Juuni Kokki, episodes 1-5, the analysis

[petronia]

canis_m, I rented and watched the first DVD of Twelve Kingdoms. XD Of course this means you owe me GetBackers, although I do not honestly expect you to like it as much as I may potentially like 12K (overall judgment is currently reserved). Labyrinthine plot and quasi-canon ghei aside, it is dorky shounen heavy on hand-to-hand fighting and female cleavage, and there is not at all military commander x underage bishounen, whereas 12K does appear to have repressed dude x redhead. So I suppose I have the long end of the stick. OTOH, sacrifices made for the sake of fic and friendship, etc. etc. XDD And you may enjoy it after all.

So Twelve Kingdoms! ...Er.

Rather sober, isn't it? ^^;;;

People have left me with all manner of sketchy impressions regarding this series, but depressing wasn't one of them. Yet I found these first few episodes immensely draining emotionally. It feels much more like watching Boogiepop Phantom than like watching Fushigi Yuugi. I suppose the novelistic source has a lot to do with it. All the novel-based anime I've watched (Boogiepop, LoGH, HnM although heavily abridged) have understandably shared characteristics: no visual gags, no chibification, sustained sense of drama, relatively straightforward framing. They betray their source, basically, though of course that's not a negative. And the relative richness and complexity of the characters is a definite plus. Not to say manga characters are all cardboard - obviously we know they're not - but in these types of "YA lit" fantasy story they tend to be archetypal, especially the main character. Shounen heroes and shoujo heroines come in well-trodden stereotypes. Youko however is anything but a stereotype, which accounts for a lot of the interest and emotional exhaustion.

(FWIW Takaya in HnM isn't a hero-stereotype either, but you'd be hard put to know this just from the anime. I keep saying HnM isn't terribly impressive writing mechanics-wise - lucky for me in any case, or I wouldn't be able to read it XD - but the characterisation is handled very well.)

Youko actually reminds me of Mooncalf's description of her AU!Callo Merlose in "Go Wyverns": "Fake, but deeply fake." (Although she's not fake in the same way as Mooncalf's AU!Merlose. No, I don't remember every single word you've ever written on the Internet, I swear!) She's constructed her life around being "nice" and "a good girl", not because she believes it's right but because she's afraid of incurring consequences if she steps out of line, and she's been doing it for so long that she has no conscious realisation of her self-imposed stiflement. (Unconsciously the tension is there: her reluctance to dye her hair black and so forth.) The fact that the people around her recognise her facade on some level - either suspecting her clean record or despising her perceived hypocrisy - is an unusual touch of realism, because yes, people do recognise fakeness.

This girl, then, is ripped away from everything she relies on for validation and her sense of self, and told to rebuild from scratch or lie down and die. At first glance she's the least suitable candidate of all time to be the heroine of such a story, although I don't think she acquits herself badly even at the beginning. Her only sin is reacting with realistic terror and bewilderment and paranoia, really; to someone of her temperament and upbringing this story is thus far much more of a survival horror narrative than the beginning of an epic tale of destiny and rabu. XD Of course, fantasy lit being what it is, she will live and learn and grow - and as Sugimoto Yuka did not quite put it, had she remained in her own world she would've ended up as the pill-popping okusan of a rich businessman, desperately neurotic and unhappy and not even knowing why. Monster-slaying and politicking is vastly preferable in the long run, and we haven't even touched the kirin factor.

(Sugimoto is extremely interesting in her own right. Intelligent, bitter, sexual, cynically clear-sighted in some ways and utterly deluded in others. And her character serves a meta-purpose, of course, which is always fun.)

The other thing I wanted to mention was the HILARITY incurred by my realisation that that cutely symmetric flower-pattern thing in the background of the DVD and CD covers is the world map, which was quickly undercut by the immediately ensuing realisation of how many kanji there were to memorize. =_= And what is it with this pseudo oracle-bone script?

Comments

[angrybabble.livejournal.com]

OMG JUUNI KOKKI~~~~~~~

BTW, I think of the first DVD of Twelve Kingdoms as, like, torture on disc. I hated all the characters and wanted to fling them all off a cliff, pacing seemed random and annoying and way too slow half the time, etc. I think those episodes are totally necessary, but at the same time, I never want to see them again!

This show gets SO much better! And DEATH to all those people who compare it to Fushigi Yuugi! It's freaking NOTHING LIKE FY, except that it involves a girl being taken to another world and fulfilling her destiny there. Okay, and the homicidal jealous friend thing, at least at the beginning. But it's much more serious. It's much more like, say, Escaflowne, minus all the "meaningful" metaphorical stuff. ^^;

And no slashing Keiki with Youko! I mean he's cool and all (I thought he was boring, but he really gets so much better in some of the story arcs, especially the ones about kirin) but... no, man! YOUKO X RAKUSHUN 4EVAR!!!!!!1 Must make winamp skin(s)... @_@ Rakushun is, like, awesome! I guess I'm always a total wuss for the cute, retardedly nice dorky ones. Plus despite being ridiculously nice, he's not actually stupid and I don't think he'd put niceness over logic if it came to that (though so far it hasn't). Youko never gets with anyone canonically though (at least not thus far). The show isn't really a romance at all, which is actually nice and refreshing - a show with shoujo sensibilities where the main focus is on human interactions and politics instead of romance is so rare.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Dude, don't spoil me. XD

I don't hate the characters, actually, though I was sort of expecting to because - er - everyone I know did at the beginning. They're very real, so mostly I feel sorry for them. ^^; Also, not slashing Keiki and Youko (is that even slash? ...maa ii) would basically invalidate the current point of me watching this, which is so I can read Kristin's fic. Although I was well aware that other people on my flist were shipping, er, other characters I haven't met yet, so no opinion here. XD

[quixotic-sense.livejournal.com]

Well, we all know that Youko is so going to end up being the ultimate seme. XD

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Well, she's supposed to be T3h R34l Queen of Kei, right? (Series isn't there yet but it's not as if it's not blindingly obvious. XD) I look forward to it, though it does seem to invite standard essays on female self-actualization rather.

[quixotic-sense.livejournal.com]

Bwaha. I'll not spoil the series for you, but getting the throne is really the easy part. XD

I haven't seen any essays or meta posts on the subject, actually. Possibly because certain features of the JK universe make an easy gender analysis virtually useless, the reason for which shall become clear as you watch more of it. *koff*

[angrybabble.livejournal.com]

The pirates of my ship will kick that other ship's ass, dammit! >:O Actually I have read really good Youko/Keiki fic (yes, she tops in ALL SHIPS unless maybe you slash with En-ou which would just frankly be hilarious) but it doesn't change which ship I head out of port on!

I did feel sorry for them, but mostly in the "I want to shake you till you stop being retarded" way. XD I spent a lot of this show yelling at my monitor. XD I think my favorite comment to the monitor later in the series was "OH YEAH, FUCKER, YOU JUST GOT A VERBAL BITCHSLAP FROM A UNICORN!" (Not really a spoiler. XD)

Don't worry, dude, I'm not spoiling anything! As you say, seeing that she's supposed to be Kei-ou is not surprising. It's painfully obvious. The series isn't based on startling you with sudden revelations like that... it's based on the real drama and intrigue behind the scenes of such a heartwarming and seemingly rags-to-riches type of story. Getting there is only a little of the fun in this series... what happens afterward is the big story.

[quixotic-sense.livejournal.com]

yes, she tops in ALL SHIPS unless maybe you slash with En-ou which would just frankly be hilarious

*sporfle!*

Um. I think I have to go scrub the images out of my brain now. XD Personally I think she'd still be on top, if only because En-ou is one kinky bastard. *snerk*

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Shan't spoil you. >_> Don't worry, while there are a lot of thrilling moments, there also are tons of painful, painful ones to come. Lots more enjoyable emotional exhaustion. XD

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Oh, I see. XD;;;

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

It's a very earnest series, yes. The books also. Not much with the haha funny, although there'll be levity forthcoming as some more well-adjusted characters appear. ^^; And yeah with the female self-actualization, which seems to be almost as much of a turn-on for me as criminal shota...um? (Maybe "female self-actualization + hawt critter" is more accurate.)

Of course you are not obliged to ship Youko (攻) x Keiki; I haven't even written very much of it, although I've scripted a lot in my head. As angrybabble mentions, 12K is a bring-your-own-romance job: if you leave it to canon then nobody will ever get laid, except possibly the king of En in a brothel on occasion.

RE: the vocab, there's oodles. The names of the kingdoms aren't even the tip of the iceberg--they're the petrel flying over the iceberg and deciding NOT to land. At one point I'd started compiling a glossary for my own reference, but I gave up on it out of exhaustion. These may or may not help:
http://12k.divadrummer.com
http://digitarius.easa.ne.jp/novelclo/12koku.html
(Am pretty sure there's a better Japanese encyclopedia-type site, but yahoo isn't producing it at present.)

Right, okay, GetBackers, a deal's a deal. I actually picked up the English edition of vol. 1 of the manga in a bookstore the other day. I put it down again, but hey, I picked it up. XD

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Too late. Rather, it's depressing enough that I have to ship something, in order to achieve bare minimum of shoujo sparklies requisite for continuation. I swallow angst a lot better if it's qualified by vague sexiness in the background. But focus may shift or expand later on. XD;;

Youko (攻)

Funny how everyone keeps pointing that out.

Thanks very much for the vocab links; they are greatly appreciated, as I was going insane trying to read the oracle-script signs over the various town gates. (Onyomi do absolutely nothing for my comprehension/memory if they are not accompanied by their respective characters, and the official subs follow that latter-day trend whereby they don't translate words for fear of offending diehard fansub fans. =_= "Kaikyaku what? Which 'kei' out of the 6,351 words that are pronounced 'kei' in Japanese?") As for GetBackers, I'd rather you watched the anime. >D The manga is fairly negligeable overall until volume 5, I think.

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

Am so proud of self; made it through 4 eps of GB last night, presumably while you were listening to Bebel. More on that later. (Want concert report! Am going to show next Monday in Chicago.)

In the case of 12K I think the non-translations are sort of legit; so much of the vocab in question is invented & world-specific, so it's new & foreign to the audience no matter what their base language is. Thus the J-reference sites, for all the Japanese people who can't tell one "kei" from another just by listening, either.

It becomes evident that Tin and I are, like, the only people outside Japan who don't think Youko should hook up with--well. You'll see. Luckily the fandom seems to lack the critical mass required to accomplish pairing wars.

[amamiyarin.livejournal.com]

Oooohhhh... Juuni Kokki. *______________* It won't be complete without the novels, actually. Thank God my friend is willing to summarize them for me. ^^; She even wrote a paper on the series, especially the arc dealing with En-ou and Enki later. ~__^

I love this series... too bad Pierrot decided to stop it. -_-;;

Youko/Rakushun, I SO agree. XD

[angrybabble.livejournal.com]

is anyone translating the novels? I heard something like that but haven't really checked into it yet... I would LOVE to read them, but just listening to the sheer amount of keigo in the anime makes me flee screaming into the streets at the thought of trying to read it myself. My translating abilities are still down around the level of Hime-chan's Ribbon, ya know? ^^; But I really want to know what happened... T_T

[amamiyarin.livejournal.com]

as a matter of fact, there is. ^^

http://www.otyaku.com/

It moves really slowly, but there are translations that give us really cute interactions between Kouri and Gyousou-sama. ^^

There's a friend of mine who translated a few chapters into Bahasa Indonesia, but she then abandoned it. T___T