Manga Catch-up: Gakuen Polizi
After taking much interest in two of Milk Morinaga's "girls' love" manga series, I was more than ready to start reading another one, and one Seven Seas was now publishing in regular-thickness volumes as well. As I bought the first volume of "Gakuen Polizi," though, I did notice a few comments that the flirty, slashy preliminaries seemed less undeniable to start with, and I suppose I decided to wait until I had the second volume as well for a bit more impact. Once that had been published, I didn't quite get around to the series right away, and then I realised there weren't any more volumes being solicited...
Stuck remembering poor-selling manga series I'd been left hanging on in years gone by, I left the two volumes for quite a while. One day, though (after having started reading three other "girls' love" manga series and posting about one of them), I'd read my way through a great deal of the other manga I'd managed to pile up, and starting anything else left would mean having to get through something longer. I decided to begin Gakuen Polizi at last. There were lurking thoughts, though, that depending on what side of the Pacific things had been left hanging I might wind up digging for however much of a continuation there was...
Milk Morinaga's artwork was as pleasant as ever, in a way I can't quite quantify; it's on the "cute" side of attractive, perhaps, although not as "cute" as some styles can get. My own opinions on recalling those old impressions of the series as "fluffy fun" were soon developing, however. While the conceit of the story had two high school students be official police agents with official police badges, the things they wound up investigating did seem the sort of stuff "amateur detectives" in another story would get involved with. The author's note at the end of the first volume talked about the concept of "whipping out a police badge" being compelling in itself; perhaps so. In any case, I was picking up on the character development of the typically mismatched partners (one over-enthusiastic and one a damaged veteran whose past fills in over the series), but also getting the sense it didn't seem to me like this amounted to "starting to pair them off." It did bring to mind all the times I'd watched other people getting excited about anime series and thought "the slashy innuendo may matter to you, but somehow the ostensible larger plot still seems adequate in itself for me."
I pushed on into the fateful second volume, aware I was getting closer to the moment I was expecting to leave me hanging. The cases were getting a bit more serious, and now there did seem some innuendo I couldn't avoid picking up, and yet now it was somehow "late enough" it "felt as gratuitous as any other 'bait.'" Then, all of a sudden I was looking at a chapter's title page labelled "Final Chapter," and that was a surprise. Manga series can be wrapped up at any moment, and this one didn't seem to be coming to a screeching halt, but I suppose the two unread volumes hadn't provoked thoughts they'd be "complete in themselves." The blurb on the back of the second volume could certainly have mentioned something, perhaps. I finished the series very conscious of all the time I'd waited on a mere impression, but I suppose the wait did make it easier to fill out a post about the whole experience.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/276833.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.
Stuck remembering poor-selling manga series I'd been left hanging on in years gone by, I left the two volumes for quite a while. One day, though (after having started reading three other "girls' love" manga series and posting about one of them), I'd read my way through a great deal of the other manga I'd managed to pile up, and starting anything else left would mean having to get through something longer. I decided to begin Gakuen Polizi at last. There were lurking thoughts, though, that depending on what side of the Pacific things had been left hanging I might wind up digging for however much of a continuation there was...
Milk Morinaga's artwork was as pleasant as ever, in a way I can't quite quantify; it's on the "cute" side of attractive, perhaps, although not as "cute" as some styles can get. My own opinions on recalling those old impressions of the series as "fluffy fun" were soon developing, however. While the conceit of the story had two high school students be official police agents with official police badges, the things they wound up investigating did seem the sort of stuff "amateur detectives" in another story would get involved with. The author's note at the end of the first volume talked about the concept of "whipping out a police badge" being compelling in itself; perhaps so. In any case, I was picking up on the character development of the typically mismatched partners (one over-enthusiastic and one a damaged veteran whose past fills in over the series), but also getting the sense it didn't seem to me like this amounted to "starting to pair them off." It did bring to mind all the times I'd watched other people getting excited about anime series and thought "the slashy innuendo may matter to you, but somehow the ostensible larger plot still seems adequate in itself for me."
I pushed on into the fateful second volume, aware I was getting closer to the moment I was expecting to leave me hanging. The cases were getting a bit more serious, and now there did seem some innuendo I couldn't avoid picking up, and yet now it was somehow "late enough" it "felt as gratuitous as any other 'bait.'" Then, all of a sudden I was looking at a chapter's title page labelled "Final Chapter," and that was a surprise. Manga series can be wrapped up at any moment, and this one didn't seem to be coming to a screeching halt, but I suppose the two unread volumes hadn't provoked thoughts they'd be "complete in themselves." The blurb on the back of the second volume could certainly have mentioned something, perhaps. I finished the series very conscious of all the time I'd waited on a mere impression, but I suppose the wait did make it easier to fill out a post about the whole experience.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/276833.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.