Samurai Deeper Kyo: Kyo and Yuya's first meeting

[meganbmoore]

Been meaning to post this for a while and remembered I hadn't while talking about mangas that get turned into anime with dangermousie.

Kyo and Yuya are one of the odder(but cute in their dysfunctional way) OTPs out there, and they have what has to qualify as one of the, if not THE weirdest first meetings of an OTP ever.



(not the cover to vol 1, but to a lot later, but hey, I like it...)

Travelling around 1604 Japan, bounty hunter Yuya Shiina meets this guy:








Sweet, but essentially useless and dumb(or so he tries very, ver hard to convince us.)  But he has packmule-like uses and a modest bounty, so she keeps him.  Then he basically gets pounded within an inch of his life, and this happens...











Poor Yuya...likely qualifies as the worst day ever for her so far.  (I feel compelled to point out here that Kyo/Kyoshiro isn't a case of multiple personalities, but two completely separate men who used to be friends and Kyoshiro-for reasons that come out later-basically locked Kyo's soul in a little box and stuffed it down inside four years ago.  So when he first gets out, he's a little prickly and antagonistic, even for Kyo)







Anyway, Kyo gets his morning workout(read: slaughtering all the bad guys) then there's this:







It cracks me up that he's so disappointed she's actually going to do it(or so he thinks)



That was probably a first for him(and I have yet to decide if it was brave or suicidal on her part, or both)



Poor girl has no idea what she's letting herself in for, there...





This is Kyo's idea of letting a girl know he likes her.  Have I mentioned that he's like a hormy five-year-old pulling hair in the sandbox when it comes to Yuya??(poor Yuya, before long you'll wish all he ever did was slice open your kimono...)



This means "You're cool, let's hang out.  Can I grope you any time I feel like it?  I really don't care if you say "no" because I will anyway."



Take heed of that "make more effort to become a woman" comment Yuya...testing your...urm...growth is going to be his favorite hobby soon...





Oh, hello again Kyoshiro...





Poor Kyoshiro...that was more for Kyo than for you...really.

Comments

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

OK, this looks awesome and I am about to head to a bookstore to pick up the first volume.

But you are kidding, right? I mean, from this scene, Kyo would be a fun character to follow the adventures of, but to ship him with Yuya? Yikes. Ugh, molesters. Well, I'll give the ship a try. I wanted to strangle Domyouji and Logan at first after all, too.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's part of why I love Kyp/Yuya so much. Because at first you can't possibly imagine Kyo/Yuya and can actually kind of go for Kyoshiro/Yuya. I didn't even realize I shipped them for a long time, it just kind of sneaks up and bites you. Now I can pinpoint when I probably started shipping them, or at least considering the possibility(another character, Mahiro, masquerades as Yuya and tries to seduce Kyo, and-not knowing yet who it is-he tells her to shut up and knock it off because Yuya would never be that pathetic) but I didn't realize I was for a long time.

The only SDK characters I really immediately latched on to are Yuya, Kyoshiro and Sasuke, most of the rest were "ok, you're cool and interesting but I'm not sure I like you" and then at some point something involving them would happen and I would be all "EEEEEE!!! DON'T YOU HURT MY PSYCHOTIC DAMAGED ANGSTY WOOBIE!!! DIEDIEDIE!!!!"(even when it was another psychotic angsty damaged woobie)

Actually, that's why I love SDK so much...on the one hand, all the characters are exactly what they seem, but on the other, it's just a small part of them...I mean, on the one hand, Kyo really is a homicidal perverted jerk with the maturity of a five-year-old, but as you read, you realize that he's also extremely loyal and protective(psychotically so-*points to other SDK entries*), will never break his word, will always stand by his friends and, in his way, is noble to a fault. And it's not until you're realizing that that the possibility of Kyo/Yuya really occurs to you.

(incidentally, I think that headbutt is rather like Makino hitting Domyoji: "She stood up to me. I must have.")

I know what you mean about Logan and Domyoji...when I started watching VM, I couldn't see why anyone would EVER like Logan outside of the "love to hate" way, much less ship him with Veronica, and was actually rather leaning toward V/Weevil(bad boy pretty much wrapped around her finger but knows it) or V/Wallace(sweet best friend)(but most definately NOT V/Duncan because the only thing that ever made him interesting was wondering if he was nuts) but LoVe was handled in a way that I didn't even realize I was starting to like Logan until the spinny kiss...yeah, I noticed he was being nice to her, and starting to be protective and that they were slowly becoming friends again, but it was just a BAM! I SHIP I SHIP I SHIP!!!! thing.

In MG, Si is immediately endearing because it's obvious he's more, well, dumb and dysfunctional than anything else, but if I didn't know the story from HYD, I would have been "huh?" to the ship, which WAS my reaction to Domyoji in HYD because it was "How could anyone EVER possibly want them to get together? I mean, he sent the ENTIRE SCHOOL to horribly bully her because the girl stood up for a friend? What's wrong with you people?" But, obviously, both ships won me over(or should it be the two versions of the same ship?)

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

Looks interesting... Some extremely nice art there too.

Odd translation... 150cm? honestly, if someone means "five foot" they should say "five foot"... and they could at least have translated the sound effects as well (being able to read them doesn't help much either... what on earth is "zuruzuruzuruzuru" supposed to mean?)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Actually, the art here is EXTREMELY rough in comparison to what comes later.

Scanslations tend to do exact translations, and the original text had centimeters instead of inches and feet. Dunno about the zuruzuruzuruzuru.

[chomiji]

Yeah, Kamijyo's art really evolves as the series goes on. There's a gorgeous gallery of mostly color stuff at SDKPOWAA (a massive French fan site). Here's a colorization of a black-and-white frontispiece from one of the late issues ... the guy in the tiger-striped headcloth is Benitora, who shows up in vol. 3, and standing behind him is Akira (vol. 5, I believe) ... they have a bit of a rivalry going on at this point, and it's not always friendly, either.

I love this series ... no one is really what he or she seems at first, and finding out who's really what is just extremely entertaining. Not to mention that the huge ensemble cast means that there's a favorite character for just about everyone, no matter what type of hero you prefer!

-Cho

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

One day, I shall make an icon of Benitora and Akira yelling at each other saying "no, I have a cuter crush on Yuya!"

[chomiji]

(Oh, BTW, you are one of the few other people around who seems to know who Cordwainer Smith is ... I was poking around in Interests and recognized your name from Megan's page here. - Cho, another CS fan)

[southerndave.livejournal.com]

Pleased to meet you (and sorry for the delay, my email account wasn't giving me last week's comment notifications until today). I've been a fan of his writing for something like two decades now... Just so darned good, really. He's one of the world's great storytellers, albeit one of the least prolific...

[yaoipimp.livejournal.com]

The look on Kyo's face when he's rubbing his chin after she nuts him is...fantastic EVERY time I see it. He's just got this "wtf just HAPPENED?" look.

Swords? Pfft. Knives? Amatuers. Fists? Old school.

Cute looking girls headbutting him in the chin? Nooot quite what any of his training prepared him for!

*still stalking your SDK entries* :3

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

The headbutt is why he keeps her, I swear. It's like "she stood up to me...I must have. I must I must I must."

Uhm...that'll take you a while...

[yaoipimp.livejournal.com]

Now I'm seeing Kyo having a Wayne's World moment..."She will be mine. Oh yes, she will be mine."

Not as long as you'd think! XD; (Though I rejoice in seeing Kyo and Kyoshiro squabble over Kyoshiro comparing Kyo to a little kid! Thank ye for posting that and saving my lazy ass the trouble of looking! :3)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Heh. At the rate I'm going, i'll have entire VOLUMES of manga posted to my LJ before long.