Retconned manga my love
Friday, June 4th, 2010 11:04 amOk. This is complicated. Pay close attention.
Back in November '05 I bought a comic from Bookoff called Madara (青). The 青 is actually surrounded by angle brackets but I can't be arsed to look up the code for them, and in fact I didn't even notice that detail until last night. It was also vol 2. I tried reading it in summer '06-- the manga has grey moistness and Temeraire as its associated images in my head-- and gave up. Too much katakana, too much back story from presumably vol 1, couldn't follow it. Started again just recently and have been hacking through it ever since.
We begin a flashback to our hero, Kaos, abandoning Jamila, the mother of his children, to go off with his pal Yudaia in search of someone or something called Madara; an event which apparently happened several milennia ago, because now Jamila is Zenobia and immortal, having sold her soul to a demon. And off we go.
Who is Madara? Whoever he is, Kaos says he'll drop whatever he's doing to go off with him once he-- or his incarnation-- is found again. At which point I start having flashbacks to that White Hart novel series last fall with much the same premise. From in-manga flashbacks Madara looks like yer average genki spiky-haired shounen hero, yawn, but his current avatars, of which there are two, are much more interesting in their smooth villainy and high-handed diplomacy. Lotsa hints of plots and counterplots and betrayals lurking in the shadows; fascinating reading.
( And then it gets complicated )
Back in November '05 I bought a comic from Bookoff called Madara (青). The 青 is actually surrounded by angle brackets but I can't be arsed to look up the code for them, and in fact I didn't even notice that detail until last night. It was also vol 2. I tried reading it in summer '06-- the manga has grey moistness and Temeraire as its associated images in my head-- and gave up. Too much katakana, too much back story from presumably vol 1, couldn't follow it. Started again just recently and have been hacking through it ever since.
We begin a flashback to our hero, Kaos, abandoning Jamila, the mother of his children, to go off with his pal Yudaia in search of someone or something called Madara; an event which apparently happened several milennia ago, because now Jamila is Zenobia and immortal, having sold her soul to a demon. And off we go.
Who is Madara? Whoever he is, Kaos says he'll drop whatever he's doing to go off with him once he-- or his incarnation-- is found again. At which point I start having flashbacks to that White Hart novel series last fall with much the same premise. From in-manga flashbacks Madara looks like yer average genki spiky-haired shounen hero, yawn, but his current avatars, of which there are two, are much more interesting in their smooth villainy and high-handed diplomacy. Lotsa hints of plots and counterplots and betrayals lurking in the shadows; fascinating reading.
( And then it gets complicated )
