Anime notes continue

[petronia]

Hey, the Pony Girl's found Prince of Tennis! (No, this isn't a bad thing. XD Just that she's one of those fandom people who are, ah, easily remembered - if we were all music scenesters she'd have a hit song written about her, like Franz Ferdinand's Michael or Jacqueline.)

Watched Peace Maker Kurogane until bad files foiled me again - that is, up to 19. Wah, angsty voice-acting. ^^; I read this part in Chinese, so Susumu and Akesato's dialects never registered very well - you know how you hear dialogue in your head when you read? I'm not a good enough Japanese speaker that I can mentally reproduce the "sound" of Kansai tone variants. (And I have to ask. Does anyone understand what was going on with those filler eps? ^^; I mean, what was it about? Who were those people? Or is there no significance and the animators just pulled a scrap of plot out of a bottom drawer?

It is so sad (in a not-really-sad sort of way) that the chronology doesn't allow for Itou Kashitarou to be there, even though it apparently allows for Sakamoto Ryouma and wacky onmyouji spells. I mean, they're obviously not afraid of cranking up the ghei factor needlessly or anything...)

Other series: Monster should download be subbed come out on TV faster. ...Yeah. And I think I'm getting weirdly addicted to Kyou Kara Maou. It gives me the feeling that I'm watching Fushigi Yuugi all over again (the Fluxblog dude's words on Bis come to mind: "I realise this may be a nightmare for some of you but that's because you're being very borecore"). I need to get mah homies together and screen this show. It's such an indictment against the idea of fangirls ever having sons... Though I find I have a real positive liking for Yuuri, because he's so normal. I mean, think about it: the stereotypical shoujo heroine is supposed to be LCD and normal, but she's not. Normal people aren't that flamboyantly genki/stupid/clumsy/greedy/naive/wibbly in love, even when they're 15. Stereotypical shounen heroes - even the dorky loser types - are exaggerated as well, albeit along different lines. But Yuuri is almost paradoxically believable. He has a sense of humour, and he's not as completely non-judgmental and reactive as main characters tend to be in these FY-esque storylines - every once in a while he throws up his hands and says something to the effect of, "well, damned if I know WTF's going on here," or "wow, this is incredibly stupid!", just like a normal person would. And riding horses hurts his ass.

...This is because it's genre parody, of course. ^^;

Comments

[ayabai.livejournal.com]

good god, PMK as a whole was a mindfuck for me. i read 1-3 of kurogane, watched the anime, and then read shinsengumi imon. IT BURNS, IT BUUUUURNS =_________________= btw, i in all honesty didn't notice any gay in PMK until, like, the episode that has that part with okita and hijikata after the ikeda-ya incident. clearly, my gaydar is broken.

MONSTER <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 i need to get my hands on the manga-in-japanese... i downloaded, like, one chapter of the scanslation just to see if i'd like it and then i'd make a trip to kinos and buy the damn thing, but then i just kept reading the scanslations because it's a very "AAAGH WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?! WHAT DID _fill in the character_ MEAN WHEN HE/SHE SAID THAT?!! NEXT CHAPTEERRRRRRRRR" manga and i ended up reading the whole thing in english in nearly one sitting, which i haven't done for manga in a long, long, time. that, too, was a mindfuck >_>;; manga shouldn't be this easy to read! it should be a long labourous process involving me reading at the pace of a snail with a dictionary in one hand!

there's no shame in getting addicted to kyou kara mao. have you seen the moaning sword yet? or the wolfram- sparkly angel of health scene yet? TEH SAIKOU <3 other people may think it's stupid, but i love it, dammit. spouse loves the novels, which are dirtier. XD

i like yuuri because he says weirdass stuff like 'oh, an onsen attraction!' when being paddled into a cave of doom filled with supernaturally hot water. he's not stupid, just terrifyingly optimistic. XD

[eightfold.livejournal.com]

... Pony Girl?

That's, like, not what I'm thinking it is, is it?

... ... oh, wait, My Little Pony. Phew.

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

I wondered when you overly literate proxy perverts would descend on Kyou Kara Maou. I haven't seen such a blatant bishie display since Saint Beast, I think. I bet the muses in your head started making fanfics within five minutes from the show started.

Or perhaps that's just me.

And I don't think the Japanese have any right to complain about weird engagement rituals, coming from a country where women propose by making boxed lunch!

[serendip.livejournal.com]

I miss the days when tCoB talked about shoujo. Now it's all shounen all the time, which makes me knee-jerk h888 in response. Which is not to say that I am completely reactive, given that I like lots of things that are rilly popular, like CCS, teh Brit, Nsync, etc.

So bring it on, j0~! is what I mean to say XD

[petronia.livejournal.com]

See, I'd actually bet the other kind of pony girl is a dime a dozen in certain circles, but I have yet to find anyone else on the Internet who does pony fanart of non-pony anime characters. *g*

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Well, I just got 52 eps of Full Moon wo sagashite. XD So dunno - if I talked about that would you listen? XDXDXD

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Actually I think the usual gang of overly literate proxy perverts tried out the first ep or two of KKM and decided it was too dumb to be bothered with. *g* Which - well, it is, but IMO it's smart-dumb like Homer Simpson. Homer is dumb but the guy who writes Homer's lines isn't. And because it's a parody it's not slashy in and of itself at all. XD It's just funny, in the manner of a fangirl in-joke.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

...And I think it's great. It's like something you'd come up with if you were ten! The apotheosis of Cute Formalism!

[serendip.livejournal.com]

d00d, I even read your tenipuri entries, cos let's face it, sabina taking a point and running with it is entertaining, irrespective of actual content. In other words, you make things sound appealling, even though I know deep down inside they're prolly not my cuppa. 3b33l woman, should be in advertising or teh like.

[eightfold.livejournal.com]

Oh, it is great.

Just, you know, Ryoma in a bit and bridle with a horsetail sticking out of his butt? THE TRAUMA.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

PMK: Ah dunno, man, all that ninja/page manly angstbonding on the rooftops. Now with extra glossy colour pretty and voice acting. XD Also, you read PMK 1-3 first and managed to miss the frightening gheiness of crazy!Suzu and noexcuse!Itou? What's with that?

Monster: I thought the manga was out in French but can't find it in stores. So maybe I hallucinated it? O_O Well, I'm doing okay just following it in the anime. It's an atavistic pleasure, this waiting-until-next-week-to-find-out-what-happened-after-the-cliffhanger business - I haven't done it since X-Files.

KKM: nooo, I'm only downloading the subbed versions, so the last ep I saw was 4. The thong bit made me laugh until I cried. XD I should order the novels, I bet they're an easy read. But I'd get killed for not reading, I dunno, Honoo no Mirage first.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Actually that's kind of--

That--

I mean--

--It could work in doujinshi. *slinks off in shame*

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Aw, I will take that as a compliment on my sl0ring skills. XD But fear not, I have just been in the bookstore and saw that Nana 7-8 were out in French, so a rant will probably be forthcoming as soon as I manage to scrape 20$ together. XD

[serendip.livejournal.com]

I wanna read Nana, but no translations out in English? Or Spanish, I could read Spanish. That's about it XD

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Yeah, what happened to TCoB? I think there was a collective fed-up-ness about CLAMP, and then recently most of the exciting anime (imho) have been shounen. I could talk about how much I love Karekano, but it would devolve into me begging for shoujo recs. -_-

[serendip.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, I opted out of the worshipping the whole CLAMP ouevre. I liked Clover, but they abandoned it, and it's arguably not even shoujo. Angelic Layer was fluff and shounen, cos it was running in SJ, right? But you get my point. Tsubasa and XXXHolic bother me cos, hi, it's doujinshi, wtf? XD

And I'll give almost anything a try in terms of shoujo, cos I think that shoujo canonically offers the same sort of thrill that much 'ship shounen offers. Or that could just be me XD

Sorry bout spam, cherie~! ^^

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Well, AL did have some romance. But I think I changed or something, cause the magic just don't seem to be there no more with CLAMP. Flipped through Tsubasa, it left me cold. (How is XXXholic? From the back cover it has an original story?)

Hmm, so I have an excuse, 'cause I don't ship my shounen much. But for a lot of people, the canonical thrill would be there in BL comics, I'm afraid.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Problem is most of the shoujo I liked was supernatural dark-shoujo with aesthetics up the wazoo, and it just seems as if there's not much new in that genre left these days. We know what CLAMP is doing. Matsushita has disappeared off the face of the earth. I could read Alice 19 but Watase comes low on my list of must-haves. Yuki Kaori? What's she up to now? :/ And so forth. Oh, and I'm actually awaiting on tenterhooks the next S to M no Sekai, but the last tankoubon of that came out July 2003. >_>

In general I'm a bit old for plain gakuenmono, m/f or m/m. Hence, Nana. XD I'll probably pick up XXXHolic at some point, not Tsubasa.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I kind of like XXXHolic, from the little I've seen of it. It reminds me of early Tokyo Babylon, but with more consciously weird stylised art.

[eightfold.livejournal.com]

Have you actually ever seen Pony Boy and Pony Girl getups? They're just massively dorky looking (http://www.tara-ts.com/preview/pre3.jpg) and unsexy (http://www2.ultra.to/~peko/Yoshinaga/yosinaga-pg.jpg). I mean, at the best, there's a distinct feeling of "headgear (http://www.scenewear.com/images/large/PONY%20BOY%20&%20GIRL.jpg)" about the whole thing. At worse, well... yeah.

The Dog thing is about as bad, although I understand the psychology of that one a lot more. But all the "animal training" D/s tropes are cursed by being incredibly stupid looking.

... then again, I'm a bad person, and M and I are fond of making "monkey training" jokes.

[serendip.livejournal.com]

*nod* I feel you on the shoujo drout, tho I'm not terribly interested in the dark, supernatural shoujo.

And I think gakuenmono is sort of my thing, hence my never-ending obsession with shoujo. XD But you're right, it does get old. Man, I should just get back to working on WLE instead of wistful reminiscing over shoujo that never was. XD

[serendip.livejournal.com]

It's not just you. CLAMP is getting lazy and less disciplned and it's showing up in their work. *shrug* Tsubasa gave me a moment cos EEEEE!!! Tomoyo and then it sort of passed. XD I think Tsbasa is pure CLAMP fangrrl bait, of the Sakura/Syaoran sort, so unless waffy pink <333 is your thing, I'd stay away. I don't really know about XXXholic. I've heard that it's considered more substantive/substantial? *shrug* And if you are into witches and more supernatural stuffs, I think XXXholic has promise of that.

Yeah, cept I don't see people talking about BL comics, just slashing/yaoifying shounen stuff? Which isn't a bad thing, just weird to me XD But that's because a lot of s/y writing by fans of shounen seems to have this underlying current of subversiveness. Which would be a no? BL comics being case in point.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

I'm amazed that there are enough CLAMP fangirls do actually create a mainstream title. But on the other hand, I have a low pink tolerance. Give me purple any day.

I see them sometimes. And I do agree, part of it is the non-canonical thing, but from the fanworks I can see why a lot of them wouldn't like something like Fruits Basket, although there is shoujo that is all dark and angsty and perverse and pr0ny; it just doesn't get translated that much.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

BL comics don't have much plot, is the thing. :/ I bet those as likes them read scanlations but there's not all that much to talk about either way.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Eh, that's about my taste too. (What is gakuenmono literally? I get that it's cute WAFFy school stories? I can take it in small doses; I like Karekano and intend to read M to N no Shouzou when my Japanese improves, but the art tends to be better in supernatural series. The problem with WAFFy school stories, IMHO, is the plotting)

I think Yuki Kaori has done some yomikiri, right? in the other Hana to Yume. Yuu Watase in general just does nothing for me, strangely. Matsushita has quit, I think. Maybe she'll reemerge in the gaming industry.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

(Yeah, I've seen them. XD) Which is why I say doujinshi. Home of erotica that wouldn't actually work on 3D people since... since! I don't know why they started drawing the schtuff. Sometime in the early 80's.

Or maybe I should stop giving this thought. XD

[eightfold.livejournal.com]

Try mid-40s. Anne Rice may have popularized it, but she didn't originate it.

... just out of curiousity, who would be ponying whom?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Oh, I meant drawing doujinshi. The pony thing sounds to me like some Brits must've come up with it in the 19th century. XD I dunno, it's one of those things that seem like a better idea when least articulated. Prolly the arresting mental image; having people actually running about on all fours just seems awkward.

[serendip.livejournal.com]

What about Banana Fish? Isn't that BL? And it has a plot of a sort. XD I don't read BL comics for the reasons you've stated.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It's not! It's shoujo with ghei. XD (Actually, it's more like shoujo-imitating-seinen-adventure, and the only way you can tell it's shoujo is publisher plus ghei plus the occasional long-haired Chinese bishounen assassin.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Well, if said yomikiri come out in tankoubon I hope somebody will tell me. :P Yuu Watase isn't really dark-shoujo but I read her for nostalgia and meta value (she dumps roiling teenaged female Freud/Jung issues out onto the page and covers it with pink fluffy, apparently unintentionally as opposed to the Be-Papas complex).

If Matsushita were in fandom she'd be one of those people who get f_wanked on a weekly basis. XD;;;

[serendip.livejournal.com]

Well, it was my understanding that CLAMP has a following, not necessarily that it's mainstream.

I think Fruits Basket is kind of angsty. I mean most teenage shoujo is angsty, ISN'T that the point in being a teenager? XDXDDX Or at least, isn't that what they tell us it is? Ah well.

[serendip.livejournal.com]

I am enlightened. ^_^

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, I shall. ^_^ What do mangka do between series? There's one about vampires, IIRC, and I think there might be more Ludwig?

Yes, unfortunately so, I believe. Joy was telling me about the impression she had formed by reading the freetalks and someone else was telling me about the BBS.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Eh, but there have to be lots of people reading for it to be in a serial.

I mean, more the perverse and dark and pr0ny part, less than the angsty part. ^_^ You know, all the YnM or Yuki Kaori style blood all over the pages. With Yuki Kaori, a page layout set around a severed head is almost a trope. Also, in perverse shoujo, the costuming is astounding.

[serendip.livejournal.com]

*shrug* Kristina says CLAMP's otaku-fu is strong enough for the serial, tho it not be on par with Jump. I'd actually be fascinated to learn about the relationship between magazines, publishers and mangaka. Even though I'm not about being the mad capitalist and making lots of money, business is fascinating cos money is power, and I'm definitely into power. XD

Yeah, the peverse and pr0ny doesn't do much to me. I see enough peversity IRL and in my work, so I would rather have fluff. Tho I do have a hankering for angst, so XD

[serendip.livejournal.com]

I don't think gakuenmono literally means cute, WAFFy school stories. Doesn't it just mean school stories, i.e. stories about kids who are under the age of 18 and placed in school. So as a template it gets old, but I don't mind hackneyed outlines. ^^

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

So would I. If I were to learn enough Japanese, I would like to read the business information about the Japanese publishing industry. There are all sorts of questions I have about it. I recently learned, for example, that less than 20% of the shoujo audience readers are into BL/yaoi.

Shoujo fluff, I find, doesn't get fan-translated as much as the gothy stuff. But maybe with the translation explosion, there will be more.