OK, for the few of you who live under a rock and have no idea what Train Man is, read this paragraph. The rest of you can go on to the next paragraph. There's this media phenomenon in Japan around "Train Man." Train Man is a 22-year-old (in 2004) otaku who was very shy around girls. One day on a train, he stood up to a drunk who was harassing women, and after the whole incident was over with immediately rushed home to tell his story on Livejournal the 2chan BBS. When she sent him a thank-you gift, he reported that to 2chan asking for help and that touched off a long thread of advice over time for him on how to approach, talk to, and in general interact with this girl. The media got hold of this, and the story has turned into a book, manga, movie, stage play, and a TV series. Exactly how real this is ... well, no one knows for sure. The TV producers have contacted the original Densha Otoko and swear to the truth, but there's no telling how much of it has become elaborated.

Two of the four (!) manga spinning off from the movie, TV show, stage play, and general media buzz have just been published here - a shounen version by Viz (Train_Man: Densha Otoko) and a shoujo version by Del Rey (Train Man: A Shojo Story). CMX has apparently licensed a third one, but I don't know when it's going to be published, and I just have the Viz and Del Rey versions. Anyway, I thought this might be a nifty way to look at the different ways of telling a story. Of course, now I have a problem: which to read first? I've read enough of the first parts of each to know that they're both heavily pulling from the book that's said to contain the original 2chan message thread. I also know that I have a tendency to imprint on the first version of a story I read and assume it's the better version.

So ... I turn to teh_intarwebs!

[Poll #869295]