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Feb. 29th, 2008 01:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksI have been working on a post about my favorite books of last year, but I keep getting derailed by manga, because we recently bought a large quantity of it. I mean, more than usual. Because Jason Thompson's Manga: The Complete Guide is useful, useful crack.
Every manga published in English up through the last few months of 2007, reviewed, age-rated, and, what is far more important, with complete and accurate publishing data.
He *sorted out the various Gundam manga*. A task that should have been beyond human abilities. (There is a Gundam Wing-related manga called, and I am not making this up, Battlefield of Pacifists. I laugh every time I see that title.)
Anyway, we figured out which anthology of underground comics the Cat Soup manga was in, and got it, and Parasyte, and quantities of Hideki Hino, and a lot of Jiro Taniguchi, and it will keep me occupied a while, especially since I keep finding myself rereading Sugar Sugar Rune.
Sugar Sugar Rune continues to be dropped in from another dimension, in which magical-girl series are secretly scathing criticism of standard gender roles. Oh, Moyoco Anno, how are you so awesome?
And in scanslation I've been reading the new Watase Yuu, Sakura Gari. Which is... not a direction I had ever expected Watase Yuu to take, artistically. It's like... seriously, I think she's trying to be Yukio Mishima for a change, which is kind of freaky. Anyway, it's a historical yaoi, with a great deal of very careful accuracy in things like the clothes and the architecture and the political events, and the characters don't look a thing like any of her characters from other things (except for very brief moments), and there is no veneer of romantic comedy over the dark bits, and it's self-published because she has enough power to do that and keep her audience, and so she can be as explicit as she wants. Which... uh. I'm all for explicit, usually. It's very pretty? It's just, these people are in a Mishima novel and nothing possibly can end well ever, and also apparently she has spent the last ten years researching and writing and working on this manga, which is hopefully why it drips with what I can only call a kind of claustrophobic obsession. Frankly, this manga is more than a little creepy. It's like, imagine if Godchild were a) precisely accurately researched and b) deadly serious. And had actual sex. And Riff were actually a sweet little farmboy who has *no fucking idea what he is getting into*.
I mean, I keep wanting to scream at said farmboy 'Run away! Run away! The guy you have a crush on is having sex with his primary care physician, his accountant, a guy he keeps around just to have sex with, his lawyer, and his sister (okay, she started it and is kind of abusive about it), and then on weekends he dresses up as a woman and has sex with his alcoholic father, and you, in your total inability to parse interpersonal currents, have utterly failed to notice any of this! Run for the hills before he starts selling you at parties to prove to himself that he doesn't love you, which is an action I would not put it past him to seriously consider! Gah!'
Did I mention this thing is kind of creepy?
Still, I will probably keep reading it, out of morbid fascination, and because it is Watase Yuu and the art is spectacular, and because actually there hasn't been any non-consensual anything, it's only the power currents are horrible and everyone is having sex with the wrong people. (Where 'everyone' equals the guy the protagonist has a crush on and 'the wrong people' equals I believe the entire universe.) However, it is treading *very, very close* to my acceptable-reading threshold, and we shall see.
ETA: Sakura Gari scanslations at Watase's Sorai. I found this website rather confusing; the project list is a pulldown in the top left. There are only two chapters out at the moment, but the first is a hundred pages long and the second seventy. The third chapter was released in Japan Feb. 14th (wince), so should be out sometime here.
Every manga published in English up through the last few months of 2007, reviewed, age-rated, and, what is far more important, with complete and accurate publishing data.
He *sorted out the various Gundam manga*. A task that should have been beyond human abilities. (There is a Gundam Wing-related manga called, and I am not making this up, Battlefield of Pacifists. I laugh every time I see that title.)
Anyway, we figured out which anthology of underground comics the Cat Soup manga was in, and got it, and Parasyte, and quantities of Hideki Hino, and a lot of Jiro Taniguchi, and it will keep me occupied a while, especially since I keep finding myself rereading Sugar Sugar Rune.
Sugar Sugar Rune continues to be dropped in from another dimension, in which magical-girl series are secretly scathing criticism of standard gender roles. Oh, Moyoco Anno, how are you so awesome?
And in scanslation I've been reading the new Watase Yuu, Sakura Gari. Which is... not a direction I had ever expected Watase Yuu to take, artistically. It's like... seriously, I think she's trying to be Yukio Mishima for a change, which is kind of freaky. Anyway, it's a historical yaoi, with a great deal of very careful accuracy in things like the clothes and the architecture and the political events, and the characters don't look a thing like any of her characters from other things (except for very brief moments), and there is no veneer of romantic comedy over the dark bits, and it's self-published because she has enough power to do that and keep her audience, and so she can be as explicit as she wants. Which... uh. I'm all for explicit, usually. It's very pretty? It's just, these people are in a Mishima novel and nothing possibly can end well ever, and also apparently she has spent the last ten years researching and writing and working on this manga, which is hopefully why it drips with what I can only call a kind of claustrophobic obsession. Frankly, this manga is more than a little creepy. It's like, imagine if Godchild were a) precisely accurately researched and b) deadly serious. And had actual sex. And Riff were actually a sweet little farmboy who has *no fucking idea what he is getting into*.
I mean, I keep wanting to scream at said farmboy 'Run away! Run away! The guy you have a crush on is having sex with his primary care physician, his accountant, a guy he keeps around just to have sex with, his lawyer, and his sister (okay, she started it and is kind of abusive about it), and then on weekends he dresses up as a woman and has sex with his alcoholic father, and you, in your total inability to parse interpersonal currents, have utterly failed to notice any of this! Run for the hills before he starts selling you at parties to prove to himself that he doesn't love you, which is an action I would not put it past him to seriously consider! Gah!'
Did I mention this thing is kind of creepy?
Still, I will probably keep reading it, out of morbid fascination, and because it is Watase Yuu and the art is spectacular, and because actually there hasn't been any non-consensual anything, it's only the power currents are horrible and everyone is having sex with the wrong people. (Where 'everyone' equals the guy the protagonist has a crush on and 'the wrong people' equals I believe the entire universe.) However, it is treading *very, very close* to my acceptable-reading threshold, and we shall see.
ETA: Sakura Gari scanslations at Watase's Sorai. I found this website rather confusing; the project list is a pulldown in the top left. There are only two chapters out at the moment, but the first is a hundred pages long and the second seventy. The third chapter was released in Japan Feb. 14th (wince), so should be out sometime here.
