JOHN: ok. what's this story about?

JOHN: ogre sex, or salamander shipping, or something?

ARANEA: Nope! Although I would 8e happy to tell you all a8out those topics another time.

Aranea Serket: A huge idiot who cannot effectively convey her fannish zeal for things in under 2,000 words, thus making everyone else mistrust/hate the things in question.

I overidentify with Aranea! How many ineffective rambling rec posts have I even written about Vampire Game? Probably a lot.

(Okay, Vampire Game in one sentence: It's an inexplicably non-misogynistic vampire manga, sort of about Bella Swan attempting ineffectually to use Edward Cullen to destroy her enemies, drawn really badly and adapted into English by someone who thought jokes about anal sex and jell-o were just the very best thing.)
Oh my god, Heart of Thomas is basically one of Karkat's troll romance novels.

Thomas ><3 Juli
Juli ><3 Eric
Eric ? Juli
Oscar <> Juli

They are all doomed because of their failure to arrange things sensibly for bucket-filling purposes.
This is the last and longest of the three posts that went up on Minekura's blog on April 1st. As before, things I wasn't sure of are in gray text.

Cut for length. )
This is the first of the three posts that went up April 1st. It's mainly promotional stuff for the Gaiden OVA.

In this one, I'm including small versions of the pictures she posted, mainly because I think the last one's funny.

Cut for length and images. )
There are two other posts, but they're mainly promotional stuff, so I thought I should do this one first.

As always, stuff I wasn't sure of is in gray text; let me know if you have corrections.

The Pacific Coast Touhoku Earthquake (This post will stay at the top.)

To those who were affected by the Touhoku earthquake of March 11th, I want to extend my most earnest condolences. I pray every day that recovery can be quick.

When the manager of the cell phone site told me that people were worrying about me, I was embarrassed. My sense of balance was affected by the surgery on my head, so I was throwing up for three days after the major earthquake, but that passed and I'm fine.

...But more importantly, to those who lived in the seriously affected areas - I can't find the words. To people who are already desperately trying to keep things together, it seems unthinkable just to say something like, "Try your best!" Even though I'm a writer, I can't put together even an imperfect statement - I'm such a useless creature. It's pathetic.

I wish I could do something for those who haven't been able to get back to their normal lives because of the aftershocks, and those who are living in areas hit with nuclear problems - but in my condition I would only cause more trouble if I went to help. So for now I can only think of my readers and do my best at my own work.

There were a lot of Saiyuki and Bus Gamer towels sitting in a storehouse at work, which I got to send to a nearby relief warehouse. They may have been thinking, "Where did all these weird towels come from...?", but I won't feel embarrassed about it - if they get to people who need them, I'm happy.

- 2011-04-01 00:05
A Drunken Dream and Other Stories, by Moto Hagio

In Two Sentences Or Less: Mostly a little slight. Hagio's better in long form.

The Long Version: The best things in this collection are Hanshin, a deeply professional punch in the stomach, and Matt Thorn's interview with Hagio. Interestingly, these are also the only things in the book to have been previously published in English.

That's not to say that the book's not worth buying, because it is, but it's hard not compare this stuff to her longer work. The ones that stood out most to me:

Iguana Girl - Vivid, disturbing, and obvious in a way that can't diminish the former qualities.

A Drunken Dream - Needed to be twenty pages longer to escape feeling like cheating.

Girl on Porch With Puppy - Hah.

The Child Who Comes Home - In places, a little lazy; in others, a genuinely affecting depiction of grief.

The Willow Tree - I'm unclear why she bothered to write this, and then, having written it, publish it. Did a friend ask her for a short story of a really specific page-length, and this was what she had lying around?

...this comes off as quite negative! Sorry about that, that's not really the intention. But I really don't think another short story collection was the way to reintroduce Hagio to the west. It's been tried before, if in a very different publishing climate for manga, but part of the problem really is that her longer works are much stronger. I am open to argument over exactly what should've been first, but I argue in favor of The Poe Clan, with Heart of Thomas as the runner-up.

(I'd suggest Marginal, except that my feeling is that that visual style doesn't go over well in the North American market - for some reason it actually feels more dated than the two older works on first glance. On the other hand, Heart of Thomas does have those old-school tone shifts - like Eric's fit here - that I think might throw people who read mainly modern manga. Those things are signalled very differently now than they were once-upon-a-time; there's this really specific architecture of panel flow, and I think there are federal statutes regulating line thickness for superdeform-style and goofy heads. I hear Sakura Kinoshita spent a couple days in jail over volume two of Matantei Loki. The prophesied second coming of Osamu Tezuka will probably be brought to an abrupt end by a stoning prompted by an unorthodox use of diagonal gutters.)

tactics 8, by Kazuko Higashiyama and Sakura Kinoshita

In Two Sentences Or Less: In Which The Mangaka Continue Their Tradition Of Cutting Away To Cheap Jokes Every Time The Story Appears To Be Going Somewhere.

The Long Version: The first chapter is the finale of the plotline from the last volume, which went much deeper into the dysfunctional nature of Kantarou and Haruka's relationship than any of the previous storylines had. The rest of the volume, naturally, consists of comedy one-offs.

Not that they're bad comedy one-offs, for the most part! But it's getting to be obvious that this is something Higashiyama and Kinoshita do when they feel in over their heads. I think that they do know where the plot's going, but that they're uncomfortable with it and aren't in a hurry to get there.

The Princess and the Hound, by Mette Ivie Harrison

In Two Sentences Or Less: Too much manpain, not enough Princess. Or hound.

The Long Version: I think that actually was the long version.

Well, I'll say this much - [personal profile] rushthatspeaks is right in comparing this to Robin McKinley, because the tone is very like hers. The problem is that Harrison isn't willing to put the kind of weight on the story which McKinley-style prose is designed to hold. The actual conflict here is very minor, because the characters who would be ripping each other's hearts out in a McKinley book are too restrained to do it here. Things feel too easy, and when I got to the end I thought - "what, that's it?"

Fire Dancer, by Ann Maxwell

In Two Sentences Or Less: Man, why the hell isn't more sci-fi like this? And by "like this," I of course mean "completely insane."

The Long Version: I'm actually just going to quote [personal profile] oyceter here:

I laughed every time I encountered "Kirtn," which I unfortunately pronounce as "curtain." I also giggled over his furry virile manliness and his sexual frustration. Also! There are talking rocks! And there is a species that is so foreign that they forgo apostrophes for slashes! I kid you not, they are called the J/taal. Rheba knows nothing about sex, given that her planet exploded before she could learn.


I ask you - what is not to like?
There have actually been several new posts on Minekura's blog since I last translated one here, but I haven't had time to do them, and may not for a while. I apologize for the especially rough quality of this translation - I haven't been reading much Japanese recently, so I'm completely off my game. As always, if you have corrections, let me know. Passages I'm not sure of are marked in gray text.

Minekura says this in the entry itself, but I'll reiterate it here: her condition's extremely unpleasant, and she doesn't mince words in describing it. If you think it'll upset you, you really shouldn't click on the cut.

-

"I'm home."

This is Minekura. With your help, I've come back to life.

My family carried your gifts to me every single day in the hospital. The thousand-cranes... no, the tens-of-thousands-of-cranes filled the room until it was overflowing. The nurses said they'd never seen so many. After the surgery, when it hurt so bad I wanted to scream, the bright colors of the decorations in the room were incredibly encouraging. They tell me that my scar has healed very cleanly, and I give the credit to my good luck charms. I thank all the people who have supported me from afar from the depths of my heart. I'm so grateful to all of you.

I've been allowed to come home from the hospital, but my wound has yet to heal (it'll be about half a year before it settles down enough), and there are a number of things I physically can't do; it takes all my energy to get through my day-to-day tasks. ...But when I look around at all my beautiful good luck charms (<- I'm bragging), it gives me hope. When I put my manga on hiatus, I was so miserable I cried, thinking that people would be disappointed and angry with me. I feel honored to have received so much support and understanding.

Below the cut I explain my condition in detail. I feel I ought to give an explanation of why my manga are on hiatus, but those who don't want to see shouldn't click.

An explanation of my illness and my current condition. )
This is her latest entry, from yesterday; she'll be putting all manga work on indefinite hiatus for health reasons.

Things I wasn't sure of are in gray; let me know if you have any corrections to make. Apologies for the quality, but since I haven't seen any full translations anywhere else, I thought I should go ahead and post it.

Edit: Thanks to [personal profile] starlady for corrections.

[Important Announcement] This Article Will Stay At The Top )
Minekura's blog is a lot harder to read (for me, anyway) than Kaoru Mori's - Minekura loves her run-on sentences, and any word that can be written in kanji, the woman is darn well going to write in kanji.

Also, Minekura's blog is clearly part of a conversation with her fans to a greater extent than Mori's is - there are references in there that I think assume more context than I have. So, I'm sure I'm missing stuff in here. Sections I had to guess about are in gray.

World is MINE )

Jul. 26th, 2010 11:05 pm
Having no electricity, I am reading my rlist/flist by candlelight. KINDLE.

I have just read Ooku volume 2. Yoshinaga Fumi, I take back EVERY BAD THING I HAVE EVER SAID ABOUT YOU.
I think Black Butler might secretly be performance art. It is incapable of doing a single thing that is not offensive!

Summary of the First Plot Arc - It's fine to be a drug dealer as long as you're a rich classy guy, but sex worker ladies are bad and evil and totally deserve death! Particularly the ones who get abortions! Women who can't have kids will totally go crazy and become serial killers, especially if they keep working after marriage! Transsexuals are gross, but it's fine to cross-dress for work-related reasons as long as you don't enjoy it!

Summary of the Second Plot Arc - Indian people are poor and dirty and sneaky, unless they're rich and stupid and comic relief! Women who don't reciprocate men's affections are evil hussies! If in addition to that they're poor and would rather not be, they deserve death! Indian culture is centered entirely around curry! And apparently you're forgiven for selling children in the first arc if you do something goofy in the second arc!

Summary of the Third Plot Arc - People with physical disabilities are scary and cannot be allowed out into society! Because if they are, they will kill children! But maybe we should sympathize with the hero when he's the one killing children? After all, children who have been abused are ruined for life and better off dead! All women deserve death, as usual! And the scanlators invent strange new accents.

Summary of the Fourth Plot Arc - Arthur Conan Doyle is here! (Why?)

I really do think that this series is intended at least in part as a kind of shock art. Toboso is not Yuki Kaori or Anne Bishop - she lacks that irrational affection for her unpleasant characters, and as a result, her heroes are surprisingly unsympathetic. Her plotting strikes me as unusually calculated, and I don't think she's working from her own id so much as she is from close observation of other people's. Which is interesting to read - the apparent cynicism about the genre is refreshing - but not all that fun.

Originally published at I Am Completely Serious. You can comment here or there.

Challengers is a four-volume yaoi manga about a dorky sarariman named Mitsugu who meets a dorkier college freshman named Tomoe and falls in love at first-dorky-sight. It’s one of the few yaoi manga I’ve read with a major age difference (Mitsugu is 25, Tomoe is 18) that doesn’t creep me out, largely because Mitsugu seems to have done some reading in the genre and knows the pitfalls. It starts out with the unfortunately common plotline where one guy offers the other a place to stay while being dishonest about his intentions - but Mitsugu realizes this is fucked-up immediately, and instead of sitting around being broody and tragic about it, tries to clear things up. He admits his attraction to Tomoe, promises not to put any pressure on him, and actually doesn’t.

Obviously, Tomoe eventually realizes he’s in love with Mitsugu, too. By eventually, I mean “the beginning of volume 2.” The other three-quarters of the series is sort of an ensemble comedy wherein Mitsugu and Tomoe attempt to be gooey-eyed and domestic while various less-fluffy characters inflict wacky hijinx on them. These include Mitsugu’s pushy best friend and pushier mother, several horrific gay stereotypes (Gay guys are creepy and vulgar and gay bars are terrifying! Mitsugu and Tomoe aren’t really gay, they just happen to be in love with other men! Oh, yaoi manga.), and Tomoe’s homophobic and permanently furious martial artist older brother.

Also, the manga contains much educational information about Americans.

It becomes obvious pretty quickly that Tomoe’s angry brother Souichi is Takanaga’s favorite character. It is obvious because he gets beat up a lot. Like, every single chapter in which he appears. He is also the only character in the manga who is threatened with rape. (No, it’s a yaoi manga, this is incredible.) His best friend/favorite victim Tetsuhiro, a sweet, dorky guy who tries to redirect his rage away from Mitsugu and Tomoe, is secretly in love with him. Obviously, these two will get their own manga. This manga is Koi Suru Boukun/The Tyrant Who Fell In Love.

Tyrant is not much like Challengers. Despite that he and Mitsugu look and act almost identically in Challengers, unlike Mitsugu, Tetsuhiro is not, it turns out, as nice a guy as he looks. (I’m going to cut here.)

Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at SarahPin.com. You can comment here or there.

As opposed to select areas of the mansion being tainted with E. coli.

Mainlined the second half of Count Cain/Godchild. I’d been putting it off because I wasn’t feeling sufficiently Kaori Yuki. Now my head feels all funny. I worry that parasites are about to burst out of it for the entertainment of men with pretty hair.

There is nothing I can say about Count Cain/Godchild. It is too crazy. There’s a zombie and then several other zombies and a lamb and several hundred nonconsensual organ transplants and reverse-child-molestation, which is when the kid molests the grown-up, because the kid is actually a thirty-five year old with a gland problem, unless the kid is another zombie, or possibly a baby skull that mind-controls parades.

I don’t think anyone ever explained where all those baby skulls came from. In another series this would be a problem. In another series these would be spoilers.

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The contents of this blog and all comments I make are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License. I hope that name is long enough. I could add some stuff. It could also be a Bring Me A Sandwich License.

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