manga: Heaven!!!* Vol 1-3 (complete)

Rinne is a medium who banishes spirits with a harisen. While chasing a spirit, she’s almost hit by a truck, but is rescued by Masaharu, the school hoodlum. Somehow, though, this causes Masaharu to end up separated from his body. While Rinne and Masaharu are trying to figure out how to get him back into his body, a playboy god named Keiju takes over Masaharu’s body and places Masaharu’s soul in a stuffed monkey, saying that he just wanted to use Masaharu’s body to experience being human for a while. Soon, he’s turned Masaharu into the most popular boy in school, and convinced everyone that he’s Rinne’s boyfriend.

This is a very silly-and often shallow-manga, but a fun one, and also one where I’m never entirely convinced the mangaka really knows what she plans to do with the series until it’s time to end things in the final arc. This is especially evident in the romance, which seems to flip back and forth in terms of how things will end up, until it’s pretty much thrown out the window until it’s time for it to be important again. The end result is that Rinne, Masaharu and Keiju don’t end up really feeling like a triangle, but more like a trio of oddball friends with the complication of hormones. Where one is a bodysnatching god, another is a gangster in the body of a stuffed monkey, and the last attacks ghosts-and them-with a giant fan.

Mostly, I am amazed that body snatching somehow ended up rather endearing, and that a stuffed monkey can not only make a convincing gangster, but also that it can come across as very thoughtful and pensive.

*Don't ask me about the "!!!" because I do not know!  Though it does seem to make the title a bit obnoxious.

Dollhouse thoughts

So, I thought LJ gave you a few more icons when you renewed your paid account? I just renewed and they didn’t! I had icons picked out and everything! Anyway…

So, tonight is the season finale of Dollhouse. When the first episode aired, I mentioned that the series, while deeply problematic, had a lot of my narrative kinks. This remains true, though the problems have only intensified. In the early, Rapist of the Week driven episodes, the series had a moderate amount of self-awareness, though this self-awareness manifested itself as “you know this is wrong and we know this is wrong, and since you know that we know it’s wrong, it’s ok for us to go ahead with it full force.” Once we reached the magical episode 6 where we supposedly got past the Fox mandated episodes and to what Whedon and Co. really wanted to do, however, that limited self-awareness started deteriorating. Yes, it’s wrong, and they know it’s wrong, but the series is so caught up in sending A Message and showing how utterly fascinating this makes people that, by episode 9, the self-awareness was pretty much completely gone. (Which is a pity, because a better approach and handling could make this premise kinda awesome.) It’s also a case of taking shades of grey way too far. Buffy and Angel? Had shades of grey and complex characters. Ditto for Firefly. Dollhouse’s characters may be complex, but it’s so busy making them complex that it’s difficult to really have anything solid on the characters.

Anyway, thoughts on two points, specifically, why I can’t convince that we aren’t supposed to like and sympathize certain characters, and where the show seems to be going with the actives in the finale. This includes spoilers for all of Dollhouse and the last two seasons of Buffy and Angel.

( long )

Do not post spoilers for the finale-including the trailer-in the comments. Do not warn for spoilers for the finale and then spoil. Yes, I do know what “I saw this in the trailer but I’ll pass it off as conjecture” looks like. Don’t do it.