Mariposa Sunday, Part II

[rachelmanija]

I just saw off Oyce, alas. Dad let us fuel from the fuel tank, and she ran over the caretaker's dog's dish while pulling out. Then we had a dish of strawberries and blueberries with leftover whipped cream, and she was off.

Last night, after the dinner at the strange restaurant with the yipping cowboy singer and an elderly Goth waitress with monstrous beehive unmoving hair, Oyce and I baked blue corn blueberry scones, which we ate with whipped cream and raspberry jam and homemade lemon curd, and watched episodes 3 and 4 of Samurai Champloo. There is a lot of stuff in that show that is much more meaningful in retrospect, when you know all the characters' secrets and can understand why they sometimes react oddly at the mention of certain things.

Last night she and I both dreamed about Saiyuki. Possibly this was because I had read a draft of her unfinished but excellent Gaiden story that night. She dreamed that Gojyo and Hakkai were having relationship problems. I dreamed that I was trying to persuade Youkai Hakkai to put his limiters back on. He put on two, then lifted the third, made like he was going to put it on, then put it on my ear with a very creepy smile. I was sure he was going to kill me. Then he took it off and put it on his own ear, saying that he'd just been joking, and again with the creepy smile.

This morning we attempted to read Wild Adapter in Japanese. Because my Japanese (or possibly visual comprehension) sucks, I misinterpreted a scene as Kubota and Tokitoh lying in bed and licking chocolate off of each other's fingers. Oyce informed me that actually, Tokitoh had some chocolate on his face, and Kubota wiped it off, then licked it off his own fingers. Which is so much less more equally suggestive but in a slightly different way. I am also mystified by the sequence in which there is angst and yelling and a gun battle, and right in the middle of it there is a panel with an extreme close-up of tender ear-nibbling, and then the story returns to angst and yelling and gun battling.

At around the same time, Oyce was reading Absolute Boyfriend in English. It's about a girl who orders a "perfect boyfriend" online. The cover has a naked boy jumping out of a box with a price tag in his teeth. In a sidebar, Yuu Watase explains that the genesis of the series was that she had the image of a naked boy in a box, so she wrote a series about him. This is what I love about manga: not only do mangaka think of things like naked boys in boxes, they create series about them, draw them on the cover naked and in a box, and then cheerfully explain that that image was the genesis of the series. Well, that and series in which a cold yakuza guy ends up licking chocolate from the face of a strange guy with one clawed hand whom he picked up (literally) in an alley.

Comments

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

I dreamed that I was trying to persuade Youkai Hakkai to put his limiters back on. He put on two, then lifted the third, made like he was going to put it on, then put it on my ear with a very creepy smile. I was sure he was going to kill me. Then he took it off and put it on his own ear, saying that he'd just been joking, and again with the creepy smile.

Oh wow, that's interesting. _I_ dreamed during a nap today I was a substitute teacher out of crayons. boo.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Dear Birthday Fairy,

Please send me one (1) naked boyfriend in a box for my birthday.

Love,
Karen

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

>and she ran over the caretaker's dog's dish while pulling out<

Okay, so I read that too fast the first time and went Oh my GOD, before reading it again and saying, "Oh, a *dish.* Not the dog. Thank goodness."

>I am also mystified by the sequence in which there is angst and yelling and a gun battle, and right in the middle of it there is a panel with an extreme close-up of tender ear-nibbling, and then the story returns to angst and yelling and gun battling. <

Hee!

[greenapple2004.livejournal.com]

Absolute Boyfriend has no right to be as entertaining as it is. I'd been resisting the whole Yuu Watase thing, but this might end up being my gateway series. :-) It's the highlight of the new Shojo Beat issues, since the Nana adaptation is so pitiful.

I'm going to have to read the rest of Wild Adapter one of these days. I read vol. 1 a while back, but we don't have the rest in the office, and I've been putting off actually purchasing it. Certainly yummy, though!

[oyceter]

since the Nana adaptation is so pitiful.

Oh really? I've only read the Japanese and not the translation, so I don't know... is the translation really bad or something?

[greenapple2004.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's okay in places, but it's super-slangy, and a lot of the slang is about five years out of date. Booo!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Fushigi Yuugi: Genbu Kaiden is also a lot of fun. It's a prequel, but you don't need to have read the first series.

[greenapple2004.livejournal.com]

I keep flipping through that in the bookstore and being tempted. It's awfully pretty, and I've got a thing for Taisho-era fashion, so the covers alone should do it for me. One of these days...