"Best Manga for Wargamers?" Topic

Which manga ranks best for wargamers?

Ask at Frothers. They'll have lots of good suggestions. Particularly the tentacley types, I reckon.

Allen

Akira – lots of possibilities there.
The Venus Wars – cool assault motorcycles, and an awesome supertank.
Gundam 0083
Etc.

Masamune Shirow's "Appleseed" is hard to beat.

What's a manga? Sounds like a fruit?
--
Tim

Macros

Several years ago I was trying to come up with a good set of Akira rules.

Pumpkin Scissors all the way.

Not exactly a manga but you you should check this out if you havent:

link

I liked Appleseed myself. Akira is pretty good but the setting is probably better for wargaming than the characters and the story if that makes sense.

I think Appleseed was a pretty significant influence on Infinity, at least stylewise, which is a great game so that makes it even cooler.

More anime than manga: One Year War era MobileSuit Gundam, most of Macross (not 7), Original Bubblegum Crisis, Appleseed, VOTOMS, Steamboy, Escaflowne (not the movie or the manga), Dougram – basically almost anything from Sunrise Studios in the 1980's involving giant robots. And there was even an obscure little anime from the 1980's that had potential… I think it was called "Starship Troopers" or something like that. ;)

For mecha or spaceship fights any of the Gundam mangas will work. If you are using a supers rules or maybe fantsy would work too, but Bleach or One Piece would be good. You could fight it out between say Luffy's crew and Buggy's crew. Or the soul reapers vs some hollows.

Most of your action type manga has some kind of fighting in it. So you just have to use alittle imagination. The characters from Naruto would be good for a skirmish game pitting different ninja cells against eachother.

Back when I lived in Japan they had a regular weekly comics mag that was only war stuff. Alot of WW2 with some modern and future stuff as well. They even had articles in it that would explain how weapon systems work or tactics used by certain factions. But it was of course all in japanese so all I could do was look at the pretty pictures.

I remember an old Manga that was post modern that used WWII tanks sorry I can't remember the name, but it was pretty cool.

………….Doug

Miazaki's Panzer Pigs?

I'm currently working on a modern skirmish game based upon Rei Hiroe's Black Lagoon manga.

I remember an old Manga that was post modern that used WWII tanks sorry I can't remember the name, but it was pretty cool.

You may be thinking of Grey…

Ranma 1/2? Miason Ikkou?

"It NEEDS more tentacles!"

But why manga only Bill? What about Sgt. Rock? Creature Commandos? or, my fav, Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos…

Unknown Solider? Red Ace? The War the Time Forgot?

It may not be manga…but this is a series I have been meaning to get into….

link

Lone Wolf & Cub, Samurai Executioner and Path of the Assassin. Those are for the wargamer, for sure. The third is based on historical fact. The first two have historical overtones.

The recent bumper crops of translated manga are going to provide little wargaming material, as the majority of it has been aimed at tween girls. As such, the RPG material will dominate.

Some of the older titles, already mentioned, may provide more material, but manga, even the military topical stuff, tends to be character focused instead of event focused..

manga, even the military topical stuff, tends to be character focused instead of event focused..

Which isn't a problem if you're running a character based skirmish game like .45 Adventures or one of the other pulp systems…

Full Metal Panic has some interesting near future scenarios in the first and third season as long as you can make it through the humorous high school romance angle. The artists even made efforts to use real world military vehicles to fight their giant robots.

Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind. I would love some sort of wargame based on it, with 28mm Dorok and Torumekian troops…

Damon.

Record of Lodoss War? Pretty cool fantasy there.

"Record of Lodoss War? Pretty cool fantasy there."

*cough*D&D*cough*

Dominion Tank Police or Lupin the III

Lone wolf and cub is a must read for anyone. 8000 pages of pure inspiration.

Vagabond is also very good as is Satsuma Gishindin which is actually based on actual history.

Let's not forget Mobile Police Patlabor. The manga has way more Labor action than all the movies combined (and served as the basis for the TV series).

I second Ranma 1/2. GZG does even have minis. Though the player who controls Ranma will have a BIG advantage due to his ability to learn new forms of martial arts very fast, even *during* a battle. You'll have to apply a special rule that will make Ranma more and more strong and efficient as the game goes by, and near invincible at the end. Can be an interesting challenge for the opponent though, as he will have to kill Ranma as early as possible.