the ones that she
knows can be transformed
[7:55] into a rat, a dog and a cat,
I think they're the ones.
[8:01] And I'm assuming there are
gonna be all the others.
[8:03] Like there's a dragon and a tiger.
[8:05] I was born in the year of the tiger.
[8:06] I'm very, very eager to
keep on reading this.
[8:08] I just don't have a clue how on earth
[8:10] this is going to progress.
[8:11] If it's going to go down the route
[8:13] of her being sort of sucked
into this fantasy world
[8:16] and she then maybe has magical powers
[8:18] and she has to help them
with something to do
[8:20] with the animals
[8:21] or if maybe the entire thing is set
[8:23] in their sort of high school situation,
[8:24] and they happen to have
these magical powers,
[8:27] but it all still is about
her and her family troubles
[8:30] and the high school drama
or something like that.
[8:32] I don't know, and I'm so excited.
[8:35] This is a very, very
highly acclaimed series.
[8:37] I've been recommended
this by a family friend
[8:39] for like the last seven years now.
[8:42] Marina, thank you.
[8:44] I'm now going to start with
the contemporary mangas,
[8:46] and I'm very happy to say
[8:47] that there are quite a
few LGBTQ plus ones here.
[8:50] The first one I'm going to recommend
[8:51] is a "A White Rose in Bloom,"
[8:53] which I believe only has a
few volumes so far translated
[8:56] into English.
[8:57] So if like me, you're massively
daunted by the manga series
[9:00] that have 30 plus volumes in,
[9:02] this'll be a good one to jump on now
[9:04] because you can read as
the series gets translated.
[9:06] This follows two young
girls in a boarding school
[9:10] who are the only two students
in this boarding school
[9:12] that have to stay during
the Christmas holidays,
[9:14] and they gradually start
developing feelings for each other.
[9:17] One of them is of course,
very, very aloof and mysterious
[9:20] and was all like, no, don't talk to me.
[9:23] Go away.
[9:24] And the other one is like me, and is like,
[9:25] hi, I wanna know everything.
[9:27] This left on a massive
cliffhanger, as I'm sure,
[9:29] actually all volumes of manga
does, which is infuriating
[9:32] because I need the rest of
them immediately, and I can't.
[9:36] But I'm very, very excited for this.
[9:38] And actually there are quite
[9:39] a lot of queer mangas available,
[9:41] which I wasn't expecting as homophobia
[9:44] is still quite big in
East Asia, but there is.
[9:47] So I will leave a big list down below
[9:49] because I've made a list for
myself to read in the future.
[9:51] The next one that I'm going to recommend
[9:52] is one that I actually haven't yet read,
[9:54] so can I recommend it?
[9:55] I'm not sure.
[9:56] One of my best internet friends, Holly,
[9:57] AKA Spoopy Hall, bought this for me.
[10:00] And it is, "I Hear the
Sunspot," volume one.
[10:03] Now this is a male, male romance.
[10:05] This is one of Spoop's
favorite series of all time.
[10:08] And she got it for me because she knew
[10:09] that I'm big into queer stuff
[10:11] and I was just getting into manga.
[10:12] As that was one very, very
well thought out recommendation
[10:15] to me from a friend,
[10:16] I thought I would recommend it to you now
[10:18] who are also my friends.
[10:19] This next one is one
that I haven't yet read,
[10:21] but I'm very, very eager to,
[10:22] and this was the collector's
edition of "Orange,"
[10:25] which on the back is
described as a syfy romance.
[10:28] It says that the main
character receives a letter
[10:30] from herself 10 years in the future.
[10:32] And at first, she's like,
nah, it's a prank, whatever,
[10:34] but things that the letter
says start coming true.
[10:37] And the letter tells her
[10:38] to watch over a new transfer student.
[10:39] Their destinies become intertwined.
[10:41] And apparently it's, heart-wrenching.
[10:43] Like when I had this in
my little pile of books
[10:45] that I was gonna buy in for
Better Planet in London,
[10:47] someone else saw that
I had this in my stack
[10:49] and they were like, you
are gonna need tissues.
[10:52] And I was like, yep, I've heard that.
[10:54] So I'm gonna stock up and
then give this bad boy a go.
[10:57] This collector's bind up
has the first three volumes
[11:00] in the series.
[11:01] It's like a American sitcom.
[11:03] They all have 24 episodes in the series
[11:06] and they're all quite short
and quick to get through
[11:09] and you just devour them and
devour them and devour them
[11:11] and then you find out
that 10 years have passed
[11:12] and suddenly you're sad
that there's no more.
[11:16] That's what these were
all doing to me so far.
[11:17] Now the final few are
ones that I don't know
[11:20] if I can entirely say I recommend myself
[11:22] because I have watched the
anime of a few of these mangas
[11:26] and I really, really enjoyed them.
[11:28] And then in some instances
I stopped watching the anime
[11:31] because I wanted to read the manga.
[11:33] So I'm recommending them based on the fact
[11:35] that they're incredibly famous
and I enjoyed the adaptation.
[11:39] But on the whole, what I've
heard is that the originals,
[11:42] the manga of course, are better.
[11:45] The book is always better.
[11:46] I'm going to start with the one
[11:47] that I have not heard about on BookTube.
[11:50] The others, I think
generally people are aware
[11:52] of their existence.
[11:53] The one that I love, but I
haven't heard very much about
[11:55] is "Soul Eater."
[11:57] Now this is so funny and
dark at the same time.
[12:01] If you know anything
about "My Hero Academia,"
[12:03] I would recommend this
[12:04] and it has a sort of
magical school setting,
[12:07] but it's darker.
[12:08] And I believe it's a bit more explicit.
[12:10] I remember there being boobies.
[12:13] So soul eaters are essentially sites
[12:16] who have to collect the souls
of people that are alive.
[12:20] And I believe we start off this series
[12:22] by having a few young soul eaters
[12:24] who need to collect something
like a hundred souls
[12:26] in order to progress to
the next level of training.
[12:29] I remember the characters
being really quirky and funny.
[12:32] There are soul eaters.
[12:33] There are witches, as you
can tell from this outfit.
[12:35] Of course she's a witch.
[12:36] There are many other
supernatural characters as well.
[12:40] It's so high-key adventure
with a massive, massive cast
[12:44] of characters.
[12:44] They all have very, very
unique personalities.
[12:47] And of course, who doesn't
love a magic school setting?
[12:49] Ticking all of the boxes.
[12:51] The next one I'm going to recommend
[12:52] is one that I actually know
very, very little about.
[12:55] I know that my lovely friend,
Jody from Vanilla Moon
[12:57] is currently reading the series.
[12:59] And that is "Tokyo Ghoul."
[13:01] Now, once again,
[13:02] this is a massive series
that has spinoffs as well.
[13:04] And I'm so excited to be
able to get through to these,
[13:06] but this is in a world
where humans and ghouls,
[13:09] which are essentially,
[13:10] I believe vampire, zombie,
kind of hybrids live.
[13:13] And they're not friends,
[13:15] until one day main
character somehow ends up
[13:18] becoming half human, half ghoul.
[13:20] And then he has to try and
find his place in the world
[13:23] and goes on adventures and has
to learn about ghoul society
[13:26] versus human society
[13:27] and he has to learn how
to master his powers.
[13:30] I believe it's very gory though.
[13:32] It's like horror.
[13:33] Comparing it to a horror film,
[13:35] I believe this is kind of,
[13:37] (Tazmyn gagging)
[13:38] yeah, that's like "Saw" film level.
[13:44] I just saw something that
I really didn't like.
[13:46] The penultimate one that
I'm going to be recommending
[13:48] in this video is, of course, "Death Note."
[13:51] Now this was the first manga
slash anime I ever got into.
[13:56] This is another story
where the main characters
[13:58] who are young are highly intelligent
[14:00] and it feels believable.
[14:02] It feels genuinely like a teenager
[14:04] is figuring out this new world
[14:05] that they've been thrust into.
[14:06] So Light, our main character,
[14:07] suddenly one day it discovers
something called a death note
[14:11] and he discovers that if you
write names in it, they die.
[14:14] And if you specify how
you want them to die,
[14:17] that is how they will die.
[14:18] This notebook was accidentally
dropped by a death god,
[14:20] a shinigami God.
[14:22] And they sort of build a rapport.
[14:24] I wouldn't call them friends.
[14:26] They become best friends,
[14:28] sort of like a zero fellow
croley like bromance
[14:31] or they know they shouldn't be friends,
[14:33] but they ended up really,
really caring for each other.
[14:35] Oh, I know what else I can say.
[14:37] Don't watch the whitewashed
version of the film
[14:39] that Netflix made.
[14:41] Read the manga and watch the anime.
[14:43] Don't watch the one with white people in.
[14:45] And the final one I'm gonna
be talking to you about today
[14:48] is, of course, "Attack on Titan."
[14:50] Oh my god, I love this so much.
[14:55] So this first series, which is
just called "Attack on Titan"
[14:58] follows what remains of humanity
[15:00] when these things called Titans,
[15:01] that you can see a person
there and there's a Titan
[15:03] and they're not very friendly.
[15:04] In fact, they like to eat us humans.
[15:06] And we don't know where they came from
[15:07] or at least at this point,
[15:09] we don't know where that came from.
[15:10] There is a prequel series
called like "Before The War"
[15:14] "Before The Rise."
[15:15] Before something.
[15:16] I have the book cover here.
[15:18] And that is a prequel
to this original series.
[15:20] This is absolutely fantastic.
[15:23] It's like an apocalyptic story.
[15:25] It looks at people who have
lost absolutely everything.
[15:28] And how on earth can they
find any reason to keep going?
[15:32] How on earth after they've seen
their family, but massacred,
[15:36] can they still want to live?
[15:39] You follow characters who
were young when it was--
[15:42] oh, "Before The Fall."
[15:43] I think it was called "Before The Fall."
[15:45] Our main characters were
children when the fall happened
[15:49] and it follows them
through all of the trauma
[15:51] and heartbreak of losing your family,
[15:52] losing your loved ones.
[15:53] And they joined the, essentially, an army
[15:55] to try and find a way to kill the Titans.
[15:59] And bro, brosky, bro-gan.
[16:01] So many plot twists.
[16:04] So good, so good.
[16:06] Like it's famous for a reason.
[16:08] This is famous for a god damn reason.
[16:10] It's so good.
[16:11] It's so good.
[16:12] I mean all of them that I
recommended to you today
[16:14] are so good.
[16:16] And that's it.
[16:17] That's all of them.
[16:18] Remember, I've got loads,
[16:19] more recommendations down below.
[16:21] And by recommendations,
[16:22] I mean, books that I
have heard of that exist.
[16:24] I can't recommend them myself
[16:25] because I haven't yet read them.
[16:26] Thank you so much for watching.
[16:28] If you have any
recommendations of your own,
[16:29] please leave them down below.
[16:31] See you soon.
[16:32] Take care.
[16:33] (lips smacking)
[16:34] Goodbye.