(Untitled)

Feb 17, 2009 16:10


{...I think I'm listening to Jeff Buckley for the first time. Is this possible? I know the name like it's important...}

So I've been falling for Shoujo Rom-Com (that may sound like a redundancy, but bear with me) lately.

Another instance of me succumbing to a love that brands me for an Uber-Nerd. I'm not complaining...it's more of a self- ( Read more... )

manga, review, japan

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rhinemouse March 4 2009, 02:35:04 UTC
(Roy and Riza are just one of the awesomest things ever, aren't they?)

Well, the FMA anime is one of my most favorite things ever, so I might not be the best person to give you recs... Also, lately I haven't been doing much lately but fondling my volumes of Fruits Basket and cursing Tokyopop's glacial publication schedule. But.

(1) Last week I spent about six hours mainlining Bleach chapters, so I guess I have to recommend it. Hm. I think it has some strong faults, like a way-too-big cast of characters, and fights that go on, and on, and on--also, the author cannot resist drawing women with bosoms so large it feels kind of exploitive. So I cannot exactly recommend it with a whole heart. On the other hand, every time I go back to catch up I get sucked in, and I adore some of the characters (RENJI MY LOVE!) so . . . yeah.

Incidentally, this latest reading of Bleach has made me realize just how shamefully much I like the shounen fighting style. I mean, I still totally abhore the pause-in-the-middle-of-our-fight-to-explain-our-techniques trope, and when a fight lasts more than two chapters I tend to start skimming. But something about the rhythm of shounen fights--you know--

"Ultimate attack!"
"Haha, you barely touched me! See my ULTIMATE ATTACK!"
"Oh, but you see, that was not my *real* ultimate attack. See my SUPREME ULTIMATE ATTACK OF DOOMY DOOM! . . . Why are you smiling?"
"Because I know something you don't know . . . my weapon has an ULTIMATE FORM!"
". . . Did I mention that my BODY has an ULTIMATE FORM?"

--at some point, that pattern got engraved on my brain, and it's now supremely satisfying to read it, however much I intellectually think it's cheesy. (I try to write it too, woe.)

(2) I retain a goofy fondness for Alice 19th, though I think the first three volumes were better than the closing four--I think it was at its best with the high school hijinks, not the Epic Battle Against Evil. (Also, it was really annoying that in a series which had truth and the power of words as its main theme, the heroine spent the first couple wishing she had the strength to say that she "loved" the hero, when quite clearly she just had a crush on him. I think Watase did a pretty good job of showing their relationship turning into real love over the course of the series, but to call it "love" at the beginning, when she had never had a conversation with him? Um, no.)

(3) As long as we're on Watase--Fushigi Yuugi Genbu Kaiden is pretty fun shoujo fluff, with a significantly more likable heroine than the original FY, and at least so far it's avoided using rape as a melodramatic plot device (thank you, merciful heavens).

(4) I rather liked Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle for a while--if nothing else, it has gorgeous gorgeous art--but, um. While I admire the heights of cracktasticness it attains, some of the plot twists really made me emotionally disconnected from the characters. I'm still reading scans because I want to know what insane thing CLAMP will do next, but I'm not really cheering for anyone anymore.

(5) I haven't read all of Koukou Debut/High School Debut, but the opening volumes are awesome: she got all her ideas of romance and human interaction from manga! He has no people skills at all! Together, they have the most hilarious, functionally non-functional relationship I have ever seen.

(6) It's been a while since I read it, so my memories are getting vague, but the author of Skip Beat previously did a manga called Tokyo Crazy Paradise, which I recall liking rather well. It was a set in a future dystopian Tokyo; the heroine's parents raised her as a boy to protect her, and she gets in debt to her childhood friend, one of the biggest yakuza bosses in Tokyo (but they're nice yakuza...or something), so she has to become his bodyguard, and of course lots of fighting and romance and cross-dressing hijinks ensure. I don't belive it's been licensed; when I read it, the final chapters weren't even scanlated, though I did manage to track down text-only translations.

(Curse this meddling character limit!...)

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idiosyncreant March 10 2009, 02:58:57 UTC
I get kind of tired of the fighting part of shounen (though I don't have any objections to it), so maybe I'll be avoiding Bleach?

The cheesy trope I know is bad and yet am drawn to, and would love to use (...again. There, I've said it) is the whole physical-contact-by-chance thing. Having to carry a wounded person. (The reversal on that in Ever After *got me*.)

Fushigi Yuugi is actually the second comic I read. I read a whole spate of the beginning ones, and then skipped to the end, because my friend was moving back home (from Japan). I got tired of the walking-in-on-her-naked theme. (I got tired of that in Inuyasha, too, though that was more like a phase than a theme...a phase that got resurrected every once in a while...okay, so I just put up with it.)

I'm definitely going to have to look at Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, because that just grabs me, flaws revealed and all.

The other ones sound likely to, I'll let you know how I do.

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rhinemouse March 10 2009, 06:10:54 UTC
Yeeeah... If you don't like lengthy fights, you should probably skip Bleach. I seem to recall that at the beginning, the fights weren't too long, but once the mytharc kicked in and everybody started getting power-ups, they just got longer and loooonger.

The cheesy tropes I love are legion, sadly . . . I like the accidental physical contact too. And the accidentally getting handcuffed/chained up/otherwise constrained together. And the have-to-pretend-to-be-romantically-involved. And the crazy cross-dressing hijinks, especially if they involve multiple other mistaken identities, are always welcome.

(For that matter: falling in love whilst sneaking around in alternate identities, with the attendant angst. I will never get enough of that one. Nor, um, pretty much every crazy rom-com trope ever, except the evil rival. I like my rivals likable and complex, thank you very much.)

Tsubasa didn't grab me until about volume 6 or 7, and then I was really into it for a while, until the stuff vaguely alluded to above happened . . . I would be curious to hear what you think of it. (Though if I were going to discuss it, I would have to reread a whole bunch and actually remember it. Like, I don't think I fully understood Faye's complicated backstory of doom even when I read it, and now my memory of it has mostly faded into "ANGST ANGST COMPLICATED ANGST and then they went on to a new world.") I will say that, depending on how they end the story, I might feel a lot better about what came before--right now I feel like there's been too much crack for the sake of crack, but if they manage to justify it in the end, it would make something pretty cool.

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idiosyncreant March 10 2009, 16:12:20 UTC
Aaah, yeah. I agree about the evil-rival. I haven't even seen it that much, and it makes me grit my teeth.

Also, my trope-loves are likewise legion.

Have you read Shinigami Lovers? The whole little series is on MangaToushoukan in scanlation. Yes, I read it. Because, yes, I thought that premise sounded promising. Chained to a Death God!

I am a total Beast/Beauty fan, and it goes to the immortal/mortal pairings, too. Though if like in Tinker (Wen Spencer) there is *no* real development of heart to the romance, meh meh MEH.

Actually, I think I'm going to give myself the pejorative "runs-with-tropes" because I'm always being inspired to try things people have done to death, as a challenge!

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rhinemouse March 11 2009, 02:04:29 UTC
I have not read Shinigami Lovers, but your summary makes me need to read it right now. Immortal/mortal pairings aren't my very favorite--that would probably be the pairings defined primarily by duty/loyalty, á la Roy and Riza--but they're really up there, and anything that contains that level of forced-to-stick-together-ness . . . !

I want to be known as "runs-with-tropes" too!--I pretty much spend my days criticizing old, tired tropes I see in other people's novels and then scheming ways to put them in mine.

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