Of Swords and Parasols

 

meganbmoore has a confession to make. meganbmooreis HIGHLY SUSCEPTIBLE to scenes where a Damsel in Distress shouts a hero's name, and Subject of Scream magically appears to save the DiD with his sword (or weapon/power-of-choice...but it's usually a sword...)  meganbmooredoes not require that she ship the SoS and DiD on such occasions, whether because she dislikes the pairing, or because they don't seem to have that kind of relationship.  In fact, she has been known to squee when such scenes occur and she is opposed to the pairing. It is A Weakness.

That said: meganbmoorehad to repress a squee in the first chapter of the volume, as she was at work.

20  x Basara
10 x Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning
18 X Togari

Teasers:

  


I was also going to have Twelve Kingdoms illustrations icons and Samurai Deeper Kyo and xXxHoLic manga scans icons, but I kinda stalled out...

I have read Togari Vol 3.  As I am at home where I also have most of the series on my hard drive, and no other series I want to pimp right now has scanslations(or even raws that my meager googlefu can find) I shall post scans instead of a writeup.





Hmmm...why does LJ seem unusually slow even for a Sunday?

Time to see if megaupload will let me have anything yet.

In the non-manga arena: tonight is the  church Thanksgiving meal.  This will be Thanksgiving meal #2 of 4.  The first was work, the third will be with Dad's family on Thursday and the fourth Mom's family on Saturday.  Thank goodness it was agreed on year's ago that the Saturday meal was a no-turkey meal.

In other news, megaupload is evil and keeps cutting me off after one or two eps of Utawarerumono, making me wait 8 or so hours before I can have another(yet another argument to stick to my "dvds only" thing...)  If they announced a thinpak tomorrow I'd just wait the 4-5 months until I could get it(since I'm getting it anyway...)  I'm on ep 12 now and it's great, but one I think I'm better off waiting to really talk about until I finish.  I'm having to pace myself because of megaupload's meanness, but as soon as I get the whole thing...

Also, the online manga community has let me down thrice in the last week:  no scanslations to be found for Night of the Beasts, Qwan or Hikkatsu! Strike A Blow to Vivify?  I can find scanslations for every endless hearts and flowers and giant eyes love triangle shojo and every endless shonen action manga, but those?  Nowhere to be found.  Not even raws.  (Though, if anyone with mightier googlefu than mine wants to be nice and try...?)  At least I did find Togari, though I don't plan to read ahead there atm, just use for posts and maybe icons.  I have also decided to catch up with Bleach.  No idea what chapter/volume I left off at, so I'll just skim until I get to where I was.

[And since I'm talking a lot about downloading stuff:  I utterly despise reading manga/books and watching anything but youtube vids on my computer screen(though I have nothing but love and respect for scanslators and subbers.)  Especially reading.  I do it only to feed addictions, or if there's no other way to get it.  If I download it, I consider myself committed to buying the licensed version when/if it comes out.  The only exception is if I get completely fed up with something, at which point, I'll drop it...this has happened exactly once, and as I'd already given the US publisher a ton of money, I didn't feel real guilt over not paying for EVERY volume I read...]

On the printed manga front:

1.  I have vols 2-6 of xXxHoLic and vols 1-3 of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle waiting for me.  Do I need to read them in any specific order(since I know there are crossovers) or can I just catch up with xXxHoLic and then worry about Tsubasa?

2.  Anyone want me to try to create a comprehensible, semi-logical explanation of the plot of Hikkatsu! Strike A Blow to Vivify?  I feel compelled to pimp it more and since I can't provide scans...

ETA:  And if anyone wants to see the status of the "planned reading for the rest of the year" post I made a couple weeks ago:

 I now come with the before threatened Togari scans.

Instead of many massive fights, I bring you Tobei adjusting to the modern world(and possibly proof that Tobei is Itsuki's new pet.)



(note: a bit of nudity, but no-no parts are hidden by shadows)

I have decided that yes, I most definately love this manga.  I wish the action scenes weren't so reliant on speed lines, but that's ok.  Where else can I get conversations like this:

Hero: My head feels like it's gonna split open.
Sidekick:  Most heads do split open after being struck with rocks.
Hero: Yeah, but it hurt more when you really did split my head open in hell, you bastard.
Sidekick: And why was that?  Because you tried to escape.

*giant rock in question finally breaks in half from the head smashing earlier*

The "person from the past being overwhelmed by modern conveniences" thing is pretty common, but it doesn't feel very well-trod here, maybe because Tobei didn't really function in the society of his own time, either.  He's very strongly associated with being a stray, feral animal, with itsuki being the nice girl who fed and petted it and took it home.  And just to make sure we get the point, Itsuki remembers a feral kitten she found once but was told to leave alone, and we immediately cut to Ose being confronted outside the house with a larger, older version of the cat.  Apparently, taking in strays is her thing.  The fact that this stray is completely owned by her by her ability to master a tie and his conviction that she has the ability to trap samurai in the TV(something both she and her grandfather have great fun with.)

I wish I could feel suspense over the nd of Vol 2, but I fear I've been reading Samurai Deeper Kyo and Saiyuki too long to think an excuse to save won't be found.

Hmmm...I have found it to DL and am now tempted to post scans...

Soooo....you rule hell and a couple hundred demons called Toga, or "sins" escape to  the human world.  You have at your disposal various demons, demi gods, heavenly alliances and probably your fair share of samurai you could get if you asked nicely.  Your choice of Toga-recoverer?  A mass murderer who refuses to consider repenting after 300 years in hell.

I love you godly beings of manga and anime, I truly do.

Togari is about Tobei, a young man who killed over 1000 people in Edo 300 years ago before being captured and executed.  While Tobei seems to have started killing as a child out of self defense, it seems unlikely that that was the only reason he ever killed.  Even after 300 years he refuses to feel guilt or repent, and with nothing left to do with him, Ema, the ruler of hell, gives him Togari, a wooden sword that can kill the Toga, escaped demons that feed off and empower evil humans, and return them to hell.  If he can kill 108 of them without getting killed himself, he wins a chance at redemption.

Ema sends Ose, a demon from heaven(read: he's pretty and has a stick up his butt) who's been in charge of Tobei for the last century to watch over him, in the form of a dog(yes, Tobei has fun with that.)  One in the human world, Tobei mostly unitnentionally saves a girl named Itsuki from being raped and killed, bringing him to the attention of both Itsuki and Sawakazi, a police officer who knew Itsuki's father(a police officer whose murderer was never found.)  For an illustration of what this is like, imagine a dog used to being kicked by everyone it meets who suddenly has someone pet it instead of kick it, then has someone else offer it a treat 5 minutes later.  Actually, Tobei largely makes me think of a mix between a serial killer and a dog just like that.

And just for fun, anytime Tobei sins, the scar on his neck where he was decapitated bleeds, and anything he does to a human gets done to him in return.  There's also a nasty(though not necessarily inexpected) twist as to why Ema really chose Tobei to go after the Toga.

For the curious, yes, you coul probably dump Tobei into the middle of a squabble between Blade of the Immortal's Manji and Magatsu and not really notice except for the increase of "punk" and "kid" being used.  I was largely drawn tothis for the similarities(character/general redemption plot/art) to BotI, and while it doesn't measure up to BotI(what does?) I liked it quite a bit.  Like BotI, it is completely unapologetic about its "hero's" past, and manages to make him somewhat sympathetic without making excuses or saying he really isn't that bad(because hey, he is)

Maybe I just forget(or maybe I just haven't read that far yet)  but do we know the story behind Renji's tattoos?  Or for that matter, how much of his body they cover?

I meant to ask in last night's post but forgot.

In other news, today I shall read the first volume of a relatively new manga called Togari, about a vagrant swordsman who spent 300 years in hell but is sent to the modern world to recapture 108 escaped demons.  It looks to be as insane, violent and unapologetic as Blade of the Immortal.  I have high expectations.