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My problems with Takahashi Rumiko
Going from the sublime of Samurai Champloo (no really, anything that works in The Great Mirror of Manly Love, Mito Komon chanbara, real Dutchmen and classic ukiyo-e in the same episode deserves props) to the letussay unsublime, I'm also watching random Inuyasha to see what the fuss is about. I'm still unsure what the fuss is about but I suspect it's got to do with being 40 years beyond the target age group.
The style looks Sailor Moonish to me but the comparison is unfair. SM never gave me quite the kind of hives that Takahashi Rumiko gives me. They're unpindownable hives as well and may be Ranma specific. I don't know. It goes like this.
Someone somewhere (it may have been Tanizaki in In Praise of Shadows) said the trouble with cleanliness is that the dirt shows more clearly; and more: a cleanliness mentality automatically suggests that dirt is still there in places it can't get at. I'll agree with that and point to the NAmerican germ obsession as evidence. Expanding that idea to the arts, depictions of sweetness and light- or in the Japanese case, genkiness and 'akarui'-ness (which is still light, isn't it?)- suggest to me a nasty corruption below the surface. All that stuff you don't get to see, shut away and festering. (That sense is naturally absent in works where the darker side of the charas is also shown- umm, like Samurai Champloo.) I first encountered the idea when someone wrote about the original illustrations of Dickens' wee demure heroines and how they gave *him* the fantods, and had to agree. There's something dangerous and unnatural and slightly terrifying about those women: all sweet meekness and bland goodness to look at, and where has the humanity of them gone?
And I find the same with Takahashi. Everyone is so good and genki and normal, they must be practising coprophilia or bondage on the side. (Well, they're Japanese. You /know/ the guys are fantasizing bondage when they jerk off.) Something about her style automatically puts me in mind of hentai rape manga. It's the same kind of woman in both: wide eyed and innocent and asking for an introduction to the dark side of the human psyche.
Inuyasha may be different; after all, we've got the requisite dark side character given to us on an animus platter. Actually if Inuyasha the character goes on being the one-note unlikable dork he is (and no, Blue Seed has proven to me that 'otoko-rashii' doesn't /have/ to equate to 'socially challenged dweeb') what we have may be a bleak parable about the choices the average Japanese woman has to face: unlikable manly-male or destructive animus charm. No wonder they've stopped getting married.
(ETA: boo hiss VIZ. Doesn't give the names of the Japanese VAs. Dub-by-default thinking, I tell you.)
The style looks Sailor Moonish to me but the comparison is unfair. SM never gave me quite the kind of hives that Takahashi Rumiko gives me. They're unpindownable hives as well and may be Ranma specific. I don't know. It goes like this.
Someone somewhere (it may have been Tanizaki in In Praise of Shadows) said the trouble with cleanliness is that the dirt shows more clearly; and more: a cleanliness mentality automatically suggests that dirt is still there in places it can't get at. I'll agree with that and point to the NAmerican germ obsession as evidence. Expanding that idea to the arts, depictions of sweetness and light- or in the Japanese case, genkiness and 'akarui'-ness (which is still light, isn't it?)- suggest to me a nasty corruption below the surface. All that stuff you don't get to see, shut away and festering. (That sense is naturally absent in works where the darker side of the charas is also shown- umm, like Samurai Champloo.) I first encountered the idea when someone wrote about the original illustrations of Dickens' wee demure heroines and how they gave *him* the fantods, and had to agree. There's something dangerous and unnatural and slightly terrifying about those women: all sweet meekness and bland goodness to look at, and where has the humanity of them gone?
And I find the same with Takahashi. Everyone is so good and genki and normal, they must be practising coprophilia or bondage on the side. (Well, they're Japanese. You /know/ the guys are fantasizing bondage when they jerk off.) Something about her style automatically puts me in mind of hentai rape manga. It's the same kind of woman in both: wide eyed and innocent and asking for an introduction to the dark side of the human psyche.
Inuyasha may be different; after all, we've got the requisite dark side character given to us on an animus platter. Actually if Inuyasha the character goes on being the one-note unlikable dork he is (and no, Blue Seed has proven to me that 'otoko-rashii' doesn't /have/ to equate to 'socially challenged dweeb') what we have may be a bleak parable about the choices the average Japanese woman has to face: unlikable manly-male or destructive animus charm. No wonder they've stopped getting married.
(ETA: boo hiss VIZ. Doesn't give the names of the Japanese VAs. Dub-by-default thinking, I tell you.)
no subject
Now it's whole books that come out every couple months, a much better system.
It makes me really nostalgic to think of back then. Viz and Darkhorse really had the market, so a lot of what I read was Rumiko Takahashi stuff, and I liked it because it was funny and there wasn't really anything else like it. The alternative was American comics, which had the bonus of "color", but didn't tell stories of wacky romance and comedy, and Battle Angel Alita (Gunnm) (which is somewhat similar to an American story of an female anti-hero in a future world) did have a major difference from its American counterparts. It *ended*. It had a last page, which made it much more satisfying. (It also has, *cough*, a sequel called Last Order, which I haven't checked out.)
Neverending shounen manga reminds me of American comics. American comics aren't bad. I like(d) Strangers in Paradise and Bone, but I like how in Japanese comics, they'll tell stories more geared towards (boys-love-loving) woman, and also have stories that have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It's sad to see a story end, but there's something amazingly satisfying in it too. I never get that from the forever-going American comics.
no subject
Yes, rather. Running forever on the same hamster wheel and, in my childhood, reaching for ever more unlikely AU scenarios to inject something new into the series. The difference is that manga can have an ending, it just gets postponed forever in the big companies, Jump and Asuka.
Me, I rebel at paying graphic novel prices for manga. CLAMP here costs $15 a hit before sales tax. This is supposing I want to read an English translation in the first place, though I'm definitely up for a French one. Which is only marginally better- maybe $12 all told for standard size tanks. But the pictorial quality is better, if nothing else.
Still... having no manga to read but Takahashi Rumiko strikes me as one of those versions of hell. No manga available but Dr Slump and DBZ. Eunh.
no subject
Yeah, but remember, for this "new generation" of anime fans (in America/NA anyways), Sailor Moon and then DBZ were the first on TV. So a lot of people who were getting into anime would watch it, even if later this would not be their genre of choice at all.
Funnily enough, people were joking about DBZ last night. "Know what was good about Dragonball? You could get up and leave for ten minutes and then come back, and nothing had changed in the story."
A pause.
"...Wait, why is that good?"
Watching that show is like a weird rite of passage or bonding experience. Years later, you nod at each other and pat shoulders in this acknowledgement that "You too sat there for 30 episodes while nothing happened?" "I did! I did!"