You're supposed to hate Yoko now. She's pathetic. By the end of this storyline, she's almost another person altogether. When I first watched the first disc, I hate all three of what seemed to be the main characters, but liked the music and was interested in the world, so I stuck it out a bit longer, and it ended up one of my favorite animes, and Yoko one of my favorite anime characters.
I'm not quite sure what's setting off Miaka/Yui comparisons for you (I suspect the same thing that makes me twitch when the smart/driven/ambitious/pretty girl is indicated to be the future Evil Other while the dim but cute and bubbly and/or tomboyish girl is wonderful and perfect) so all I'll say is that Asano is almost irrelevant to any problems between the two, and this storyline is almost as much about Sugimoto growing and learning to look beyond herself as it is Yoko doing the same.
Mostly it was the good but not necessarily bright girl vs. the power-hungry "friend" in a magical setting in which both are possibly touted as saviors of a certain faction. But I'm glad to hear it doesn't really go that way? (This is also based on hearsay, since I've never watched FY.)
(Err...FY has nostalgic value to me, but I suspect it'd annoy you.)
Hmm...it does have some elements of that, but handled in a completely different way. Like, Sugimoto is 100% justified in the "no, I'd be better at this than you!" at the beginning because Yoko is so pitiful. But she isn't power hungry so much as she wants to be someone important, and can't understand how someone as pathetic and unsuitable as Yoko could be special, while she, who is actually willing to step up to it, isn't "special."
I almost want to compare it to Priness Tutu, where it's just as important that Rue have a better life as it is the Ahiru have her story, though it's in very different ways.
Yoko's passivity is addressed as a product of her always trying to be what others expect her to be. I've never watched Fushigi Yuugi because I liked 12 Kingdoms and I've been told that Fushigi Yuugi's triteness would upset me.
I don't know how else to explain Juuni Kokki except to say you're supposed to dislike the main character and see her faults and then watch her pick herself up and actually do and learn and mature. The world and music intrigued me enough to keep watching.
I thought most of us who recced it had warned you that the main character starts off in a place where you wouldn't like her but that the journey is psychological as well as physical?
FY and 12k don't compare at all. I don't mean that as "one is better than the other" but more as "you might as well compare Ouran High School Host Club and Revolutionary Girl Utena, since both are set at elite schools and include genderbending." I encountered both (12k anime and FY manga) at about the same time, and it never occurred to me that they would be compared on any level until after I'd finished both. (Which was a couple years later.) The similarities begin and end with "modern schoolgirl finds herself in world based on Chinese mythology."
JK reminds me of why I fell in love with fantasy and why I wanted to be a fantasy writer when I grew up (still do). I love the smart twists on tropes. I love the mythology. I love the characters (their growth and pains and highs). I love the damn thing so much that I've scoured the internet for fan translations of the book and even found myself listening to a japanese podcast of a CD short story. Didn't understand a word of it, but recognized all the voices.
Yoko gets much better!! I find Twelve Kingdoms realistic in that Yoko is the chosen one, but she really has to adapt and grow up and conquer her inner self to be able to handle it, and when she does she really finds that this is the place for her and not our world.
Sugimoto... well, she is the version of the girl who always thought she was special and she will do anything to grasp that. (In the novels her two classmates do not even enter the Twelve Kingdoms) They document what happens when you can't adapt but stick with your blinders.
How to put this? 12K is an anime that is more like a book than a manga: the main character goes through a brutal character arc to grow and mature. In fact, you'll find that with many of the characters -- they're unlikeable early on but mature into awesomeness.
In fact, the anime *is* based on a novel series, the first two volumes of which are available in the United States. The books are hefty, but an amazingly quick read (for me at least). I have yet to watch the anime, but the "schoolmate" characters that get transported with her are, I believe, anime-only (unless they show up in later volumes, which I find unlikely).
I was annoyed by lead char, but stuck it out for a couple-three discs. We were really entertained by the fact that the series seemed to be out to overturn all the Fushigi Yuugi conventions, and it really kicks the whole "trust everyone" theme in the teeth not too much further along. We haven't gone back to it because it's pretty unrelieved drama, and we're just not in a space to cope with that -- we got distracted by FMA, which we started watching almost simultaneously, and which has heavy drama well seasoned with humor.
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I'm not quite sure what's setting off Miaka/Yui comparisons for you (I suspect the same thing that makes me twitch when the smart/driven/ambitious/pretty girl is indicated to be the future Evil Other while the dim but cute and bubbly and/or tomboyish girl is wonderful and perfect) so all I'll say is that Asano is almost irrelevant to any problems between the two, and this storyline is almost as much about Sugimoto growing and learning to look beyond herself as it is Yoko doing the same.
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Hmm...it does have some elements of that, but handled in a completely different way. Like, Sugimoto is 100% justified in the "no, I'd be better at this than you!" at the beginning because Yoko is so pitiful. But she isn't power hungry so much as she wants to be someone important, and can't understand how someone as pathetic and unsuitable as Yoko could be special, while she, who is actually willing to step up to it, isn't "special."
I almost want to compare it to Priness Tutu, where it's just as important that Rue have a better life as it is the Ahiru have her story, though it's in very different ways.
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I don't know how else to explain Juuni Kokki except to say you're supposed to dislike the main character and see her faults and then watch her pick herself up and actually do and learn and mature. The world and music intrigued me enough to keep watching.
I thought most of us who recced it had warned you that the main character starts off in a place where you wouldn't like her but that the journey is psychological as well as physical?
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Sugimoto... well, she is the version of the girl who always thought she was special and she will do anything to grasp that. (In the novels her two classmates do not even enter the Twelve Kingdoms) They document what happens when you can't adapt but stick with your blinders.
Please give it some more episodes.
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