RG Veda Vol 9-10 (end)

[meganbmoore]

Uhm…rocks fall and almost everyone dies? Maybe I was spoiled by the endings of Basara and , where, halfway through, you’re pretty much convinced that everyone is going to be dead by the end, but you end up with a respectable body count and more survivors than not, and pretty much everyone who died died accomplishing something, or making it possible for someone else to accomplish something. Not in the middle of finding out the good guys had unintentionally been aiding in the apocalypse.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to “rocks fall, everybody dies” when it makes sense, but when you add it to learning that everything you’ve watched the characters go through wasn’t to save the world, but to destroy it, it starts to feel gratuitous. At one point, Zouchouten said he was sick of all the dying. I actually said “me too” out loud.

And yet, I’m still pretty fond of this thing.

But is Clamp capable of just writing a good old-fashioned bad guy? I mean, I’m all for complex characters and motives and twists, but it’s nice to just have a villain you can root to have defeated from beginning to end. For that matter, why does the reveal on these things always have to end up “and all this was because I loved someone”?

Other bits:

1. Kendappa was the 4th general. This pleases me.
2. That Lord Ashura and Taishakouten both married Sanshi because she had the seal while they had a thing going themselves didn’t exactly make me sympathize with them the way the backstory was supposed to. Not that I particularly sympathize with Sanshi, but really…
3. Kujaku is the spawn of an incestuous union between the former god king and his sister, was kept locked in a jail cell to hide his father’s sins, and his mother tried to kill him. I am deeply concerned that something like that no longer shocks me. Possibly even more concerned that it makes me go “Whee!”
4. Ashura really shouldn’t have made the “Everyone loves you”! speech to Tenou. While it was pretty understandable under the circumstances, it made me want to point to Yasha, Souma and Ryuu and go “What are they? Fertilizer?”
5. Thank you for at least leaving two characters I liked-Zouchouten and Tenou-alive, Clamp. (Though I feel compelled to point out that it was three until you went for the last second death.) (Yes, I do like Yasha and Ashura, too, but…)
 

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It was the last second "Kill Kujaku, save Ashura" thing that really pushes it into "oh, come on, Clamp, really?"

ashura and Yasha as a pairing kind of weirds me out. I mean, Kujaku was still calling Yasha Ashura's father 10 pages from the end.

But yeah, I like them, but liked most of the people who died-often senselessly-for them even more, so seeing them suddenly get a second chance and happy ending is a bit of a kick to the gut.