Made the home thread 
Head over there if you want to read FMA with the club!
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Currently gauging interest for a Re-Reading Club! Please check it out if you like!
Oh no, I have been tagged as a spammer. Ummmm. I promise I’m not?
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I’m really happy that I got a tablet to read manga. Much cheaper than buying imported paper versions and I can use split screen to always have my dictionary on the side:
Comfy!
Also it took me way too long to realize that you were supposed to read 4koma one column at a time instead of the usual way…
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I see Bocchi, I approve
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I’m really tempted to nominate Akira because I think it would be a good pick for this club, but as far as I can tell it’s pretty difficult to procure digitally. It’s a popular manga however, so there are many options to buy a physical copy.
Thoughts?
- We should allow physical-only options
- Sounds too complicated/expensive
- In general I would avoid it but I’m willing to compromise for high-profile manga
0
voters
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I’ve seen it happen before in the ABC with nominations of books that don’t have an online version. I don’t see a reason why not to nominate it but it should definitely be clear in the nomination post (maybe listed in the Cons?). And then the voting will do its job, if it gets very low interest three polls in a row…くび!
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Yeah I noticed in the guidelines that physical-only appears to be discouraged but not forbidden:
That being said I wanted to gauge the reaction of the local populace before I risked making a pointless nomination.
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When in doubt, I’d say nominate it and let the vote decide. We had the same problem with Slam Dunk - I never voted for it because the idea of having a physical copy didn’t appeal to me. But there’s no harm in nominating it as far as I can see. The worst thing that can happen is that it gets thrown out due to low interest.
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Due to, aha, popular demand, I’m moving this nomination here. Now all y’all can vote for it. 
ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！
Author: はまじあき
Page count: 119
Natively: Level 28
Summary
Japanese
きららMAXの大人気バンド4コマ、待望の第1巻がついに登場！
「ぼっちちゃん」こと後藤ひとりは、ギターを愛する孤独な少女。
家で一人寂しく弾くだけの毎日でしたが、
ひょんなことから伊地知虹夏が率いる「結束バンド」に加入することに。
人前での演奏に不慣れな後藤は、立派なバンドマンになれるのか――！？
全国のぼっちな少年少女に届ける、いま最高にアツい音楽漫画！！
陰キャならロックをやれ！！！
English
Hitori Goto just wants to make friends, but the thought of approaching a stranger on her own makes her so nervous that she’s spent the entirety of middle school teaching herself how to shred on the guitar-to moderately successful (albeit anonymous) YouTube fame-in the hopes of seeming cool enough for someone else to reach out to her instead. After bringing her guitar to school provokes zero interest, Hitori’s just about ready to shrivel up and die…which is when Nijika Ijichi comes across her moping in a playground and begs her to fill in for her band’s flakey guitarist for their first-ever live performance! It’s like her wish came true-but does this most antisocial of introverts have what it takes to perform in front of real people?!
Availability
Personal Opinion
Bocchi surely needs no introduction - the guitarhero sensation that swept the nation. The anime remains one of my favourites, and here it is in the original print form. I’ve yet to meet a Kirara manga that I haven’t enjoyed.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
- It’s popular, it’s funny.
- It got an anime if people want to hear the words (and music!) aloud. Plus an official English translation.
- Short chapters, makes for much easier time of chopping it up into evenly-sized readings.
Cons
- It’s yon-koma, no furigana, both of which make for a fairly chonky read (which is why we’re here and not in a lower group)
Pictures
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That seems like a fairly dense read and we’re already doing a 4koma currently, maybe it would be a better fit in the Intermediate Book Club?
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Listen, you. I expect to see you actively campaigning for this to win the next poll.
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I’m buying Discourse bots as we speak.
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That said, I just finished reading the second volume in English the other day, and it’s already past the end of the anime. The one season (so far?) covers about one-and-two-thirds volumes. Meanwhile, Yuru Camp, whose third season is current airing, runs at about four-and-a-half volumes of manga per season of anime. Rather gives you an idea of how dense yonkoma can be.
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I only started reading the first volume last week and the plot moves pretty quickly indeed. That’s good IMO, we get to the fun stuff much quicker instead of getting bogged down in endless character introductions.
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At the beginning of last year it took me like a month to finish bocchi vol 1 by myself, I wonder if I can about tackle the next volume yet
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This is very specific to the Japanese words I know, but it looks like Bocchi is very much in the same territory as our current read for me:
紡ぐ乙女と大正の月 volume 1:
- 69% words known (+2% learning)
- 51% sentences readable without a lookup
- Text density: 38.42
ぼっち・ざ・ろっく！ volume 1:
- 67% words known (<1% learning)
- 47% sentences readable without a lookup
- Text density: 40.86
I think after a volume of our current read, I may be able to handle a volume of Bocchi. But with the likelihood of offshoots, I think reading volumes from both at the same time may be 
.
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What’s the unit for text density?
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ink weight per physical manga volume
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What are the scores for まちカドまぞく? 
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Number of Words / Number of Pages
It’s most useful when comparing between a series you’ve read and one you haven’t to get a general idea of what to expect.
If I were going to read the following series, picked completely at random, I might read them in the following order to build up my reading stamina:
| Series | Density |
|---|---|
| ヤマノススメ | 13.65 |
| 鋼の錬金術師 | 15.34 |
| ご注文はうさぎですか？ | 27.96 |
(But I would also take into consideration my known word percentages for each.)
Gotta find someone with Mokuro JSON files of it for me to extract stats from, or else I need the first volume to get a time-limited free release for me to run stats on it.
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