Soul Eater reread (Ch 23-61)

Hahaha, here I was thinking I'd churn this out pretty quickly but nope, it's been a month since the last part. Oops.

Look, it's that one character... that I completely forgot about... from the part that no one remembers in the anime! Since the Asura-in-the-basement arc was the last full arc from the manga that got adapted into the anime, it was the last really coherent bit of plot that I remember. This next storyline about Arachne and so on was only partially adapted, and then everything got muddled by anime-ending and I just didn't bother trying to keep any of it in my head. But onwards to the manga chapters:

Soul Eater reread (Ch 0-22)

Soul Eater is finally ending! I've been waiting for it to properly end for like two years now. You see, I have problems with waiting for manga to end-- sometimes they just drag on and on and I simply don't have the patience to wait through new chapters. I mean, I understand that ending a long-running series is difficult in the best of times, but these kind of shounen battle manga can easily fall into a trap of too-many-battles-HOW-BORING. (Bleach, I am thinking of you right now) Soul Eater was definitely hitting that stage when I stopped reading. Besides, this was a monthly manga, meaning it took even longer in real time to get through the boring stuff. Hence the two year wait for it to end-- uughhh TWO YEARS!!! 

(Alright, it could have been worse. It could have been like Detective Conan. I've been waiting for Detective Conan to end for the better part of a decade and it still hasn't.)

Hence in celebration (??) I'm going to reread the whole manga from start to finish so I can figure out exactly what actually happened at the end (and also to tell Kathryn because lord knows she's never going to do it herself)

Fairy Tail: no, no, no.

Fairy Tail, the amount of really terribly unnecessary and awful fanservice in your last two chapters have filled me with a nigh undescribable level of disgust and rage. I kind of do want to continue to read you, for some increasingly mysterious reason, but it is really hard to read a manga when I am constantly facepalming at how gross it is.

Look, I don't really ask for much when it comes to mindless, generic, please-just-waste-some-of-my-time shounen. I really don't. And since I've gotten 300+ chapters without dropping Fairy Tail, it's not like there's nothing decent in there. But the last couple of arcs are getting more and more disgusting with fanservice, and if its going to continue down this path, we will rapidly reach the point where even the cutest of cartoon cats will not save this manga from my eternal contempt and loathing.

And considering my ridiculous weakness for cartoon cats, that's saying something.

Manga reflects my life far too closely

The Ravages of Time (undignified fangirling time)

This is me.

Alas! I find myself in danger of disappearing off the face of this blog (not that I update much anyway). You can blame this almost entirely on the Three Kingdoms 2010 drama, which is a ridiculous 95 episodes long, each episode being twice that of your typical anime episode. Goodbye, life. 

Speaking of which, before I turned into a horrible anime/manga obsessed freak, I was a Romance of the Three Kingdoms obsessed freak first. Chinese history, awesome battles, battles of wits etc, what is there not to love? I'd like to think I'm a lot less obsessed now than I was, but every now and then (like now), I'm hit with this utter, uncontrollable fit of Three Kingdoms fanaticism that basically destroys my patience for anything else until I somehow find something more interesting to distract myself away from it. 

There are Three Kingdoms adaptations all over the place, and they vary unbelievably widely in interpretation and quality. The 2010 drama is really quite enjoyable, lengthy though it is, but by far my favorite adaption is the Hong Kong manhua Ravages of Time.

A weeaboo's dilemma

tl;dr

Kekkaishi

Ghost doggies!

Ok, that's a gif from the anime, which I haven't actually watched, but it's cute and relatively representative of how much I liked this series? Really, Kekkaishi kind of blew me away in how good it was, which really shouldn't be a surprise since it's been on my to-read list for a good two or three years now as an excellent shounen manga written by a woman with good character depth and plot development etc (ie something to fill the void in my heart left by completing FMA).

It starts out episodic and really really slow, which is why it took me a while to get into it. Actually, I'm pretty sure this has been the third time I started reading Kekkaishi, but I've only finished it for the first time just now. So yes, the pacing is a bit wonky at first. But the plot builds up more and more as you go further down the story arcs, and from chapter ~150 onwards I was basically finding myself marathoning reading this manga until 2am until I was done with it.

Awesome weird monsters!

And yes, Kekkaishi is completely completed, which is probably the best thing you can say about a long-running shounen series. Unlike a lot of shounen, it doesn't drag near the end-- if anything it gets more and more interesting. It also avoids that annoying shounen pitfall where you know the story ends with the main character beating the Big Bad in some kind of epic showdown, something that even the great FMA had. So yes, I loved the ending-- it didn't all tie up in some cheap fight; it was very positive and satisfying and hopeful; there was still a twinge of sadness/melancholy to make it kind of hit home a bit harder.

Also have I mentioned how much I love reading shounen stuff written by women? It is orders of magnitude less disgusting than most of the usual stuff. There is very little fanservice, except for one part when the main character accidentally peeks on his crush when she's bathing. He then spends the entire next chapter beating himself up over it for invading her privacy-- a far cry from, say, One Piece, where purposefully peeking on women is trivialized into nothing but a joke, reinforcing the idea that that kind of behavior is acceptable and normal. Also there's this ridiculously funny boob joke in there that shows no cleavage whatsoever but had me giggling for a good two minutes. That's impressive!

Kekkaishi has an anime, but it's 50+ episodes long and only covers up to the end of the first major story arc, around chapter 120. Which is a shame, because things get so much more interesting and cool afterwards! The whole manga is 345 chapters, meaning Kathryn will never read it and she will never get to all the cool fun parts of the story. Shame, shame. My dear friend, you are missing out.

International Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day! As we all know, Japan is seriously like, ridiculously sexist in many ways, and this is often reflected in the culture that it produces! Despite this, there are still a lot of really awesome women in the anime/manga industry and they make really really fantastic things.

So in the spirit of things, here's short list of cool things that you should read/watch that were created by women and with awesome female characters:

The saddest thing...

--From Cat Street, a very nice slice-of-life-y shoujo manga about people not functioning in society slowly resocializing themselves.

(I'll do a proper post later this week, I promise! :P)

Bokurano

Next up is Bokurano, an anime which aired in 2007 (before I actually started watching anime properly) and came highly recommended. 

You know, this picture kind of makes it look like it is a show about a bunch of kids being kidnapped by sentient chairs

what the hell did i just read

Since we finished watching Shiki back in September, it reminded me of how much I enjoyed Fujisaki Ryu's art and such. So I went and reread Houshin Engi (more on that later, possibly much later), and now I'm looking at some of the other stuff he did.

And.....uh..... what. 

Scanlation editorials and unexpected fury

My turn for a little rant thing. So I've been reading last week's One Piece (691), blah blah blah, ridiculous shounen fights, wacky hijinks, etc. Business as usual, end of chapter, nothing left to see, right?

Hold up, there's still the scanlator's remarks and credits. Wait, wait, what is this sexist bullshit???

Seriously? Seriously? Wow, way to be a sexist prick. "Oh, look at me and my manly awesome interests that totally teach me such valuable lessons in life; you stupid girls with your pop music that is as shallow and effeminate as you are would never be able to grasp its greatness which is why I am so much better than you."

Nerdrage problems

You know you have nerdrage problems when, more than the occasional WTF plot, more than the increasingly boob-exposing outfits, more than generic shonen dullness, this is the single most irritating thing about One Piece.

Seriously, what is that even supposed to mean??????

Quick Link: "Genital Gun" I don't even want to know

A friend of mine sent me this article from aramatheydidnt that really..... really.... deserves no more words. Really.