Grey, grey, it's grey they say, on the far side of the hill

[flemmings]

Seattle's weather is currently happening outside my window. Which makes me happy because in two days we'll be having Kuala Lampur's.

And over at fandom_wank there's a threnody thread (one should be able to portmanteau those words-- threadnody?) about Great Unfinished Manga Works. Not just YnM, actually. And much CLAMP bashing.

Rereading Kurotsubaki randomly. Why I love it:

• Detailed drawings of Kyoto

• Great washes of information about the geisha world, the kabuki world, Noh and Takarazaka, Kyoto history, Kyoto legend, Kyoto geography, Kyoto Japanese usage, and the Kyoto supernatural

• Kyoto-ben: read enough of it and, like male Japanese, it begins to make instinctive sense, at least to the point where you can hazard a guess as to whether that's really a negative or not.

• Casual incursion of supranatural beings into the everyday: guardian demon generals, tengu, bodhisattva, shinto deities, the occasional sake-swilling ghost. Possibly the way the world looked to people a century or so ago when these things were real.

• It has a female character who's as tall as I am, and has the same sense of Too Big as I do when I'm in Japan. And who becomes a geisha anyway.

• It has a hard-drinking doctor character who was the presumed heir to a geisha house but said 'The hell with it- I can't do the small talk bit and I can't dance to save my life. Give me a good exam any day of the week' and who goes off to the States to study medicine.

• The presentation of female sexuality-- cheerful, active, enthusiastic, and a bit larger than life. Love the scene where hair-still-in-plaits teenage heroine calls her geisha Mom and asks 'Look, how do you get a man?' and then calls her onnagata Dad-- 'Look, this is my one chance to get him, will you help me out?' Love the scene where heroine's danna cancels all her engagements for the week after New Year's and takes her away to a secluded country ryokan ('By introduction only'- you need to know someone who knows the owners or you can't get a reservation, and man does that sound like everything I've ever heard about Kyoto) so she and he can indulge in as much sex as they like without the constraints of half a dozen other people in the building. Because she's been so busy this last year with her own engagements and four maiko to train and under so much stress and that's how she relieves it. Um-- yeah.

Comments

[mvrdrk.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're getting Seattle weather. We've got it too! Isn't that odd?

I'm also glad I followed your link to fandom_wank, which I don't normally do. Has Ono really started up on 12K again? That would be a lovely thing.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Odd indeed, since when we're being you, you're usually being us, to everyone's great surprise and displeasure where you are.

I keep hearing rumours to that effect, but I won't be holding my breath.

[tammylee.livejournal.com]

I would LOVE to have more Under the Glass Moon! ;__; It is the manga closest to the crack I would probably produce.

Kurotsubaki sounds like a great story!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I've actually never heard of Glass Moon before this.

Great story, if episodic; never going to eb translated and possibly couldn't be, alas.

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Kurotsubaki does sound like a good read... hmm maybe one day oh and please excuse the cluelessness but is that the Author/Mangaka or is that the Title? *facepalms in shame* I feel I ought to know (because methinks you HAVE mentioned it/he/them before) but it is escaping me.

Also ... KL weather huh! Hmmm I think even KL weather beats LRD weather sometimes because the pollution compounds the problems. Eh! Is why I haven't been across the causeway up that far in a damn long time!!!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

That's the title, Black Camellia; author is Kawasou Masumi, and I've nattered about the books previously (http://flemmings.livejournal.com/127336.html#cutid1) here and there.

Yeah, we get the pollution, the minute it gets warm and often when it doesn't.

[kickinpants.livejournal.com]

It's been TOO Seattle here- I don't mind the gray and rain, but it's June, so some nice sun would be...nice. :/ Oh, well, I'll miss it when it's 95.

God, YnM...that was like...getting out of a bad relationship. "You disappoint me and don't fulfill me! Plus you stop in the middle!" And then I heard she restarted it, and all I could feel was "Oooooh, no, I'm not going back. It took me too long to get over you! I LOVED YOU-WHY DID-YOU-BETRAY-ME-NEVER-AGAIN!"

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

IME when the sun shines it ceases to be Seattle and become Kuala Lampur immediately.

I LOVED YOU-WHY DID-YOU-BETRAY-ME-NEVER-AGAIN!"

And then we do it again.

'And if love calls to them, so foolishly they run,
They run without a sound, the desperate ones'

as that twit Brel wrote, more or less, and not about manga fans. Too true. But the delays,. the going-nowhere, the lags between chapters, and the ultimate betrayal is an intrinsic part of the experience. A manga where a good chapter comes out regularly, month after month, feels scarcely a manga, and its mangaka is certainly not human.