I Am Completely Serious

Probably the usual response to it is not "you know, maybe I should re-read the Pippi Longstocking series."

Structurally it's similar to Naoki Urasawa's Monster: a thriller plot with several characters separately working on a cold-case crime with present-day implications, eventually pooling their resources; the eccentric but ethical old tycoon bereaved by the loss of a child many years ago, unleashing dangerous forces in an unexpected end-of-life act of humanity; the use of the Holocaust as a sort of primordial source of evil, a few years in the grave, but still in living memory and still somehow a threat; and the fact that the story exists as a vehicle for the author's investigation of his personal image of evil. Larsson's is rape, Urasawa's is child abuse.

Larsson is significantly less complex and a little less willing to be nice than is Urasawa. Salander and Blomkvist want to scourge their evildoers from the face of the earth, while Dr. Tenma and Nina view everything in a more internal way, convinced of their own complicity in the morass they've discovered (though they have none in any real sense; Urasawa doesn't let things get that heavy) and determined to redeem some part of it. Urasawa would end the cycle of violence by healing the abusers, while Larsson would prefer to kill them all.

It's interesting and kind of cheap that Salander kills two people and ruins the life of a third passively, setting their worst instincts loose and letting them do the work themselves. It's kind of the Disney hero move. Tenma and Nina take more responsibility there.

I don't buy Salander as a character; she has very little apparent self-knowledge, yet is able to penetrate to other people's innermost souls very quickly and easily. Those two things don't usually go together. The way she talks about computers is silly about 50-60% the time. I think Larsson probably had help from an actual nerd for some parts of the book, but wrote others himself. The journalism sections sound more reasonable to me - not that I know anything about that, but Larsson was a journalist himself, so I adjudge it to be possible that those parts are silly less than 50-60% of the time.

I'm not sure whether this is actually the first long-form piece of fiction Larssen wrote, but it reads like it. In addition to the inconsistency of her characterization, Salander has a personal subplot that ends up dead-ending almost immediately, disconnected from the rest of the book in every sense except for theme. Scene changes are very abrupt, and conversations end in strange places because he wants to get on to the next scene.

I have no way of knowing, but I don't really feel like the problem is the translation; I think the prose was probably just kind of awkward to begin with. Larssen does that thing where he spends a lot of time pounding in descriptions of mundane tasks like doing dishes and putting on coats, to keep the story from feeling like it's floating a couple of inches off the ground. He doesn't always succeed - honestly, Twilight did it better. And it's obvious who the villain is almost from the first time s/he's mentioned, though some people might view that as a feature rather than a bug.

Basically I'm saying that if you can only read one of the two, you should definitely read Monster.

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 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.

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"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. )

Is this a deliberate reference to Shunkin? Or is Beautiful Morally-Problematic Blind Shamisen Player Woman a trope in itself, to which Shunkin herself is a reference?

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 starlady for corrections.

( [Important Announcement] This Article Will Stay At The Top )

(I'm working on a few posts from Kazuya Minekura's, as an apology to smillaraaq and chomiji for freaking them out the other day.)

Edit: Apparently direct-linking to the images is not allowed - you'll need to copy-and-paste the URLs.

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Sketch Dump (from November 11, 2009)

I've finally got some free time.

I feel like I'm finally getting the hang of the once-a-month pace, so here are some sketches.

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"Favorite Horse"



[Text from image:

Ak-Kula is spoiled rotten. (male)

Suriyik is a little stubborn but very serious. (female)]

These are two characters from my current project Otoyomegatari and their favorite horses.

In the Kyrgyzstani Epic of Manas, the title character's favorite horse is named Ak-Kula - that's where the name comes from. Suriyik is also from the Manas. It's Bagish's horse.

The phrase "They run so fast they barely seem to touch the ground" sounds so cool I've stolen it.

The Manas is really interesting for an epic poem, and it has a gorgeous woman warrior named Saikal who duels! It's very exciting and emotional, and I definitely recommend it.

( Read more... )

Imuri! I'm only on, like, your first chapter! And you are apparently mainly about teenagers at an evil boarding school, which is not actually a complicated premise! Do not make me go to your glossary to figure out what's going on! And you probably don't need those huge expository lumps every couple pages!

...but I'll probably keep reading you because you are very pretty.

There's a planet in here called "Rune" [ルーン], which is apparently an acronym for mukou no hoshi [向こうの星], "the planet over there." My thoughts about this idea:

1) I don't think that this makes naming planets "Rune" any more respectable of a practice. What's your other planet's name, Blaze? This manga is an 80's-to-early 90's American sci-fi novel displaced in time and space.*

2) The furigana says that Rune's an acronym for mukou no hoshi, so it is, okay? These are far-future space teenagers, they are not actually speaking Japanese; the furigana is allowed to do this sort of thing. (Though I think we need to keep Okano Reiko away from furigana entirely, because she is badly behaved.) English needs to institute furigana, to make it less work for me to insert made-up words in stuff I write.

3) Is there is a specific term for made-up-language-furigana-ized-acronyms? I need to know if there is, because otherwise I will invent the word "kanjacronym," and I really shouldn't be doing that.

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* Closely Related: Somebody wrote a licensed Star Trek: TNG novel where Commander Riker went undercover as a space pirate named "Stryker," to mess with an actual space pirate whose name was "Blaze." The title is Blaze of Glory, as I think should be obvious. I think Blaze nobly sacrificed himself for something? I don't actually remember, but it seems like a pretty safe guess.

What I do remember is that - unless I'm confusing this with another bad Star Trek book, which is possible - there was a scene where Riker tried on his new space pirate wardrobe, which included tight leather pants. Even at the age of ten, I found this idea unacceptable.

With the pants business in mind, I'd originally googled the book convinced that it was the one that Laurell K. Hamilton wrote, but no, that was Nightshade, which I remember as being bad in a less spectacular way. Though maybe I just didn't recognize the madness when I saw it, having been ten at the time and all.

...that said - why did they choose to re-issue this? There's creepy new cover art with Worf hovering threateningly over Troi. I assume that means they're aiming it directly at LKH fans. I wonder if it's working?

A professor I had described the difference between Western and Eastern culture this way: Western culture believes that history points forwards. It is bringing itself towards some end point, honing itself into something purer and in some way perfect - though perfection may mean destruction. Our world is a story, and we are certain that it will end, the way all stories do, with a new sort of equilibrium established.

History is different in Eastern culture, he said. Once there was a golden age, but it is over now; and things deteriorate. They are continuing to deteriorate, often gracefully, and beautiful things are found in the ruins, and at times some facsimile of the golden age is established for a while. But it always falls apart again, and each time it returns a little coarser. There is no endpoint in sight, only a constant tumbling of the pieces of that perfect civilization, thinning out. Time seems to be getting wider. It’s not going anywhere.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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

Grimmer x Tenma OTP!!!

I actually seriously need doujinshi for this.