What goes up must meme down...
bakashoujiki asked me the following questions:
(1) Do use an instant messenger?
(2) Do you prefer YGO manga or anime? Why and such.
(3) What sort of things draw you into a manga?
(4) What are your feelings on pop-up books?
(5) Who are your favorite authors and why?
My answers:
(1) Yep! AOL: sarasusa
(2) Surprisingly difficult to answer.
I love the care and--I don't know--cleanliness of line evident in the drawing of the manga. I also like how it started out dealing with a variety of games, not just stupid ol' Duel Monsters. I have, however, gotten used to the anime-style character design, so early!manga Yuugi looks too exaggeratedly childish in comparison.
I own both the first anime series of Yu-Gi-Oh!--never released in the U.S., and neither subtitled nor dubbed (which makes it a bit of a challenge to understand)--and the Hong Kong-subtitled version of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (featuring some extremely amusing "translations"). I feel great affection for both series, even though the dueling aspect of the second series often bores me silly.
On the rare occasions when I've seen the American dub, I either laugh or wince--the voices sound All Wrong (one in particular), and the sanitizing cuts/changes to both art and plot are disturbing.
I actually enjoy the odd amalgamation of all three--the manga and both animes--more than I'd enjoy reading/viewing one independently of the others. But I could happily have done without the Yu-Gi-Oh! movie.
(3) Each manga has its own special blend of factors that draws me in.
*The artist's sense of humor, both literary and visual, is a big sell. I love, for example, how Greenwood's Yukie Nasu inserts herself into the narrative, interrupting characters when they begin to point out plot holes. And Bleach's Tite Kubo has a wonderful practice of sandwiching humorous or poignant vignettes, in the form of a tiny rough sketch, between chapters.
*I'm a sucker for flawed-yet-sympathetic characters, especially when we can watch them grow through the course of a story. The feckless Yusaku Godai of Maison Ikkoku; bratty Hikaru Shindo of Hikaru no Go; antisocial Ichigo Kurosaki of Bleach; plenty of others... (But I've got to admit that among the things I enjoy most in Rumiko Takahashi's manga are the characters who *don't* evolve: Yotsuya the mischief-minded voyeur with his poetic streak, cowardly Myouga the flea, and more.)
*I love manga artists that succeed in capturing mood and/or moment. (Take the point in the first volume of Banana Fish when curious Eiji asks to hold Ash's gun--we're given the chance to see it from several perspectives, and to notice its significance without too much in the way of words being thrown at us.)
(4) Popups and other movable books are a wonderful genre that's a headache/poor investment for public libraries. (The latter's particularly true of popups intended for younger children. A little careless handling by one patron and the book's effectively ruined for other patrons: the tongue that waggles is gone, the monster's jaw is torn off, whatever.)
(5) My favorite authors are many and different, depending on what I'm in the mood for. Some all-time loves are Rosemary Sutcliff, Hester Burton, Barbara Willard and Jill Paton Walsh for historical novels; Lloyd Alexander especially for his Westmark trilogy; Ursula Le Guin, for Earthsea; J. R. R. Tolkien, for the world of Middle-Earth. But there are sooo many more! Basically, if a book makes me feel deeply in touch with a character, place, or historical moment, it's likely to win me over.
I finally laid hands on a digital camera and took the photos I promised as part of this meme from...egads, October of last year.
For _hisgirlfriday_, who wrote: "Take a picture of an apple. Or any kind of fruit, really."
Cherchez la pomme!
There are even more, plus some I took for misura, but apparently I haven't uploaded them yet. In the fullness of time, & c., & c.