Sunday, headachey Sunday~

[petronia]

It was really bad. ^^; Actually bothering to stand in line for Cutie Honey in the heat and humidity for an hour didn't help (the gremlins handing out free samples of chilled grapefruit 7up did, though XD). Nosed briefly through the comix fair but felt bad about leaving sororial unit in line, so didn't do much shopping. Bought the Del Rey version of XXXholic 1 to entertain said sororial unit in line, though - that was from the SF Anime store booth. The dude still remembers my face. XD When I expressed my astonishment at this fact (I lost my membership card in my house like, two years ago and have been too lazy to go back to rent anime, since, uh, MASSIVE HEAP OF FANSUBS) he pointed to a random otaku dude in the vicinity and was like, "I haven't seen this guy around for five years and I still remember him!" Now that's customer service.

I really like XXXholic, actually. Tsubasa I can take or leave, though I'll probably end up reading it at some point, but XXXholic is a return to my favorite CLAMP mode, the cynically clever and morally instructive (in a s00per-relativistic way) supernatural investigation short stories of early Tokyo Babylon. Said format is the best showcase for CLAMP's marked tendency toward didacticism, ethical and sexual - pace Tin and D.H.L. XD - better than the ten-volumes-of-ponderous-angsting-over-destiny-to-make-one-single-philosophical-point that afflicts all their main series**. (I don't mind the didacticism, if only because their points are never pat or sugarcoated. I like the precision of their formulations. Love can be a bad deal, in CLAMP, but viewing their oeuvre as a whole it's less look-at-the-character-poor-baby than saying to the shoujo readership, "You think you have it hard with your little gakuen crushes? Buck up, shut up, and take some responsibility for your own actions and desires.") And if we're to do massive crossovers - which, why not? if I had a dozen wildly successful manga/novel/whatever series under my belt, you can bet all your money that I'd write a giant AU crossover with all the characters I liked - then by all means let there be a character like Yuuko commenting from the sidelines. I have a visual imagination: if CLAMP is a "universe" (rectangle box) and their various series are overlapping sets (round circles), then Yuuko and XXXholic live in that shadow-space outside all the circles. She's the best gnomic Greek chorus one could wish for. Mokona might also do, I suppose, but it's hard to make a Sophoclean impact with mono-syllabic "Puu"s. XD

Also, my great Beardsley art!wang (man, there's a bad joke in that) means I'm muchly for the drawing style. No screentone no crosshatch no colour yay!

** I rather suspect they were able to put X on hiatus because they got the Main Point out of the way already: it's when Subaru says "it's impossible to make everyone happy". You can't grant everyone's heartfelt wish, because sooner rather than later you'll get a couple of bastards whose One True Desires conflict. Remains only killing people off bloodily and creatively. ^^;;;;;;

Cutie Honey was brill. Spectacularly over-the-top, intentionally cheesy and unbelievable, absolutely brill. What is it with all these live-ac adaptations that are prettier than the original? Credit goes out to Satou Eriko for her *coughhackcough* performance, actually; Honey is the sort of squeaky cheerful dim-as-a-10-watt-bulb anime girl one typically wants to murder, but Satou somehow pulled it off on sheer likeability. The MASSIVE F/F HAPPENINGS probably helped. I'm comfortable putting this in the thumbnail review because the fanboy crowd was definitely engaging in some heavy fantasizing in the theatre, aha. Actually I've always had this impression that the original Cutie Honey anime was femslashy, but when you think about it fanboi-created pr0n is just as unreliable an indicator as fangrrl-created pr0n. ^^;

Soundtrack was so ace it hurt - P5-style retro-kitsch electropop for the most part. Trademark Anno visual!wank was wittled down to about ten seconds near the end. So is all good!

When pirated video editions hit the net many lj icons will appear of Tokyo Tower with a giant rotating gold dildo up its ass, and that is all I'm going to say about that.

Blueberry, meanwhile - that's the French western flick based on a Moebius comic - was about peyote. There was a plot of sorts, but mostly? Peyote. XD;; As Golitzinsky put it afterward, the moral of the story appeared to be that the way to exorcise your personal demons was to get together with your enemies and get high. Man, you'd have thought only the Japanese comic-book crowd could possibly do "mystic Indian wisdom" with a straight face in this day and age, but apparently the French are not far behind.

I do NOT recommend seeing this film while on hallucinogens, or for that matter any kind of drug. Seriously. Actually, the only reason I'd recommend seeing this movie is to experience the speculum's-eye view of Juliette Lewis's girl bits, and then only if you like that kind of thing.

Comments

[corneredangel.livejournal.com]

re/XXXHolic, *exactly* my impression! I'm really only now getting into TB, after three years of slugging through TB fic, but Triple-X (yeah, I actually prounounce it as such) just feels more thought out - and certainly more interesting - than Tsubasa. Although, I fear/ph34r CLAMP taking a cue from Heinlein and bringing *all* their characters together in a giant fantasy-worlds Comiket. Or the eventual (inevitable?) Tokyo WorldCon. (yes, yes, I know *all* about the Bid...)

Then again, there *was* CLAMP in Wonderland...

[petronia.livejournal.com]

TB manga itself: let me guess. Bit of a surprise after the fic? XD All the lighthearted charm and kooky humour. A lot of the original impact of the series had to do with its humanistic tone - here's Subaru, trying to make a difference, and here's Hokuto, the incarnation of joie de vivre, and Seishirou fakes it so well that you honestly think something at the core of him will learn how to respond to all that, because that's the kind of series it seemed to be. But the questions posed by the stories grew more and more difficult to answer, until you hit the "fooled you, stupid shoujo reader, there is no answer BECAUSE THERE IS NO GOD!" ending. XD;; And then X took that and... well. I like X. But it's not as clever, if only because it's not as self-contained.

CLAMP In Wonderland = "This is our reality!" *applause*

[corneredangel.livejournal.com]

You guess...correctly. Then again, take it that *is* the predictable/default reaction?

But why is the angst gone?!? x_X

[meril.livejournal.com]

Yuuko's quickly become one of my favorite CLAMP characters, and now I know why. That's a good reason for this sense of detachment I get from her.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Detached commentary, yes. The Tsubasa same-events-different-POV bit was genius (as well as unadulterated cash grab XD). Did like Del Rey's notes, annotating CLAMP's shameless self-references and obscure retro geekouts in the tone of one of those smiley anime librarian-types who stay calm and cheerful even as giant robots battle and buildings collapse around their ears.

[dipping_sauce]

Man, you'd have thought only the Japanese comic-book crowd could possibly do "mystic Indian wisdom" with a straight face in this day and age, but apparently the French are not far behind.

... Clearly, you haven't read enough BDs. So much of the stuff I've seen sounds/reads like it was written after the authors had all smoked humongeous doobs. (And Moebius' Arzac Rhapsody was probably meant to be watched stoned.)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It's not so much the drugs. It's the stunning lack of re-examination of white-man stereotypes, both good and bad. It's impossible for an American to make an unironic and/or un-pomo Western nowadays, but the French sneer at political correctness - as they always have - and the Japanese just have no idea what you're talking about ("but Nazi uniforms are sexxxy! ;_;").

[dipping_sauce]

It's the stunning lack of re-examination of white-man stereotypes, both good and bad.

It's probably because it doesn't apply to them -- like with the Japanese and the Nazis. ("Since it happened OVER THERE, we don't have to think too hard about it! Isn't Crawford teh SEX-AY in his SS uniform?") Kind of like a lot of Western authors myticize India and China.

But I've seen a *lot* of BDs that deal very honestly, and in a clear-eyed manner, with the question of colonialism and slavery in Africa. Or the troubles (ahaha) in northern Africa, because that's relevant to them.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It's off and on, though. Like the weird-ass French obsession with presumably un-mysticized mainland Chinese literature, which is as far away and over there as it gets. (Unless it has to do with Asian girlsex. Shanghai Baby, Balzac et la petite tailleuse, et al. But then I'm not a dirty old Frenchman who was Maoist during the sixties, so that's where I get off the analysis bus. XD)

Ramblings

[smurfmatic.livejournal.com]

I just want to say I saw you walking back to queue-up while I was sitting on the bench near the pop-corn stand ENJOYING THE AIR-CON. XD

(Indeed, you're right, when you go alone to these things, you can come 10 minutes after the official start of the movie and still get a decent seat. And it's even better, b/c at least you can predict what is, or isn't a good seat judging from the height of the dude/gal sitting in the seat below you. I'm starting to get a hold on Badly-Designed Theater Seating Theory. XD)

(Nat-chan is kinda cute - but then I've a megane fetish ._.)

-Ced

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Curse you, when I heard bout Tsubasa, I thought I was done w/Clamp. But now your description of XXXholic is drawing me in again. Cause cynical Japanese style horror stories are where it's at.

[tsutanai.livejournal.com]

It's not quite cynical, not yet. You do have a few moments (can't help those who won't help themselves, would be Yuuko's opin, I'd wager), but you also have the ohlordthisistoocutetoocuteevenwiththeaccidentalsoulstealingandcomaincident Valentine's Day story in volume 4. So far, it's also been amusing to look up some of the superstitions too.

TB fooled a lot of us, back in the day.... (And, only reason I bought X to begin with, hmph.)

... I bought the four volumes on the fourth, had them almost memorized a week later, and am somewhat missing them now. Mrh.