Get cerusee over here; she is Petshop Girl, she will know! But I am certain it was definitely set in California for...reasons I can curiously not articulate. Possibly the sunshine and immigrant population and Leon's Hawaiian shirts!
You are right, not!Leon is not a good foil for D. The Tokyo series feels weird to me because it's a continuation (a la Saiyuki / Reload?) only not, because PSOH Original-Flavor had a definite character-climax-y change thing going by the end for both Leon (the stubbornly meddlesome No-Nonsense Cop!) and D (the morally ambiguous Mysterious Shopkeeper!). Where do you go from there? Preferably not to Square One...? So starting things over in Tokyo with D as the Mysterious Shopkeeper again only works if you wipe out the squishy human feeeeelings that had snuck up on him by the end of Original Flavor, which, no; or if you contrast his inhumanity against someone even more amoral, which...may be the intention with not!Leon? Only he doesn't have a moral high ground to defend or compromise, like Leon of Squishy Human Law and D of Nature Red In Tooth & Claw, and he's not interested in D or the supernatural D represents except as it impacts not!Leon's business. He is a person Leon would hate instantly and there's not enough personality click to see why D would feel any different.
The situation reminds me a lot of the X-Files reboot, when No-Nonsense Cop Doggett replaced Mysterious True Believer Mulder as the lead and skeptic Scully was the new True Believer. It didn't really work, in part because of sloppy writing, in part because every time there was a non-Monster O' The Week ep it was like they were shouting "HEY, GUESS WHO ISN'T HERE? LEON/MULDER! CHECK OUT THAT HIM-SIZED HOLE!" But it did work for me to the extent that I actually liked Doggett, who was reasonable and moral and respectful of Scully even while making You Are Crazy faces at her. You could see why Mulder&Scully and Scully&Doggett could work well together despite Mulder and Doggett hating each other like cats on fire.
Meanwhile not!Leon twangs my every nerve, and there are only so many Animals O' The Week* I can take, individually interesting as they may or may not be. I didn't read 10+ volumes of, effectively, an anthology series because I was frantic to know whether D would get up to his wacky animal tricks again and even survive them. (he would. and did.)
*strangely this does not bother me at all in Mushishi, perhaps because human connection is a big factor of the series, and Ginko is an especially warm and fuzzy Mysterious Shopkeeper.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 06:33 am (UTC)You are right, not!Leon is not a good foil for D. The Tokyo series feels weird to me because it's a continuation (a la Saiyuki / Reload?) only not, because PSOH Original-Flavor had a definite character-climax-y change thing going by the end for both Leon (the stubbornly meddlesome No-Nonsense Cop!) and D (the morally ambiguous Mysterious Shopkeeper!). Where do you go from there? Preferably not to Square One...? So starting things over in Tokyo with D as the Mysterious Shopkeeper again only works if you wipe out the squishy human feeeeelings that had snuck up on him by the end of Original Flavor, which, no; or if you contrast his inhumanity against someone even more amoral, which...may be the intention with not!Leon? Only he doesn't have a moral high ground to defend or compromise, like Leon of Squishy Human Law and D of Nature Red In Tooth & Claw, and he's not interested in D or the supernatural D represents except as it impacts not!Leon's business. He is a person Leon would hate instantly and there's not enough personality click to see why D would feel any different.
The situation reminds me a lot of the X-Files reboot, when No-Nonsense Cop Doggett replaced Mysterious True Believer Mulder as the lead and skeptic Scully was the new True Believer. It didn't really work, in part because of sloppy writing, in part because every time there was a non-Monster O' The Week ep it was like they were shouting "HEY, GUESS WHO ISN'T HERE?
LEON/MULDER! CHECK OUT THAT HIM-SIZED HOLE!" But it did work for me to the extent that I actually liked Doggett, who was reasonable and moral and respectful of Scully even while making You Are Crazy faces at her. You could see why Mulder&Scully and Scully&Doggett could work well together despite Mulder and Doggett hating each other like cats on fire.Meanwhile not!Leon twangs my every nerve, and there are only so many Animals O' The Week* I can take, individually interesting as they may or may not be. I didn't read 10+ volumes of, effectively, an anthology series because I was frantic to know whether D would get up to his wacky animal tricks again and even survive them. (he would. and did.)
*strangely this does not bother me at all in Mushishi, perhaps because human connection is a big factor of the series, and Ginko is an especially warm and fuzzy Mysterious Shopkeeper.