An Interesting Aesthetic Line
Nov. 5th, 2002 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksSince Bryn Mawr Dining Services gave me an unexpected windfall in the form of prize money for the cooking contest, I picked up all fourteen volumes of the manga Ayashi no Ceres in French. It's written by Watase Yuu, of course, who also did Fushigi Yuugi, a series I am probably too fond of considering that the first couple of volumes are so bad that there are parodies out there written, officially sanctioned, and published by the author herself. Ayashi no is much, much better; I'd read the first seven volumes in French and I'd read web translations of the rest, so I knew about what happened in the rest of it. I figured it was going to be angst-ridden, simply from the events described and the dialogue, but angst-ridden in the way Fushigi Yuugi was, where Really Bad Stuff happened to some characters who didn't deserve it but things worked out basically OK. So I knew I was going to be fine with seeing the art.
I'm fine, but I'm starting to wonder if the series is. I had not been expecting this to be Watase Yuu's version of Zetsuai, and it's all in the art. (If you haven't seen Zetsuai-- you probably shouldn't, even though it's brilliant-- it is The Ultimate Stalker Movie. Its characters have the single most truly twisted relationship I think I have ever seen in anything. Everyone I know who's seen it has spent a brief period of time thereafter convinced that it would be preferable to, say, take an eternal vow of silence rather than pull that kind of crap on anybody and also that the human race is built such that they really ought to be taking that vow about now 'cause it's only inevitable. Which isn't true. But Zetsuai can make perfectly healthy people think it is. I occasionally regret having seen the thing.) Ayashi no, well, it isn't quite up there with Zetsuai, because, for one thing, it has more than two main characters, so the angst has to be spread out a little, but in sheer terms of Nasty Stuff that has happened to the main character at this point, I am ranking it with Yami no Matsuei. Honest. And the villain of Ayashi no has earned a permanent place in my list of anime STFs (Sick, Twisted Fucks) and is sharing a spot with Muraki, simply for a couple of facial expressions.
I haven't finished reading it yet, but the author would have to have written one of the most impressively redemptive things I've ever seen to finish this without being massively artistically irresponsible. She might have. I hope so, because the series is too good in general for me to want to write it off as just going over the top into wrongness. It leads me to the questions: how much is too much? How much is an author justified in putting characters through, and for what reasons? How much should be shown and how much shouldn't? I know those answers in most cases, but this series is walking the line between artistic merit and what I can only think of as the pornography of angst so finely that I cannot tell which side it will fall into. I will be fascinated to see what I will think of it if it just manages to keep walking that line, right to the end, and whether I would find it irresponsible if it never decides.
Oh, and the English translation of Ayashi no which Viz is putting out really, really sucks, but is (barely) comprehensible. I don't know what the lousiness of their translation will do to the later volumes, but frankly, I don't see how they can put out the later volumes and keep their age rating, so if people want to read it in English, go ahead but be aware that you'll probably wind up finishing the series on the web. It is definitely worth reading through volume 7 and in fact is really wonderful up to that point.
I'm fine, but I'm starting to wonder if the series is. I had not been expecting this to be Watase Yuu's version of Zetsuai, and it's all in the art. (If you haven't seen Zetsuai-- you probably shouldn't, even though it's brilliant-- it is The Ultimate Stalker Movie. Its characters have the single most truly twisted relationship I think I have ever seen in anything. Everyone I know who's seen it has spent a brief period of time thereafter convinced that it would be preferable to, say, take an eternal vow of silence rather than pull that kind of crap on anybody and also that the human race is built such that they really ought to be taking that vow about now 'cause it's only inevitable. Which isn't true. But Zetsuai can make perfectly healthy people think it is. I occasionally regret having seen the thing.) Ayashi no, well, it isn't quite up there with Zetsuai, because, for one thing, it has more than two main characters, so the angst has to be spread out a little, but in sheer terms of Nasty Stuff that has happened to the main character at this point, I am ranking it with Yami no Matsuei. Honest. And the villain of Ayashi no has earned a permanent place in my list of anime STFs (Sick, Twisted Fucks) and is sharing a spot with Muraki, simply for a couple of facial expressions.
I haven't finished reading it yet, but the author would have to have written one of the most impressively redemptive things I've ever seen to finish this without being massively artistically irresponsible. She might have. I hope so, because the series is too good in general for me to want to write it off as just going over the top into wrongness. It leads me to the questions: how much is too much? How much is an author justified in putting characters through, and for what reasons? How much should be shown and how much shouldn't? I know those answers in most cases, but this series is walking the line between artistic merit and what I can only think of as the pornography of angst so finely that I cannot tell which side it will fall into. I will be fascinated to see what I will think of it if it just manages to keep walking that line, right to the end, and whether I would find it irresponsible if it never decides.
Oh, and the English translation of Ayashi no which Viz is putting out really, really sucks, but is (barely) comprehensible. I don't know what the lousiness of their translation will do to the later volumes, but frankly, I don't see how they can put out the later volumes and keep their age rating, so if people want to read it in English, go ahead but be aware that you'll probably wind up finishing the series on the web. It is definitely worth reading through volume 7 and in fact is really wonderful up to that point.
