snarp | Entries tagged with a: ohkubo atsushi

The plot is still stupid, but it is at least - unlike certain shounen manga I might name - in motion. I still love you for that, infuriating manga.

Also, for this chapter, wherein half the cast switched genders for no good reason. I am easy to please.

And this is not slapdash gender-switch, where people look the same but with slight modifications to the chest area! Oh, no. Ohkubo was so enthusiastic about this idea that everybody got entirely new character designs and outfits for the occasion. Yet they're all fairly recognizable - except for Soul Eater, who, being a fighting manga hero, logically had to turn into a magical girl manga heroine.

I also like how he immediately switches from guy-variant-tsundere behavior to girl-variant-tsundere behavior when he sees Maka getting a nosebleed over another girl. And the conclusions Maka draws from her nosebleed. "Oh, I've gotten a nosebleed! My observations lead me to believe that this is a crucial part of shounen manga male sexuality! What an educational experience!"

Ohkubo clearly gave far too much thought to this development. I can easily imagine him scribbling these ideas out madly and giggling, most likely very late at night. Is it possible to troll your own comic? Because you just know the guy has been checking out forums for reactions every day since the chapter came out. Probably Pixiv for fanart, too. I have just checked Pixiv for fanart, by the way.

I'm just disappointed that Kidd's missing out on the big genderbending party. He could have had asymmetrical boobs and freaked out about it. I think this is a missed opportunity.

For some reason I thought this was the last volume… I guess I’m happy it’s not?

But I’m disappointed by the sense I’m getting that, in the long run, no shounen manga dares stand in the way of the almighty Shounen Jump formula. For one thing, the formula seems to require that the female characters either stop getting fight scenes, or make them the froofy passive-looking metaphysical kind.

For another, there seems to have been an executive decision that Soul Eater lose his hat, acquire a hairstyle somewhere between present-day-Ichigo’s* and Edward Elric’s, and completely change the shape of his face and eyes. Because it’s not okay to have a protagonist who doesn’t look exactly like every other protagonist?

Also, Black ★ Star has suddenly become the number-one angstiest member of the cast? The guy who pronounces a little star in the middle of his name to emphasize how special he is? The one who was introduced as a parody of Naruto!? Yet he is now More Special Sasuke! It’s like the manga’s IQ is progressively getting lower.

If Patty ends up getting angst, too, I’m just going to retreat into writing fanfic where everyone’s an adorable moron again.

* Hey, remember the good old days when Kubo Tite actually had a recognizable personal style? Whatever happened to those days? THE SHOUNEN JUMP FORMULA HAPPENED TO THOSE DAYS. If Mizuno Junko ran a manga in Shounen Jump, within twelve months it would become a story about a fourteen-year-old boy overcoming his rocky relationship with his dad through montage-intensive training to become the best evil naked zombie drug dealer gigolo nurse.

** I just checked and Soul Eater actually runs in Shounen Gangan, not Shounen Jump. Close enough!

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

1) When I am the villain, my minions’ uniforms will involve full-face masks of an easy-to-duplicate design, just to make it that much more convenient for the good guys to infiltrate my secret lair.

2) When I am a manga artist drawing a wacky shounen comedy series, just before the final battle I will suddenly introduce a whole bunch of new characters no one cares about. They will then proceed to have earnest romantic troubles.

3) Also, my art will get sloppy, I will decline to clear up at least two subplots, and two characters’ personalities will change completely with neither explanation nor buildup.

(The first six volumes were so great! Why does the manga want to hurt me now?)

ETA: 4) Also, my scanlators will consistently transliterate the two nerds’ names as “Ox Fold” and “Harvar,” possibly because they’re from a DC comics alternate universe where schools don’t exist because of something Lex Luthor did.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

I want to go out in the snow, but I’m afraid to. I’m afraid because there’s a small swimming pool out in the yard somewhere… and I can’t tell exactly where.

Someone stop me from playing EVE Online and watching Soul Eater all day. I think it likely that neither one is a good idea on its own, but they’re particularly unharmonious in combination. I’m going to name a spaceship something like “SYMMETRY!,” and then someone named NeMeSiN will destroy it and send me a misogynistic message explaining why they did so. And I’ll want to apologize to Death the Kid for letting the symmetry get destroyed again.

Death the Kid is my favorite character. His voice was giving me weird signals, so I looked it up, and he’s Tamaki from Ouran. Things somehow make more sense now that I know that. I just looked up Black ★ Star, and he’s Excel, which is obviously also good.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)

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Entries tagged with a: ohkubo atsushi

Soul Eater chapter 71, haha.

Soul Eater up to volume 14

Soul Eater up to volume 12

Still snowing!

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