Manga manga manga
(Ced tells me I should make more RL posts while he's gone so this will resemble a proper blog useful for keeping tabs on person with. Unfortunately this post is not one of them. XD)
I'd gotten tired of having odd volumes of everything (when I go to the bookstore I typically buy the most recent tankoubon out I haven't read, because I can't remember if I own it or if I read it in scanlation or if I have the Japanese but not the French/English or what), so on Monday I went with a list and my credit card. XD Now I have:
I'm really liking Bleach but then I've always liked Bleach - like Hikaru no Go I took to it at first sight, for the art. Now that I own the sequential volumes I'm going to re-read it from the beginning, as I think it lost overall emotional impact from the way I was reading a volume every few months... I have a sort of perverse urge to declare the series a ship-free zone insofar as I'm concerned, much as Kenshin was, but there's no sense in purposefully limiting one's opportunities, is there. XD It has something to do with the predominating friendship theme. Okay, all WJ series have "friendship" as a theme, but often it's a bit... abstracted? Like unrequited love when the person in question's moved to another city, an emotion still capable of breaking your heart but divorced from the daily reality of, I don't know, hanging out between classes or attending concerts together or bumming around playing video games. 'Nakama' in WJ is like as not 'a person you can trust to watch your back in a fight and vice-versa', but that's only one definition of a true friend, even taken figuratively. I think? I think. If you've gone through some hard or intense times with a given person at your side, you're going to have a special bond. But there's nothing shallow about the hanging-out-for-the-sake-of-hanging-out kind of friendship. It takes longer, is all. A human being is debatably comprised of his or her memories; anyone who takes part in my memories is a part of who I am, and I am a part of who they are. Nothing spectacular needs to occur. It builds up with the simple repetition of simple presence, you and the other bearing witness to your respective passages through time. The bearing witness part is important to humans, somehow: when we say "Remember when...?" we need to hear someone answer, "Yes, I do."
This is what GSeed tells us about Kira and Athrun, as opposed to showing. Bleach shows it, and it does make a difference.
I think all this ties in with my obsession with "texture" in fiction. ^^;
I'd gotten tired of having odd volumes of everything (when I go to the bookstore I typically buy the most recent tankoubon out I haven't read, because I can't remember if I own it or if I read it in scanlation or if I have the Japanese but not the French/English or what), so on Monday I went with a list and my credit card. XD Now I have:
- Bleach up to vol.8. Eight is all that's out in French, meaning that uh, if anyone happens to have scans of chapters 71 and up lying around somewhere. *coughs*
- Nana up to vol.10. I'm going to give up buying it in Japanese, I think, because it's so hard to read. ^^; Like, in terms of sheer difficulty of comprehension my top three are Trigun, Nana and Peace Maker Kurogane, in that order, all of which are quite a bit harder to read than Mirage of Blaze or indeed Murakami Haruki. Maybe it's just me? I mean, I'm a lot better at kanji than I am at slang or dialect or grammar.
- XXXHolic up to vol.3. Couldn't help buying vol.2 in French, was seduced by the purple-edged paper.
- Tsubasa 1 to go with the XXXHolic 2. Must catch my sister in the evening so I can pimp it to her. :0
I'm really liking Bleach but then I've always liked Bleach - like Hikaru no Go I took to it at first sight, for the art. Now that I own the sequential volumes I'm going to re-read it from the beginning, as I think it lost overall emotional impact from the way I was reading a volume every few months... I have a sort of perverse urge to declare the series a ship-free zone insofar as I'm concerned, much as Kenshin was, but there's no sense in purposefully limiting one's opportunities, is there. XD It has something to do with the predominating friendship theme. Okay, all WJ series have "friendship" as a theme, but often it's a bit... abstracted? Like unrequited love when the person in question's moved to another city, an emotion still capable of breaking your heart but divorced from the daily reality of, I don't know, hanging out between classes or attending concerts together or bumming around playing video games. 'Nakama' in WJ is like as not 'a person you can trust to watch your back in a fight and vice-versa', but that's only one definition of a true friend, even taken figuratively. I think? I think. If you've gone through some hard or intense times with a given person at your side, you're going to have a special bond. But there's nothing shallow about the hanging-out-for-the-sake-of-hanging-out kind of friendship. It takes longer, is all. A human being is debatably comprised of his or her memories; anyone who takes part in my memories is a part of who I am, and I am a part of who they are. Nothing spectacular needs to occur. It builds up with the simple repetition of simple presence, you and the other bearing witness to your respective passages through time. The bearing witness part is important to humans, somehow: when we say "Remember when...?" we need to hear someone answer, "Yes, I do."
This is what GSeed tells us about Kira and Athrun, as opposed to showing. Bleach shows it, and it does make a difference.
I think all this ties in with my obsession with "texture" in fiction. ^^;