Chobits Vol 1: Things I Forgot

Thing I forgot Number One: 

So, this first one, is kind of a weird, minor nit-pick, but it was something I kept noticing as I started reading through the comic.  As far as I can tell, CLAMP did not actually set a date for the series, and instead leaves the reader to assume that this takes place in some nonspecific future-time.  That in and of itself is absolutely fine, as you don’t really need a year for this kind of story.  However, because this was published between the year 2000 and 2002, and subsequently written in the late nineties and early two thousands, the terminology itself and the concepts behind how computers work actually dates the series pretty hard.  It essentially takes place in the year 2000 except that computers are shaped like people now, and Hideki exists as the reader’s proxy to be told what all this technology does and what all these abbreviations mean.  This is not bad per se, but it almost seems as though the comic would be better served without including that kind of “educational” information.  It slightly slows pacing (which is something this manga did not need help with) and just opens the series up for modern-day criticisms like these.  My examples from the first volume are minor, but talking about things like USB, BBS, and screen-savors for machines not using screens seem unnecessary, and legitimately took me out of my reading for a minute each time because I, from nearly two decades later, know that we are far past USB, that BBS is really not called BBS anymore, and that screen savers for devices without screens are just called sleep-mode (a term which is actually used in a later volume, weirdly enough).

Maybe I’m being a little rude, ragging on CLAMP for not future-proofing their tech lingo, but it was just kind of silly to me to include things like that in the first place.  This is not a sci-fi manga, it’s a sienen manga about the finding that special person just for you (which we will discuss at a later date because good lord).  Anyway, moving on…

Thing I Forgot Number Two:

I forgot that this was a sienen-type manga!  I associate CLAMP with shoujo such as Magic Knight Rayearth and Cardcaptor Sakura, so this being targeted towards young-adult males was kind of a twist for me.  However, I think the reason I forgot who the target audience was is because while the plot is about something very sweet and idealistic such as finding your one true love, the framing is… awkward.  I of course remembered the infamous scene where Hideki finds her power button (which, knowing who created her and why, is mildly troubling), and I did remember some trouble with her and clothing, but I think I largely let these go because they seemed to be a part of the story and a part of learning about Chi.

What I did not remember was a scene where Shimbo just sort of nonchalantly picks Chi up by the legs to look at her vagina for a serial number (why is that where that would be??), or that Minoru has surrounded himself by sexily-clad maid persocoms who tackle Hideki with their with their breasts when he arrives, or that one of Hideki’s number one reasons for wanting a persocom is to download tons of porn.  The men are almost written like what a female’s perspective on teen and young adult men might be: they constantly think about sex, and if they can’t have it, they will surround themselves with all the iconographies of sex.

Like… Minoru is a young, dignified, and highly intelligent.  Why does he feel the need to surround himself with barely-dressed persocoms?  This might tell us something about his character, but it’s never mentioned, and he never represents himself as a character who cares about sex, or porn, or even what women look like besides Yuzuki, who is created to be like his sister and who is specifically the least sexualized persocom he owns.  Run-on sentences aside, a lot of this does nothing to serve the story and simply there to be funny or to take up pages with pin-ups.

At the same time, while everyone else gets to be comfortable in their sexuality and who they may or may not like or love, Hideki is constantly made to feel embarrassed about it.  Everyone else gets to talk about their equally inappropriate feelings (we’ll get to these relationships later…) with confidence and without an ounce of shame while Hideki receives nothing but lighthearted jabs about what a pervert he almost every time he has a conversation with someone.  Whether Shimbo is making fun of him for wanting to buy Chi underwear because she doesn’t understandthe concept of modesty, or whether his landlady is slowing backing out of the room saying “it’s okay, it’s a guy thing” as Chi undresses in front of the TV and calls herself a side-dish (WE’LL GET TO THIS, TOO), Hideki is just kind of doomed to question every decision he makes as everyone around him makes their fun.  Sex and sexy things are so heavily emphasized in this volume, and it takes up a lot of the “run-time.”  It’s a lot of superfluous jokes about how bashful Hideki should be when I’m actually very interested in reading about where Chi came from and what brought her to where she is now.  You really don’t find out very much about her beyond the fact that she “might” be a Chobit (I mean, obviously she’s a Chobit).

Maybe it’s just one of those cycles of adolescence where you discover what sex is, but then you discover how taboo the topic is (well, was in the early 2000’s I guess), and then you become a sexually repressed protagonist of your own manga where you are constantly surrounded by beautiful women with amazing boobs who tell you their bra sizes unprompted or come over to your house in the middle of the night to drink beer and crash, but can’t do anything about it because it’s sooooo tabooooooo?

Who’s to say?

Anyway, that’s all for now.  I thoroughly intend to write a one or two more entries about a couple of things that really threw me throughout my reading, but I’ll be saving those for a day when I’m not sick as a dog.

Thanks for reading! -SR

Manga Binge Time

So I’ve started to go through my old books and manga to see what I would like to sell or donate, and I’ve decided to try read everything before actually making that decision. In addition, I would like to try writing posts as a form of motivation as I work my through my shelves.First up is going to be Chobits, as I happen to have the whole thing and don’t remember much about it beyond the premise. Because it’s CLAMP, I am preparing myself for the inevitable weirdness/inappropriate relationships to come, but I’m still curious to see how it all plays out. Wish me luck!

Wonder Woman Almost Got It

I am writing this a year and a half post release not as someone who has background in reading Wonder Woman comics, but instead as a regular movie goer who has some beef with some of the character motivations, and as it turns out, I have a blog and I can vent my frustrations if I want to.  I fully understand the difficulties of adapting something long-form into  the confines of a two to three hour movie, however past successes exist, and this movie was so close. Wonder Woman was a huge success and arguably rescued and set a new tone for the rapidly sinking ship that was the DC extended universe.  It did not seem ashamed of its comic book roots like some of the previous entries did, and it gave us a character who openly fought for what could be considered kind of corny values, which is actually pretty refreshing.  Sometimes it’s okay to have characters who believe in things like justice and love and who are not ashamed to show it.

Where the movie really missed the mark for me was the characterization of Wonder Woman herself as well as the use of Ares in contribution to her story.  Ideally this is what I’m going talk about today, but we’ll see where this takes me, okay?

Dianna is kind of a rare protagonist in this day and age.  In a market flooded by characters who have things happen to them, Dianna grabs the bull by the horns, turns it around, and show it the error of its ways.  She is driven, she has her own agency, she does what she says she’s going to do, and she will settle for nothing less than saving literally everyone.  She is the female super hero I think a lot of women and little girls have been missing, but I also kind of found her to be one of the weaker parts of the movie, and I think it largely comes down to her naivety.  She is naive almost to the point of farce, but it is played off as just a quirky character trait that she never really has to come to terms with, or at least not in any satisfying way.  But in almost the same breath, she is shown to have an extensive knowledge of the world’s history from reading all of the books that were available to her.  It’s difficult to buy that she both understands what sex is and how to do it based on these books she’s read, but does not understand how wars start and spread.

I think it could have done a lot to elevate the story if it turned out the Professor Lupin was not Ares, but was actually who he said he was.  If Dianna was confronted with the concept that perhaps this war actually did come from man and not from an otherworldly being she is destined to destroy, she would be forced to know what it is that she is actually fighting for.  She would also be forced to understand that there is such a thing as a moral gray area as well people who are fundamentally evil.  Her naivety does not work well if she still gets to be right in the end.  Her conflict over whether or not to save the humans or join with Ares doesn’t mean a lot because she knows that if she destroys Ares, the war will end.  If instead, Dianna had to grapple with the idea that the problem does not have one singular cause, and that she may have to pick a side, she could learn and expand her understanding of human kind.  I get that perhaps the movie was going for something much more lighthearted than what it has been previously produced by the DC universe, however, there are ways to lighten things up without completely neglecting the idea of character growth.

That’s all for me today!  Man, two entries in a row about missed character opportunities.  Will I ever be satisfied?

It’s like watching a horror movie, but instead of horror, it’s just sadness.

PSA:  As with every entry, this post assumes that you have either read/watched the material or that you do not care about having major plot points revealed.

In a suddenly recent reignition of my love of magical girls, I picked up a copy of the first volume of Magical Girl Raising Project, by Asari Endou.  A friend of mine showed me a couple of episodes of the anime a couple of years ago, and it has nagged at me since.  How sad was this going to get?  What kinds of characters had I not had the chance to meet yet?  I had never read a Japanese light novel before, but it was honestly a kind of nice, low-pressure read.  I remember a couple of awkward moments of very specific phrasing (such as a moment where a character was specifically aiming for someone’s carotid artery, when it would have been simpler to say “neck”), but I think that the overall translation wouldn’t come off strange to someone who has read a lot of manga, either fan-translated or official.

I have rather mixed feelings about this book, because, as mentioned above, it’s like watching a horror movie without any of the horror, and instead, everyone is just sad or crazy.  For a quick synopsis, the book revolves around a cell phone game where the players make their own magical girls and play games for candies, the presumed currency of the game.  A select few find themselves gifted with the actual powers and appearances of magical girls of the magical girls they’ve created.  These powers vary from having certain skills with weapons, to being able to hear to thoughts of others in distress, to just immediately making holes when she starts to dig.  As it turns out, their numbers have become too great for the Magical Kingdom to handle and they must reduce this number by half.  Initially, the goal is to go out into the community and earn candies by doing good deeds.  The girl with the least amount will have her powers taken away and as a result, she dies.  The concept of earning candies quickly falls by the wayside as the girls start to turn on each other and fight to the death until they reach the desired number of magical girls.  From there the book becomes a tournament-style “fighting anime.”

There are many things that I love about this book:  I love the character designs; I love the concept that your character is based on the one you created from the game, non-matching costumes and all; I love that the characters encompass a vast variety of ages and social backgrounds, including adult women, a first grader, a boy, and someone who doesn’t actually appear to be from Earth (although I could be totally wrong about that one).  I love the ending, where it is revealed that none of this should have even happened and that this who thing is a plot concocted by a blood-thirst magical girl master, and that the Magical Kingdom comes in at the end in a “oh my god we are so sorry that this has ever happened, here have honorary powers and positions, and we know this could never make up for this trauma, but oh my god we are so sorry” kind of way.

I liked that many of the characters deaths were not based on who was more powerful, but who used there powers in the smartest ways.  Characters who are obviously physically more gifted than other magical girls can be brought down by a smart plan, or just be very quick thinking.  I think they greatest example of this is Cranberry’s death by “sudden hole in middle of body” created by Tama, who up to this moment has been portrayed as rather slow on the uptake and who is given kind of an oddly specific power, but incredibly devoted to those who treat her well.  Even Winterprison meets her end by an unfortunately well-laid trap.

What I didn’t like, was losing a lot of really wonderful characters without really getting to spend more time with them or before they were able to complete any kind of meaningful arc.  Characters like La Pucelle are killed “off-screen” before she gets to carry out her duties of protecting Snow White.  I don’t necessarily have a problem with her dying, but feel that this should have happened while in the act of doing this thing that she has gone out of her way to vow to do.  There was such a big fuss about her making this vow, but she dies in this bloodlust-fueled fight instigated by Cranberry when Snow White has already gone home for the evening.  It just seems like this book has a lot of set-up with not very much payoff.  The book is a little on the shallow side, but I know that’s almost the point, as it is a light novel meant to be read kind of quickly and easily.

So here’s my hot-take: I want a book exclusively about the trials and tribulations of Hardgore Alice, and not necessarily in the way her story plays out within this book.  I felt that she had the strongest motivations for being a magical girl, and even befriending Snow White, whose small act of kindness saved her from wanting to commit suicide and led her into believing in what it meant to be a true magical girl.  All she wants to do anymore is help Snow White and subsequently help the people of her town.  It’s a dark and sad beginning to what could potentially be a really sweet story with some realistic lessons and character growth.

I really like the concept of a magical girl whose power is that she just can’t die, and who repeatedly gets impaled, decapitated, possibly exploded, etc., but with the mood and tone of a Sailor Moon cartoon.  At the core of it all, she is a magical girl, though a very unconventional one.  I like the idea that after a big fight against some monster, the other magical girls go home for the night, but she has to go around and pick up the pieces of her that have come off (perhaps waving goodbye to the other girls with her own severed arm) before she can go home and de-transform.  I like to imagine that she finds her powers very frustrating and that she is often upset that she doesn’t seem to really embody the unspeakable beauty and strength of a magical girl like her peers do, and that she perhaps finds her powers to be some kind of a cruel joke about how she wanted to commit suicide not long ago (in my version, she is assigned her powers and appearance in spite of the fact that she had picked a very cute costume on the cell phone game).

I guess what I ended up not liking about the book was that there was a lot of missed potential, and not in the sense that I don’t understand what the premise of the book is.  What I mean is that we are given a lot of really good characters who just don’t have the chance to thrive in a story like this.  In spite of the premise, the author went out of their way to set up some really neat stories that never get to come to fruition, and it just seems like a waste of character development.

I’m a big fan of character stories and character growth moments.  The plot is usually very secondary for me as long as I like the people I’m reading about or watching on TV, and I liked a lot of these characters so much, but it just felt like some were mistreated in their arcs.  None of this means that I’m not going to pick up the next books.  I’ve already ordered volume two and am waiting very impatiently for Tuesday to arrive.  All it means is that I have some thoughts, and that while I like the idea of adding dark elements to what is normal classified as a very light and bubbly, I would like to see these dark elements become less about the violent deaths of magical girls, and more about the deep personal battles that they have to deal with.

That’s all for me today.  My next entry was going to be about American Gods, but then I read this (in about three weeks somehow), and thought I would throw in my two cents on an discussion that was had probably about a decade ago.  Enjoy!

So we’ve come to this…

“Death cut him short.  The end closed around him.

Flying free of his limbs

his soul went winging down to the House of Death,

wailing his fat, leaving his manhood far behind,

his young and supple strength.  But brilliant Achilles

taunted Hector’s body, dead as he was, “Die, die!

For my own death, I’ll meet it freely–whenever Zeus

and the other deathless gods would like to bring it on!”

The Iliad, Book 22: The Death of Hector, Lines 425-432

I truly hate that I’m at a point in my English-reading life where I read the phrase, “leaving his manhood” and legitimately wonder whether it refers to the Hector’s soul just leaving the state of being alive, or leaving his penis behind.

V for Vendetta

I liked it.  And not because my brother-in-law told me that I was obligated to enjoy it when he recommended it to me.  He has been trying to get me to read this one for a couple years at least and with the reading challenge going on I figured it was a good opportunity to actually sit down and read it.  It took me longer than I wanted it to, but it was something that required a lot of breaks for me, and not because it was boring or unpleasant, but because it’s incredibly dense.  Every scene has at least two things happening, whether it’s characters talking, radios playing, tv’s going, or other things like that.  It’s all extremely busy, so it can be a slow read.  I actually have a hard time writing about books that I like.  But I was discussing things with my brother-in-law earlier and decided that I wanted to talk about a something.

There are things that I liked and things that I didn’t, but I’m fairly certain that was intentional.  I enjoyed the book as a whole.  It had an interesting, thought-provoking story, and the art was impactful, and I suppose that gave me a chance to actually get upset when things happened to people I liked.  I think I identified very heavily with Evey, and so whenever something bad happened to her, I felt bad too.  When V took her in and educated her, I felt happy, and I got attached to the character of V.  When he left her alone in the street, I felt a little abandoned too, but then she found someone who made her happy, and I was happy for her.  When V revealed that it was him who had tortured and imprisoned her, I was… well, very upset.  My brother-in-law pointed out to me that you’re not necessarily supposed to like V (we both actually ended up liking Detective Finch a lot), and that the book is not supposed to make you think a certain way, but instead is just meant to make you think.  I realized then, that for many of the events that took place, I really didn’t know how I was “supposed to feel,” and I realized that I fell into a trap that gets laid down by books and movies.  I found myself looking for the agenda.  The opinion.  The thing that would make it so that I either whole-heartedly loved or hated the comic.  There’s always a side that you’re supposed to acknowledge as the “right” side for the story.  You don’t have to agree with it, but it’s there.

There’s not really anything to that effect in V for Vendetta and I guess I like that.  It put me in this weird, uncomfortable place where I don’t know what I’m supposed to think about these morally ambiguous characters and their decisions, and in a funny way it was freeing.  It makes me laugh just thinking about how “meta” that concept is.  There’s a lot I ended up liking about the comic, but I think in the end after some discussion, that is the concept I find the most interesting, and the most necessary.

More Saga

On one last note about Saga, I really enjoyed the art for the most part, but it kind of lacked impact regarding certain scenes such as this one. “Listen to my voice, boy. I’m going to murder you… right after I murder everything you ever loved.” That is a line that is said by a dark, gristly man whose just lost everything. For one thing, there is not enough attachment to The Stalk for the reader to garner this feeling and for another, the art and expression is completely bland here. He doesn’t look terribly angry, just… Like he’s talking to whoever.There is another scene which comes to mind: the scene in which Marko and Alana come to the Uncanny Bridge. There is a huge battle taking place, but they just kind of see it and leave, but the colors and the layout of the page just don’t drive anything home for me. Very bland there too, though I though that the giant-ass turtle with an entire camp on its back was awesome.

Saga

Things I Just Like

Scenes I just enjoy from V for Vendetta.

The Voice

I wonder what the voice sounds like.