Thoughts on Mirage 17 or so

[petronia]

• Soooo finally we get the low-down on the Take-iwa-tatsu no mikoto and Asara-hime and Kihachi legend. Um. Damn those invading patriarchal oppressors, damn them! But seriously, now that all the conflicting and incomplete information has been sorted out, one is left with the realisation that the plot is basically a cautionary tale against the dangers of insufficient research. Kristina would be amused.
  
  Chiaki's the first one to piece it all together and find Sailor Mars the Asara girl, of course. 99% of the time he's the most intelligent character in the series, it's the 1% that kills it. *weeps*


• It is so angsty! Yet I cannot stop laughing! I think it's the nonplussed faces the Kantou Alliance dudes are making - whaddyamean Fuuma no Kotarou is being illogical? And Kousaka's story is actually true WTF?
  
  (Rairen: "It's been a weird day."
  Motoharu: "You think your day was weird?")
  
  Mitsuhide did point out that not a lick of it makes sense, to his credit. I mean, it doesn't. What does Kenshin intend to do with Kagetora? Everything else makes sense as a s00per-s3kr1t operation except that. Or is it a question of timing? Frankly there are better ways to inform someone he's burning out and you're forcing him to take a vacation.


• Also, when they dragged Takemata in I was immediately like, "Hey, I know you! You were one of those ghost dudes at Uozu I translated!" I can't believe Kagetora actually had them take bodies and walk around. Weirdly cool.


• I've never seen anyone mention this, but Mirage actually has a major and a minor period: Sengoku Jidai and... WWII. In 5.5.1 Sayuri trails ghosts of people who died during the bombing of Toyama IIRC; then in the Wadatsumi Arc you had the whole thing with the tsukumogami!Yamato and Kure's dead soldiers rising from the sea and the Hiroshima Atomic Museum. The first Kagetora-memory Takaya recovers that's a specific recollection and not a skill is of Naoe comforting him during the firebombing of Tokyo (of course it had to be traumatic h/c, what on earth did you expect).
  
  Now, after Aida-san in Wadatsumi, you have the portrait of Ikeda Katsuya, betrayed by both his youthful Communist enthusiasm and the militaristic nationalism of the 40s, returning to tribal beliefs and distorting them into a fundamentalist faith as coda to his lifetime quest for existential meaning. I'm not sure if the focus on WWII has metaphorical value at all in the story. It could just as well be a marker of Kuwabara-sensei's fields of specialisation at uni. But Mirage is full of such vaguely didactic tangents - it's not all cracked!sex by a long shot - and some of them are her most thoughtful and sensitive writing. Generally speaking the tenor of the thing changes gears every 5-10 pages, often in such a way as to stall the engine halfway up the highway ramp. ^^;


• Oh, Kiyomasa. This whole staggering onto the stage battered and bloody and gasping out "Do...no..." before collapsing dramatically into my lord's arms thing? It would come off a lot better if you were both, I dunno, dressed in 16th-century armour. As opposed to like a high school student and a slumming j-rock star respectively. Speaking of which I burn with curiosity re Nobunaga's PMVs.


• Snake demon larvae. In a beaker of Inui juice. ..........OK SENSEI, THAT WILL BE ALL, PUT THE X-FILES DOWN SLOWLY.


• For some reason I'm really liking Yuzuru's POV, though. Even if it was dumb of him to come to Kumamoto in the first place. I think it's because he's completely dorktastic in this arc. "Ew, blargh, snake. ...Am I brainwashed? Is this what being brainwashed is like? I don't feel - OH HEY PSYCHOKINESIS IS COOL."


• Dude, I was right: there is some weird psychological shiz going on between Ootomo Sourin and Tachibana Dousetsu. It takes all sorts of lords and retainers to make a sea (as Irobe-san didn't really say). Of course you start wondering how err extrapolated her portrayals of these more "serious" and secondary historical characters are - Date Masamune and Sassa Narimasa and so forth - as opposed to characters like Kagekatsu or Kiyomasa who are obviously on total crack for fangirl plot purposes. I bet the real Kiyomasa would've thought contact telepathy was a really gay power, like those dudes in the 11th Division in Bleach who would all make fun of Yumichika if they found out. The nam-myoho-renge-kyo spear on the other hand...

I sort of want to make a Yami Sengoku character FST; a semi-snarky one with 80s pop in (not that I ever listen to anything else). Narimasa would be "White Wedding". Motoharu would be something like KoC's "I Don't Know What I Can Save You From". And everybody wants to rule the world! ...Man, something like three people on the Internet will grok this.

Comments

[ayatsujik.livejournal.com]

Your thoughts always make my day. XD

I think Kenshin should get The World Is Not Enough, but I'm just doubting Thomas where Chichiue's concerned. :D

(also, I *would* so give Ranmaru Cherry Lips and laugh my head off, but he'd need to go through curling tongs first.) [/random Garbage kick]

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Oh, dude, I doubt Kenshin too. *weeps* I've been doubting him ever since I realised he knew all about what happened 30 years ago and sent Kagetora back down anyway. But it makes me feel like one of those Harry Potter conspiracy theorists who believe Dumbledore is actually evil; even when it happens in the books one is incredulous. It's as if the police one day up and decided to storm all the yakuza hangouts with riot squads, take their drugs and re-sell them from their squad vehicles.

HOWEVER MITSUHIDE MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. I mean I wondered why they were all waking up now too but I didn't think it was going to get directly addressed in the books.