mindstalk | Entries tagged with manga

This is based on a manga, but I will change character names to clear pre-conceptions.

So we have this young woman Sarah, age 20, and an older but still attractive one, Heather.

Sarah has:

* declared that her main motivation in life is seeing Heather be happy

* said that she is susceptible to Heather's seductive wiles

* voluntarily taken over waking up and grooming Heather in the mornings, for the past 4 years

* been repeatedly possessive about anyone else touching Heather, even to the point of ripping Heather out of another woman's arms. She has carried an unconscious Heather through dangerous weather, even when someone much stronger than her was available.

Also, while not doing anything clearly sexual or romantic, Sarah and Heather touch much of the time, including sleeping on each other's bodies, or cuddling together overnight when camping. Sarah often wraps her arms around Heather's shoulders from behind.

There's also a young man, John, the same age as Sarah. Sarah and John are friends, more or less; they certainly care about each other's well-being. They went on a date once, almost by accident or mutual teasing/bullying. It was a nice date. John thought Sarah was cute. Sarah has shown some subtle awareness of John as a strong and kind young man. They did not hold hands or kiss. It was their only known date, in between two separate instances of Sarah being possessive about Heather's body. Sarah has never once shown John the same intensity of feeling (motivation, possessiveness) that she has shown for Heather.

Is Sarah, in any way, remotely straight?

If I add the information that Heather has been Sarah's teacher and housemate since Sarah was 10, and her only guardian since Sarah was 15, does this change your opinion? (All of Sarah's behaviors described have been in the past 2-4 years, there's no trick here a la a 10 year old saying they'll marry a particular adult when they grow up.)

Tonight I caught on several months of issues of a few manga titles, and come to think of it they all had romantic developments, but two were amusing.

In manga 1, Boy and Girl confessed quite some time ago, with even some kissing. They're on a very slow burn toward anything more for class reasons, though. Boy was having a cold but hiding it to avoid a fuss. Girl got them into a private space, was obviously skeptical, and said "If you don't have a fever, let's kiss." Boy doesn't want to get her sick, so bluff called. But it was amusingly direct of her... in character for any other topic, but I don't recall her being that blunt about their smoldering romance.

In manga 2, Boy and Girl had not confessed. Girl had overhead about Boy having a fiancee. Boy got tired of being in a romantic comedy, possibly in so many words, and ripped the bandaid off. In front of their intimate traveling companions. *fwoomp*

In the same manga, a different Boy and Girl are just friends, really. But the palace staff think they're lovers, which is a relief to them ("our king isn't gay! there might be an heir!") and fewer eligible women are being pushed at Boy. Honestly, Boy might be asexual for all we can tell so far.

Crossposts: https://mindstalk.livejournal.com/500730.html

I could talk about some of these in more detail at some point, but figured I'd dump for now. Also, this my first table of text and images, because I thought I'd try more images and wrapping text in HTML seems hard. Images are mostly HTML-scaled (to 150 pixels high) and larger if you 'view' them in your browser.
(Edit: I discovered the Livejournal version of this looks like shit in chromium. If you're reading this there in that, might try Firefox or the Dreamwidth link.)
( Table of text and images )
If you want a blind recommendation out of all this, I'd go with RSG, because it's good and pretty short so what do you have to lose? and FMA:B, because it's awesome. Or the original FMA manga, also awesome. I have no opinion on the first FMA anime, I just know the story diverges massively. Oh, and the opening/ending of Mahou Shojoutai, because it's only 4 minutes total, and so pretty and weird. I wish I had someone to share the rest of the series with, but I can't make it a high priority cold recommendation.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/411220.html

At Anime Boston this year, it was impossible to get into panels I wanted for most of Saturday afternoon, which I instead spent watching five episodes of Bunny Drop. I've now watched the rest, and I like it. For conflict and tension it's down there with Maria-sama, Aria, YKK, and Chii's Sweet Home; pure slice of life of a 30 year old bachelor who effectively adopts his 6 year old aunt (Granpa got lucky before he died) and raises her. It is basically pure parenting DAWWWW but as with Maria-sama and Aria and YKK that seems to work on me, and this time there isn't even the usual parade of nubile women. (I can't stand Chii.) Daikichi and Rin may remind me of my and my niblings or friends' kids.

There's a bit of bite: a look at how hard it is to be a single parent in Japan, people taking demotions so they can pick their kid on time, a cousin who runs away from her husband and in-laws, then later other good fathers. I'm influenced here by the Totally Subversive Toons panel, which said that Japan's long recession changed what was acceptable to show in terms of family dynamics and tensions. Before, only happy families; after, a Black Lagoon exec who comes home and ignores his wife and troubled kids. So I'm wondering if "parenting is hard, work isn't everything, and in-laws can suck" is part of that.

I don't know if actual parents would think this is sweet and awesome or just banal because they live it. But for what it is, it seems perfect.

Then I went to look it up online, and learned it's based on manga. Specifically, the first half of the manga, which seems just as perfect in its familial realism, but with more details than the anime. The second half starts with a timeskip of ten years, and, well... volumes 5 and 6 are said to be fine, but after that it takes a very weird turn and you might simply want to skip that.

( Or descriptions of it. But if you don't: )

http://japaneseliterature.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/bunny-drop/ is an interesting and positive review of the manga... again apart from the ending.

So, I still recommend the show, and the first 4-6 volumes of the manga (on hearsay.) Caveat lector on the rest.

Crossposts: http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/367390.html

1) Armitage III. Sounded promising on Wikipedia, which did not prepare me for a character who rivals Major Kusanagi in "inappropriate clothing for a law enforcement officer". Perhaps it's meant to distract criminals? Was interesting, but the robot science got rubbery, and the ending skipped a lot of details or explanation.

2) Voices of a Distant Star. Poignant. Poignancy ruined when I realized that FTL travel means FTL courier mail, ruining a key premise. Though you can rationalize it with the right assumptions, kind of. Someone printed out a summary of the last 50 pages of the novel, which has a happier ending but doesn't make sense unless the aliens blew up the last-used jump point... in the manga, the ship seems just too damaged to move, though the news of that seemed to go back and forth via FTL.

3) The Place Promised in Our Early Days. Might be good? But another heart-wringing relationship with rubbery science (Now with Extra Quantum!) tonight was too much for me, especially tired, so I bailed out halfway through.

In Manga news, I bought and read Ghost in the Shell. Major's a lot different, with emotions and facial expressions and boyfriends. Still lots of fanservice. Got a lot more mystical at the end, at least compared to the series, don't recall the movie that well. With mention of ESP and a psychic.

James introduced me to Girlfriends, light yuri-ish shoujo. I liked it, though I don't claim there's anything deep there. I didn't find a better way of going between chapter than editing the URL. Not manga, but I also re-read the As If webcomic archive, something I'd forgotten about.

Astro City: the Dark Age was pretty good. Dark Phoenix Saga was decent. I hadn't known it introduced Kitty Pryde and Dazzler! That was cute.

I'll be off to Chicago tomorrow, courtesy of taxi and Megabus.

My online lives are closing. There's been rather sharp separation: close friends from college and San Francisco in e-mail; other college people on Gale; various mailing lists and newsgroups; IU on LJ; Michelle over on blogspot; never shall they meet. Well, except for Usenet/LJ bleeding. But shakal's a (silent) person from Caltech on LJ, and now fanw of my close circle and I have exchanged names. And I find she's been on LJ since 2004, ahem.

I've read all of the Chobits manga, courtesy of the public library. What I've realized is that it's affected me in a way that most manga and anime hasn't, and that the ending is really frustrating (that, alas, isn't uncommon.) There are works which change how you see the world, or how you think the world should be, or how you think *you* should be: Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Ayn Rand (not for me, but for many), Lois Bujold, Vernor Vinge. The mindbending quality of Adams and Pratchett is what I now think they have in common, you put their books down with a different mode of thinking. I think Hitchhiker had more of that than Dirk Gently, and Discworld more than Bromeliad, thus the relative popularities.

Hikaru no Go got me playing Go again for a while, and Scrapped Princess infected my imagination and gave me a userpic, but most other anime/manga I can think of seems like it's been an aesthetic or narrative drug. I watch, I enjoy (or not), I see how it comes out, and that's that. Chobits gave me another way of seeing future human-robot relationships and development, and a fairly plausible one. Big win. It also ends with our being told that even the most robots don't feel emotions -- told this by a robot who shut down of pain from grief and unrequited love. What? There's more to say on this, but I won't for now. It'd be most fun with people who'd read the thing, anyway.

I went to Gen Con Friday. Played Puerto Rico, and a Castle Falkenstein RPG, and went out to dinner with anime people. I can understand unforth's just wanting to walk around and steep in geek culture, but I'm glad I got to play a Falk game.

I've now bought Puerto Rico, "better than Settlers" and the most popular game at thinkgamegeek.com, as well as Citadels (from a defunct gaming group) and Bohnanza (known from Caltech friends). Coming soon to a Guild meeting near you! Well, not too soon.