[personal profile] snarp
Ooku, volume 1, by Yoshinaga Fumi

This is so good. Yoshinaga Fumi is actually kinda engaging in social criticism this time, instead of gently skating around it like she usually does. And there are hard-ass female protagonists! This is exactly the manga I have wanted from her.

Viz's adaptation, however, is awful. I haven't read the original, and so can't comment on the accuracy of the translation, but the adaptor for some reason decided to use a kind of opaque, ultra-formal archaic English that's very inappropriate to the subject matter. It surprises me that the manga won its Tiptree in this kind of condition.

I'm assuming that the original was in mildly archaic language, but I've skimmed the first few pages of the Amazon.co.jp reviews, and I don't see any of the complaints you'd expect if it had been as self-conscious and poorly-done as this. (Not that I'd expect them, given that Yoshinaga is a good writer.) The Amazon.com reviews, on the other hand, all complain about the adaptation - as they should. I'm really disappointed that this sort of stuff is happening even in the Signature line, which I'm assuming Viz would like us to think of as having a high level of quality control.

Eternal, by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Despite her adoring guardian angel Zachary's attempts to prevent it, a shy teenage girl named Miranda becomes a vampire. To punish Zachary, the archangel Michael turns him into a human. Miranda, getting on with the usual vampire business of dressing fabulously and throwing parties, is instructed by her "Father," the vampire who turned her, to hire a personal assistant - she ends up hiring Zachary, who is determined to save her soul.

This would be fairly normal paranormal romance stuff, except that Miranda's response to becoming a vampire is to murder several million people. It's what you'd expect of a classic vampire, but a little different from what you normally get in a paranormal romance. Miranda is slightly brainwashed at the time, but in most ways still recognizably herself, so that a lot of the book is from the point of view of an insecure serial killer who worries a lot about clothes. Which is, at first, mostly funny:

My coffin is a demure complement to Father's. His is king-size and made from black marble, customized with brass fittings and a NASCAR emblem. It could be fairly characterized as the black-velvet Elvis painting of coffins.


Eternals have no right to speak, to assemble, to anything that I learned about in Government, though everybody seems enthusiastic about bearing arms.


Until it turns around and does something like this:

Annoyed, I mutter, "Why do they need tongues, anyway?"

With his chopsticks, Father stirs wasabi into his soy sauce. "Why, indeed?"

He excuses himself, leaving the room without an explanation.


There's a disturbing scene in which Zachary, still convinced that Miranda can't possibly be a murderer, visits the dungeon full of humans Miranda's servants are keeping for her to eat.

This is a weird book, simultaneously lighter than you'd expect from the genre, because it has a sense of proportion about what it's doing, and darker, for the same reason. Being a vampire is not a good thing here - it's both absurd, because Smith knows the genre conventions and has a lot of fun tearing them to shreds, and horrifying, because, you know, vampires eat people. The ambition required to question all these genre assumptions makes the book interesting, but I'm not sure it gets where it was going. For a book written in first-person, it's oddly distant in places - it's hard to tell exactly what Miranda's thinking a lot of the time, which feels lazy to me. Similarly, it's hard to tell how deep Zachary's denial runs. I enjoyed the book, but it's not quite all there.

Dark Enchantment, by Karen Harbough

In 16th century Paris, an English nobleman named Jack Marstone meets an amnesiac young woman named Catherine de la Fer, who has been living on the streets in a half-deranged state, occasionally murdering people when they do evil things. Catherine has stigmata, and her hands bleed when she is in the presence of evil, something which is very convenient for her vigilante career. Jack worries that she may be a sorceress; Catherine worries that she may be cursed; somewhere, an evil wizard worries that the demons he has been raising to send after Catherine are not smelly enough. Catherine blackmails Jack into teaching her swordsmanship, feeling correctly that it might come in handy.

The plot is very silly and erratically-paced, and I don't think it actually makes sense in the end, but whatever. The book is about Catherine and Jack bickering, slaying demons, experiencing UST, and then taking those actions which excise the U from the acronym. As such, it is a cute book, but kind of forgettable. The villain is a little short on clear motivations - despite having some fairly extensive first-person sections - and Catherine and Jack have no common sense. A pair of comic-relief innkeepers who serve as dei ex machina are nearly the only thing keeping the plot on the rails, leaving me with the impression that the world would be better off if whimsical innkeepers, rather than dashing foreign rogues and magical amnesiac swordswomen, were the typical first point-of-contact for evil wizards.

Does looking up the plural form of deus ex machina make you a total jerk? Because I just did that.

Date: 2010-05-23 01:41 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] starlady
I'm working through the Japanese, and it is nothing like the English in terms of whacked-out archaicisms. People occasionally bust out a でござる or a だんな, but it's not inconsistently applied (unlike the faux-Elizabethanisms in the English), and it doesn't impede understanding.

It's a real shame, because with the thee/you and sir/sirrah distinction Elizabethan English actually could model some of the distinctions Japanese makes pretty well. But it has to be done by a translator who understands it, and the translator here clearly doesn't. Also, I don't think the early 1700s in Japan really matches the Elizabethan era very well; Restoration English would be a lot better, but Restoration English has a comparative Dearth of Significant Differences.

Date: 2010-05-25 02:38 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] starlady
Yeah, kabuki = Elizabethan theatre is so easy, isn't it? (Obligatory ranty mutterings about false civilizational dichotomies redacted.)

I think you're right, and for the same reasons I think Victorian English may be a little too late to match with Oooku (but it makes a great match with the Meiji era, for all the obvious reasons). But Regency English--which also is much less distinctive comparatively, but also I haven't inhaled Regency novels the way a lot of people have--would work pretty well, I think.

P.S. Can't wait for that post.

Date: 2010-05-23 02:07 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] torachan
I read a few pages of the English and it was so horrible! D:

Date: 2010-05-23 03:39 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] laceblade
Yeah, I think the heinous translation is what's making me drag my feet on reading volume 2. Every time I got into the story in volume 1, it would jar me out of it like nails on a chalkboard.

Date: 2010-05-23 02:43 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] smillaraaq.livejournal.com
Argh, YES, the Ooku translation DRIVES ME UP THE FREAKING WALL. I think I can see what they're trying to do in terms of showing a distinction between usage of formal and casual speech patterns, but ARRRRGH it's so heavy-handed and fakey-sounding -- it comes across more like Wardour Street English picked up from modern historical media, rather than a truly studied, archaic style.

Date: 2010-05-23 03:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] darkelf105.livejournal.com
Had the same thought about the Ooku translation. But I guess it shows how freaking amazing it is because even with the weird translation it's still super, super awesoe.

Date: 2010-05-23 04:30 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] thegeekgene.livejournal.com
I was about to look up the plural form and then be suitably impressed if you were right. So I guess we're both jerks.

Date: 2010-05-23 03:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cerusee.livejournal.com
I am in a lonely minority that isn't bothered by the translation. I don't think it's awesome, but it's internally consistent, perfectly comprehensible, and coherent, so it takes me a minute to adjust to it, and then I'm immersed in it, and don't even notice.

And yes, I'm very sensitive to the nuances and cadences of language, so it's not just that I'm tone-deaf. I don't know why my experience with is to wildly off the mark of other people's. It just is.

Date: 2010-05-24 04:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mikkeneko.livejournal.com
I find it somewhat awkward, but not to the point where it prevents me from being able to understand and enjoy the story... and on the plus side it does give a very distinctive atmosphere to it.

Also... what is that icon?

Date: 2010-05-24 05:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] smillaraaq.livejournal.com
It's pretty similar for me -- the story, characters, and art are all strong enough that I still enjoy it a great deal, but the language use is just sort of this low-grade but constant mosquito-buzz annoyance in the background. I never stop noticing it, but there's enough awesome stuff to balance it out that it's not at the foremost of my thoughts.

Date: 2010-05-24 03:29 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cerusee.livejournal.com
It's Zuko, failing to pick up some chick! Obviously.

Date: 2010-05-25 12:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mikkeneko.livejournal.com
I think to some extent I agree, it feels like the translator bit off more than they can chew when they decided to do the entire thing in that style. At first I thought that just the peasants were going to talk that way... or maybe just the people from the flashback section... but no, EVERYBODY does, all the time.

Date: 2010-06-19 06:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] clytemnaestra.livejournal.com
I don't really hate the translation like many folks do, but I definitely see what you're saying here. I'm able to turn it off in my brain pretty quickly, but it does jar you out of the text for a few pages, which is exactly what a translation shouldn't do.

I think my problem is that the use of the old-style English feels shallow. From the first volume I was okay with it, because it was still new and different. But when they continued with it in volume 2 and 3, it started to feel more like a gimmick than anything else.

Date: 2010-05-24 12:05 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] octopedingenue
I enjoyed Cynthia Leitich Smith's Tantalize much more, for it had Austin, werewolves, and food porn.

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