My favourite anime and manga
Posted on June 29, 2008
Filed Under manga recs |
## means “loved to bits OMG!”
# stands for “liked.”
[] means “rather liked,” on the brink between “liked” and “not my thing.”
If you want to see what yaoi manga I liked, look here.
Ai no Kusabi (1992-1994) #
Status: 2 ep x 60min
Genres: Drama Psychological Romance Sci-fi Tragedy Yaoi
Rating: R, mature
Based on this book by Yoshihara Rieko. Read about the book here.
Found: I’ve heard about the book and anime a lot but my watching/reading list is so long and there are so many things I want to try on it that this one always got pushed down. Until ura_hd recced it just a few days back. I went to check it and got lost in it :)
Summary: The story is set in the future on the planet named Amoi which is controlled by a supercomputer named Jupiter. Among the mostly male human population, the light-haired elite class is allowed to temporarily keep the dark-haired “mongrels” as pets. One elite member, Iason, encounters a mongrel named Riki in the slums and decides to take him in. However, Iason keeps Riki longer than it is socially approved, and rumors abound about their possible relationship.
Watch at Youtube or download at Aarinfantasy site, since they are the subbers.
Read more reviews here.
A new version is being made and is scheduled to be released spring 2010.
My notes: This one is really good! I wasn’t sure how much it was going to impress me while I was watching it, meaning: really good and I liked it quite a bit but it wasn’t quite love. A day passed. Then two. And I’m thinking and thinking and thinking about this story, watching and watching and watching some scenes in my head, and I find myself wanting to watch it again. So it couldn’t possibly be anything but love, especially for the last Riki/Iason scene, which, as for me, is near perfect.
If you are a scaredy cat (I am!), mind the genres. But also consider this: I try to avoid unhappy stories. But there’s something in this one, so poignant and beautiful, that it’s truly comforting and pacifying.
I loved the story. It must be really well-told — and I think it is! — for a Sci-Fi anything to overcome my aversion to the genre. And it’s always a plus for me when there’s love where it shouldn’t have been. In this case, in Iason. He is a super-human, one of the artificially created race that are, on average, much stronger and bigger than “natural” humans (which, come to think of it, is a decent background for seme/uke size cliché). They are also devoid of human feelings and urges. They need neither relationships nor sex and keep pets for their own amusement, to watch them. Except that an enslaved Riki is like a captured flame, and fighting to submit him, Iason somehow falls for him, in his strange way.
Riki is suffocating in captivity. But when he comes back to his gang of the pre-Iason’s years, things can’t return to what they once were. It’s a train wreck. You watch how a small conflict grows before your eyes, sucking in more and more people. You know it can’t end well. But it’s impossible to look away because by the time it reaches the point of no return, you are too invested in the characters, their friendships and animosities, their highly complex relationships.
I loved the art, too. At first I thought it was dated (and it reminded me of Akira somehow) but now I better say it’s a bit old-fashioned. Yes, you can see that it’s not an anime from this year but the art is nice, as for me. Especially Riki. I loved how he was drawn, when he’s brooding in particular.
As a conclusion, highly recommended!
*and no, I don’t want fanfiction. It’s a rare case when I think the story is perfect as it is.
MANGA: Antique Bakery (Seiyou Kottou Yougashiten) (2000) #
Mangaka: Yoshinaga Fumi
Genre: Comedy Josei Shounen Ai Slice of Life
Scanlated by: 7:11AM, Beautiful Soup
Status: 4 Volumes (Complete), licensed
Found: recced to me by klynie1 here
Summary: From DMP: A high school crush, a world-class pastry chef, a former middle-weight boxing champion…and a whole lot of cake!
Ono has come a long way since the agonizing day in high school when he confessed his love to handsome Tachibana. Now, some 14 years later Ono, a world-class pastry chef and gay playboy has it all. No man can resist Ono’s charms (or his cooking skills!) but he has just found a new position under a man named Tachibana. Can this be the only man who resisted his charms, and if so, will the man who once snubbed the “magically gay” Ono get his just desserts? And how in the heck did a former middleweight boxing champion wind up as Ono’s cake boy? The series won the 2002 Kodansha Manga Award for shōjo.
You can also read the manga online here.
ANIME: Antique Bakery []
Directed by Yoshiaki Okumura
Status: Complete, 12 episodes, 30 minutes each
Summary: Antique Bakery is a small bakery that’s run by four handsome men. Tachibana, the owner. Chikage, who was send by Tachibana’s family to watch over his childhood friend. Ono, the “demonically charming” gay master pastry chef. And Kanda, a former boxer and Ono’s apprentice.
DL: all episodes can be found in this post by neko_myka. Episodes 4 and 5 are a bit broken (you can watch about 70% but then it freezes). You can find all the episodes (not broken) at GalAnime.
More about this mangaka can be found in fumi_yoshinaga lj comm. DJs can be found here.
My notes: MANGA this is a VERY DANGEROUS MANGA! It will make you want to eat all sorts of cakes and desserts right away; it can make you go out in search of them! Don’t read it if you are hungry ‘cos you will drool. Also be careful if you tend to put on weight easily or are a suggestible reader. It’s guaranteed to make you pack on a couple more kilos. Even I went and ate a bar of chocolate which happens, like, never. I don’t eat desserts unless they are fruity ‘cos I don’t like sweet things, I only like fruit. But I’m afraid that I’ll be dreaming of cakes tonight.
Also, this manga is a soap. At first, it seems as if it consisted of separate episodes, united only by location and the cast of characters, i.e. Tachibana and his pastry shop. But Yoshinaga Fumi is a bit slier as a storyteller, so past and current events take turn and connect into a bigger picture, with a detective/mystery subplot in the background. The story still remains a soap in and of itself. Which I usually dislike, even strongly, but really enjoyed here. If you look at the genre line above, you’ll see it defined as Shounen Ai but I wouldn’t really call it this. The manga isn’t focused on the love of a gay couple nor does it feature any sex.
Another thing to keep in mind is that this mangaka’s style is an acquired taste. At first it looks almost ugly (what’s with their drill-like eyes and rather peculiar faces); it’s for sure different. So let yourself get used to it ‘cos Yoshinaga Fumi tells an entertaining story. Although she, too, suffers from the terrible yaoi drawing illness called same-face-itus. It takes some effort to learn to tell characters one from another.
I liked all the four main characters. Each of them is lovely and interesting in his own way, especially Tachibana, the owner of the shop who doesn’t like sweets (he has his reasons!) and doesn’t understand anything in cakes. He is really just a big softie behind his grumpy appearance :) But I liked Chikage best. He appears in vol. 2 and is hilarious. He’s slow on the uptake (not to call him a simpleton) and extremely clumsy (think Tonks!); he’s very tall but always forgets it and bangs his head on the door frame. And he’s naive and sweet like a puppy.
Ch 5 vol 1 features one of the most amusing makeovers I’ve seen. The gags at the beginning are also amusing. The shop owner observes a new customer, then makes a detailed description of their life and habits a la Sherlock Holmes. Too bad for him he’s no Sherlock at all. I think vol. 2 is more interesting (and funnier) than vol 1. And on the whole, this is the sort of story that grows on you. By vol. 3 I liked it, and had to read vol. 4 alternately looking at the raws and the file with translation because I wanted to read it no matter what. There are some SPAG errors in the scans but not so many as to make reading unpleasant. Very enjoyable, as for me.
ANIME Now I’ve watched the anime and want to rec it too.
As usual, I didn’t like it at first :D One thing I did like was that it was done in an interesting way, combining real backgrounds with animation. What I didn’t like was that the characters resembled those of the manga only somewhat, in profile more than full-face. I lol at myself ‘cos I remember how I hated Yoshinaga Fumi’s character faces at first and now look how attached to them I have become! But come to think of it, this is the first time I came across an anime where I found the difference in drawing from the manga source visibly noticeable. Ono looks the most like himself, as for me, and Tachibana the least. And Chikage is Chikage whatever you do with him :P
I don’t know how well this anime works if one watches it with ‘fresh’ eyes, meaning if somebody who hasn’t read the manga watches it. So if you are one of those and you give it a go, please share your impressions with me. It seems to me that in comparison to the manga, the anime brings forth the comical side and the detective subplot while losing some fine nuances of characterisation. But maybe I found the detective subplot clearer here ‘cos I had to read vol. 4 of the manga alternately looking at raws and reading the translation in an MSWord file :) On the whole though, I think the anime is pretty adequate to the manga. I enjoyed it, especially, yes, Chikage whom I loved as much here. He’s so awwsome. All things considered, watching this anime was a pleasant experience. It’s neither too plotty and dramatic nor too light and comical but has elements of it all. Neither too long nor too short so it works well as a light-ish distraction for a couple of evenings. Lovely!
Bleach (since 2001) ##
Artist: Kubo Tite
Scanlated by: lots and lots, see the list at the link to MU above
Status: 39 Volumes (ongoing, actually, it’s more like 40-something if to count the released chapters rather than tankoubons), scanlation ongoing (caught up with the manga), licensed
Genre: Action Adventure Comedy Drama Shounen Supernatural
Found: saw it talked about all over my flist. In the end, made a deal with Furiosity: she reads Eroica (see below) if I read Bleach :)
Summary: Kurosaki Ichigo has always been able to see ghosts, but this ability doesn’t change his life nearly as much as his close encounter with Kuchiki Rukia, a Soul Reaper and member of the mysterious Soul Society. While fighting a Hollow, an evil spirit that preys on humans who display psychic energy, Rukia attempts to lend Ichigo some of her powers so that he can save his family; but much to her surprise, Ichigo absorbs every last drop of her energy. Now a full-fledged Soul Reaper himself, Ichigo quickly learns that the world he inhabits is one full of dangerous spirits and, along with Rukia–who is slowly regaining her powers–it’s Ichigo’s job to protect the innocent from Hollows and help the spirits themselves find peace.
Sources: Bleach wiki: nice, big, detailed, but beware spoilers. Anime episode guide (click links to seasons to get to summaries). bleach_news lj newsletter, several Bleach ship manifestos, Bleach recs at try_this_fic, my Bleach recs.
DL: on your own please. But it’s all over the net (Bleach comms, mangatraders, free_manga, etc, etc). I might upload it for a day or two later for those who will get seduced with my rec.
*I dislike early covers so no Ichigo covers here.
For more covers, see this rec on LJ.
My notes: reading this manga/watching the anime is as suspenseful and full of unexpected as watching a cow ruminate. But I enjoyed it, very vocally even: squee’d and shrieked and squee’d some more, reading/watching it in huge chunks, literally not able to put it away.
What I mean is: at first, it looks like a computer game. You get a character who has decent starting characteristics: strong, steadfast, loyal. He encounters an enemy. The enemy thrashes him. He tries and tries and somehow overcomes the enemy. He becomes stronger. He meets a new enemy. The enemy is stronger. The enemy thrashes him. He tries and tries and somehow overcomes the enemy. He becomes stronger. He meets a new enemy. It’s scary and strong. It thrashes our hero. Lather, rinse, repeat, many, many times. Actually, as long as the manga/anime goes on. Our hero will get a few friends (in the terms of computer games, say he got a few helpers and now travels with a team). The process will be repeated with all of them. And also like in a computer game, the enemies that seemed scary and super strong at the beginning? There will be much scarier ones later.
Once you figure out the pattern of a fight and acceptable variations, and that will happen by the fifth or tenth fight in the manga, there will be few surprises for you anymore, at least in one-on-one battles. This is what I meant in the first line of this rec. But I still give it two stars. Would even give three if two weren’t my highest rating. Why? Read on.
So, the first conclusion: you’ve seen one battle, you’ve seen them all. But here’s what looks like a paradox at the first glance but in reality isn’t. The battles are quite probably the most enjoyable part of the manga. You welcome them. You cheer on your favourites. You savour them. I imagine not unlike Homer’s listeners enjoyed and savoured the battles and one-on-one fights in the Iliad. Not unlike people of the Middle Ages savoured the highly repetitive and rhetorical descriptions of the battles of King Arthur’s knights. So yes, this is what shounen manga, Bleach not the least among them, remind me of.
At first, explanations of what’s going on and how and why one of them will defeat the other, delivered by various characters, seem annoying. But then you clue in to the genre and they become enjoyable. I especially loved them during “the battle of mad scientists” (you’ll get what I mean when you get to it). All warriors deserve some story space to explain and properly show themselves, be they protagonists or antagonists, and as long as they are warriors, they aren’t completely “bad guys”: they are also given page room to express and explain themselves, and they often have their own truth. Kubo Tite gives the total majority of characters their own character moments; while I found it bewildering or slowing down the pacing at first, I learned to treasure it later.
And this, following in the steps of the old, rhetorical, pre-Romanticism epics, is one of the things (I’ll name the second one later) that make you love the manga the more the longer you stay with it. I began with [], went through # and now love LOVE LOVE it, ##. When I started reading the manga, I was bewildered why Furiosity squealed so much with every new chapter released. I thought, “Well, sure it’s entertaining enough but what’s so special in here to cause such a loud emotional reaction? Huh.” Somewhere by vol. 20 I began sort of getting it, like, “Yay, go Ichigo, kick this baddy’s arse! Yay, he did it!” But I still thought the manga was hardly beyond shounen cliché, so while for sure a well-crafted thing, it was nothing outstanding to warrant so much praise generously given to it by its fans. But now, after about 40 volumes and 200-something episodes of the anime, now I understand it fully. Well, yes, it’s a typical shounen. But it’s totally worth the praise.
Of course Kubo Tite didn’t invent any of those general features. What he did though was making the whole of his manga damn appealing, not least of all because of the second thing that makes you love this universe the better the longer you stay with it: the characters. The cast is huge, lots of characters are quite awesome, and seeing how almost all of them have character moments, every reader can pick at least a few characters to fall in love with. Not to mention that with the exception of the first volume or two (while Kubo was, possibly, finding his style), they are drawn in a way to make you want to lick them. Well, at least admire them :) As the story develops, we meet new characters and the old ones are given tantalising glimpses of biography that shift your initial opinion of them (usually towards understanding and sympathy).
I adore many, many Bleach characters. I won’t type long ruminations on them, limiting myself with just brief intros and a few screencaps since my task here is to seduce you, not to analyse things. Let the fact that I can type all their names without looking them up be a testament of my love :) So here are my favourites, in descending order; if you want to see pictures of them, see this rec on LJ.
1) Kurosaki Ichigo. Ichigo, as for me, is an ideal shounen manga protagonist. He’s really really awesome. It’s a typical trait of a shounen protagonist but somehow it looks especially charming and appealing in Ichigo: never giving up and always striving to become stronger, for the sake of protecting his friends. Nothing new, right? Right, however Ichigo beaten but still standing is too awesome for words. He’s such a sweety… a mouthy sweety but still :) Anyway, just believe me: Ichigo is awesome beyond belief.
2) Zaraki Kenpachi, the 11th Squad captain, the strongest swordsman of Gotei 13. As for me, first and foremost, the man is ultimately honest. He’s a one-track pony: he’s interested in one thing only, namely fighting, and never hides the fact. He might look like a stupid brawn-no-brain at the first glance but in fact, he’s pretty sharp. Look at his fight with Tousen, for instance. One thing he doesn’t have is the sense of direction, which his fantastic brat of a lieutenant Yachiru (whom I adore — but who doesn’t?) doesn’t have either. So the scenes where they chase Ichigo through Seireitei are among my most favourite of all :) A bit of trivia: I share a birthday with him! Yay :)
3) Kuchiki Byakuya, the 6th Squad captain, the head of one of the four noble houses. Byakuya is cooler than cool, in all senses. Beautiful, not to say pretty, and scary, the master of the most beautiful and awesome Bankai too, as for me. When I hear “Scatter, Senbonzakura”, I make an embarrassing girly squeak of adoration :)
4) Abarai Renji, Byakuya’s lieutenant. His tattoos make me drool. For real. I love his biography, his tenacity, and his boisterous personality. In the 50-60s episodes of the anime, Renji, Kenpachi, and Byakuya look good enough to eat.
5) Ichimaru Gin, the 3d Squad captain, my favourite villain. From the first moment I saw him wave from behind the closing gate, I was intrigued: strong, psychotic, with ever closed/slitted eyes and smiling face. When he showed that tiny bit of humanity giving the dying Matsumoto some dried persimmons, I fell in love completely. One thing remains unclear for me. Wiki says: “In the anime, Gin speaks with a distinct Kyoto dialect, which is polite but indirect. His English dubbed voice is also formal and polite, but with a rather mocking and facetious undertone.” In the subbed speech, he sounds almost like Hagrid though, always making me think he’s formerly a low class Rukongai street rat. I wonder what impression, biography-wise, his speech makes in Japanese.
6) Urahara Kisuke. Urahara is ♥ When we first met him, I thought he was creepy, which I’m sure was the author’s intention. I started liking him by the middle of the manga but all I can say after the “Turn back the Pendulum” arc is, OMG, hat-and-clogs man, you are so, so fantastic! Also, I love his name. Kisuke sounds lovely for Russian ears.
7) Hitsugaya Toushirou, the boy captain of the 10th Squad. Aww, be my teddy bear, will you? He’s so adorably serious and smart, especially in comparison to his flaky lieutenant Matsumoto Rangiku, that I want to hug and tickle him. I think they make a terrific pair with Matsumoto, both serious/working and comical. When he answers Ichigo’s “Toushirou!” with “It’s Hitsugaya-taichou to you!”, I clap hands. Kubo’s captain charts show Hitsugaya to be stronger than Gin (and in general to be in the stronger half of the captains), and that makes me squee.
8) Ishida Uryuu. He reminds me of Touya Akira of Hikaru no Go as in, he has a stick up his arse the size of the tallest tower of Seireitei, he tries to maintain cool and propriety in all situations but at the same time, he has a temper which Ichigo drags out of him with ease, and he’s a sewing dork :) He looks good, too, especially in his white Quincy outfit :)
9) Sado Yasutora aka Chad. Sado was my favourite supporting character early on in the manga. Not that I began liking him less later; it’s just that more awesome characters got introduced for me to fall in love with. Sado is totally my kind of guy: big, strong, and quiet.
10) Ukitake Juushirou, the 13th Squad captain, and his hairy and lazy husband Kyouraku Shunsui, the 8th Squad captain. What? I’m sure they are long-term partners, despite all Kyouraku’s flirting with his lieutenant. They are among the four oldest Gotei 13 captains, have been in these positions for ages. Ukitake is probably the kindest and most compassionate of the Shinigami. Kyouraku’s flamboyance and laid-back attitude hide a sharp mind and lots of strength. They shine separately but together they shine even stronger.
I also like Shihouin Yoruichi, Kira Izuru, Hisagi Shuuhei, Madarame Ikkaku and Ayasegawa Yumichika, Unohana Retsu, Yamada Hanatarou, Hirako Shinji, Komamura Sajin; from the Arrancar, I like Grimmjow. I have a complex love/hate relationship with both female leads, Kuchiki Rukia and Inoue Orihime. I hate them when they have to play the part of damsel in distress cum wet blanket for a while, although both are pretty cool in other situations.
Zanpakutou (Soul Cutters, Shinigami swords) are nearly separate characters. Well, Ichigo’s one is, and he’s Snape. He really really is Snape, no? :) See here. My favourite Shikai is of course Byakuya’s because of its terrific beauty and killing potential. Second place is Kira’s. I find the idea super cool. The very release incantations for many a Shikai/Bankai became a thing of beauty for me as I read more and more of the manga. “Scatter, Senbonzakura,” “Howl, Zabimaru,” “Sit upon the frozen heavens, Hyourinmaru,” “Raise your head, Wabisuke” — every time I hear those, I squeal a bit inside.
Back to what I said at the beginning, this manga can be potentially endless, which the insertion of the Bount arc in the middle of the anime proves, and I would really love for it to last another ten years. In the manga, my favourite one is Turn back the Pendulum arc. I love it to bits and pieces. I hope there are more chapters from it in the near future ‘cos I’m burning to know more about the past of nearly every main Shinigami character.
Drawing: The first volume (or several) are, to be frank, pretty meh. Seeing how the story doesn’t really pick up much until the beginning of the Soul Society arc either, they are rather a chore to read. Well, at least it was so for me. But please believe me, the further you go on, the better the drawing becomes. In the second half of the manga, it’s simply fantastic and drool-worthy, in my opinion.
Anime: Animation is neither too good nor too bad, as for me. In other words, quite all right. My particular favourites drawing-wise are about eps 50-60. I like how they follow the manga story line, and — don’t throw stones at me — I like filler arcs. Not separate filler eps, especially not the earlier ones, but I do like the Bount arc and the New Captain arc. But what I absolutely love in the anime are extras that are shown after the end credits, Shinigami Illustrated Book in particular. Of course not all the episodes are equally witty but a dozen are absolutely hilarious, say, Kenpachi and his bells, Komamura and hair brush, Ukitake giving sweets to Hitsugaya, eps about how the Shinigami Women’s Association spent all their money and now are taking candid photos of hot male Shinigami to sell in 160s, also ep. 142 Shingami Zukan, Golden Kenpachi/Byakuya is awww and lol In general, I think small comic relief details in the anime are quite good, for example, Sado’s interactions with Nova or “Kurosaki brothers” when Renji appears in the Mod Soul arc.
Random notes
- Soul Society is a pretty ruthless world. It often asks for lots and lots of its faithful Shinigami. Just see, for example, the Maggot Pit in Turn back the Pendulum arc. Or almost any of Yamamoto’s Seireitei-wide decisions actually. Or the life at the outskirts of Rukongai.
- Kubo loves boobs. Inoue, Matsumoto, Neliel, some other female characters give a lot for a male teen to drool over. OTOH, female readers have lots to drool over too, I testify for it :) Kubo also has a foot fetish, and OMG I love him for it :) Sandal-clad Shinigami feet, aww, I need them iconified :)
- When I was still in the middle of the Soul Society arc, I was convinced that Aizen must turn out to be a baddy ‘cos he was too congenial and kindly and that Gin must be secretly a good guy ‘cos nobody as sinister as him could be a villain. We’ll see in the end if I was half-wrong or not :)
- Favourite pairings:
from the major slash ones, I quite like Ichigo/Ishida, Ichigo/Renji, and Byakuya/Renji. But this is yet another fandom where I like rarer pairings better, such as:
Kenpachi/nearly damn anyone, het included
Ichigo/Byakuya, Ichigo/Hitsugaya, Ichigo/any of the males listed above among my favourite characters
Gin/Kira, Gin/Hitsugaya (want!), Gin/anybody but Aizen, and not too non-con-ish
Ukitake or Kyuraku with any male except each other
Ikkaku or Yumichika with any male except each other
- Still amazed that the fandom is so poor. Rants here.
It seems I’ve run out of steam at last :) To wrap it up, try it. Read it or watch it! I’ve spent nearly half a year with Bleach and I’m positive I’ll be coming back to it again and again, as more episodes of the anime or chapters of the manga are released, as soon as there’s a big enough batch collected for me to get lost for a day or two :)
Chi’s Sweet Home (2008) ##
Status: 104 ep x 3 min. Sequel: Chi’s New Address
Genre: comedy, slice of life. Themes: cats, family
Director: Mitsuyuki Masuhara
Original creator: Kanata Konami. More info here (series is ongoing)
Found: I first heard about the original comic from Parlophone a while ago. Then I kept coming across Chi this and Chi that. And finally I decided to try it.
Summary: After being accidentally separated from her mother and siblings, a kitten is taken in by a human family. Although pets are forbidden in their apartment complex, they become attached to the kitten they have named “Chi” and decide to keep her, hoping they will be able to keep her a secret from the landlady and the other residents. At first, Chi only wants to return to her mother, but the love and companionship of her new family soon erases these thoughts from her mind. Chi’s family - A gentle mother, a kind father, and a playful little boy - has never owned a cat before. This presents some problems, but it also fills every day with new discoveries and joys, and they come to think of Chi as an important member of their happy little family. And although some of the things her family does occasionally confuse or annoy Chi, she comes to really enjoy her happy and fun life with them in her new Sweet Home.
Download: in usual anime-sharing places: torrents, lj comms, etc. It’s popular, so it’s everywhere, including YouTube.
My notes: in short? OMGSQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE!! MEOWSQUEEEEEOMG!!!!!! Which means a) RUN DON’T WALK! And b) *DEAD OF CUTE AND FUNNY OVERLOAD*
In other words, this is the most adorable thing I’ve seen ever! The cutest, loveliest, funniest anime ever, and at the same time neither saccharine nor silly. It’s a tale of a kittie in a sort of ideal family. What makes it so funny and refreshing is a counterpoint of POVs. We see things from Chi’s point of view but also from the family members’. Litter box training? Hilarious. Chi hating Dad for the visit to the vet? Hilarious and lovely. A hundred of short scenes from a kitten’s life, awww. Guys, really, it’s fantastic! If you like cats at all, go watch it! And if you are a cat lover, it’s a must-see.
Have a look at ep. 1 at YouTube. It will take you three minutes but you’ll know if you want to see more.
Death Note []
Author: Ohba Tsugumi/Asami Yuuko. Artist: Obata Takeshi
Scanlated by: Aku Tenshi, Binktopia, Ice-Master Scanlations, KEFI, OrangeTangerine, Shannaro, The Ones Who Never Lie, Toriyama’s World, We, The Fans, mD-xD, pedobears, gto0o
Status: (12 Volumes + Volume 13: How to Read - Complete), licensed
Genre: Adventure Mystery Psychological Shounen Supernatural
Found: via Amanuensis; bought 10 vols in a tiny shop in Haarlem, Netherlands, and the rest in Antwerp
Summary: Light Yagami is an ace student with great prospects–and he’s bored out of his mind. But all that changes when he finds the Death Note, a notebook dropped by a rogue Shinigami death god. Any human whose name is written in the notebook dies, and now Light has vowed to use the power of the Death Note to rid the world of evil. But when criminals begin dropping dead, the authorities send the legendary detective L to track down the killer. With L hot on his heels, will Light lose sight of his noble goal…or his life?
Read here
My notes: This is a story of love that could have been but wasn’t. When I first opened this manga, I didn’t believe I would like it. I didn’t like the drawing. I thought it was very professional but adhering to the tastes of late-teen majority and not to my tastes in general. But since I’d bought all the volumes, I decided to give it a go. And it blew me away. Totally and completely.
It’s possibly the plottiest thing I’ve read. I don’t like playing chess (although I did when I was a child), but I’d compare it to chess, only lightning-fast. The two young geniuses play various, highly complex combinations that change and turn like a kaleidoscope, fluidly shifting and dragging you with them. It’s a manga impossible to put away. You keep OMGing and WHOAing. I felt torn between the desire to gobble it up as fast as possible and stretch the pleasure. So for the first half of the manga, the way to work and home became my favourite part of the day ‘cos I decided to read it only on the train. Yep, it wasn’t the wisest decision ‘cos yep, I missed my stop.
But then it went sour, for me. You see, I’m a fan of a finite narrative structure, so to say: beginning-development-climax-end. There’s another one, that of a soap or ongoing TV series. Say, like this: there’s a big family with complicated relationships. Mary and John are in love but fighting, and Suzy left for a long trip (’cos the actress is busy in another project, but that’s off topic), and CC is in coma (because the actor’s contract hasn’t been renewed, but that’s also OT), and Mary and John keep fighting but that’s becoming boring, so the creators need ‘new blood’. So - bang! - a long-lost sister comes, who turns out to have been living in captivity, seized at a tender age by a really bad twin brother of CC who had left home to join a gang when he had been a teenager. In other words, add a new villain. Add another hero … deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum.
Let an old villain train/pass his powers to/clone/whatever a new one; let the hero find a companion/pass his sword/blaster/fatherly advice/whatever to the new one; let a lost relative/friend/love appear. Then do it again. This way, your story becomes potentially endless. This way, your plot gemmates. You can end it at any stage of gemmating or let it linger depending on the popularity of your product. It’s not inherently good or bad. It’s just another structure. But I hate it. It rubs me against the fur.
This is why, when DN changed the type of story in the middle, I nearly stopped reading. Not because of [spoiler, see below] in vol. 7 but because I felt that it started looking as if the writer introduced more new characters because s/he didn’t quite know what to do with the old ones and the admittedly elaborate plots s/he entangled them in.
Now for the real spoilers, highlight to read:
I can’t say the killing of L made me terribly sad. But it did make the manga lose any sort of personal touch that it had had — which hadn’t been many, as for me. ‘Cos both L and Light are rather sociophobic/sociopatic to begin with, and their relationships with the people around are nothing but utilitarian. This is, on the whole, a manga where it’s very hard to identify with the characters: they are either, let’s put it mildly, not very humane and treat people as things (massmurderer Light, reclusive and ruthless L, a young criminal Mello or a hyper-infantile Near — who turns out the most humane of them; a psyho actress Miso or robotic Takada and Mikami) or are boring or not very bright (Soichiro Yagami who’s a good man but old and boring; Matsuda who’s stupid — but he’s my favourite character in this manga. On a tangent, don’t Matsuda and Ide make a good couple?). So removing one character from the pair of opposites the readers got to like best by vol. 7 and introducing two new ones who require a couple more volumes to get used to, as for me, was a serious mistake, not to mention that it broke the pacing. Also, one Kira vs one detective genius was ok. Two Kira, since the second one appears very soon, vs one L were fine. But as soon as L is killed off, I couldn’t see the rest as anything but arbitrary. If there can be M and N, why not P and O? Or L1/2? Well, ok, the author managed to pull out of this hole by making Near deliver the explanation of why N+M are cooler than L. But I had to read for five volumes to get there. The same is true for the other side: if there appear more Shinigami, new Death Notes, and a new Kira, why not another one? Or three more? In the end, I can’t see why it had to be 12 volumes and not 18 or 34. Or 9. In other words, the middle part bored and annoyed me.
IMO, the story does pick up by vol.9 or so when it becomes personal again and — surprisingly — settles back into the finite structure, and by vol 11, it again becomes truly engaging. But still the reason I persevered through the third quarter and finished it was to see how exactly the ending would be done. I liked the final confrontation and the very final pages but didn’t like what happened in between. Spoiler ahead, highlight to read:
The way Light dies, well, I didn’t find it particularly unbelievable but I didn’t find it believable either. He was coolly walking the plank for so long that his total and very melodramatic loss of nerve seemed a bit OOC.
A couple more words about the drawing. As I said, it looks very professional but rather generic I don’t know. It’s clean and really well-done, but as I said in comments on LJ, it reminds me of Mercedes Benz while I want a horse. It’s also very dense: a lot of visual information is pushed into every panel (except blank black pages) but little of it is vital information. The panel structure isn’t very varied. They are all rectangles, and the two tricks the artist uses are close-ups and remote view from above. I don’t think it’s a drawback though. If the visual side were more varied, with this kind of ueber-fast and complex plot, it would be too hard to read, I think. This also makes it a ’starter’s set’ manga, something that an inexperienced western reader could use to begin getting familiar with manga in general because the narrative element dominates over the visual clues.
The thing I hated was how feet are drawn, of course :) I don’t mean only L’s awful monkey feet (really, feet aren’t sorta-arthritic-hands!) but the feet of other characters too.
And also concerning drawing: when there were about 10 pages without speech bubbles in vol. 10 — to convey the passage of two weeks — it completely threw me. I thought I got a defective book :)
As a conclusion, it was for sure a very entertaining and engrossing reading but not involving on any other level than plot/suspense.
ETA: but where the manga didn’t succeed, the live-action films did. I watched both Death Note and Death Note: the Last Name (careful, articles may contain spoilers). I liked them. They are long and very different from the manga. I liked the cast. So many beautiful girls. Although it’s silly to compare such different media, I liked the drawn!Light better. Well, same about the drawn!L. But I also liked this creepy eyebrowless film version. I finally was able to connect to the story emotionally here as I was unable to while reading manga. Let me just say that what didn’t make me cry in the manga, here sure did. It’s so quiet; he’s alone. I cried like a baby. Also, showing the event of such magnitude through details: hands, chocolate — that really punched me hard.
I also liked the endgame in the films better, in what concerns Light’s character (see spoilers above). But what I absolutely loved were Shinigami. They are so wonderful!
The films worked for me where the manga didn’t, and where the manga did, I liked it a lot. So I got the whole from two different sides :)
See also comments on LJ: some very interesting discussion points from Amanuensis among others.
Eroica Yori Ai wo Komete (From Eroica With Love) (from 1976 till now) ##
Mangaka: Aoike Yasuko
Scanlation group: Pink Panzer; an anonymous group scanlated the first 19 volumes. The first ten volumes have been published in English.
Genre: Action Adventure Comedy
Status: 34 Volumes (Ongoing); scanlation up to Vol. 21 (part 2 of of story 17)
Found: in a talk with Parlophone about old skool manga
Summary: What happens when a gay art thief and a conservative NATO officer cross paths? Disaster, of course. Dorian is an aristocrat, a thief and a hedonist; Klaus is a duty-driven espionage agent with no patience for fools. Follow them as they chase each other across the globe — from Britain to Baghdad, from Alaska to Alexandria, from Moscow to Madrid. Spectacular locations and non-stop adventures await!
Download: Vol. 1-19 with a nice detailed guide including notes on scan quality (locked for members); vol. 20-21 (locked). More covers (and first 13 vols for sale) here
Prequel/spinoff: Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter; Madan no shashu)
Status: 1 volume (Complete).
Summary: A hardboiled espionage action story featuring Major Eberbach. Can he elude the pursuit of the genius assassin from the KGB? More detailed summary by missparaphilia here.
Other related and side stories: Z, Plus Ultra (artbook), Nanatsu no umi nanatsu no sora and its prequel, Eru Arukon - Taka (a step to the past, about Man in Purple)
Related things: lj comm castlegloria (Eroica fanfiction); schlosseberbach (everything Eroica); Eroicafans.org. There’s fandom! I might dip my toes in it. I haven’t decided yet. Am awfully tempted.
My notes: I loved this manga to bits and tiny little pieces! I’ve had SO MUCH FUN with it. Best Male Friend who had to observe me reading it in the evenings on our trip now must be sure I’m a complete loony, if he hasn’t thought so before. Because I clapped hands, squealed, laughed, and talked to my laptop.
It’s awfully trashy, as trashy as only comics about superheroes and Cold War times can be but yeah, lots and lots of fun. I can’t tell you how many times I burst out laughing or grinned in delight. Each time I finished a story from the series, I thought, “I liked this one best!” And then thought the same when I read the next one. The genre is spy action/adventure and humour. Truth be told, I don’t like reading about spies almost as much as I dislike reading Sci-Fi. Not my thing at all. But this one is so light and captivating, and in the end, so amusing and enjoyable that I succumbed almost at once.
Character facial expressions aren’t Aoike Yasuko’s forte, nor is anatomy. Plot is. Spies and secret agents of every country: KGB, NATO Intelligence, CIA and FBI, MI6 (SIS), Interpol, etc, etc and also local police of where the action takes place and local criminals are all competing with each other or fighting each other. Characters travel all over the world. Character names are awfully trashy too; that first seemed too bad to me but later made me laugh and welcome them (Misha the Cub as the KGB boss, Comrade Dostoevsky, Comrade Gorky, Comrade Karinka, lol). The settings are European (mostly) but there are lots of Japanese sayings or references, and that creates a fantastic multi-cultural kaleidoscope. If it’s skewed, it’s fun nevertheless. One thing I find surprising is that among all the agents and forces, there’s not a mention of Stasi. You’d think that Iron Klaus of Bonn would mostly deal with them. But back to what I started with, this manga is incredibly plotty. Feels like a real rollercoaster sometimes. What amazes me most is that the mangaka always ties all her ends by the end of a story. Wowsome.
Both main characters are very attractive. Supporting characters are wonderful too, especially Mr James, Eroica’s extremely stingy accountant (although I don’t like how he’s developed in the last scanlated stories). I love-love-love Iron Klaus (Major Eberbach). I can’t even believe how much myself. Almost like Snape. But then again, he’s a Snape-like character, only with much better hygiene. He’s very rude and loves to shout; he expresses his negative opinion on people and actions without hesitation. He’s a prude and neat freak and superhero all the way but unexpectedly, there’s something in him that calls for your sympathy and makes you want to hug him, even with the risk for your life such a gesture would pose — when he broods or when something does manage to stun him (Eroica usually :D). IMHO, his character isn’t as logical as Eroica’s: it’s rather contradictory, if you start thinking about it seriously. But in the mosaic-like nature of this character perhaps lies a lot of his appeal. He’s intelligent, resourceful, quick-witted, and observant but at the same time not aesthetically developed in any way (despite being a rich aristocrat by birth) and rather naive in some things, or maybe infantile. But why am I looking for that much psychological credibility in a character who smokes like a chimney but is able to run fast for miles without losing his breath? He’s incredibly cool (superhero, remember?) but his quirks and idiosyncrasies make him humane. And precious. If to speak of the way he’s drawn, I melt when I see his haircut. Melt and squee :) So I understand why Eroica never gives up.
Eroica himself is also an absolutely charming character: extravagant, flamboyant, childlike in his wish to have all the pretty that he likes, devious yet kind. And more logical in and of himself, as a character. Speaking of the drawing again, the characters don’t age as the years pass: not only is Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach the Eternal Major, he’s an ageless Klaus: he’s the same in 1990 as he was in 1977, and so is Eroica.
On the whole, I’ve read manga where the drawing looked more professional but was it more enticing? No, no, it wasn’t. At the beginning, I looked at the covers and thought, “OMG, what awful jaws!” By the end I though, “Oh my, such lovely chins, gimme more!” I thought it many times while reading Eroica that I saw things drawn better in other manga (although Aoike Yasuko, I must say, is among the best in what concerns the absence of anatomy errors in her manga!) but overall I was completely charmed. The mangaka draws one face for her main characters, as too many do, but it seems she’s aware of it: see story 10 and on. In any case, the drawing changes to the better visibly from the first volumes to the middle of the manga. It looks as if the mangaka didn’t find her style and touch at once. I like the later style better of course, and objectively speaking, it’s more elaborate and sure.
Another thing I liked very much about this manga is that it’s like a contemporary history lesson. Well, only for those who remembers the news hot topics from the years when the volumes were drawn ‘cos the lessons are comical and so of course warped. War Iran vs Iraq, Moscow Olympics 1980, Perestroika and Glasnost, the uniting of the two Germanies, they all pass before your eyes. Fashions! OMG sunglasses! Hair styles OMG! :) Breathe and drink history, or ‘History Lite’, if you will :)
Speaking of structure, the manga consists of stories that have the same cast of characters and that you could read separately. Comparing it to other manga that have ‘big plot’ and ’small plots’, I wouldn’t say it has a big plot that unifies all stories. I mean, if you start with story 15, I don’t think you’ll find it incomprehensible. But I still recommend reading it from beginning to … well, to the current [scanlated] volume. Because while the big plot barely goes anywhere, the characters form various kinds of relationships, and it’s interesting to trace those. Story 1 is really just a warm-up for the later series (but please don’t let it scare you off). There are main characters you won’t meet after story 2, so reading vol. 1 is a bit bewildering ‘cos it barely touches what the summary speaks about. But that story picks up later, and goes on for many volumes.
Side stories are fun, especially the one that shows the disastrous party that is referred to in The Laughing Cardinals. Other side stories tell us quite a bit about Lord Eroica’s and Iron Klaus’s past. General advice: don’t skip side stories, especially the later ones. They either show a lot of important things or you simply would want more Eroica by then :)
The prequel, Der Freischütz, is darker than the main series. If From Eroica with Love is a humorous look at a spy’s life (and so, adventures), Der Freischütz is about its dangers and ruthlessness. Makes one understand Major’s paranoia better. Spoiler, highlight to read: only in Der Freischütz can we see the death of a character. In Eroica, things get smashed, buildings destroyed, there are fisticuffs, people get injured occasionally, but nobody dies. In Der Freischütz, even Major kills.[/end spoiler]
I posted this rec on my LJ under the yaoi tag but it’s not yaoi at all. Spoiler white on white, highlight to read (mind, a REAL spoiler, for the whole series, so think twice): honestly, it’s not even BL for real. Very soon in the series, by the end of vol.1, Eroica falls in love with Iron Klaus aka Major Eberbach. Major, if anything, is asexual. He despises the ‘homo stuff’ but there’s no woman to make his blood run faster either. If anything, he’s a devoted husband to his work. So Dorian and Klaus’s relationship consists of endless one-sided flirting and passes and also one-sided shouting and attempts to sterilise plates, door handles, etc not to catch the dreaded ‘homo virus’. I would hate UST of such proportions in another manga. But somehow it’s not annoying here. Maybe because Eroica enjoys chase much better than gain. Or maybe because if Iron Klaus didn’t break into a cold sweat at the thought of somebody touching him (unless it’s a fight), he won’t be Iron Klaus anymore. Be it as it may, the UST too happens to be very enjoyable in this manga.[/end spoiler]
A couple of notes on the fan translation of volumes 1-19: it seems to be done by a person (persons) whose first language is Japanese, so the English often sounds stilted. There weren’t errors that threw me out, just strange word choices and expressions. Well, and of course the translation of proper nouns can be very imprecise, say, Ljublanka in story 11: I couldn’t figure out what it was until I saw the note that it was where the KGB headquarters were located. Turns out to be Lubyanka. It’s translated correctly in the published version. But I can’t say such things really matter. Ljublanka or Lubyanka, or Russian names that can’t exist, it’s still fun and charming in its own way. My special thanks to Pink Panzer guys for picking up the scanlation in the first place, but also for keeping to the spirit of the translation (’cos by the middle of the story, I loved it) and for the good scans.
My favourite story is Emperor Waltz (a huge one, volumes 16, 17, 18 & 19), and favourite scene is Iron Klaus performing a Tyrolean dance. Who could resist?! A couple of pictures to entice: click here.
I spent almost three weeks with this manga, and now that I’ve reached the end of the scanlated stuff, I don’t know how to be without! As a conclusion, heartily and highly recommended. From pj with love :)
Fullmetal Alchemist (FMA) (Hagane no Renkinjutsushi (Hagaren)) (2001)
Manga: ##
Mangaka: Arakawa Hiromu
Status: 21 Volumes (ongoing), licensed (17 volumes released by Viz), scanlation ongoing (up to ch. 88 (vol.21))
Scanlated by: lots of groups, full list at the link above
Genre: Action Adventure Drama Shounen Supernatural
Found: Manga recced to me by a RL friend with the following words: “Даже не стимпанк, а альтернативный мир 1910-20 годов, с алхимией и проч. Много приключений, но при этом убедительная сюжетная линия, которая не сводится к тому, чтобы давать персонажам возможность устраивать регулярные поединки (чем грешат многие другие серии). Тонна симпатичнейших персонажей, в осн. мужеска пола. В целом, мой хороший приятель подсел на мангу именно после FM.” (”It’s not even steampunk per se but an alternative world of the 1910-1920s with alchemy and such. Lots of adventures but besides that, it has a solid plot-line that doesn’t boil down to just giving the characters an opportunity to have regular combats (the drawback of many other manga). There’s a lot of attractive characters, mostly male. A friend of mine got into manga thanks to FMA.”
Summary: From Viz: In an alchemical ritual gone wrong, Edward Elric lost his arm and his leg, and his brother Alphonse became nothing but a soul in a suit of armor. Equipped with mechanical “auto-mail” limbs, Edward becomes a state alchemist, seeking the one thing that can restore his brother and himself… the legendary Philosopher’s Stone.
Anime: #
Directed by: Seiji Mizushima. Starts at Vol 1, Ch. 1, deviates from manga plot at Vol 7. Consists of 51 24-minute episodes.
Found the anime via gossymer’s rec.
AnimeNews summary: After losing their mother, Alphonse and Edward Elric attempt to bring her back using the forbidden science of human alchemy. However, alchemy operates on the theory of equivalent trade, and breaking the human alchemy taboo carries a heavy price. Ed loses his leg, and Al loses his body. Ed is able to seal Al’s soul inside of a huge suit of armour, at the cost of his arm. Years later, Ed (now with two mechanical limbs) and Al (still trapped in the armour) leave their childhood home, each brother concerned with the other’s happiness. Ed, who has a natural talent and skill for alchemy, becomes nationally certified and is soon known everywhere as the “Fullmetal Alchemist.” Their true objective is to search for any information on the fabled Philosopher’s Stone, hoping it will allow them to regain their old bodies. All of their hopes rest with this mythical stone, which may not even exist at all. However, the brothers soon learn that they are not the only ones after the powerful stone.
List of characters, list of anime episodes (both contain spoilers). Animated film sequel: Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa. There are also novels and drama CDs; you can read about them through the Wiki articles linked above.
My notes: the rec of the anime goes first, then the manga rec because this was the order I got acquainted with them. A few bits are going to be repetitive because these two reviews were posted on LJ separately with a nearly two-month break, so please bear with me. It’s a bit repetitive, not much :)
ANIME (September 14, 2008)
I’m going to speak of the anime (and sequel) ‘cos this is the version I picked to get familiar with. I’m not going to read the manga until later, firstly because it’s ongoing and I hate WIPs, and secondly because I know how different the manga and the anime are and I’m afraid it would create a terrible mess in my head. Although this very difference is what tempts me most so I guess I will read it, as soon as some time has passed. I want to try it at least for the sake of Scar and his different fate :)
When I began watching the anime, it reminded me of Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers (only bloody and scary) because every episode is a somewhat finished story where the boys finish this or that quest, even though there’s a ‘big story’ that ties them together. I like it better though when it’s one continuous story divided into parts, say, like in Death Note. So I didn’t think I’d like FMA at first. But by the middle it becomes more of that second kind of story, and by then you know enough character background for the story to become really captivating. By about episode 25, I liked it an awful lot. Am definitely keeping it and am going to watch it again.
One of the most pleasant things in this anime for me is that you can’t easily guess if a new character you just meet will turn out a good guy, a bad guy, or a good guy who will turn bad, or a bad guy who’ll reform. Lies and deception is this story’s second (and third) names. That makes it very interesting to follow. Many surprises await you. The story is really captivating, the further the better.
The abundance of plot doesn’t mean the lack of character development, not at all. Ed, Al, Winry grow a lot as the story goes on, and so do some of the adult characters too, such as Roy Mustang or even Scar. The Elric brothers have to mature fast. In their quest to find the stone, they join the military in the country ruled by junta and torn by civil wars. They have to repeatedly see death and crime, to fight all sorts of villains and opportunists. They get help from unexpected sources but sometimes are betrayed by the those they trust. Their quest and service often ask them to make choices that would be hard even for adults and for sacrifices no-one should make. They persevere. Both brothers are really wonderful. Al is simply a good guy, kind and compassionate even though he’s a suit of armour. Edward has one hell of a temper but his heart is in the right place. There are lots of other likeable characters and interesting ones.
Another thing I liked a lot was everything to do with mechanics and alchemy: artificial limbs, the suit of armour movements (OMG I love to watch Al walk from behind!), the fact that alchemists have their specialisation and that state alchemists are given names according to what they do. I simply loved that all.
I didn’t like the sequel, Conqueror of Shamballa because it’s largely set in our world. I liked the hints of it in the TV series and I would be very happy if it stayed like that. I just don’t particularly like it when a fantasy universe sprouts into other worlds, especially when one of them is ours. I prefer it to be closed-up and separate. But the film was pretty interesting to watch.
If to think of the quality of animation (how much drawing goes into each scene, how detailed it is, etc.), this anime is among the best I’ve seen. Not Miyazaki of course but really good :) So it was a pleasant experience. Heartily recommended!
MANGA (November 7, 2008)
Love, love, LOVELOVELOVE!!!
I loved the anime, yes. But I loved the manga much more. I loved it to bits! It’s competing with Eroica (see above) for my affections.
If you watched the anime, please give a chance to the manga. It’s soooo different. Actually, I don’t know another canon where two canon sources were as different as here. Like, very different plot, different sets of characters (there are those that appear only in the anime and those that are manga-only), and a considerable part of the characters that act in both the manga and the anime have completely different roles and connotations.
I first encountered FMA about a year ago. I read the summary, looked at the stills from the anime, and thought, “Meh.” Orphaned kids, alchemy, yadda-yadda. How boring. Saw it once (HP), saw it many times. Gosh, why do I always do it?? I did it with almost all the things I love: Rammstein? Yep. Found them ridiculous at first. HP? Sure. Was looking askance at the people who kept going on and on about magic and wands and stuff. I should have learned by now to never ever say “Meh” about things without actually trying them first! I’m happy that the recs by Alex and Gossymer persuaded me to give it a go. I’ve lived in the FMA world for the past two months, and now I check every day if ch. 89 has been published already.
There’s so much to love about this manga! Firstly, of course, characters. The Elric brothers are amazing and very easy to fall in love with. I’d even say, impossible not to fall in love with. Edward, the older one, is hot-headed (especially when somebody calls him short, which he is) and rather pig-headed. If he decided something, neither mountains nor seas in his way will stop him. Something else might though. He values human life, so if his goal asks him to step over people, then he’ll reconsider the value of the goal. His brother’s approval or disapproval weighs a lot in his decisions, too. He’s a terrific fighter, for his age and stature. But his younger brother Al, whose soul is confined to a suit of armour, is probably an even better fighter: not only because he never tires and doesn’t need food or sleep but also because he’s more level-headed than Edward. He’s also very kind. Not that Ed isn’t. He just doesn’t like his kindness to be noticed. Al, on the other hand, is never embarrassed to love kittens, to thank people, or to ask for a peaceful solution. Ed is a young genius who became a state alchemist at the age of 12; both his skill and talent aren’t inconsiderable. When he researches, he tends to forget to sleep or eat, while normally he eats for two. Not that it helps him grow :) Al is quite talented as an alchemist too but he seems to be content to lurk in his brother’s shadow. The bond and love between the brothers are simply beautiful. Orphans from a young age who have survived things not every adult encountered in their whole life, they live for each other, they are each other’s family and home, past and future. Oh, of course they have their share of fights. Excepting everything that puts them beyond ordinary, they are normal boys.
The Elric brothers believe that alchemy exists to help people. That comes into conflict with Edward’s job when he becomes a state alchemist, a dog of the military, to get access to the best research materials the country has to offer. On the way to reach their goal of returning their lost bodies and body parts, Ed and Al meet lots and lots of other characters: good guys, really bad guys, and quite a few ambiguous ones. Not knowing how a new character you see will turn out keeps you on tenterhooks. That, and the plot.
Unlike the anime that has a few filler episodes, the manga never loses its drive, as for me. The plot is complex, with flashbacks and several plot-lines centred on various key characters. It only grows in complexity as the story goes on and the Elric brothers and other main characters (and we with them) learn more about what’s really going on, but it never becomes messy. Things begin small. We learn the basics of how alchemy works and what is what in this world. Gradually, they become bigger. We learn the price of errors, bits of bloody history, civil unrests, wars. Then we meet people from outside: outside the country and outcasts lurking on the edges of this world. Our knowledge of alchemy and history becomes deeper, and the complexity of the story grows on par with it. Presently, the story is clearly heading to the climax. Yes, I realise that depending on how detailed it is, it could take two volumes but could also easily fill ten. My guess would be about five more volumes to go. If you are wary of WIPs, give it a try anyway, will you? I hate WIPs but I don’t regret for a moment that I began reading this manga.
Back to the characters, my second favourite of the protagonists is, of course, the Flame Alchemist Roy Mustang, bless his scheming heart. He has a reputation of being quite the ladies’ man which his nets of female ‘helpers’ prove and upset at the same time. I also can’t help loving Major Alex Louis Armstrong, the Strong Arm Alchemist: a mountain of muscle but gentle soul, and much more observant than he lets on.
From the antagonists, my favourite one is Scar. In fact, he’s one of my favourite characters ever. A semi-religious, semi-patriotic fanatic, he sets out to avenge his people. He has a drastically different role and fate in the manga than in the anime. As the story goes on, he also learns a lot, like the protagonists, and I can’t in good conscience call him an antagonist when there are much scarier and dangerous things plotting and acting in the manga. We also can see Scar’s human side more in the manga, especially later on. (But he looks more glamorous in the anime :D)
There are many, many more characters to love in this manga, I have to agree with my friend who recced FMA to me, because Arakawa Hiromu made them live and breathe. They have biographies, amusing quirks, individuality. They are interesting and hard not to love. Besides, I love the look of most of them.
This smoothly leads me to speak of what I like best in the drawing ;) That would be facial expressions. I think Arakawa Hiromu is terrific at conveying emotions. When they are exaggerated or comical, they are hilarious. But she’s good with serious stuff too. Because really, she manages to make it clear as water when the suit of armour!Al is sulking or terrified, when he wears a grave expression or is mischievous. Spoiler for the last volumes ahead, highlight if you want to read it: when Lin Yao and Greed share a body and fight for its control, it’s usually clear by the facial expression who’s in control at the moment. Which I liked a lot! I also absolutely love everything to do with how the suit of armour or auto-mail are drawn.
All in all, it’s a compelling, even addictive story, wonderfully told and drawn. Highly and heartily recommended!
Bonuses
My favourite tracks from the FMA OST (composed by Oshima Michiru), the introduction of the characters via the anime screencaps, a few manga pages (from vol. 1 and 3) so that you could see a sample of page layouts, characters, and drawing style; an FMA meme: 16 questions about FMA and me, answered — all these can be found here in my LJ. See also my reviews and recs of 80 FMA doujinshi that I’ve read, my recs of FMA fanfics.
ANIME:Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo (2005) ##
Studio: GONZO, directed by Mahiro Maeda
Genres: adventure, drama, mystery, romance, science fiction, thriller
Themes: Deception, Mecha, Revenge
Rating: Mature
Status: 24 ep x 24 min (complete)
Found: via Amanuensis1’s rec.
Summary (from the manga ‘cos it’s less spoilery): From Del Rey: While vacationing on the moon, Albert, a young Parisian nobleman, meets the Count of Monte Cristo, a fabulously rich aristocrat from the far reaches of the galaxy. Fascinated by the count’s sophistication and intelligence, Albert is unaware of the older man’s dark purpose: to enact revenge for a terrible act of betrayal committed against him twenty-five years ago. Soon, all of Paris, including Albert’s own mother and father, will feel the terror of the count’s vengeance.
Related things: Wiki article, manga adaptation (ongoing, licensed), Gankutsuou LJ comm, Gankutsuou fics at Yuletide.
DL: I found it in torrents. Try ThePirateBay.
My notes: Last anime I recced (and correspondingly, liked) was Hikaru no Go. I said that the anime basically was nothing to write home about, if to think of the way it was made. Gankutsuou, on the contrary, is so much to write home about I doubt an owl would be able to carry it. When I started watching it, I kept hitting the pause button ‘cos there were so many details I felt as if everything were sliding away from me, that I couldn’t immediately fine-tune my attention to notice everything that matters. I’m sure I missed lots of fine details anyway, however hard I tried. The backgrounds/decorations and the colours are incredibly rich. The next bit is hard to explain. The characters are very well-drawn but they are sort of transparent, at least their clothes. So when characters move, it looks like they are cut out of the picture? The transparent outlines with real, visible faces move on the background of very loud cloth patterns of the character costumes, so it creates an effect of you looking through them like through a glass.
To make the matters more complicated, this film is about the [admittedly, very romanticised] European past adapted from the source set in post-Napoleonic France but placed here in some futuristic Sci-Fi-ish settings (years 5000-something), but I watched it in Japanese with English subs. That created an almost unbearably loud culture clash inside my head :)
I got used to it fast though. By episode three, I was able to follow it without any stress. I still preferred watching attentively though. While one could say that overall, the visual side is cluttered or eclectic, as of me, it’s a pleasant, harmonious eclecticism. I loved the character designs and most of all, their motion. IMO everything about how they move (walk, run, turn, fight, gesture) is simply superb here.
The anime is based on the novel ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ by Alexandre Dumas, père, which was my most favourite book when I was 13-14. I love it still. I didn’t expect much from the anime. But it surprised me. It made a really strong impression on me. But now I’m struck by indecision. If I speak of the things that moved me, made me cry, made me keep watching it inside my head days later, I’m afraid I’ll begin sprouting spoilers. If I don’t though, how will I persuade you to try it?
I have no other choice but to try and see how it goes.
Duma’s book isn’t all sunshine and daisies. The Count sets out for revenge, nearly erasing half of Paris, metaphorically speaking. Yes, he suffered enough. Yes, we can understand him, sympathise, and be on his side. Until he distinctly, clearly goes over the top. But even then, he doesn’t lose his humanity. He freezes on the brink of the precipice but is human enough to step back, and we love him enough by then to stay with him.
Let me just say that in some respects, the anime is darker. And while the book is mostly about the Count, the anime is largely about Albert de Morcerf and his friends. As for me, it worked really well to balance the changes in characterisation and plot the authors forced here. You can’t not love Albert. He’s naive and, well, rather clueless or maybe not the brightest of them all. That naivete is what makes him so easy to manipulate and that, basically, makes the disasters possible to happen. But he’s also the purest, loving heart. So clear-eyed, so enthusiastic, he’s like a puppy. He’s what the best protagonists and heroes are made of.
His friends shine too, especially Franz d’Epinay. Unselfish, clever, quiet, he’s a key element in the story. He’s the voice of reason for Albert, so of course Albert doesn’t like listening to what he has to say. He will though, one day. Because however pigheaded, he too must learn, and the harder the lesson, the longer it will stay with him. I loved the parallel scenes of Albert, Franz’s, and Eugénie’s childhood/teen years and those of Edmond, Fernand, and Mercédès.
Some thoughts on the Count further white on white, highlight if you want to read spoilers: having fallen to the bottom of despair, Edmond Dantès made a pact with a demon in the futuristic nightmare of the Château d’If: his body and spirit for Gankutsuou’s experience and power to help him in his quest for revenge. Now they exist as one, the demon gradually taking over. I can’t say I liked how literal the authors were here. Edmond carries a demon inside even in the book, only it’s metaphorical. But on the other hand, there’s something in this literal demon thing that I liked, namely how we can see them struggle for the one body they inhabit. “Not now, Gankutsuou” is a powerful recurring scene, and the less of Edmond is left in their common body, the sadder it is.[/end spoiler].
My favourite scenes:
- The death of [SPOILER] Franz d’Epinay[/end spoiler]. It happens midway and, apart from being really beautiful and striking — I cried my eyes out and suffered from headache for the rest of the evening, it affects everything that follows, colouring or shadowing it. I loved how it was done. Usually, character death in anime is a thing projected at watchers more than other characters, even the best of those scenes I’ve seen. Here though, it changes and affects everything.
- The Count sending Albert back to Earth. I cried too, and I loved how the scene ends, [SPOILER] with the Count crying/laughing. Do you think he began with crying and then Gankutsuou took over? I believe it was so.[/end spoiler].
- The end of the final battle. [SPOILER] Albert embracing Gankutsuou. I have no words, just waaaaah! :((( I cried, and cried, and cried.[/end spoiler]
- When Albert finds the letter and says something like, “You’ve always been here, haven’t you.” It seemed so bittersweet to me! And also when he visits the grave of the character named in #1. Very moving.
By now I’ve probably scared the few people that have read this post to death. Please don’t be afraid. While it’s for sure angsty and dark in places, it’s not without its lovely moments. I’m very glad I’ve watched it, so my thanks for the rec to Amanuensis1!
Another thing entirely is that I do need something to kiss it better now. So if you have recs of Gankutsuou fanfiction by any chance, especially AU fics, I’d appreciate them.
MANGA: Hikaru No Go (Hikago) (Hikaru’s Go) (1998) ##
Story by Hotta Yumi, manga by Obata Takeshi
Status: 23 volumes (189 ch), complete, licensed
Scanlated by: Toriyama’s World and others
Genre: Comedy Drama Fantasy School Life Sports Shounen
Found: recced to me by an RL friend
Summary: From Viz: After stumbling across a haunted Go board, irresponsible Hikaru Shindo discovers that the spirit of a master player has taken up residence in his consciousness. In his pursuit of the “Divine Move,” Fujiwara-no-Sai awakens in Hikaru an untapped interest and genius for the game, and soon the schoolboy is chasing his own dream–defeating the famed Go prodigy Akira Toya!
ANIME #
Status: 75 ep x 23 minutes. Starts at volume 1 chapter 1, ends at somewhere at volume 19. Sequel, Hikaru No Go: New Year Special, contains the following events, up to but not including the tournament, the North Star Cup.
Series director: Susumu Nishizawa.
DL: you can find the manga in the usual manga-trading places; the anime is available at GalAnime (without the sequel, which can be found in torrents). List of manga chapters and anime episodes (spoilery); sample pages of the manga and artbook here in my LJ.
My notes: OMG I WANT MORE! A manga sequel, another anime sequel, anything! Just MORE! I can’t part with this universe. I’ve watched the anime twice and think I’m going to do it again, and then maybe read the manga another time.
Gosh, it happens every time! Hear me solemnly forswear to form even a hint of opinion of a new thing offered to me to read and promise to treat everything as potentially exciting until proven otherwise. Because it happened again. You see, I have zero interest in sport stories or sport manga. How much do I care for board games or abstract strategy games? Not a bit, unless they are very pretty. I downloaded vol. 1 of Hikaru No Go just to see what it’s like and to have my conscience clear when the friend who recced it to me would ask how I liked it. But after reading vol. 1, I rushed to DL the rest. I gobbled up the manga in three days, sleeping four hours a night just to be able to function somehow. I watched the anime after it, also in three days. I was so sleep-deprived that I kept falling asleep where I shouldn’t have. But I simply couldn’t stop reading/watching! It’s a real page-turner and a story that will make you love its main characters.
My mind and my heart were in conflict about this manga all the way while I was reading. The heart clearly won, despite all the mind’s protests and arguments. Won by a large margin even. The argument went like this. My mind tells me: Go is booooring; you don’t like it. My heart meanwhile flutters and following it, I’m fidgeting in my chair: will he win? will he lose? OMG please let him win! My mind grumbles: down with the indoctrination! Who cares if Japanese players are stronger or weaker than the Koreans? But my heart says: OMG Hikaru is LOVE! Look at his face when he’s in the battle mode! My mind tells me: people who are completely devoted to only one thing are the most boring and uninteresting thing in the world; you’ve known some like that and you didn’t like them in the slightest. My heart keeps squealing: ♥ to Akira, ♥ to Sai, ♥ even to Ogata and Touya Meijin :) I’d think it’s a testament to Hotta Yumi’s writing skill that despite the nagging thought that the thing this manga is about is the least exciting and utterly unimportant thing in the world for me, I loved it to bits and pieces, read and watched it twice and still want more.
Try it! I promise you won’t regret! Do you believe me yet? Want to know more?
I would call this story Shindou Hikaru: a Legend in the Making. We start with an ordinary boy and come to quite an extraordinary guy. Well, we come to him being on the brink of realising his full potential. Close but not quite there. But I’ll talk about the ending separately, later. We can see how this extraordinary person grows. We can see how and what events shape him. That’s beyond fascinating. We can also see how the legend about Shindou Hikaru grows with him, and this layer of the story is quite funny.
I love Hikaru. He’s a lazy, mouthy brat who also tends to blurt out whatever is on his mind. But he isn’t unkind and later on, he grows awesome though hard-earned determination and willpower. Hikaru looking at the Goban with his unique, single-minded focus is my favourite image from the manga.
Two people make Hikaru what he is. The first is Touya Akira. Well, the first is probably Sai but Touya gives him a stronger push at the beginning, while Sai plays a much bigger part later.
This is Touya Akira. A very serious boy and Go prodigy. Famously fashion-challenged, too (*cough* lavender suit *cough*). Akira is single-mindedness personified. He is a bit robotic, which the anime underlines. Yes, yes, I would find it most annoying in a RL person but in this character, it’s charming. Besides, his haircut makes me melt!
This is the most slashy canon that is not actually slash/yaoi. OMG, it’s soooo slashy! Everything Hikaru is about Akira, everything Akira is about Hikaru. No wonder there’s so much AkiHika slash in HikaGo fandom. Because these two ooze UST of epic proportions all the way.
On the other hand, I don’t quite understand why there’s so much Akira/Hikaru slash in this fandom. ‘Cos who needs slash when this is all canon? Is there not enough Akira chasing Hikaru, literally and metaphorically? Is there not enough Hikaru running after Arira? Is it not enough that they only think about each other? Lots? Well, that and Go but it’s the same thing really. Is there not enough Hikaru looking at Akira with love-struck, puppyish eyes? Or Akira trembling like a bow string when he hears Hikaru’s name mentioned?
Honestly, who needs fanfiction after all this goodness? It’s very obviously love even if it’s called rivalry or competition ;) Actually, soooo many slashy pairings ask to be written. Akira/Hikaru and Waya/Isumi, yes, of course, but also Shindo/Isumi, Sai/Hikaru, Ogata/Hikaru, Isumi/(no, not Le Ping!) Hai Yang, Sai/Touya Meijin. And they all are very attractive pairings with lots of canon support!
The second (or first) main influence on Hikaru is Sai. I ADORE Sai! He reminds me of Count D and Eroica at the same time only without flirting and being a completely different character.
He’s a Go genius from a thousand years past, selfish and spoiled but also clever and kind. I love him best when he’s bratty or drawn in a comical manner (Sai who plays Hikaru for the first time and misnames the spot, Sai that cries a river when Hikaru refuses to go where he wants, and such). No, scratch that. I like him best when he’s sad and contemplative. Or maybe when he’s in the battle mode. Well, that means I love Sai in whatever way he shows himself. I love him selfishly taking Hikaru’s place or being selflessly proud of his achievements. I simply love Sai. He’s very different in his various roles but never discrete. Sai’s plot-line in the story, IMO, is perfect. The rest is white on white because it’s a huge spoiler: The story of Sai’s departure is heart-wrenchingly sad and beautiful. They are bickering like old lovers; there’s casual cruelty there without any intent to be cruel at all, born out of misunderstanding and things untold. There’s love and friendship and jealousy and competition, but most of all, the presumption that they have an eternity together, as we tend to assume about our loved ones, which, in fact, they don’t have, just like us. It struck me so hard because it’s a very precise projection of thousands RL goodbyes that aren’t said on a fantasy one. That scene is also everything about teacher/pupil relationship and true life goals. The saddest and most beautiful goodbye I’ve seen in a while. I cried like a baby — not when Sai disappeared (’cos it was peaceful — but damn, how devastating it was that Hikaru was half-asleep!) but when Hikaru was looking for him at the cemetery in Tokyo, and again when Hikaru found him in his game against Isumi, and again when Hikaru dreamed about him. Cried my eyes out.
Each of the main characters have their moment of weakness or sin to overcome. For Hikaru, it’s despair and the temptation of easy win; for Isumi, loss of confidence; for Waya, well, laziness or maybe cowardice (I’m not sure how to define it); selfishness for Sai; closed-mindedness for the Meijin. They all grow, pushing and supporting each other.
This manga has lots of really loveable characters, just like Fullmetal Alchemist. Apart from the three above, I liked
Touya Meijin: I think were I to meet him in RL, I’d run away very fast. This is a man who took one skill and developed it to perfection. It looks like there’s nothing in his life beyond Go and nothing for sure is more important. I do wonder that he sired a son :) But at the same time, as a character, he’s magnificent. All that calm, intensity, and inhuman concentration, wow. The scene where he’s sitting in front of the Goban waiting for his opponent is, IMO, one of the strongest visual images in this manga.
Isumi Shin’ichiro: he’s quiet and contemplative, with the sort of calm concentration and politeness that make me see him as really sexy :) I like him whether he broods, angsts, thinks, smiles, or calmly goes for the kill in his matches. Also, he wears undershirts and tight jeans. The mangaka (and anime artists) are quite fond of showing us his jeans-clad bum :) I think he’s much better looking in the manga than in the anime, btw. As for me, he’s the prettiest of them all.
Waya: I didn’t care about him much at first but later he grew on me, especially after he’s had his lapse of judgement later in the series.
Ogata Seiji aka Ogata 9 dan: he’s somewhere in between being suave and creepy, as for me :) He’s cool and cunning and on the other hand, a total asocial jerk who discards his girlfriend as something unimportant and drinks until he loses his mind. Drunk!Ogata is such a teddy bear :)Also, he loves fish. I mean, as pets, not as food. And he drives a red Ferrari or something like that.
I also liked Chinese team supervisor (and Isumi’s roommate) Hai Yang and Kaneko, well, and lots of others. They are easy to like. Strangely enough, I didn’t dislike Kuwabara Hon’inbo. He’s a bully and a manipulative old bastard but then again, the people who are competing for his title must be ready to withstand his mind games.
Now for the more formal things: story structure, pacing, drawing, etc.
First, the manga and the drawing. I loved how it’s drawn, I must say opposite to another manga by the same artist where I didn’t care for the drawing much, Death Note. I think it might have to do with characters. In HikaGo, in my opinion, Obata Takeshi made the characters’ faces express their emotions very clearly, them being very likeable characters, and I found it the most appealing. Another thing I loved was how Hikaru’s (and others) physical growth was clearly visible. It’s pleasant to watch the changes: how his face becomes that of a teenager, losing its chubbiness, how his hands become those of a young man, and how it reflects the maturing of his character. He becomes beautiful.
I liked the drawing in the anime worse. IMO it’s sort of unstable. Different artists at work? The anime itself is on the good side of average, as for me. Nothing outstanding but quite enjoyable.
The next thing I’m going to talk about is at the same time the greatest achievement of this story and it’s major flaw. Pacing. The story (both manga and anime) is absolutely impossible to stop in the middle! One more chapter… Oh well, I need to know how this match ends… Oh phew, I need to read something calmer after this chapter, so one more… And look at the clock — five hours have passed! Games are REALLY exciting. I squealed, bounced in my chair, bit my nails. Me, who doesn’t care about games of strategy, Go included, at all. Things to get excited about take turns with those to take a breath, and then you are racing again, and so on, and so forth. This is totally, absolutely great. Two things in the manga aren’t.
#1 is Vol. 18. It’s just a filler. It consists of six extras. You learn little new about the characters from it, if only about Kurata’s past. Not that I was burning to learn more about him… But love them or hate them (or don’t care about them, as is with me), this volume breaks the pacing and makes one think about the circumstances of the author’s/artist’s life and publishing business much more than it should (which should be: not at all). The same extras break the pacing in the anime too, if you watch it continuously, even though there are only two episodes of them, if my memory serves. But come to think of it, if I didn’t read the manga and watch the anime in one go but waited for a new volume/episode and instead of a proper one got an extra, I’d probably throw a hissy fit. This way at least I could leaf/wind past them.
#2 is the ending of the manga. I don’t mind the what in the ending: the event, how it went, what it meant for Hikaru. What I mind A LOT though was how. As for me, the ending is beyond abrupt. It’s the major problem with pacing. It feels as if you were running pretty fast and suddenly ‘encountered’ a brick wall. To be frank, I thought I’d forgotten to download the last volume. I went to check: nope, ch. 189 was the last one. I kept WTFing and shaking my head, flabbergasted. You can’t just end a story in a random place; you can’t just end it ‘cos you ran out of time before your deadline or ‘cos your contract with the magazine hasn’t been resumed. A story needs a proper resolution that would fit its pacing. What happens in this manga is a beginner’s error I wouldn’t expect in such a well-told story. Disappointing. I even had an uncharitable thought that Obata Takeshi is unlucky to draw for writers who have major problems with pacing. :/ Well, disappointing and bewildering, yes, but not tragic and I can’t say it spoiled my fun :)
The manga and the anime end with different things so their messages are somewhat different too. I like the message in the manga better. Problems with the pacing aside and also putting aside all that “the big world of Go” that is too utopia-like, I’m absolutely fine with what it says. Yes, Hikaru has a long way to go yet, but he stepped on this way and he’s moving along. And yes, the combination of genius and hard labour will eventually let him achieve a lot but he’s not quite there yet. The anime message is more cheerful and winning, and even though there are no problems with pacing concerning the ending of the anime, I would still take the one from the manga as a deeper, more thought-provoking one.
ETA: I was told in the comments for the LJ post with this rec that the ending of the story as it is was forced by external circumstances. Good to know that! This knowledge makes it much less puzzling and means that Hotta Yumi didn’t suddenly lose her (quite amazing) writing skills! It’s a pity that happened though :( I would love the story to have the ending the author intended.
#3 is only about the anime. The games that are so exciting in the manga are still exciting and exhilarating in the anime, often even more so when they are accompanied by the battle music. But at the same time, they are often boring. Immobile drawn faces, the same motion repeated x 5 minutes, pa-chi, pa-chi, pa-chi, the same expression, pa-chi, pa-chi. Or, say, Ep.14: 15 seconds of the lid from the Go stones jar trembling in Touya’s hand! The whole moment of Touya’s breakdown takes about 40 seconds. Waaaaaay toooo loooong. The flashbacks are waaaay toooo looong too. There’s no need whatsoever to repeat so much; one only needs a couple of key images to remind the spectators what they need to recall.
I feel as if I were nitpicking because honestly, if I enjoyed this story, both the manga and the anime, so much that I read/watched it twice in a row, why am I stopping to enumerate what I percieve as its flaws? But as usual, I feel that I must say everything I think, the good and the bad, only remembering that the good outweighs the bad by far in this case for me.
My favourite episodes of the anime are 70, 60, 55, 48 (Sai vs Meijin), 45, 41 (Isumi vs Ochi). I love the battles! It also should be noted that it’s a pity I watched the anime in Russian. The sequel in English went so much smoother. Because the person who did the Russian subs starting from about ep. 20 showed scary levels of illiteracy. Scary! Errors people learn to avoid at age 10. Not to mention the errors in translation. They translated from the English subs (which were partly visible) and often mistranslated quite horribly. It was like trying to read a really bad fic from FFnet sometimes. But that also didn’t matter much for me ‘cos I remembered the manga and could read the English subs often, and they mostly did manage to get the general meaning across. And I really, really liked Japanese voice actors, especially the voice of Touya Meijin.
Speaking of remembering, the way my memory works (or doesn’t work) scares and amuses me sometimes. It goes like this: “Oh my goodness, I just read the manga. And now I’m watching the anime and can’t remember how key matches went??? WTF?” Pro exam match Shindo vs Isumi? I forgot the crucial moment! Was wondering who won all the way until that very moment and then nearly slapped myself. Forgot how the match between Shindo and Ochi went and who won and was wondering until the very last. Hikaru vs Waya? Nope. Forgot the result of his game with Touja Meijin. And so on. Gah :)
To wrap it up, I’m seriously considering watching the anime/reading the manga another time. Like, right now. Because it’s LOVE! So much love! And I’m absolutely not ready to say good-bye to this universe and these characters. Gosh, half a kingdom for a sequel! No? Well, off to read HikaGo fanfiction I go then :)
ANIME: Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler) (2008) #
Status: 24 ep x 30 min
Anime Start/End Chapter: Starts at Vol 1, Chap 1, Ends at Vol 5, Chap 21.
Genres: comedy, mystery, supernatural
Themes: bishounen, demons, historical, shinigami
Summary: One of the noble families of England - Phantomhive, has a butler, Sebastian Michaels. He has unquestionably perfect knowledge, manners, talent with materials, martial arts and much more. But for some reason, he serves a 12 year old master…
MANGA: Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler) (2006 on) #
Mangaka: Toboso Yana
Status: 8 Volumes (Ongoing), scanlation ongoing, licensed.
Scanlated by: lots (see list via the link above)
Genre: Action Comedy Historical Mystery Shounen Supernatural
Download: you can read it online at Mangafox.
My notes: I’m going to be contrary and begin my rec with a critical review taken from MangaUpdates. A reviewer says about the manga: It jumps around so much. It makes me wonder: Is this a horror manga? Suspense? Comedy? Shota-con? What the heck is going on?! It goes back and forth between being cutesy comedy and gory murder. I’m not sure how to feel about that. It makes all the death feel cheap and unrealistic. No one seems to care that people are dying left and right as long as they can make curry and play with dolls. The author could be trying to show a parallel between what Ciel is doing (fighting evil and trying to get revenge for himself and his family while being the sole heir to the Phantomhive family and doing all that it entails) and what he should be doing (playing with his betrothed, eating sweets, going to parties, and doing little-boy things), but she doesn’t do a good job of letting us know that. We never get to know how Ciel really feels about anything that’s happened, other than his near-death experience, or if he has any feelings left at all.
Ciel is literally and figuratively soulless. He doesn’t seem to care much about anyone other than those who’ve wronged him. He seems to have no feelings at all, at least in the manga. It’s rather unrealistic, and very disturbing to watch him do things like play dress-up and eat cake while he is barely a human being. He’s much like a zombie bent on revenge on those that killed him. The hints of shonen-ai creep me out because Ciel is only 12 years old. If he was older, fine. But he’s a little kid, and it’s gross. He also dresses in outfits that a Victorian boy wouldn’t be caught dead in, and tends to look more like a 12 year old girl, but I get that the artist is going for a certain style and not Victorian realism. It’s a cute style, but when coupled with all the murder, demons, and BL hints, it becomes a bad kind of creepy.
So all in all, I’m still not sure if I like this manga. I loved the Count Cain series, and at first glance, Black Butler looks similar, but it’s not. Count Cain made sense. Black Butler does anything but. The settings and premise are similar, but that similarity ends very, very quickly. Black Butler can be very good at times, but I wish that it would make up its mind as to what genre it wanted to be, or at least was able to blend genres together a bit better.
When I read this review (before reading the manga but after watching the anime), I thought I agreed with most of what the reviewer had said (well, except for shounen-ai hints and Ciel being 12 — nothing creeps me out in that one; I’ve seen younger in manga and in yaoi specifically). On a closer look though, I realised that they were far not objective or unbiased.
Yes, Ciel can be considered rather soulless but even when I say it with the limiting “rather”, it doesn’t sound quite right. Nor can I agree that he has no feelings at all. He is hell-bent on revenge and extremely cynical but then there’s duty, and pride, and honour, and trust to some extent (if only for his staff), and even small sprouts of affection in him — even if some of these feelings are more pronounced while others are barely visible.
If Ciel were as one-dimensional as the reviewer made him look, Kuroshitsuji would be much more boring than it is. Is it? I think not! I liked the anime an awful lot and found the manga the more captivating the further it went on.
I’m glad I watched the anime before reading the manga though ‘cos the latter, at least for the first couple of volumes, is messier. Frankly, I think that were I to start with the manga, I’d get lost and confused so much that I would quit. The anime creators tried to streamline the plot (which is much harder the trace in the manga) and tell one, main, story through all the subplots.
It diverts from the manga somewhere around vol. 5. It also makes Kuroshitsuji a finished story*, giving it a proper conclusion. I loved the last episode! I think it fits the story very well, and it’s poignant and beautiful in and of itself. I would recommend watching the anime even if just for the ending.
A character they invented just for the anime [spoiler, so it’s hidden white on white] the rogue angel who works as the Queen’s secretary [/spoiler] doesn’t really contradict the manga, as for me, but it does make the whole even more eclectic: [spoiler] as if Shinigami in the Victorian London weren’t enough — ok, ok, make them just your usual European Grim Reapers, only in a Japanese wrapping — we have angels here too [/end spoiler].
The anime kept my attention, I think, mainly thanks to the style. Is it eclectic? Sure is. Don’t expect terrible historical accuracy from Kuroshitsuji because, while it’s set in the Victorian Great Britain and liberally uses various Victorian Era styles and details, many things follow modern animanga stylistic conventions, many others are anachronistic (some deliberately, I suppose, like that Steampunkish “cell phone” Sebastian borrows, and others quite unconscious). But it all con-fuses into one style, the one that charmed the pants off me.
In other words, it’s a wonderful eye-candy. :) Partly Victorian, partly Goth, partly anime-ish. With so many lovely little details like pocket watches, collars, veils, hats, canes, buckles, ties, etc, etc, of course it’s very pleasant to watch and of course cosplayers all over the world orgasm about it.
Back to the review quoted at the beginning, yes, this anime/manga is flirting with all those genres the reviewer mentions and those noted in the genre tags. I can’t say the experiment is completely unsuccessful though. Black humour? Dark comedy, often rather cracky too? Well, yes, it’s an important element. Therefore, blaming it for cheapening death and profaning suffering is like, I dunno, asking Tarantino not to pile up corpses or pour rivers of blood in his films.
Sebastian is a demon who agreed to make a contract with a boy who had one leg in the grave at the moment, to serve as his butler and help him until the boy’s revenge on those who had wronged him and his family is fulfilled. The boy serves as the Queen’s “guard dog”, a disreputable noble with the ties in the underground society who helps solving crime cases and preventing others. Which is ridiculous in and of itself if you try to think about it as a realistic story. It’s not! It’s a very stylised Gothic mystery (manga style of course, with Shinigami and such) that has a strong dark comedy element. If you look closely, you’ll notice that these are the two genres it balances between. IMO, one shouldn’t seek some profound and realistic meaning in it. IMO again, one should just enjoy the ride, suffering the bumps and enjoying the view :)
The demon butler doesn’t have super-powers. He has SUPER super-powers. He’s omnipotent. He can cook a perfect fancy dinner, brew a perfect tea, fix anything broken, play los of instruments, teach any discipline, fight a hundred opponents at once, move from place to place faster than the fastest train, and so on. He’s also very pretty. I’m in love with Sebastian’s smirk, I confess. But who could resist?!
There’s a lot more to enjoy in this animanga. Speaking of the manga, even if the plot meanders in the first volumes, the story is for sure plotty and it seems to me that the further on, the better it is. I really like the last murder mystery arc: the closed room murder. The manga is up to ch. 41 currently and that chapter ends on a HUGE cliffhanger! OMG I want more right now!
To conclude, recommended! Give it a try!
*They say it’s decided that there will be a second season. I can’t imagine how, after this ending, but scriptwriters’ creativity knows no bounds.
ANIME: Kyou Kara Maou (2004-2009) #
Based on a series of light novels written by Takabayashi Tomo. Produced by Studio Deen. Director: Junji Nishimura
Status: seasons 1+2: 78 ep x 24 min; Kyo kara Maoh! R (OVA) (sequel): 5 ep x 30 min; season 3: 36 ep x 30 min = 117 eps total, all subbed.
Genres: adventure, comedy, fantasy, romance, Shounen-Ai
Rating: PG-13
Found: via Amanuensis’s fic here.
Summary: Shibuya Yuuri was living a pretty normal life. That changed the day he was dunked into a toilet after an attempt to save a classmate from a gang of bullies. Instead of just getting a good soaking, he’s pulled in. The next thing he knows, he’s in a world that vaguely resembles medieval Europe. If that’s not odd enough, he’s told that he is to be the next Maoh, just because he has black hair and black eyes. The Maoh is the King of the Mazoku, who are coexisting not-so-peacefully with the humans in this world. Much to his subjects’ dismay, he’s totally different from the rulers they’re accustomed to. He’s kind, considerate, a believer in justice, and not willing to use violence to solve conflicts. Not exactly someone they want running a country on the very brink of war. Now, Yuri has to deal with trying to become a good Maoh, while at the same time attempting to adapt to this lands’ customs and culture, all in a world where the tension between the humans and Mazoku is reaching its peak.
Related links: Wiki article, list of characters (contains spoilers), manga adaptation, light novel. Discussion of all things KKM-related at Aarinfantasy forums, list of KKM doujinshi available at Aarinfantasy forums (scroll down). On LJ: kkm_yaoi (name’s self-explanatory; they also list KKM comms in their profile); kyou_kara_maou (general KKM comm), the_daily_maou (a KKM newsletter), Kyou Kara Maou fandom overview. Characters in dresses from a game or something but it’s entertaining.
Download: @ GalAnime up to ep.100 + OVA; some episodes are also available at Aarinfantasy (search the forums on your own) and in torrents all over the net. You can search torrents of subbed episodes via BakaUpdates.
My notes: if I had a 10-point rating system (where 1 is the lowest, 10 is the highest) and were to rate the quality of animation in Kyou Kara Maou (further KKM), I’d give it 5. I’d give the same rating for plot. But the overall rating of mine would nevertheless be 7, which, converted into my personal appreciation marks, means #. Paradox? Yeah, well, sort of :) I’ll explain. Bear with me please and read it to the end because I’ll start with how this anime is barely average but I will come to how it has been my joy and comfort for this past month.
I don’t know how much money went into which anime production, but KKM looks like what I call a cheap anime — unlike, say, Code Geass or Fullmetal Alchemist or, to be quite radical, Gankutsuou. I base this evaluation on how much detail and detailed motion drawing goes into an average scene: to convey walk, talk, horse ride, etc. It’s even more telling if to take a battle scene. In this respect, KKM is so cheap it almost hurts. Remember how battles are drawn? One character frozen in motion, the other too, slash, slash across the black screen, the result. The frontal horse ride consists of two frames repeated? Three? Well, something like this.
The art itself is nothing to write home about to begin with, and it keeps changing rather wildly as different artists work, say Gwendal’s face changes like whoa in ep 65, well, all other faces too. It’s not always easy to find good screencaps ‘cos either the face would be distorted, or a body.
The writing is pretty messy too. The plot meanders in the manner of a soap made on the go. There are lots of sub-stories that don’t add anything to … well, to anything. Characterisation is either random or non-existent during long parts. Sometimes I almost ranted at the screen, “Move on with the main plot already!” There are anime shows where there are problems with pacing. Well, comparing to them, KKM needs that the very idea of pacing be introduced to the writers.
In my opinion, it all is especially noticeable at the beginning, for the first 20 episodes or so, when the drawbacks poke you in the eye but you don’t love the characters yet for it to seem sweet. It’s rather less than exciting while the new king runs about saving damsels in distress, kids, and cute kittens time and time again, with nothing progressing. So we established that he’s a good, kind boy, not very studious and rather bratty but with a heart of gold. One-two episodes like that would be enough to establish what kind of person he is. 20 is a bit too many.
BUT! I loved this anime and enjoyed it an awful lot, re-watching old episodes while waiting for the newer ones to be subbed.
Because first of all, it’s huge fun! It has every cliché and archetype ever written worked into it: there’s a Sauron and orks and wolf changelings, there are elf houses in the trees; there are Dumbledore and Grindelwald; there’s magic of various kinds, humans and demons, half-bloods and purebloods. There are wars and treasons and orphaned kids and most comical romances. There are kings and national customs and stereotypes and villains and knights in shining armour. Just name something and it’s likely included in this kaleidoscope of clichés. And most of it is fun, cheesy, and tongue-in-cheek.
Also, it’s officially slashy. To begin with, Yuuri gets a fiancée almost immediately, which fiancée is a boy, Wolfram. Then, everybody keeps hitting on him or lusting after him (see my icon). There’s cross-dressing, dancing, Wolfram’s jealous fits, and whatnot. There’s a slash (yaoi) fans’ running commentary delivered by the maids who make bets on various character’s chances and evaluate the positive sides of various couples.
Whatever kind of slash pairing you like, you’ll find it here — well, almost whatever — and there will be enough grounds for it to sustain your hopes. A mentor/student pairing? Konrad/Yuuri. A Harry/Draco one? Yuuri/Wolfram, the canonical one. An Eroica/Iron Klaus sort of opposites attract? Günter/Gwendal. A historical one? Dig around the original king, Shinou. A comrades in arms kind? Konrad/Yozak. A buddy pairing? Yuuri/Murata Ken. And so on.
The running gags become the more precious the more times they are repeated. Sleeping!Wolfram is the winner of my heart, and so is knitting!Gwendal, mumbling “It’s a kitty!” or Günter running about with his mournful cry “Heikaaaaaa!” McGonagall!Gunter is also among my favourite things, especially when he pulls his hair in a bun and wears reading glasses :)
The Mazoku world is really charming. The demon sword Morgif is hilarious, the bear-bees, the vulture-like birds that cry “Bad omen! Bad omen!”, the flying skeletons, the shiny head of Christo Gruff, Anissina’s fantastic inventions — they are all precious.
And of course the characters are very easy to love. Even the protagonist, Yuuri, whom I found extremely annoying at first, grew on me. I fell in love with the king’s Mazoku entourage almost at once. My favourites are Günter and Gwendal. So here’s as good a place to introduce a few of the characters as any.
To see Characters in screencaps, go to my LJ post. There you’ll find:
Shibuya Yuuri, a 15 (later 16) year old Japanese boy who turns to be the new Maou (Maoh), a Mazoku king.
Maou!Yuuri (you’ll get what it is when you watch the anime)
Yuuri’s fiancée Wolfram von Bielefeld, the third son of the former Maou and arguably, the cutest of them all.
Conrad/Conrart/Konrad Weller, the second son of the former Maou, half-human, the man who named Yuuri, the best swordsman in Shin Makoku and sort of Yuuri’s knight.
Gwendal von Voltaire (or von Walde, in other translations) — I like the former better ‘cos it’s funnier. The eldest son of the former Maou, the commander of the demon army and sort of Councellor. Loves knitting and baby animals :)
Günter von Kleist (some translations say ‘von Christ’), Yuuri’s advisor, mentor, and teacher, head of one of the ten ruling families of Shin Makoku. Lurve ♥ :)
There are lots and lots more loveable characters, and I like them all: Adelbert von Grantz and Lady Celi, Anissina von Karbelnikoff and Saralegui, Shinou and Murata Ken, Yozak Gurrier and Jenies, and others. For more information about the characters, look here (contains spoilers). Honestly, guys, I’ve been picking screencaps and fell in love with this anime a bit more again.
As I said above, I don’t like the drawing throughout the series but I like the art of the second half of season 1 best and also ep.48-49. I also like how the OVA are drawn.
I don’t really have favourite episodes. I have favourite scenes. But I liked ep. 47 about Gwendal’s youth and the “Konrad Stands upon the Earth” scene. IMO it was done beautifully. But I mostly adore the comic scenes.
There are things in this anime that should have annoyed me to no end. But in all this lovely mess, they didn’t. Say, the almost totalitarian religion of Shinou would be disturbing if it weren’t, well, Shinou (especially he of later in the series) and Shin Makoku with all the ridiculous things that are normal there.
This anime is potentially endless. It seems to be over with three full seasons (people in KKM comms are petitioning for the continuation). But with its structure, there can be season 4 and 5 easily. Anyway, I’m impatiently waiting for the last subbed episodes. And sorry for the rambling rec :)
Let Dai (1995-2005) ##
Artist: Woon Soo-yeon (Won Sooyeon)
Scanlation Group: Seri Chan’s Translations
Genre: Drama Mature Psychological Romance Shounen Ai Tragedy
Status: 15 volumes (complete), licensed
Warnings/rating: NWS for violence; reads left to right
Found: Recced by ahoythere here: It’s just been completely scanlated a few days ago (15 volumes!!) and I haven’t read it past volume one, but oh my god, I know it’ll break your heart because I spoiled myself. Here’s how a reviewer put it: “This manhwa is about a teenage gang leader named Dai who changes whatever world he steps into. He’s beautiful, dangerous, quiet, and unpredictable. He also has the emotional maturity of a 6-year-old, and I don’t mean that in a manchild sort of way - I mean that he literally thinks about things the way a 6-year-old thinks about things. He hits people when he’s upset, he leaves conversations halfway through, he expresses his sexuality through touching and kissing and absolutely nothing else. He’s wholly deranged and impossible to ignore. People love Dai or they hate Dai - there’s nothing in-between.”
Summary: From NetComics: Set in a soulless neo-Seoul ruled by young punks and pleasure seekers, an amoral teenager named Dai is the living embodiment of the city’s beauty and cruelty. As the leader of the vicious Furies gang, Dai seduces everyone who lays eyes on him, only to blind them to his own barbaric nature. When an honest schoolboy named Jaehee rescues a beautiful girl from being mugged by the Furies, he can’t possibly realize how this brief encounter will plunge him into a downward spiral of unbridled passion and unfathomable pain. From his brutal gang initiation to an unspeakable act committed against his girlfriend, Jaehee wavers uncomfortably between revulsion and fascination. And in Dai he finds a tender, caring friend one moment and a heartless sociopath the next, awakening strange and unhealthy desires in Jaehee that he could never before have imagined.
Download: you can buy it via Amazon or other online bookstore or find it online in the usual manga-sharing places. IMO you really should buy your own paper copy. I have :)
My notes: I feel as if I’ve been through a meat-grinder but I loved every moment of it.
I read Let Dai for three days, had dreams about Dai every night, made myself take a two-day break to let my head un-mess itself a bit. When I reached vol. 15 and suddenly realised that there was only one volume left, I got so agitated that I nearly cried. Because NOOOOO! Don’t end please! In the end, I read it through yesterday’s night until 9 in the morning and after that, dreamed of Dai again. I think some panels and scenes are etched into my retinas but I’m going to read it again anyway, just to savour details.
Let Dai had been sitting on my hard drive since ahoythere’s rec, but the final push came from Furiosity who said she thought I might like it. Oh, I did. Not sure I have enough words to express how much I did though.
The story is what I expected it to be and absolutely not.
First of all, have a look at more covers.
The covers are pretty but misleading. They are all so deceptively tender and peaceful. They do reflect an important side of the manhwa and Dai and Jaehee’s relationship but if one buys it seduced by the covers, I guess they will be in for a big surprise. Because the story is anything but peaceful.
It is, in fact, very dramatic and so intense that sometimes I caught myself literally holding my breath or biting my fingers. Another thing is, I was expecting this manhwa to be a sheer angst fest and darkness galore after reading the NetComics’ summary, because this summary rather than the covers was how I started to get acquainted with it. But what I noticed most when reading was a love story, a painful but pretty tender one, and far less scary than I thought it would be. So I think it’s a surprise whatever side you come from.
We meet the two main characters as polar opposites. Jaehee is a good boy. He’s a good student, does some semi-official good-boy school stuff, loves his mother (and has a very open, friendly relationship with her), is nice to his girlfriend, and so on. He’s a bit of a whimp but can fight if necessary. A good and very pretty boy. You get the picture. Dai Lee is a really bad boy. He’s unpredictable in his behaviour like a random numbers generator, cruel, vindictive, uncaring, cold, beyond merely selfish, violent, but also beautiful. You’d think it’s as cliché as it can get. Well, it’s not, please believe me. That is, of course it is because how many centuries old is this plot? What new can there be? But even such an old tale can be made fresh and captivating, and Woon Soo-yeon certainly made it striking, as for me.
So we meet them as opposites — that attract, also promptly following the cliché. There’s something in Dai that fascinates Jaehee, and something in Jaehee that attracts Dai. Ultimately, it’s a story about love: how it changes people, making some commit atrocities, some others, make fools of themselves, and redeeming others and forcing them to grow. There are many more love stories (and friendship, and affection, but also betrayals and cruelty) within this story that make it really multi-dimensional but of course most of it is about Dai and Jaehee. They yearn to become one, and I love how they rub off on each other (metaphorically speaking) and sort of even become each other, to some extent.
This is also a story about growing up. At the beginning, Dai seems larger than life and the teen gangs look like they are the world. But as you keep reading, at some point it strikes you: OMG, they are just children. Cruel and messed up, and they can (and do) bite the hand that feeds them, and they can and do break hearts and lives, but I nearly cried over them because they are so lost and confused, so emo and hurting. Yes, the story is emo because the characters are. But it’s not annoying at all. It only drives home the memory of your own teen years and makes it feel so freaking real! This is, btw, what amazed me most in this manhwa. I felt as if I accidentally used a Time-Turner and became 16-18 again, felt what first love feels like again and saw the world around how I saw it then. Stirred a hurricane inside me.
During the entire manhwa Dai and Jaehee’s relationship is like that of two magnets: being pulled together with one end and pushed apart with the other. And the story itself is this endless pull-push too, angsty then lovely, scary then sweet, cruel then funny. The pacing perfectly fits these waves, as for me. The story is fast-paced but slows down where necessary to let you digest the most affecting parts. So in this context, I like the ending and think it’s very fitting. Because you wouldn’t expect it to be simple in a story like this, now would you? A spoiler for the ending white on white, first one-word, if you want to know what kind of ending it is: open, ambiguous, or hopeful. In more detail in comments under my request for spoilers. And some thoughts of mine: Actually, the ending is more hopeful than you’d expect in the middle of the manhwa. I liked how it ended, even the abruptness of it and that it’s off-screen. Because I can’t imagine their relationship at that stage reaching any sort of definitive answer, be it a happily ever after or a full break-up. Until both of them grow up completely and maybe even after that, they have a long way to go yet in learning how to compromise between their love and the rest of their lives. [/end spoiler]. ETA: a discussion of the ending with the folks who have read the manga here in my LJ.
I could talk about the wonderful supporting and secondary characters (Naru Hagi especially, gosh, he’s so, so lovely!) but I should stop somewhere. Maybe I’ll add something later.
One thing I do want to talk about before I finish this rec is drawing. I’m in love, for real. Those of you who’ve been reading my LJ for a while probably know that my type of man is Iron Klaus from Eroica or Till of Rammstein. I don’t like them young and slender. But OMG, I couldn’t look at Dai or Jaehee enough. They are so beautiful I feel like crying. I’ve been looking at those panels with the rain (see below) for hours.
Have a look at a few sample panels from the manhwa here. They are beautiful.
What bugs me is that can’t pronounce the names. I have no idea how Jaehee sounds and even less so about the names of the sisters, Eunhyung and Yooneun. So if any of you speak Korean and can transcribe them for me, I’d be very grateful.
Anyway, I think it’s a beautiful and wonderfully moving story. Give it a try!
MANGA: Loveless (since 2002) []
Mangaka: Kouga Yun
Groups Scanlating: Kamibana Scanlations, Obsession, Shoku-dan, Raburesu lj
Status: 9 Volumes (ongoing), licensed; scanlation ongoing
Genre: Drama Fantasy Mystery School Life Shounen Ai Supernatural
Found: was recced by lots of people and has been languishing on my HD for about a year.
Summary: From Tokyopop: Aoyagi Ritsuka is one troubled 6th grader. Two years ago, he mysteriously lost his memory and developed an alternate personality. His mother constantly berates (and occasionally beats) him, asking what happened to the “real” Ritsuka, and his only defender and friend, his older brother Seimei, was recently killed.
Suddenly, Seimei’s apparent “friend,” Soubi, appears. Soubi tells him that Ritsuka’s true name is “Loveless,” and that Soubi was assigned by Seimei to take care of Ritsuka and protect him. Ritsuka soon gets sucked into a bizarre underground society where teams of people, a “Fighter” and a “Sacrifice,” battle using elaborate and beautifully-phrased spells. He seeks both acceptance of himself and the answer to the mystery of who killed his brother and why.
Download: at the groups’ sites.
ANIME (2005)
Starts at Vol 1, Ch 1. Ends at Vol 4, Ch 9.
Director: Yuu Kou
*summary at Animenews is rather misleading.
Status: Prologue + 12 ep x 23 min.
My notes: now this is some seriously weird stuff! I mean seriously weird. Weird main characters, not to say fucked-up, very strange relationships between them, things being turned upside down again and again as the story goes on, elements of various genres used, - this all creates a very strange whole.
I fell into a complex love/hate with this universe from the very first look. You see, kids have cat’s ears and tails there. On the one hand, the worst kind of Yaoi I ever read was one with cat’s ears in it: pointless, cliched, drawn so-so, and catering to readers’ kinks at the expense of everything else. On the other, if I ever see it done well, I’ll fall in love with it because I love cats and their ears, when they ever allow you to pet them, are awesome. I don’t mind Furries. So I was prepared to hate it but hoping to love it, but in the end, it turned out to be neither. Because cat’s ears in this universe don’t play any part except fan service. Because again, and here I’ll hide it by making it white on white, they indicate a character’s virginity and fall off when they lose it.[/end spoiler] And that’s all. I mean, it’s a lovely but completely superfluous element because if you decide to read much meaning into it (relationships between adults and kids/teens in Loveless or the role of sex in this society), you’ll have to admit it’s pretty underwritten and underdeveloped too. A working element must work more :) But in any case, by the middle of the anime, I started liking those ears and tails for the sheer pettability of them, forgive me for inventing a word.
As you see, I have opinions about cat’s ears in Loveless. But what gets me most in it — it still remains to see if it gets me in a good or bad way, about which later — is probably genre confusion. I mean, at first when Soubi appears and keeps confessing his love for Ritsuka (it’s the very beginning of the story, so I don’t think I’m spoiling anybody), I thought it was Shounen Ai that would quickly slide into Yaoi. Well, definitely not the latter: as far as I’ve read it (all scanlated parts), it’s not Yaoi at all. It has elements of Shounen Ai and Yuri but they are only elements in a more complex whole. Back to the beginning: very soon after Soubi, there appear fighting pairs, and that element follows very typical Shounen cliches. If you read Shounen manga, you can name them yourself: each next opponent will be stronger than the previous one, some of them will turn into allies, and the fighting will be shown step by step. Some essential elements are missing though. The fighting is magical and two-on-two (with a few exceptions), with carefully pronounced incantations rather than swords, which also takes it a step away from the cliche. There’s also an RPG that merges with reality in an unclear way. And the main character isn’t focused on becoming stronger. He has a completely different agenda.
Which brings us to the plot. At first, the main driving element of the mystery is the question, “Who killed Seimei?” Ritsuka wants to find them and avenge his beloved older brother. The more new characters appear, the more new information we (and Ritsuka) learn, the more contradicting POVs we see, the more different versions of events and opinions on characters we hear, the more complicated the story becomes, until several bangs and even BANGS happen that turn the plot into something else entirely. The question that nagged at me the most while I was watching/reading Loveless though wasn’t the one I asked at the beginning of the paragraph. And I think at this point of the story, it’s the one that matters most: what really happened to Ritsuka? What caused him to lose his memory and change personality?[/end spoiler] We know it had happened before the other thing. So what was it?
Somebody in a less charitable mood than I am now could call the story messy instead of complex. And that would also be a fitting word. The story does leap from thing to thing, gets sidetracked following secondary characters (which annoyed me to no end, I must confess. I mean, why do I have to learn about personal relationships within some other fighting team if we will never see them again?); new information cancels our previous concepts, and POVs do contradict each other. By this point (9 volumes! 7 years of writing) no one still can tell what’s really going on. My problem with it is this: I have no idea whether this manga is so confusing because the author knows too well what she’s doing and have a plan to confuse readers or on the contrary, because she has no clue and is thinking on her feet. I have a nagging suspicion that it’s the latter. But in any case, I’m afraid we won’t know until she finishes it, if she ever does. I’ll raise the rating if the plot gets resolved sufficiently, with no holes left.
The story is entertaining and even engrossing, and we have more than confusing plot to thank for it. The two main characters, Ritsuka and Soubi, are very interesting. They are appealing and intriguing at the same time. Ritsuka is a very cute boy of 12. He had some serious trauma in the past — one unrevealed, the other, the death of his older brother whom he loved and whom he remembers as his protector. But Ritsuka doesn’t remember much. He’s scared of forgetting and disappearing, as his former self disappeared. He’s rather standoffish but honest and not nasty, and that makes people want to try and get closer to him. His newly acquired Fighter, Soubi, is an art student of 20, an adult, who puts himself in the hands of Ritsuka, completely submitting to him — except when he can’t because Seimei’s will overrides everything even when Seimei hasn’t been his partner for some time, and except where it matters that he’s an experienced and grown man and Ritsuka is just a boy and needs guidance. Soubi is pretty (hair, aww!), willowy, has an amazing voice in the anime. Soubi likes pain. He needs to be controlled and ordered about to a degree none of the other Fighters does. He’s also an amazingly skilled Fighter. The balance of power in the pair is very interesting to observe, as is the balance of trust and their slow adapting to each other.
I think I will continue following this manga when more chapters get published and scanlated. Hope it doesn’t disappoint.
I don’t have any advise on what to begin with if you want to try it, anime or manga. I started with the anime, following on to the manga in hope that it would clear some confusion. It did but confused me in other things all the more :) I don’t really think the order of getting acquainted with the two media matters. Pick the one you like better and give it a try. At the very least it will entertain you.
Okane ga Nai (No money) (2007) []
Director: Makoto Sokuza
Genres: comedy, drama, erotica, romance, yaoi
Rating: Adults only! (Contains explicit sexual content)
Status: 4ep x 25min
Summary: Yukiya Ayase is a gentle, kind hearted, and innocent university student. The only relative he has left, his cousin Tetsuo, betrays Ayase by selling him to the highest bidder in an auction with hopes of making an enormous profit to be able to pay off his debts. Somuku Kanou, a bad-tempered (though very rich) loan shark, comes to Ayase’s rescue and buys Ayase for an impressive 1.2 billion. Kanou apparently knows Ayase from something that happened between them in the past, but Ayase cannot remember who Kanou is nor does he understand why he “saved” him. In a desperate effort to keep Ayase close to him, Kanou demands the debt be repaid in full and suggests the perfect way to do it: by selling his body to Kanou for 500,000 each time. Ayase is horrified in the beginning, but something soon begins to grow between them that can’t be bought for any price.
My notes: This is the first yaoi anime I finished (I had tried watching something else but fled). Yes, it’s cliched. Honestly, it has nearly any yaoi cliché you can think of. Large angular seme whose hand is bigger than the entire uke’s head, and on the whole he’s about twice as big as the uke. Seme is a very manly man, Yakuza loan shark, tough and very macho. Uke is small, waif-like, and looks like a 12-year-old (well, ok, 14) girl rather than a male uni student. He is, of course, a wet blanket. There’s of course seme’s inability to hold his feelings in check and — thankfully — nearly raping the object of his passion. The drawing is also in the style I dislike: the aforementioned underlined size differences, those huge wet uke’s puppy eyes, etc.
BUT! Here’s a ‘but’ of course. I wouldn’t finish it if it were nothing but a sum of clichés. There’s a story in there, and however clichéd it is (is, is of course), it’s coherent, plotty enough, and the characters are coherent too. I mean, it happens way too often that I read a yaoi manga and keep ranting, “Just what sort of logic is this? Just what sort of motivation is that?” In this anime, the characters’ motivations and the logic of their behaviour are understandable and often even nicely shown. It’s also well-balanced between comedy and drama. The funny scenes are funny (see hamster training in ep. 2), the dramatic scenes are moving. You will find something to laugh at as well as something to cry about.
A note on the rating: explicit but censored? explicit but not very? Meaning: plenty of sex and quite a bit of violence but no male bits shown.
My overall impression is positive. Not a masterpiece but pleasant enough to spent a couple of hours on. It’s the right length for it, too. Recommended.
Pet Shop of Horrors ##
Mangaka: Akino Matsuri
Scanlated by: Eternal Sleep
Status: 10 volumes, licensed; sequel, Shin Pet Shop of Horrors, licensed, ongoing
Genre: Comedy Fantasy Horror Josei Mystery Supernatural
Summary: From Tokyopop: A smoke-filled alley in Chinatown harbors Count D’s Pet Shop. The pets sold here aren’t your everyday variety and the Count prides himself on selling Love and Dreams in the form of magical creatures that come with an exclusive contract. But buyers beware. If the contract is broken the Count cannot be held accountable for whatever may happen. A fascinating and macabre look into the very soul of human nature.
More covers in my LJ
My notes: I love this manga. It was the first manga that I read beginning to end and enjoyed. You’ve probably read manga where the drawing technique was more elaborate or unique. You’ve possibly read manga with a much more solid, tight storyline. I find though that it doesn’t really matter. A story doesn’t have to be perfect to be utterly enticing. And Pet Shop of Horrors (further PSOH) is. So. Freaking. Charming.
Or maybe you are like I was: rather spooked with or uninterested in manga-style drawing (which, as it turns out at a closer look, isn’t one style at all). I think PSOH can be a good place to start getting acquainted with manga. Because it’s eclectic and has elements that may appeal to different kinds of readers: horror/supernatural, mystery, crime/action, humour, morality tale, and then there are animals and very attractive main characters.
I began with the PSOH anime (available on YouTube). It consists of only four episodes (Daughter (from Vol 1.3, rabbit), Delicious (Vol 2.3(7), Mermaid), Despair (Vol 1.2, Medusa), and Dual (Vol 5.1, Kiri). People say that Count D’s voice in Japanese is better but I really liked his English voice (I watched the English version).
I admit that by the end of episode one I was thoroughly creeped out. It still stands out in my mind as one of the creepiest episodes in the series, but to see it first, without any idea what I was getting into? Was a shock. But I was intrigued too: how come that animals are also people? I mean, how? And what’s this Count D’s agenda? He didn’t seem evil, but the consequences of his business transaction were quite horrible. So I watched on. And by the end of episode four was absolutely, madly in love with him. So of course I rushed to find the manga. It’s not difficult to find; I think it might be sold where you live, and if not and if Amazon isn’t an option for you, it can be found on the net almost in any big place that trades manga.
There are ten volumes of the original PSOH manga, and three more of Shin Pet Shop of Horrors, the sequel that features different main characters. The premise is as follows. In LA Chinatown, there’s a Pet Shop. Quoting from the book: “Its proprietor, an enigmatic figure known only as Count D, beckons through his doors the injured and the scarred, introducing them to creatures friendly and bizarre. […] Detective Leon Orcot [..] has traced a series of seemingly unrelated crimes to Count D and his Pet Shop of Horrors. A steadfast skeptic, Leon dismisses as trickery the inexplicable events he witnesses.”
It begins as spooky; the morals are a bit annoying and repetitive, and detective Leon Orcot seems to be little more than a hot-tempered dunderhead. But it’s still intriguing. So you read on. And it becomes less creepy, or at least much more varied. The dunderhead turns out to be not that bad. You begin to see the logic (or a logic) of Count D’s actions. Then, gradually, the big story becomes a focus rather than those short ones of which it consists. Leon and Count D develop a sort of friendship that is actually 3/5 flirting and 2/5 shouting at each other. Enter Chris, a six-year-old third main character. You learn more and more about Leon, his past, and his life; in the end you learn a lot about Count D too (in Vol 10 in particular). You learn to treasure the drawing: D’s expressions, comic relief scenes, outfits, animals. So when it ends, you turn to fanfiction as the only painkiller available — ‘cos it ended, and the very fact is devastating.
On the way it so happens that the two main characters and antagonists have a real potential. It’s easy to develop a crush on Count D. He’s enigmatic, mysterious, aloof, and the further the more appealing. But whom I really love is Leon. He’s an ordinary guy to umpteenth degree, but he’s so good it’s impossible not to fall for him. Leon hides strength of character and integrity under his rude and messy outlook. He’s like Harry: often clueless but true and good. By the end of the first series, my heart was so totally his that I couldn’t completely get into Shin Pet Shop. You’ll see why when you get there. Chris is plain wonderful. And animals? Awesome. T-chan in particular, but you won’t meet him until the middle of the series. So, love it is :)
I want to say thank you again to iibnf for the anime and to RexLuscus whose enthusiasm made me try it and who’s been a wonderful guide.
The Piano Forest (Piano no Mori) (Perfect World of Kai) (2007) #
Genres: drama, tournament. Themes: music, piano.
Status: OVA (101 min)
Anime Start/End Chapter: Starts at Vol 1, Chap 1. Ends at Vol 6, Chap 41.
Director: Masayuki Kojima
Summary: Amamiya Shuuhei transfers to Moriwaki elementary filled with hope and ambition. But it doesn’t take long before he gets picked on by the class bullies, and gets involved in a dare to play the mysterious piano in the forest. Igniting his meeting with an equally enigmatic child that goes by the name of Ichinose Kai, who seems to be the only one capable getting sound out of the thought to be broken piano.
Found: saw it shared in some anime comm and thought the summary looked intriguing.
Manga BU page.
Mangaka: Isshiki Makoto
Genre: Comedy Drama Seinen Slice of Life
Status: 17 Volumes (Ongoing), scanlation ongoing.
Summary: from KEFI: A tranquil tale about two boys from very different upbringings. On one hand you have Kai, born as the son of a prostitute, who’s been playing the abandoned piano in the forest near his home ever since he was young. And on the other you have Syuhei, practically breast-fed by the piano as the son of a family of prestigious pianists. Yet it is their common bond with the piano that eventually intertwines their paths in life.
Download: I’ve watched it at Youtube.
My notes: I must say it at the very beginning that contrary to my usual way of getting familiar with a new animanga, I haven’t read the manga this time. I only watched the anime, so please take into account that everything I’ll be saying is only about the anime.
This is a pleasant story: while not action/adventure, it has enough plot to keep your attention, especially around the climax. The boys are likeable. Kai’s pretty wild and brash but also kind and has this inner purity and honesty that sometimes accompany raw talent and that influence people around him. I liked his practical reasons for learning things. He can’t read score; he plays what he has heard. Once he found that he couldn’t reproduce a particular piece of Chopin’s, he plays scales to learn to play this particular piece, not because one must learn scales first, nor to become a good pianist in general. And so on. I absolutely adored his literal-mindedness about Mozart. The crowd of Mozarts made me laugh every time they appeared. In other words, Kai is lovely and very refreshing. Shuuhei is a bit more boring because he’s very straight-laced for a boy his age and he plays the piano for all the wrong reasons, but doesn’t it often happen this way? The two boys meet and gradually change each other. The best about their relationship, as for me, was the ways it didn’t go. I can’t say much more here but I liked how the dramatic side of it was downplayed rather than milked for all it’s worth. It makes Piano no Mori a soothing story.
I think animation and drawing are good. I hear that the main problem people have with the manga is the drawing style. Am not able to say anything about that yet but I can’t see what’s not to like in the anime, if to speak of the visual side. It’s neither cheap nor banal, and it’s the only anime so far where a character playing the piano didn’t make me cringe.
This leads me to why I give it only one star if I like everything. Not quite everything, as it turns out. You see, it’s piano this and piano that, piano this and piano that. In more coherent speak, the story is fine and lovely but, I don’t know, very narrow. Not unlike Hikaru no Go. But HnG was much more emotionally affecting and the story was much bigger than just about Go in the end. It sort of turned me inside out, made me live it for months. Here somehow I didn’t have the impression that the story is bigger than the main theme. Pleasant? Yes. Interesting? Yes, enough. Can I relate? Nope. Apart from that, I repeat, it’s a lovely story. I doubt you’d regret spending 1.5 hours on it, so give it a try!
Samurai Champloo (2004-2005) ##
Genres: action, adventure, comedy, drama; Themes: Historical, Samurai
Rating: Mature, R (contains sex — not very explicit but there, drugs, and graphic violence)
Status: 26 ep x 23 min
Director: Watanabe Shinichirou
Found: uploaded by somebody on my flist
Summary: Mugen’s a buck wild warrior - violent, thoughtless and womanizing. Jin is a vagrant ronin - mysterious, traditional, well-mannered and very strong as well. These two fiercely independent warriors can’t be any more different from one another, yet their paths cross when Fuu, a ditzy waitress, saves them from being executed when they are arrested after a violent swordfight. Fuu convinces the two vagrant young men to help her find a mysterious samurai “who smells of sunflowers.” And their journey begins. This is a story about love, friendship and courage… NOT!
Related links: Wiki article.
My notes: this is a story of my life: however many reviews I read before watching something, however many people’s opinions listen to, I’ll imagine something completely different from the real thing. Either my imagination is too wild or reviews are useless. Take you pick :)
So when I heard that Mugen’s fighting style was influenced by break-dance and that the soundtrack was hip-hop, I imagined something aimed for teenagers to a far greater degree than what Champloo actually is.
This is a historical anime, and as far as I can see (not far, admittedly), it’s accurate. Except when it’s deliberately anachronistic. Those anachronistic elements are very tongue-in-cheek. They are often moking, poking fun of various cultures (gently or not): European, American — but Japanese very own too, turning modern cliches, trends, and fashios upside down. What they really do though, as for me, they create a real, living and ironical, connection between “then” and “now”. I should think that modernising history is doomed to make the anime look cheap and stupid. But instead, it feels truer to history, more historical than many a straightforward historical anime or manga I’ve read or tried.
The plot is a road trip: a series of connected short stories follow the main characters as they travel to their goal — which, btw, remains mysterious until the last episodes, although if you are attentive, you’ll be able to figure it out faster. Some episodes are more losely connected to the storyline (see the end of this rec), others more closely, but in any case road trip is an ideal format for this kind of story. The time is the end of the Samurai era, the epoche about which Kurosawa Akira loved to make films. The two main characters, Jin and Mugen, are typical for such change-of-epoche times. One’s traditional, the other absolutely unorthodox, both are scarily skillful with a sword and both have nowhere to properly apply or sell their talents. So they wander.
And my, they are such fantastic, fabulous main characters! I promise you that you’ll fall in love with at least one of them, if not all three!
Fuu. She is ditzy indeed, but also courageous and loyal and cunning, in her own way :)
Mugen, the wild one. Dirty, uneducated, ever horny and hungry, and uncaring on the surface, he’s pretty sharp beneath all his loudness and rudeness, and not as uncaring as he’d like to look.
Jin, the mysterious one. Quiet and proper, he’s the last Samurai, of sorts, in a new world where commerce rules over honor.
(If you want to see screencaps, head to this LJ post of mine.)
On the whole, I think, Samurai Champloo is a very harmonious creation. I also think it’s very well-done. The animation is good, not to say superb, the soundtrack is very fitting, and the overlaying structure of the story, well, I can only wish many other anime, even those I liked, were as good. Also, in this series, I saw the best recap episode ever: ep.12. I’d never seen it done so well before and doubt I’ll be lucky enough to see many well-done recaps in the future.
I feel I have to repeat: this anime is fun and even sweet, despite the amount of violence and even death that happens in there. Only it’s not for kids.
I heard that somebody was dissatisfied with the ending and so was expecting a huge failure to obliterate all my enjoyment. But I didn’t have any problem with it whatsoever. I actually think the ending is very good: very much in the mood of the story, it ties up everything while leaving room for the spectator to make up scenarios for the future.
My only small bone to pick with it is the last two out-of-the-main-line episodes closer to the end, the baseball one and that one I’m not naming ‘cos it would be a spoiler. IMO they break the pacing and could have been built in better.
But the conclusion is: highly recommended!
They were Eleven (11-nin iru! ; Juuichi nin Iru) (1975) #
Mangaka: Hagio Moto
Genre: Drama Gender Bender Mystery Sci-fi Shoujo
Status: licensed, oneshot, part of Four Shoujo Stories
Warning: pretty bad scan quality; reads left to right!
Found: via Parlophone’s recommendation
Summary: The elite Cosmo Academy attracts applicants from every stellar nation in the galaxy. One young hopeful is Tadatos Lane, an orphan esper from Terra. The final stage of the academy’s entrance exam is a perilous mission simulation aboard an actual derelict starship. The applicants depart for the ships in groups of ten, but when Tada’s crew arrives on the Esperanza, they are horrified to discover that they now number eleven. As the test progresses, things go awry and the atmosphere grows increasingly tense. The crew members begin to suspect sabotage, and Tada appears to be the likely culprit.
Read here.
My notes: there are several obstacles to overcome but if you do, this is a really captivating, wonderful story! Those obstacles are: a) the quality of the scan: it’s a simple scan of the licensed English version, not cleaned at all; b) it reads left to right. I got terribly confused at the beginning and kept trying to read every other page in the wrong order. Then there are my personal misgivings: Sci-Fi is, arguably, my least favourite genre. “Space ship” for me is like “watersports” for some :) It doesn’t mean that I won’t enjoy a Sci-Fi story. It means that I’m extremely reluctant to read it. Parlophone told me how nice this story was and gave me the link to go read it. I went there, saw the bad scans and wrinkled my nose in displeasure. I decided to save all the pages to my computer to read at my leisure, using my keyboard for navigation, and got hooked while doing it!
The summary above is sufficient, so I want only to share my thoughts. I think this manga is a good example of coherent storytelling. You’ll say “well, duh” but really, how many truly coherent manga I’ve read recently? Not many. Add to this that They were Eleven has a wonderful balance of humour, suspense, and angst, a fine balance between plot and character development, and you’ll get a fine manga to read. The drawing is old-fashioned, but then it’s a more than 30-year-old work! But the style overall is very pleasant, as for me. Give it a try!
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (The Record of the Yokohama Shopping Trip) (1995) ##
By: Ashinano Hitoshi
Scanlation Groups: MangaProject, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou Manga Scanlations, s.ADTRW
Status: 14 Volumes (Complete)
Genre: Drama Sci-fi Seinen Slice of Life
Found: recced by a RL friend with the words, “My all-time favourite. For me, this is an indisputable and incredible masterpiece — and I try not to say such words lightly. This is ’slice of life’ at its best and most complete, with some elements of sci-fi but they don’t matter much. Critically acclaimed, too.”
Summary: [From MangaProject]: This is the story of Alpha Hasseno, an Alpha 7 M2 series robot. Left by her owner, she appears and acts fully human while running a small coffee shop named Cafe Alpha. It is a light-hearted story about the people Alpha comes into contact with behind the backdrop of a futuristic country-side in Japan. As we meet Alpha, she makes a shopping trip to Yokohama.
A really nice review and DL.
My notes: This manga is pretty amazing but it doesn’t get through to you at once. It’s like a bud that you have to wait to grow. It’s worth it though. You’ll see a most unusual, beautiful flower if you are patient. I first thought it would be [] in my ratings, then it became # and in the end, I can’t express my love for it in anything other than ##. Now to convert my impressions into words.
This is a story where absolutely nothing happens for 14 volumes. This is a post-apocalyptic world. We don’t know what exactly has happened but the end result is: the world as we know it is dying. The sea level is coming up; the human civilisation is getting swallowed by the rising waters and grasses. The humankind is radically reduced in numbers already and keeps dying out before our eyes as the manga goes on. An android called Alpha keeps a coffee shop running way out of the way in the country in Japan. She has a customer every couple of days, which days she considers very busy. The customer is usually an old man who keeps a fuel filling column miles from Alpha’s or his grandson. The manga goes like this: Alpha takes her scooter and rides to some ruins to see the view from there. Alpha brews a pot of coffee. Alpha sits on the porch and gazes at the scenery around. Alpha drives to a city (which by that point looks like a village) for coffee beans. Another android delivers a parcel. A man with a flying fish wanders by.
The title underlines this non-eventfulness of the manga. It’s not that Alpha goes on a shopping trip where this or that adventure happens. It’s, on the contrary, just one small event in a row of the similar insignificant ones. I repeat: nothing happens in this manga, at all. There’s no plot. It’s just a gallery of the small things of which the small lives that are passing away with the world consist and which Alpha is watching and sometimes recording with her camera. There are no villains. No bad characters of any kind. No drama. This manga is the opposite of plotty. But it’s the definition of charming.
It’s so beautiful! By the middle of it, you begin cherishing those empty landscapes, roads being broken and taken over by grasses, abandoned houses, and more roads with nobody around for miles. It’s beautiful and lovely and full of quiet sorrow; not a tragedy but a gentle, loving goodbye. There’s also a hint of yuri, a very light one and as non-eventful as the rest of the manga. You can see a few pages from the manga in my LJ post here.
As a conclusion, highly recommended as one of the most charming and atmospheric things I’ve ever read!
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Hello,
this is pj's fannish place made with the goal to be a sort of public library of (or a gateway to) fanfiction. I read mostly slash, I love sex and various kinks, so if you are underage and somehow wormed your way here past net nannies and warnings, please surf responsibly and go somewhere else when you are asked to!
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Anime/manga fandoms:
Have you read Tokyo Babylon (and X/1999, which comes after?). It’s probably my favorite (or maybe tied with Petshop). I think you would really like it, based on what you seem to like in a story. There’s really excellent, deep magic, a beautifully tragic love story, and lovable characters with strong and unique personality. It starts out cute and gets progressively darker.
There’s seven volumes of manga, a two episode OAV, and a live action movie. The series X/1999, which is kind of epic all by itself, continues the story of Tokyo Babylon among its many subplots. The manga was scanlated through volume 5 before it was licensed for translation, and though those scanlations have since been taken off the translator’s website, I would be more than happy to send you a copy of the files.
Thank you for the rec! I’m adding it to my, admittedly very long, reading list :)
i would love it, since you watached the death note live actions, if you could explain to me WTF happened at the end! like, the whole plot from when l says hes sending soichiro to test the dn, and the twist at the end and just who was planning to do what and what they said they were planning and idk
Hi ray,
I would appreciate if you worded your requests in a more polite way, especially since you’re asking for a favour.
What happened in DN live-action film: L realises that Light is indeed Kira. He pretends to send Soichiro and others out of their base, staying alone with Light, knowing that Light would use this to kill L. Soichiro and other Task Force people don’t actually leave; they remain hidden close behind, seeing everything that happens in their absence via cameras. Light manipulates Rem into writing L’s name in her Death Note. She does it, but since she does it to protect Misa, Rem dies. L doesn’t though. Why? Because before Soichiro left, L had written his own name in the DN that was in the Task Force headquarters, setting his date of death at the longest possible (23 days rule) from that moment. This action of his, btw, proved to Soichiro how serious L was about Light being Kira and that he was willing to sacrifice himself to catch Kira.
Hi, Painless J,
I’ve been a lurker of your posts for a while, finding them the best out there, but for this post I couldn’t help but comment!
Off your rec, I watched all the anime of Antique Bakery “fresh,” without reading the manga, and found the series absolutely fantastic! Very sweet and funny, with a bit of an exploration of the pain of life, too. I was actually really proud of Tachibana by the end, and I can’t help wondering if Chikage moves in to be with his daughter or not! I’m a huge fan of the Japanese voice actor of Eiji (Mamoru Miyano, who also did the voice of Light in DN and a bunch of other fantastic roles).
Anyway, the point of this post is to rec another anime (if it’s not already there!) to what I’m sure is a never-ending list for you—-it’s called “Ouran High School Host Club,” and in many ways it’s a lot like “Antique Bakery,” except probably sillier and more focused on humor. There are six hot guys (the lead is also voiced by Mamoru Miyano) and one very special girl in a beautifully drawn and animated series. If you’re interested, I watched the 26 episodes here, on Anime Kuro:
http://www.animekuro.com/anime-series/ouran-high-school-host-club/
Unfortunately, the manga is a WIP, but it’s also fantastic:
http://www.onemanga.com/Ouran_High_School_Host_Club/
If you ever have time to watch it, I hope you’ll share your thoughts!
Thanks,
shadowphoenixfire
Hi shadowphoenixfire :)
Thanks for the rec! I’ve heard good things about this one and am planning to watch it. Ahem, eventually :) My watching/reading list is a mile long :) But thanks again, I will!
pj
I love your lists…but I’m pretty sure you’d like a few more.
There’s Nabari No Ou, both manga and anime. If you’re looking for something that has hurt/comfort in it, and hints of shonen-ai in it, well, this is perfect for you.
You might consider looking into it. If you liked Gankutsuou thanks to the shonen-ai-ishness of it, well than, Nabari No Ou is something spiffy to look at.
You seem to enjoy a great deal of series that I have, so I have to ask, have you watched Juuni Kokuki or read Banana Fish?
Hello Painless J,
I discovered your awesome overview of Hikaru no Go here. Currently I’m rerading-reawatching whole series. I wanted to say that recently 2 extra chapters were added to manga, 190 and 191. You can read it on onemanga site. I was really glad to discover it =)