recent manga
Still have to write up Kame no Ongaeshi night #2, oops. Have also started slowly and painfully reconstructing lost remix fic. We'll see how far that goes. In the meantime, manga talk.
xxxHolic
Now that I've read volumes 10+ more or less back to back I can put my finger on what was bothering me that I couldn't pin down as I read during serialization. The pacing and tone changes so that my original thought was that it's almost like two different yet related series, but really -- okay, remember how back when Tsubasa first came out everyone was all, I can't believe they're publishing commercial serialized doujinshi, wtf, remember that? At that point xxxHolic seemed fairly self-contained, but now it's entered the doujinshi stage. XD; It works better for me if I do conceptualize it as an original series up to about the window incident, and from there on as part of a doujinshi series where Tsubasa is SIDE A and 'Holic is SIDE B. XD Prior to that point, the events of Tsubasa had very little effect on 'Holic -- there was, what, a brief appearance by Syaoran and Sakura but though Yuuko frequently popped up in Tsubasa there wasn't much reverse bleed. Starting with the aftermath of the window incident, with the third of Watanuki's saviors being (one of the) Syaoran(s) and the reasoning behind that, everything's gotten all mixed together and the underlying plot impetus seems to be providing a (vague, tantalizing, occasionally red herring-ish) explanation for some of the massively tangled Tsubasa plot threads. I may be making it sound worse than it is; obviously I still like it enough to, you know, buy five volumes and read them back to back.
Re: tonal change: well obviousy *recent massive spoilers* necessitate a different approach, but even before that. I miss the self-contained episodes from earlier on in the series, that were either just-this-side-of-cynical moralizing or heavily atmospheric and supernatural... I said to an flister recently, thinking of what I think of in my head as "series one", that if I had to pick a manga to read to evoke Japanese midsummer this would be it, all sweltering heat and fireflies and ghost stories and incense. Which reminds me, I was feeling the 和風 less, too, with the most recent volumes, but I'm willing to blame that on the fact I was on an airplane. XD My problems with the pacing stem I think in part from how so many of the magazine splash pages (I assume that's what they are) are reproduced in black and white in the tankoubon -- it breaks up my reading flow in a way that makes it feel like the story itself is stuttering.
But man are the physical books ever aesthetically pleasing. Whoever does the book design (Igarashi?) gets several gold stars. The luxurious cover art + colored page edging (heck, even the paper quality) make them look reeeeally nice lined up on one's desk/bookshelf/floor. Also I still like art a lot. Not "pretty" like X or Clover is/was) pretty, but used to excellent overall effect. (This is hammered home by comparing Holic!Yuuko to Tsubasa!Yuuko. ^^;)
Now for the spoilery part for both 'Holic and Tsubasa, so flee while ye may:
Let me just say at the beginning, I've given up on understanding what the hell is going on in Tsubasa (or went on, or was going on until time stopped, or whatever) until it's all over and done with. I need to sit down and draw a Sakuras-and-Syaorans diagram or something because I've lost track. But let's assumed I have at least the Watanuki connections understood correctly.
Yuuko: ...it's amazing the difference the Tsubasa art style + shoujo backstory has on one's perception of Yuuko. (I have more than once mistaken her for later-X-era Arashi upon first glance, actually. Er.) I -- I feel vaguely disappointed that she's been granting wishes solely to save Sakura. I mean, it's not that I wasn't expecting some sort of reason behind the existence of the shop beyond er caprice, but it seems so.... altruistic. XD; This is what I mean about the art style, actually, it's all "sad wistful beauty" instead of "slightly mad dimensional witch" so I instinctively react to the tragic doom with "...really? really?" I found the scenes between Yuuko and Watanuki in, what was it, volume 14? 13? where he talks about her wishes? -- much more affecting than, well, most of the recent chapters of Tsubasa and aforementioned backstory explanations. (Though I never say no to Yuuko/Clow... it's just how they're doing it! argh! who needs another tragic doomed woman saved from death -- with inevitable consequences -- by awesome magic wielder! ...This opinion is subject to revision upon further backstory revelations, like how exactly they knew each other and why she was dying.)
Back to 'Holic: I will be highly disappointed if CLAMP doesn't pull out some crazy backstory/plot twist about Doumeki. Besides whatever he does with that mysterious egg. He's the only major character who has yet to reveal any surprises and in CLAMP world that just won't do. I started to wonder if there was any possibility he knew Watanuki in some other context, whether he remember it himself or not....? Given that the specifics of Watanuki's past are as hazy as ever. (How old was he when he agreed to give up his memories, and in which universe had he been living, etc.?)
(The more I think about it, the more the original series -> doujinshi model makes sense, down to the part where the doujinshika explains away the fact that Watanuki & co. have been through like four different springs yet are still in high school as the effect of a significant underlying plot point. XD)
***
NANA
............*hyperventilates*
It's one thing to know someone is almost certainly going to die, one thing to know Ren in particular is almost certainly going to die, and quite another thing to see Ren's expensive little sports car totaled against a brick wall. Something about that panel made me shiver all over. If I had to name my favorite characters I probably wouldn't include Ren but that Yazawa Ai, she knows what she's doing. o_o
She didn't let up for the rest of the volume, either. The scenes where they didn't show Ren's body -- well. The imagination is perfectly capable of compensating. Twitch. Twitch. ....sdjkal;dsd poor Nobu. ;_; It could have been so easy to do this storyline wrong, too melodramatic or too purple, and instead Yazawa knocked it out of the park, imho. I mean -- for this series, compulsive desire to find out what happens keeps me reading as much as any deep emotional investment in the characters (though I like most of them and I'm interested by all of them), but at one point I realized I was physically hunching my shoulders as I read from the sheer emotional intensity. Ahaha. Also, inquiring minds would like to know what's going to happen to whassisname, the driver of the other car, when Yasu figures out what happened. ...someone is going to figure that out, right? That they saw yet fled the scene and lied about losing sight of Ren, I mean. Maybe the paparazzi photographer guy, whose character arc I am liking a lot. Of course if you follow someone around 24/7 you start to develop some kind of attachment to them (you know, like idol fans do). Really liked that he was first on the scene, and his reaction. I can't have been the only one thinking shades of Diana Spencer, right?
The newest round of future flash-forwards: Nobu's took over the ryokan?? Nobu probably is someone I'd list as one of my Nana favorites; I know this isn't a series you should develop ships for unless you like getting your hopes crushed, but I'd be lying if a tiiiiiny part of me wasn't traitorously shipping Nobu/Hachi still. >_> (Just like a tiny traitorous part of me loves Shin/Reira even though it's more or less been shot down for good. Their meeting this chapter, omg, why don't you just break my heart. ;_; While we're talking about shipping preferences, I would also take Yasu/Nana -- or, uh, Yasu/most others -- over Yasu/Miu in a heartbeat. I never warmed up to Miu, sorry to say. ANYWAY.) I'm confused by this talk about a four person family, though. There's two children, Satsuki and Ren, and... I must have read about Ren at some point and forgotten, right, this isn't a new revelation? He's living with Takumi but whose er child is he...?
I have no idea how on earth Yazawa Ai is going to tie this up, and that's part of why I enjoy Nana so much. *_*
(...does anyone know where I might find recent chapter scans?)
Edit: Also I would be very much obliged if anyone could do me the favor of uploading Superpitcher's "Happiness (Lawrence Remix)" as my .mp3 is trapped on the Dead Laptop and the song's been stuck in my head ever since it came up in (LJ) conversation this morning. Got it, thank you Mysterious Email Benefactor... ;D
xxxHolic
Now that I've read volumes 10+ more or less back to back I can put my finger on what was bothering me that I couldn't pin down as I read during serialization. The pacing and tone changes so that my original thought was that it's almost like two different yet related series, but really -- okay, remember how back when Tsubasa first came out everyone was all, I can't believe they're publishing commercial serialized doujinshi, wtf, remember that? At that point xxxHolic seemed fairly self-contained, but now it's entered the doujinshi stage. XD; It works better for me if I do conceptualize it as an original series up to about the window incident, and from there on as part of a doujinshi series where Tsubasa is SIDE A and 'Holic is SIDE B. XD Prior to that point, the events of Tsubasa had very little effect on 'Holic -- there was, what, a brief appearance by Syaoran and Sakura but though Yuuko frequently popped up in Tsubasa there wasn't much reverse bleed. Starting with the aftermath of the window incident, with the third of Watanuki's saviors being (one of the) Syaoran(s) and the reasoning behind that, everything's gotten all mixed together and the underlying plot impetus seems to be providing a (vague, tantalizing, occasionally red herring-ish) explanation for some of the massively tangled Tsubasa plot threads. I may be making it sound worse than it is; obviously I still like it enough to, you know, buy five volumes and read them back to back.
Re: tonal change: well obviousy *recent massive spoilers* necessitate a different approach, but even before that. I miss the self-contained episodes from earlier on in the series, that were either just-this-side-of-cynical moralizing or heavily atmospheric and supernatural... I said to an flister recently, thinking of what I think of in my head as "series one", that if I had to pick a manga to read to evoke Japanese midsummer this would be it, all sweltering heat and fireflies and ghost stories and incense. Which reminds me, I was feeling the 和風 less, too, with the most recent volumes, but I'm willing to blame that on the fact I was on an airplane. XD My problems with the pacing stem I think in part from how so many of the magazine splash pages (I assume that's what they are) are reproduced in black and white in the tankoubon -- it breaks up my reading flow in a way that makes it feel like the story itself is stuttering.
But man are the physical books ever aesthetically pleasing. Whoever does the book design (Igarashi?) gets several gold stars. The luxurious cover art + colored page edging (heck, even the paper quality) make them look reeeeally nice lined up on one's desk/bookshelf/floor. Also I still like art a lot. Not "pretty" like X or Clover is/was) pretty, but used to excellent overall effect. (This is hammered home by comparing Holic!Yuuko to Tsubasa!Yuuko. ^^;)
Now for the spoilery part for both 'Holic and Tsubasa, so flee while ye may:
Let me just say at the beginning, I've given up on understanding what the hell is going on in Tsubasa (or went on, or was going on until time stopped, or whatever) until it's all over and done with. I need to sit down and draw a Sakuras-and-Syaorans diagram or something because I've lost track. But let's assumed I have at least the Watanuki connections understood correctly.
Yuuko: ...it's amazing the difference the Tsubasa art style + shoujo backstory has on one's perception of Yuuko. (I have more than once mistaken her for later-X-era Arashi upon first glance, actually. Er.) I -- I feel vaguely disappointed that she's been granting wishes solely to save Sakura. I mean, it's not that I wasn't expecting some sort of reason behind the existence of the shop beyond er caprice, but it seems so.... altruistic. XD; This is what I mean about the art style, actually, it's all "sad wistful beauty" instead of "slightly mad dimensional witch" so I instinctively react to the tragic doom with "...really? really?" I found the scenes between Yuuko and Watanuki in, what was it, volume 14? 13? where he talks about her wishes? -- much more affecting than, well, most of the recent chapters of Tsubasa and aforementioned backstory explanations. (Though I never say no to Yuuko/Clow... it's just how they're doing it! argh! who needs another tragic doomed woman saved from death -- with inevitable consequences -- by awesome magic wielder! ...This opinion is subject to revision upon further backstory revelations, like how exactly they knew each other and why she was dying.)
Back to 'Holic: I will be highly disappointed if CLAMP doesn't pull out some crazy backstory/plot twist about Doumeki. Besides whatever he does with that mysterious egg. He's the only major character who has yet to reveal any surprises and in CLAMP world that just won't do. I started to wonder if there was any possibility he knew Watanuki in some other context, whether he remember it himself or not....? Given that the specifics of Watanuki's past are as hazy as ever. (How old was he when he agreed to give up his memories, and in which universe had he been living, etc.?)
(The more I think about it, the more the original series -> doujinshi model makes sense, down to the part where the doujinshika explains away the fact that Watanuki & co. have been through like four different springs yet are still in high school as the effect of a significant underlying plot point. XD)
***
NANA
............*hyperventilates*
It's one thing to know someone is almost certainly going to die, one thing to know Ren in particular is almost certainly going to die, and quite another thing to see Ren's expensive little sports car totaled against a brick wall. Something about that panel made me shiver all over. If I had to name my favorite characters I probably wouldn't include Ren but that Yazawa Ai, she knows what she's doing. o_o
She didn't let up for the rest of the volume, either. The scenes where they didn't show Ren's body -- well. The imagination is perfectly capable of compensating. Twitch. Twitch. ....sdjkal;dsd poor Nobu. ;_; It could have been so easy to do this storyline wrong, too melodramatic or too purple, and instead Yazawa knocked it out of the park, imho. I mean -- for this series, compulsive desire to find out what happens keeps me reading as much as any deep emotional investment in the characters (though I like most of them and I'm interested by all of them), but at one point I realized I was physically hunching my shoulders as I read from the sheer emotional intensity. Ahaha. Also, inquiring minds would like to know what's going to happen to whassisname, the driver of the other car, when Yasu figures out what happened. ...someone is going to figure that out, right? That they saw yet fled the scene and lied about losing sight of Ren, I mean. Maybe the paparazzi photographer guy, whose character arc I am liking a lot. Of course if you follow someone around 24/7 you start to develop some kind of attachment to them (you know, like idol fans do). Really liked that he was first on the scene, and his reaction. I can't have been the only one thinking shades of Diana Spencer, right?
The newest round of future flash-forwards: Nobu's took over the ryokan?? Nobu probably is someone I'd list as one of my Nana favorites; I know this isn't a series you should develop ships for unless you like getting your hopes crushed, but I'd be lying if a tiiiiiny part of me wasn't traitorously shipping Nobu/Hachi still. >_> (Just like a tiny traitorous part of me loves Shin/Reira even though it's more or less been shot down for good. Their meeting this chapter, omg, why don't you just break my heart. ;_; While we're talking about shipping preferences, I would also take Yasu/Nana -- or, uh, Yasu/most others -- over Yasu/Miu in a heartbeat. I never warmed up to Miu, sorry to say. ANYWAY.) I'm confused by this talk about a four person family, though. There's two children, Satsuki and Ren, and... I must have read about Ren at some point and forgotten, right, this isn't a new revelation? He's living with Takumi but whose er child is he...?
I have no idea how on earth Yazawa Ai is going to tie this up, and that's part of why I enjoy Nana so much. *_*
(...does anyone know where I might find recent chapter scans?)
Edit: Also I would be very much obliged if anyone could do me the favor of uploading Superpitcher's "Happiness (Lawrence Remix)" as my .mp3 is trapped on the Dead Laptop and the song's been stuck in my head ever since it came up in (LJ) conversation this morning. Got it, thank you Mysterious Email Benefactor... ;D