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Busy on all fronts
Coworker's mother is apparently in the hospital, she hasn't been in all week and we're gearing up for a release - during which time everyone would have 1 1/2 times their normal workload even if we weren't a body short. So. ^^;
SSBB: 5 stories vetted, 4 stories pending formatting/spellcheck/artwork issues, 2 stories not in, cover art in, graphic work still to go. Geebus, the contributor pool is turning into a hive mind. XD;; I guess y'all will see when the issue goes up.
Weekend: Sunday is Andrew's Greek Easter party, by long-standing tradition. Saturday I'll be making eggplant lasagna to go with that litre of cheap cerusuolo I picked up last week.
JoJoNotes (all the way up to volume 50!):
Kira Yoshikage -> ki-ra-ki-in -> Killer Queen
...Shaddup, I had to figure it out on my own okay.
I came across an interview fragment somewhere where Araki-sensei said he purposefully omitted the backstory of how and why Kira got to be so fucked up, because if he'd told it the reader might have felt sorry for Kira, so he left it on the level of nebulous hinting (it had something to do with his mom?). In JoJo it's permissible to despise villains, respect them as opponents, love to hate them, but not sympathise with them. But somehow you feel a bit sorry for Kira anyway. ^^;
I have this idea that Araki himself sympathizes with solipsistic aesthetes; Rohan obviously, but Kira can almost be said to be one. At one point I thought, he'd probably like the gothloli girl from Shimotsuma Monogatari! Then I realised that Josuke is the gothloli girl from Shimotsuma Monogatari (unless he's the furyou one). XD
***
I guess the Achtung Baby kid will not reappear. In current(?) continuity she'd be about twelve, and Araki does not do loli - at all. XD He does not have little girls in his manga. Nor is he into drawing huge boobies or upskirts (though I've noted a couple of panty shots - no, really). If anything, what he seems to like in a woman are legs-up-to-here. Like Mariah in part 3, Tomoko and Reimi and Yukako and Kira's not!wife all sport high hemlines that show off their long, shapely legs. Something about the way he draws women reminds me of Five Star Stories, actually.
(In general you find more little boy characters in shounen manga than little girl characters anyway, because - it's shounen manga. But I'm not sure this extrapolates to more scenes of naked little boys being attacked in the bath by psycho deviants, which has happened twice now counting baby!Polnareff. D: If the point is to teach the readership the difference between good touching and bad touching...)
***
Contrary to the usual narrative logic Josuke's get-rich-quick schemes work, though not without peripateia. And then his mom takes his money away, and he goes and shakes down people like Rohan or his dad for more. (I suspect that if Josuke had lived with Joseph all his life, he probably would have spent his childhood trying to bilk Joseph of pocket change, and Joseph would've been like SPROG PLS THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE, and they'd end up as the strongest two-man con team in NYC. But they would only activate their powers for great justice!) The Rohan ep made for total awkwaaaaardness because 1) Josuke was listening to chibi devil!Josuke sitting on his left shoulder but 2) Rohan is the kind of grownup who'd get serious about beating a kindergartener at connect-five. ...Also his house burnt down. *at a loss for words* And poor Mikitaka. XD
Speaking of fallout from Josuke vs Rohan I should mention that I was amused by ricerboy stand user. XD Part 4 is all about these small-town characters, really.
***
The tangible form of Heaven's Door is... the main character of Rohan's manga (it's like at first he needed to draw a picture and show it to people, whether on paper or sketched in the air, but at he improves he can "manifest" the character without having to draw it). So if other mangaka had stands, would they look like characters from their series? XD Something like--
Stand: Mokona
User: CLAMP
Destructive power: E
Speed: C
Effective distance: A (automatic type?)
Stamina: A
Precision: B
Growth potential: C
Special abilities: transmission of messages and objects between dimensions, sub-universe creation, vocal mimicry, alcohol consumption
...Maybe Mokona only belongs to Mokona, and the blowfish is Aikawa Nanase's. Or something.
***
You know, in normal manga when someone says hi by handing you a gouged-out eyeball and licking you on the cheek, it means he's evil.
(Eyeball...
...)
MC: And that's it for the panel. Any questions? Yes, in the back row.
AUDIENCE: Sensei, how come you're always threatening to put one or both of a major character's eyes out in a fight but you never actually go through with it?
ARAKI: ...
ARAKI: ...
ARAKI: Mokona, you know you're banned from these events!
MOKONA: What, I'm more than 100 feet away! D:
***
I thought Josuke was fascinating in an analogous way to Giorno - a manga character who doesn't resemble anyone other than his parents. XD
Giorno, Brando side:
* blondness
* ambition [1]
*shoujo sparklies
* ability to commit murder and face the world like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth
* "MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA" [2]
Giorno, Joestar side:
* ability to leave the house during the day [3]
* moral faculties
* thinking so lateral it's nearly vertical
* penchant for heavily modded school uniforms [4]
Giorno, utter mysteries (mother's side?):
* kind of short
* that wacky thing he can do with his ear
[1] Joestars are aimless and unruly teenagers, even Jonathan. They figure out what they want to do in life around age 20 or so, and proceed to become very good at it (since they're like, geniuses and all). The precocious self-possession and certain sense of destiny (as a CRIMINAL MASTERMIND) by junior high is a Brando trait. >_>
[2] It makes total sense by Araki logic (which is not your normal earth logic) that something like this would be heritable.
[3] I wonder if he sunburns easily? Maybe it's totally killing his complexion to be hanging out on the deck of a private mafia-owned yacht off the coast of Capri, but he has a dream etc.
[4] No, seriously, that object is his boarding school uniform. Check out what the other kids are wearing when you see him going back to his room with the lighter. What is wrong with schools in JoJoverse?
***
One practically has to read part 5 as a different series altogether. Gold Experience's abilities are rather baroque in their statement, like Giorno himself, and not as Occam's Razor-ish as Josuke's or Jotaro's.
1) Hitting Gold Experience directly reverses the blow, so one can't, one has to attack Giorno instead. However unlike most of the fights in which the characters have to go searching for the user of an unassailable stand, Giorno is right there. XD;
2) Gold Experience injects life force into any object it hits. That is to say, breaking down a door with GoldExp has the side effect of strewing the surroundings with small frogs and Pomona's choicest blooms. Giorno is able to make the animals obey him to an extent, like biting on command or flying in a given direction. He can also control the growth rate of plants. The animals themselves will sometimes retain characteristics of their former "existence" as pipes, shoes, body parts etc. Details of scope (such as whether or not GoldExp needs to be making physical contact) seem to vary according to Araki's whim. ~_~
Really I think he came up with this as an excuse to draw GioGio with swirls of pink flower petals.
3) Gold Experience also injects life force into any human it hits. This... causes a head rush, which effect is perhaps more hilarious than useful (it's not like you'd normally get a chance to recover between blows), but who knows. XD
Oh, and I'm reading the second Yukikaze novel (it came in the last shipment). 50 pages in, and one can tell the focus of the argument has shifted, but Rei is still catatonic so nothing much concrete is happening. ^^;
SSBB: 5 stories vetted, 4 stories pending formatting/spellcheck/artwork issues, 2 stories not in, cover art in, graphic work still to go. Geebus, the contributor pool is turning into a hive mind. XD;; I guess y'all will see when the issue goes up.
Weekend: Sunday is Andrew's Greek Easter party, by long-standing tradition. Saturday I'll be making eggplant lasagna to go with that litre of cheap cerusuolo I picked up last week.
JoJoNotes (all the way up to volume 50!):
Kira Yoshikage -> ki-ra-ki-in -> Killer Queen
...Shaddup, I had to figure it out on my own okay.
I came across an interview fragment somewhere where Araki-sensei said he purposefully omitted the backstory of how and why Kira got to be so fucked up, because if he'd told it the reader might have felt sorry for Kira, so he left it on the level of nebulous hinting (it had something to do with his mom?). In JoJo it's permissible to despise villains, respect them as opponents, love to hate them, but not sympathise with them. But somehow you feel a bit sorry for Kira anyway. ^^;
I have this idea that Araki himself sympathizes with solipsistic aesthetes; Rohan obviously, but Kira can almost be said to be one. At one point I thought, he'd probably like the gothloli girl from Shimotsuma Monogatari! Then I realised that Josuke is the gothloli girl from Shimotsuma Monogatari (unless he's the furyou one). XD
***
I guess the Achtung Baby kid will not reappear. In current(?) continuity she'd be about twelve, and Araki does not do loli - at all. XD He does not have little girls in his manga. Nor is he into drawing huge boobies or upskirts (though I've noted a couple of panty shots - no, really). If anything, what he seems to like in a woman are legs-up-to-here. Like Mariah in part 3, Tomoko and Reimi and Yukako and Kira's not!wife all sport high hemlines that show off their long, shapely legs. Something about the way he draws women reminds me of Five Star Stories, actually.
(In general you find more little boy characters in shounen manga than little girl characters anyway, because - it's shounen manga. But I'm not sure this extrapolates to more scenes of naked little boys being attacked in the bath by psycho deviants, which has happened twice now counting baby!Polnareff. D: If the point is to teach the readership the difference between good touching and bad touching...)
***
Contrary to the usual narrative logic Josuke's get-rich-quick schemes work, though not without peripateia. And then his mom takes his money away, and he goes and shakes down people like Rohan or his dad for more. (I suspect that if Josuke had lived with Joseph all his life, he probably would have spent his childhood trying to bilk Joseph of pocket change, and Joseph would've been like SPROG PLS THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE, and they'd end up as the strongest two-man con team in NYC. But they would only activate their powers for great justice!) The Rohan ep made for total awkwaaaaardness because 1) Josuke was listening to chibi devil!Josuke sitting on his left shoulder but 2) Rohan is the kind of grownup who'd get serious about beating a kindergartener at connect-five. ...Also his house burnt down. *at a loss for words* And poor Mikitaka. XD
Speaking of fallout from Josuke vs Rohan I should mention that I was amused by ricerboy stand user. XD Part 4 is all about these small-town characters, really.
***
The tangible form of Heaven's Door is... the main character of Rohan's manga (it's like at first he needed to draw a picture and show it to people, whether on paper or sketched in the air, but at he improves he can "manifest" the character without having to draw it). So if other mangaka had stands, would they look like characters from their series? XD Something like--
Stand: Mokona
User: CLAMP
Destructive power: E
Speed: C
Effective distance: A (automatic type?)
Stamina: A
Precision: B
Growth potential: C
Special abilities: transmission of messages and objects between dimensions, sub-universe creation, vocal mimicry, alcohol consumption
...Maybe Mokona only belongs to Mokona, and the blowfish is Aikawa Nanase's. Or something.
***
You know, in normal manga when someone says hi by handing you a gouged-out eyeball and licking you on the cheek, it means he's evil.
(Eyeball...
...)
MC: And that's it for the panel. Any questions? Yes, in the back row.
AUDIENCE: Sensei, how come you're always threatening to put one or both of a major character's eyes out in a fight but you never actually go through with it?
ARAKI: ...
ARAKI: ...
ARAKI: Mokona, you know you're banned from these events!
MOKONA: What, I'm more than 100 feet away! D:
***
I thought Josuke was fascinating in an analogous way to Giorno - a manga character who doesn't resemble anyone other than his parents. XD
Giorno, Brando side:
* blondness
* ambition [1]
*
* ability to commit murder and face the world like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth
* "MUDAMUDAMUDAMUDA" [2]
Giorno, Joestar side:
* ability to leave the house during the day [3]
* moral faculties
* thinking so lateral it's nearly vertical
* penchant for heavily modded school uniforms [4]
Giorno, utter mysteries (mother's side?):
* kind of short
* that wacky thing he can do with his ear
[1] Joestars are aimless and unruly teenagers, even Jonathan. They figure out what they want to do in life around age 20 or so, and proceed to become very good at it (since they're like, geniuses and all). The precocious self-possession and certain sense of destiny (as a CRIMINAL MASTERMIND) by junior high is a Brando trait. >_>
[2] It makes total sense by Araki logic (which is not your normal earth logic) that something like this would be heritable.
[3] I wonder if he sunburns easily? Maybe it's totally killing his complexion to be hanging out on the deck of a private mafia-owned yacht off the coast of Capri, but he has a dream etc.
[4] No, seriously, that object is his boarding school uniform. Check out what the other kids are wearing when you see him going back to his room with the lighter. What is wrong with schools in JoJoverse?
***
One practically has to read part 5 as a different series altogether. Gold Experience's abilities are rather baroque in their statement, like Giorno himself, and not as Occam's Razor-ish as Josuke's or Jotaro's.
1) Hitting Gold Experience directly reverses the blow, so one can't, one has to attack Giorno instead. However unlike most of the fights in which the characters have to go searching for the user of an unassailable stand, Giorno is right there. XD;
2) Gold Experience injects life force into any object it hits. That is to say, breaking down a door with GoldExp has the side effect of strewing the surroundings with small frogs and Pomona's choicest blooms. Giorno is able to make the animals obey him to an extent, like biting on command or flying in a given direction. He can also control the growth rate of plants. The animals themselves will sometimes retain characteristics of their former "existence" as pipes, shoes, body parts etc. Details of scope (such as whether or not GoldExp needs to be making physical contact) seem to vary according to Araki's whim. ~_~
Really I think he came up with this as an excuse to draw GioGio with swirls of pink flower petals.
3) Gold Experience also injects life force into any human it hits. This... causes a head rush, which effect is perhaps more hilarious than useful (it's not like you'd normally get a chance to recover between blows), but who knows. XD
Oh, and I'm reading the second Yukikaze novel (it came in the last shipment). 50 pages in, and one can tell the focus of the argument has shifted, but Rei is still catatonic so nothing much concrete is happening. ^^;
no subject
I'm kind of fascinated by GioGio's chara settei, because... it's so wrong if you think about it for more than one second, but if you don't think about it it makes perfect sense. XD
He really seems to take stuff like his hair changing colour in stride... well, maybe his mother told him his dad was Special >_> (he does keep a photo of Dio on him). By the way, I love the fact Jotaro tells Koichi to take "samples" from Giorno. Koichi has the advantage of surprise, but even so--
KOICHI: Hey, could you swab the inside of your cheek with this?
GIORNO: ...Why?
KOICHI: No particular reason. Certainly not because we of a shadowy research foundation would like to sequence your DNA or anything.
GIORNO: ......
May as well have asked him to take the boy's clothes off and check for the birthmark while he's at it.
Doesn't every other character in JoJo have green eyes? XD (Hey, if a mangaka is going to have the same
fetishesaesthetic preferences as I do, far be it from me to complain...)Is the game localised? 'Cos I can't play Japanese games. ^^;
no subject
1) use a Red Stone of Asia attack, which will PWN vampires like Dio,
2) use an "Unforgettable Memory" attack which is ALL MANGA PANELS OF CAESAR (screaming out his name)
3) use a similar attack in his old form which is ALL MANGA PANELS OF HIM BEING TRAINED BY LISA LISA (screaming out her name)
Young Joseph can only use JoJo crackers and hamon, and old Joseph can use hamon and his stand. See, nerdy fanboy things like that; CAPCOM is staffed by nerdy jojo fanboys, to judge by their loving treatment of both games.
Also, I think everyone DOES have green eyes. Even Jotaro, who technically should have black eyes, still supposedly has "greenish" eyes.
no subject
God that is the best attack ever. I want all my fighting game attacks to be 7-hit combos where I scream out the name of my
gay crushbest friend while beating the shit out of someone. XDEveryone has green eyes, yes. Like when Araki actually bothers to say in a character profile what someone's eye color is (this happens very rarely) it is usually green (though most of the time he DOESN'T say, and trying to extrapolate character color schemes from the color art is like beating yourself in the head with a steel bat). Writing my Joseph/Caesar nonsense was a pain since they both have green eyes (stated in their profiles) and I like to mention girly shit like eye colors when I write. XD
The extras are cool too! You can unlock some fun things in the Part 3 game, but the Part 5 unlockables are fucking SWEET (and prove that capcom are all crazed jojo fanboys).
Don't buy the DC port of the part 3 game, whatever you do. It's pretty and plays well, of course (that was the first Jojo experience I ever had!) but it's missing the all-important Story Mode and has no unlockables or minigames or anything. It's ONLY the vs mode fighting game part, and that totally sucks. Get the PSX version (it's exactly the same although looking slightly less pretty, but not too much).