All Four Cheeks

Last night TK, Sempai, two other pals and I went to a Japanese restaurant after class, to drink sake and eat and for Sempai and his buddy to watch the Lakers on a big-screen TV. We had asparagus and mushrooms in butter and barbecued beef Korean style and tempura fish and a disassembled whole raw mackerel (yum!) which, once we'd consumed the flesh, was taken away and the bones flash-fried for us to crunch like potato chips (double yum.)

The table quickly split into one half discussing manga and anime and the other half discussing sports.

Sempai: "Sports gibberish sports gibberish so-and-so really had a great season."

TK: "Well, you can try looking up the seiyuu and see what they've done recently. I think practically every important seiyuu was in Fushigi Yuugi."

Sempai's Buddy: "Sports gibberish sports gibberish how bout them so-and-sos?"

Me: "Did you know Tomokazu Seki-- you know, who did Chichiri-- also did the voice for Tasuki's bandit buddy Koji? 'Knock-knock, who's there? It's Koji! Hello, Koji, great to see you, pal!'"

Sempai (suddenly tuning in): "I guess when we talk about sports it makes just as little sense to you guys as it does to us when you talk about anime, huh?"

Today's manga round-up:

SCRYED 1. Shonen to the max. Yokohama has flown straight up into the air and hovered there miles above the rest of Japan and the floating land descended into Mad Max savagery and powerful mutants are born. Um, OK. Fights, fights, fights, fights... I got bored.

GTO 1. GTO stands for Great Teacher Onizuka. Onizuka is a 22-year-old biker, too old to be a juvenile delinquent but too much of a punk to be able to get a decent job. He has a black belt and can kick ass, but he's still basically a lonely loser with a disgusting apartment who hangs out with other geeks in his all-male karate club and goes under escalators to peek up women's skirts. But when he meets a high school girl having an affair with her schlumpy math teacher, he decides to become a teacher to meet girls.

(Everyone unfriends me in disgust.)

But when he actually gets to a class, the role of teacher is one that creeps into his punky little heart. And his gang of toughs and biker attitude come in handy in impressing the rowdy students. This is, shall we say, politically incorrect in every regard, and I can't call it anything but a guilty pleasure. It's also very funny. I love the depiction of the karate club as a bunch of geeks who may be able to kill with one blow but haven't had a date in years. I'm borrowing the rest from TK.

Incidentally, when I meant to earn a little money as a substitute teacher, I had a rather similar experience to Onizuka's when he showed up at teacher training: half the men there seemed to be there to get near the jailbait. I was maximally grossed out when an icky old man saw me reading a book and asked me if I liked Anne Rice.

"Uh... I liked Interview with the Vampire."

"Oh, that was good," said this creepy old guy I'd just met, his eyes gleaming lecherously. "But have you read any of her _porn_? She wrote six pornographic novels under other names. I wrote to her when I found them. I sent her an email saying, 'You naughty girl, I'd like to slap you on all four cheeks.'"

I felt really sorry for the high school girls who were going to have All Four Cheeks as a teacher. The boys too.

All Four Cheeks

Last night TK, Sempai, two other pals and I went to a Japanese restaurant after class, to drink sake and eat and for Sempai and his buddy to watch the Lakers on a big-screen TV. We had asparagus and mushrooms in butter and barbecued beef Korean style and tempura fish and a disassembled whole raw mackerel (yum!) which, once we'd consumed the flesh, was taken away and the bones flash-fried for us to crunch like potato chips (double yum.)

The table quickly split into one half discussing manga and anime and the other half discussing sports.

Sempai: "Sports gibberish sports gibberish so-and-so really had a great season."

TK: "Well, you can try looking up the seiyuu and see what they've done recently. I think practically every important seiyuu was in Fushigi Yuugi."

Sempai's Buddy: "Sports gibberish sports gibberish how bout them so-and-sos?"

Me: "Did you know Tomokazu Seki-- you know, who did Chichiri-- also did the voice for Tasuki's bandit buddy Koji? 'Knock-knock, who's there? It's Koji! Hello, Koji, great to see you, pal!'"

Sempai (suddenly tuning in): "I guess when we talk about sports it makes just as little sense to you guys as it does to us when you talk about anime, huh?"

Today's manga round-up:

SCRYED 1. Shonen to the max. Yokohama has flown straight up into the air and hovered there miles above the rest of Japan and the floating land descended into Mad Max savagery and powerful mutants are born. Um, OK. Fights, fights, fights, fights... I got bored.

GTO 1. GTO stands for Great Teacher Onizuka. Onizuka is a 22-year-old biker, too old to be a juvenile delinquent but too much of a punk to be able to get a decent job. He has a black belt and can kick ass, but he's still basically a lonely loser with a disgusting apartment who hangs out with other geeks in his all-male karate club and goes under escalators to peek up women's skirts. But when he meets a high school girl having an affair with her schlumpy math teacher, he decides to become a teacher to meet girls.

(Everyone unfriends me in disgust.)

But when he actually gets to a class, the role of teacher is one that creeps into his punky little heart. And his gang of toughs and biker attitude come in handy in impressing the rowdy students. This is, shall we say, politically incorrect in every regard, and I can't call it anything but a guilty pleasure. It's also very funny. I love the depiction of the karate club as a bunch of geeks who may be able to kill with one blow but haven't had a date in years. I'm borrowing the rest from TK.

Incidentally, when I meant to earn a little money as a substitute teacher, I had a rather similar experience to Onizuka's when he showed up at teacher training: half the men there seemed to be there to get near the jailbait. I was maximally grossed out when an icky old man saw me reading a book and asked me if I liked Anne Rice.

"Uh... I liked Interview with the Vampire."

"Oh, that was good," said this creepy old guy I'd just met, his eyes gleaming lecherously. "But have you read any of her _porn_? She wrote six pornographic novels under other names. I wrote to her when I found them. I sent her an email saying, 'You naughty girl, I'd like to slap you on all four cheeks.'"

I felt really sorry for the high school girls who were going to have All Four Cheeks as a teacher. The boys too.

Livejournal haiku

LiveJournal Haiku!
Your name:	rachelmanija
Your haiku:	really about love and dysfunctional families which employs many
Username:
Created by Grahame

Livejournal haiku

LiveJournal Haiku!
Your name:	rachelmanija
Your haiku:	really about love and dysfunctional families which employs many
Username:
Created by Grahame

X/1999: Manga Volume 1 & 2, DVD Volume 1

That haiku is strangely appropriate. The first two lines, anyway.

Per a meme I picked up from Melymbrosia, the title of my journal is the title of a book I will someday write about Tokyo. Maybe. I never really experienced the change of seasons until I went to Japan, and I was enchanted by the seasonal foods and decorations and how everyone as excited about the bonfire-colored leaves as I was, even though they got to see it every year and it was my first time. Also parts of Tokyo have more neon than I've ever seen in my life, though Time Square comes close.

I can't watch more SAIYUKI till I order it from ebay or amazon, and can't read more till volume 2 comes out in May. So I'm delving into the female collective CLAMP's X/1999. What I've watched and written covers around the same ground, as the first DVD has three episodes plus a very extended intro-teaser labeled episode 0. I understand that there is also a movie which is incomprehensible and dire, so I won't be seeing it.

X/1999, in both incarnations, is absolutely gorgeous, in a lush, doomed-romantic way. The animation is fluid, beautiful, and very expensive-looking. That is to say, the production values are excellent. CLAMP's artwork is intricate and lush, reminding me at various points of Thomas Canty (it's the complicated costumes and all that hair, I think) and H. R. Giger. Exquisite young men and women soar and duel above Tokyo, brutal scenes of splatterpunk violence are drawn with a decadent beauty, and enough cherry blossom petals and feathers cascade down from above that I began to imagine a crew hurling them from unseen rafters.

The storyline is complicated and so far pretty vague. A boy named Kamui (that may actually be a title of some sort) returns to Tokyo after several year's absence, having gained vast psychic powers. A whole bunch of people who also have powers, some of whom are in cabal with each other, want something from him but it's not clear what. Armageddon is approaching, and Kamui will either save the world or destroy it.

I was put off in the manga, which focuses on Kamui, by the fact that he's a complete jerk. The anime focuses more on the supporting characters, and I enjoyed that more. Also the anime spends more time introducing everyone and so is clearer at the outset. (I still liked the manga, don't get me wrong.) The large cast of characters are all interesting and many are likable, and there are bishonen galore. The women's roles are also good. I hope to see much more of the tough schoolgirl who can pull a sword from her hand, and also of the girl with a spirit dog named Inuki (Spirit Dog.)

Note to TK, in light of our conversation last night: Kamui's seiyuu is the ubiquitous Tomokazu Seki, and I once more did not recognize his voice but found out when I looked up the seiyuu on the net.

Also, one of my favorite characters, a cute monk-in-training in a baseball cap, has what I-- no kidding-- managed to identify as an Osaka accent long before one of the other characters referred to his duel with "a funny little boy from Osaka."

X/1999: Manga Volume 1 & 2, DVD Volume 1

That haiku is strangely appropriate. The first two lines, anyway.

Per a meme I picked up from Melymbrosia, the title of my journal is the title of a book I will someday write about Tokyo. Maybe. I never really experienced the change of seasons until I went to Japan, and I was enchanted by the seasonal foods and decorations and how everyone as excited about the bonfire-colored leaves as I was, even though they got to see it every year and it was my first time. Also parts of Tokyo have more neon than I've ever seen in my life, though Time Square comes close.

I can't watch more SAIYUKI till I order it from ebay or amazon, and can't read more till volume 2 comes out in May. So I'm delving into the female collective CLAMP's X/1999. What I've watched and written covers around the same ground, as the first DVD has three episodes plus a very extended intro-teaser labeled episode 0. I understand that there is also a movie which is incomprehensible and dire, so I won't be seeing it.

X/1999, in both incarnations, is absolutely gorgeous, in a lush, doomed-romantic way. The animation is fluid, beautiful, and very expensive-looking. That is to say, the production values are excellent. CLAMP's artwork is intricate and lush, reminding me at various points of Thomas Canty (it's the complicated costumes and all that hair, I think) and H. R. Giger. Exquisite young men and women soar and duel above Tokyo, brutal scenes of splatterpunk violence are drawn with a decadent beauty, and enough cherry blossom petals and feathers cascade down from above that I began to imagine a crew hurling them from unseen rafters.

The storyline is complicated and so far pretty vague. A boy named Kamui (that may actually be a title of some sort) returns to Tokyo after several year's absence, having gained vast psychic powers. A whole bunch of people who also have powers, some of whom are in cabal with each other, want something from him but it's not clear what. Armageddon is approaching, and Kamui will either save the world or destroy it.

I was put off in the manga, which focuses on Kamui, by the fact that he's a complete jerk. The anime focuses more on the supporting characters, and I enjoyed that more. Also the anime spends more time introducing everyone and so is clearer at the outset. (I still liked the manga, don't get me wrong.) The large cast of characters are all interesting and many are likable, and there are bishonen galore. The women's roles are also good. I hope to see much more of the tough schoolgirl who can pull a sword from her hand, and also of the girl with a spirit dog named Inuki (Spirit Dog.)

Note to TK, in light of our conversation last night: Kamui's seiyuu is the ubiquitous Tomokazu Seki, and I once more did not recognize his voice but found out when I looked up the seiyuu on the net.

Also, one of my favorite characters, a cute monk-in-training in a baseball cap, has what I-- no kidding-- managed to identify as an Osaka accent long before one of the other characters referred to his duel with "a funny little boy from Osaka."