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a various, including old manga
Oct. 28th, 2012 10:03 pmI am chain-reading Tokyo Crazy Paradise, which didn't really strike me much when I first started it, but after a certain point *really* grabbed me. It's an earlier series by Yoshiki Nakamura, writer of Skip Beat, and man...does she do complicated relationships and following through on ins-and-outs of concepts brilliantly.
Manga is one of those forms in which it takes a weird balance of control and lack of embarrassment to make a good one--this is a yakuza manga and it plays to all the tropes that make a story about yakuza cool--the chilly guy, the martial arts, the secret world of heirarchy.
But then the subversions: the heroine is "bodyguard" to the yakuza don hero, the main conflict of power is between her and his arranged fiance (who also is supposed to be a tough woman who can protect him). Of course, there are birth secrets and love triangles and druggings and kidnappings and loss of limbs, but the substance of it is something indefinably more than it's elements.
***
...I really know I've had a stressful week when I don't wanna work on anything, not even a drama, and just read manga, though. Yesterday I went from work to my old place of work, where I was to promote the pumpkin patch parable book I did drawings for as the illustrator, there for a signing.
I brought my spindle and demonstrated that to make it a little less awkward.
Tomorrow morning, I'm up at 5:46 to take my dad to work, so we can have the extra car while he's gone on a business trip for the week!
I think I am going back to bed after that thought. Phew.
Manga is one of those forms in which it takes a weird balance of control and lack of embarrassment to make a good one--this is a yakuza manga and it plays to all the tropes that make a story about yakuza cool--the chilly guy, the martial arts, the secret world of heirarchy.
But then the subversions: the heroine is "bodyguard" to the yakuza don hero, the main conflict of power is between her and his arranged fiance (who also is supposed to be a tough woman who can protect him). Of course, there are birth secrets and love triangles and druggings and kidnappings and loss of limbs, but the substance of it is something indefinably more than it's elements.
***
...I really know I've had a stressful week when I don't wanna work on anything, not even a drama, and just read manga, though. Yesterday I went from work to my old place of work, where I was to promote the pumpkin patch parable book I did drawings for as the illustrator, there for a signing.
I brought my spindle and demonstrated that to make it a little less awkward.
Tomorrow morning, I'm up at 5:46 to take my dad to work, so we can have the extra car while he's gone on a business trip for the week!
I think I am going back to bed after that thought. Phew.
