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meganbmooreI am up to ep 11 of the first season of Bleach(Ishida, I felt like I was being good, waiting so long for you to do something. Just so you know. I had forgotten what a prick you are initially, though.) As far as the show itself goes...uhm...it's good and it's Bleach, but I don't have a lot else to say about it. I have, howeverm watched some of the eps dubbed while I also did other things in the room(and while calixababbled to me about badfic) and...that's Ichigo and Rukia? Uhm...very much not how I'd imagined their voices(keeping in mind that I'm very generous about dubbed anime, as it's all I watched the first few years.) At all. Orihime and Isshin are pretty good, though.
It reminded me, though, of a conversation I had not to long ago with someone(don't ask me who, I forget because I'm bad that way) about character types we identify with in manga. The character type I tend to identify with the most in fiction is the one who, on the surface, is bookish and intelligent and doesn't seem to interact with people once, and tends to come across as superior or a jerk, but who you eventually realized is just reserved and has no social skills or idea of how to interact with people. This especially stands out with someone like Ishida, who tends to be shown sitting off alone with his book, speaks as little as possible, and is assumed my the few who notice him or try to interact with him(except Orihime, who is too nice to ever t hink ill of anyone) to be arrogant and superior. As we get to know him, however, we see that while he is arrogant, it's more a case of he completely lacks social skills and has no idea how to intereact with others his age, at least partly because he doesn't share their interests. In high school, I was the girl with the book who people thought was stuck up because I always read and didn't go out and get drunk with them, and didn't use the slang or poor grammar they used. In reality...I just had no idea how to interact with them, especially when all they wanted to talk about was boys, shopping, and parties(that seemed to involve stories about how cool it was that they got so drunk that they apparently fell on their head and couldn't remember it.) So when I see a character like Ishida who seems arrogant and superior but is actually reserved and just lacks dissembling social skills and doesn't want to pretend to care about things he doesn't (though in his case, he definately also has a degree of arrogance going for him, too) I tend to connect with the character. It stands out more with Ishida than others, though, because he's also the bookworm who even reads in class...I viewed breaks between classes as a chance to get a few more pages read myself. It is, however, a character type that largely seems exclusive to males in manga.
Which, I think, is part of why so much shojo has trouble sticking with me. Most shojo seems to depend on the reader quickly connecting with and identifying with the heroine. Most shojo heroines, though, fit into two categories:
1) A combination of super cheerful, bubbly, outgoing, go-getter, talkative girl.
2) The shy wallflower with few friends.
The first one is a character type that I can like plenty, and often do(sometimes flatout adore,) but who I find it difficult to identify with, because they're the polar opposite of what I was at that age, and still very different from the me today. The second category seems to be the one I should identify with, except that those girls often let themselves be used by others financially and academically, and often lack a spine until the hero's love gives them one. Sorry, but I have and always have had a spine, and while I once let myself get pushed around some thinking it would help me fit in, I never let myself get pushed around as much as those girls do. I may have lacked social skills, but I never lacked a feeling of self-worth, and seeing most of those heroines sit there and take it makes me want to shake them. And, quite frankly, I never needed some boy to help me stand on my own two feet and give me a feeling of self-worth, and I hope I never do. (Another problem I have with shojo heroines...they tend to let their self-identity get too wrapped up in their man and what he thinks of them.) One of the reasons Skip-Beat appeals to me is that, technically, Kyoko falls into the second category...except that she grows her spine when she realizes that she's being taken adventage of by the boy she likes, and is all about punishing him for using her, then starting to grow out of the vengeance phase and into her own person largely through her rivalry and later friendship with another girl.
Because I can like but not identify with them, the more the plot starts to revolve around their romantic issues(especially the "he wants to have sex but I'm not ready" stuff) the less I can care. Shonen, however, is different. Because it's directed to boys, the female characters aren't put forth specifically for me to identify with, but rather for me to like, find interesting or cool, etc. Because I'm not expected to put myself in her shoes, I never feel like I'm missing out by not directly identifying with her.
And I have no idea if any of this will even make sense to anyone but me, but there it is.
calixababbled to me about badfic) and...that's Ichigo and Rukia? Uhm...very much not how I'd imagined their voices(keeping in mind that I'm very generous about dubbed anime, as it's all I watched the first few years.) At all. Orihime and Isshin are pretty good, though.It reminded me, though, of a conversation I had not to long ago with someone(don't ask me who, I forget because I'm bad that way) about character types we identify with in manga. The character type I tend to identify with the most in fiction is the one who, on the surface, is bookish and intelligent and doesn't seem to interact with people once, and tends to come across as superior or a jerk, but who you eventually realized is just reserved and has no social skills or idea of how to interact with people. This especially stands out with someone like Ishida, who tends to be shown sitting off alone with his book, speaks as little as possible, and is assumed my the few who notice him or try to interact with him(except Orihime, who is too nice to ever t hink ill of anyone) to be arrogant and superior. As we get to know him, however, we see that while he is arrogant, it's more a case of he completely lacks social skills and has no idea how to intereact with others his age, at least partly because he doesn't share their interests. In high school, I was the girl with the book who people thought was stuck up because I always read and didn't go out and get drunk with them, and didn't use the slang or poor grammar they used. In reality...I just had no idea how to interact with them, especially when all they wanted to talk about was boys, shopping, and parties(that seemed to involve stories about how cool it was that they got so drunk that they apparently fell on their head and couldn't remember it.) So when I see a character like Ishida who seems arrogant and superior but is actually reserved and just lacks dissembling social skills and doesn't want to pretend to care about things he doesn't (though in his case, he definately also has a degree of arrogance going for him, too) I tend to connect with the character. It stands out more with Ishida than others, though, because he's also the bookworm who even reads in class...I viewed breaks between classes as a chance to get a few more pages read myself. It is, however, a character type that largely seems exclusive to males in manga.
Which, I think, is part of why so much shojo has trouble sticking with me. Most shojo seems to depend on the reader quickly connecting with and identifying with the heroine. Most shojo heroines, though, fit into two categories:
1) A combination of super cheerful, bubbly, outgoing, go-getter, talkative girl.
2) The shy wallflower with few friends.
The first one is a character type that I can like plenty, and often do(sometimes flatout adore,) but who I find it difficult to identify with, because they're the polar opposite of what I was at that age, and still very different from the me today. The second category seems to be the one I should identify with, except that those girls often let themselves be used by others financially and academically, and often lack a spine until the hero's love gives them one. Sorry, but I have and always have had a spine, and while I once let myself get pushed around some thinking it would help me fit in, I never let myself get pushed around as much as those girls do. I may have lacked social skills, but I never lacked a feeling of self-worth, and seeing most of those heroines sit there and take it makes me want to shake them. And, quite frankly, I never needed some boy to help me stand on my own two feet and give me a feeling of self-worth, and I hope I never do. (Another problem I have with shojo heroines...they tend to let their self-identity get too wrapped up in their man and what he thinks of them.) One of the reasons Skip-Beat appeals to me is that, technically, Kyoko falls into the second category...except that she grows her spine when she realizes that she's being taken adventage of by the boy she likes, and is all about punishing him for using her, then starting to grow out of the vengeance phase and into her own person largely through her rivalry and later friendship with another girl.
Because I can like but not identify with them, the more the plot starts to revolve around their romantic issues(especially the "he wants to have sex but I'm not ready" stuff) the less I can care. Shonen, however, is different. Because it's directed to boys, the female characters aren't put forth specifically for me to identify with, but rather for me to like, find interesting or cool, etc. Because I'm not expected to put myself in her shoes, I never feel like I'm missing out by not directly identifying with her.
And I have no idea if any of this will even make sense to anyone but me, but there it is.
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Date: 2008-01-22 06:46 am (UTC)The heroine is (me, with a few more extreme traits - I actually have a post to that effect coming up) - a cross between those two character tropes; she's an insanely smart, workaholic journalist, who is awkward in general with people. The basic plot of this manga is that, after having been dumped by the man she thought she was going to marry, she comes across a beaten up young man in an alley, takes him home. He wants to stay with her, since her flat is awesome, and she cooks, and she says no... unless he stays as her pet.
I'm in love with this serious for the way the author treats the heroine - she is given respect for what an effort being an 'elite' is, and the person you should be with is presented as the person you're most comfortable with, not the knight in shining armor, even if you love him a lot too.
Plus, I find the window on japanese modern life fascinating (no idea how accurate it is...).
It's a very fun, frothy series.
... sorry to get all tangenty and rambling in your journal.
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Date: 2008-01-22 07:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 09:46 pm (UTC)I totally understand liking this type of story best in a more confined narrative. I was reading the last one, and was really, really sad when i saw 'to be continued' on the end, because they were at such a perfect stopping point, before reading that the NEXT volume will be the end.
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Date: 2008-01-22 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-23 12:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 09:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-22 09:36 pm (UTC)And I haven't actually read Wild Adapter (Fandom: "CANON SLASH! THIS PROVES HAKKAIXGOJYO!1111" Me: "yeah, I'm giving that one a pass.") but from what I've heard, that comparison isn't too far off.
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Date: 2008-01-23 06:10 am (UTC)As for Wild Adapter as canon slash? Eh, not really. Buckets and buckets of subtext, as is Minekura's wont, but still hardly anything in the way of action. I haven't yet made my way through the scanlations I picked up of the most recent volume, but in the stuff out in English so far there is just one male/male kiss (and it's not even between the Gojyo-and-Hakkai-ish boys; it's between the Hakkai-ish Kubota and his Yakuza boss, and it doesn't go anywhere). Other than that, well, there's one scene where Toki and Kubo are delivering dialogue to sound like they're making out, but it's a distraction because their room has been bugged; they're actually just sitting on a couch looking bored the whole time. And in another arc, the cover story Kubo comes up with when they're trying to get closer to a cult they're investigating is that they're half-brothers rejected by their family for their incestuous love (Toki is NOT amused). As far as text goes, that's as slashy as it gets. (I understand she's done an AU doujinshi where it is overt, but that's another story of course.)
Mind you, even if it's not terribly slashy in actual overt canon, I'm still not sure it'd be quite your thing. Minekura brings the pretty, as usual, but it's more of a dark urban mystery series with gritty underworld/Yakuza elements. Female characters are pretty scarce and mostly ones you'd not want to identify with, and the Hakkai-ish boy is *so* cold and reserved that he makes TENPOU look like a big fluffy teddy bear in comparison. I like it, but a lot of Minekura fans who adore Saiyuki seem to find this one leaves them a little cold.
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Date: 2008-01-23 06:40 am (UTC)*hem*
I highly doubt she'd like Wild Adaptor. I have a much higher slash tolerance than she does, and I like urban noir, but I couldn't finish the second book. Too obsessed with being dark and gritty and not enough anything else. OTPH, I very, very much liked Bus Gamer, and wish there was more of it. It has a similar comraderie feel as Saiyuki, and is a rather fun adventure book that actually makes games between businessmen interesting.
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Date: 2008-01-23 09:31 am (UTC)I've liked WA better than BG so far, but I have a bit of a thing for yakuza/triad stories, mysteries, and gritty noir, so even aside from any slashy subtext it's hitting more favored genre buttons for me. (And the crackier parts of my brain, given my 585 obsession, can't resist trying to parse it as all just one long dark strange 585 AU or reincarnation fic, so really it works for me on multiple levels.)
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Date: 2008-01-23 04:52 pm (UTC)You know...from the little I saw, the WA characters made me think about Hakkai and Goku more than Hakkai and Gojyo, but then, I didn't read very far. The main problem I had with it was just that it was SO OBSESSED with being dark and gritty and noir. I don't care for when writers/artist get so obsessed with their style that it starts getting in the way of the work for me.
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Date: 2008-01-23 07:48 pm (UTC)As for Praed's jumping ship, eh, I can't really blame him for jumping at the shot of a starring role on Broadway -- it was the sort of thing that could have been his big break if the musical hadn't flopped so hard. And much as it broke my heart seeing Loxley get killed off, it gave the writers some grand opportunities to play with both major strands of the Robin Hood mythos and work with all sorts of heightened emotions; "The Greatest Enemy" just packed such an incredible punch and I'm not sure the series ever would have reached that high point if Loxley had survived. It's just a shame that Kip was doing so much less of the writing by S3, Huntington had a lot of potential but it was too often undercut by clunky writing. And then it never got picked up for a fourth season so all those plot threads were left hanging...
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Date: 2008-01-23 07:55 pm (UTC)I haven't seen Huntington Robin Hood yet(aside from the bit at the end of the first set) as I'm waiting for the set to have a good price.
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Date: 2008-01-23 08:52 pm (UTC)(And hrm, you know, I *do* actually have a DVD R/RW drive these days, perhaps this is a sign that it's well past time I tested out the "W" side of things...)