Just finished Domu: A Child's Dream at the recommendation of my roommate. It was technically well-written and drawn, but I just really don't care about psychic powers that much. I've never been able to get much into Akira for the some reason. I recognize Katsuhiro Otomo's craftsmanship, but his subject matter is not my bag. I think roommate was hoping my interest in horror manga would mean I would love this and he could use it to springboard me into Akira, but I'm not even sure I would call Domu horror. It moves along very, very quickly and most of the terrible stuff gets breezed past in action sequences or happens far afield offscreen. It probably didn't help that I was reading the 1996 Dark Horse translation, which is reverse printed and I kept getting turned around and trying to read backward. Definitely a fine story, probably worth looking at if you like Akira and can find it, not for me.
Also been slowly crawling my way through Noir, and as it goes along it's gone from pretty good to near-excellent. For being such a slow show it really doesn't waste a lot of time. After the first handful of episodes it doesn't really have filler. Every episode contributes to either the plot or the characters in a lasting way. The action sequences tend to be very similar, with most of them just being a showcase of the numerous ways the two leads can fight their way out of being cornered by armies of hitmen over and over, but at least the writers are still coming up with cool new ways for teenage girls to kill a room full of goons. I'm definitely going to at least try Bee Train's followup series, although I know conventional wisdom is that they're not as good. I loooove Requiem For The Phantom though, so they're 2/2 so far in my book.
