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Wednesday, Official Bleach Holiday
Feb. 26th, 2014 09:30 amNew Bleach chapters come out on Wednesdays (when Kubo-sensei is not on hiatus, at any rate,) and so I've decided that, for the most part, I'm going to give into my fannish squee one day a week and mostly just spend the day being a fan.
Chapter 570 was good, in case you were wondering.
( Read more... )
Speaking of manga and chapters, last night, at work, I picked up Volume 5 of Ōoku: The Inner Chambers.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
naomikritzer bought volume one of this series for me as a Solstice/Christmas gift this last year because the premise sounds right up my alley (and it sort of is.) The manga is an alternate history where sometime during the Edo period, the men of Japan are all afflicted with a disease that wipes out a huge percentage of the male population. Women rise to power and men become, well, breeders, really. Many are sold off to brothels, etc. The main plot, however, revolves around the men in the "Inner Chamber," the shogun's own harem/concubines. So there is political intrigue and lots and lots of men being "debased" for the shogun's pleasure.
YET, despite that fabulous premise, this manga could be a lot hotter than it is, honestly. Despite the warning of "explicit content" there's only a little hint of m/m and most of the sex is a pan to the left and IMPLIED.
The other problem with the story, IMHO, is that there are a lot of time jumps. Like, right now, I'm not actually sure where I am in the timeline. It started when the female shogun was well established, but then jumped to tell a story of the first "Swain" (the concubine in charge of taking the Emperor's maidenhead and then falling on his sword) and then jumped again to tell of the rise of the first female shogun. I THINK we've been moving slowly back to the "now" from that second story-in-a-story, but I'm honestly not sure.
Unfortunately, this is a two part problem, one that falls squarely on my shoulders, and the other I will blame on the mangaka (a woman named Fumi Yoshinaga).
The problem that's mine is that Japanese names don't stick very quickly in my head. I have to be hammered with a Japanese name for several issues before I remember it (even when the characters are wildly different looking, like in Bleach--thank fate for the Bleach Wiki and the fact that Byakuya kept saying "Renji" over and over and people introduced themselves at each fight...) and... the second problem is that the mangaka seems to have one image in her head of "hot guy" and so the guys that catch the shogun's eye (even different shoguns) are all kind of the same TYPE. Worse, everyone is sporting the same hairstyle, purposely copying the Hot Guy. So, I've had a hell of a time figuring out if I'm following the first Hot Guy or a new Hot Guy.
BUT, despite this criticism, I'm still reading. I even picked up the last two volumes 6 & 7, with the thought that I'll see this through. The universe is interesting enough to keep me reading and the titillation is titillating. (I've got a good imagination, after all.)
Plus, as Naomi well knows, this sort of set-up is a big guilty pleasure of mine. I really enjoyed (far too much) Catherine Aasaro's LAST HAWK, because it's this same thing, only in that case the Hot Guy is a crash-landed fighter pilot captured and thrust into the harem of a matriarch on a matrilineal planet. Similarly, I pushed through Wen Spenser's A BROTHER'S PRICE because it was a future where there was another plague that affected only men, and... yada, yada harems and brothels full of desperate men. Similar-but-different, I really adored ABSOLUTE BOYFRIEND a six-volume shojo manga about a girl who mail-orders the perfect android boyfriend (from the future, but that's kind of a side story.)
Clearly, I love this set-up. It's like some kind of gender-swap Slave Girls of Gor and I'm really not sure what it says about me.... and I'm not sure I want to know.
Chapter 570 was good, in case you were wondering.
( Read more... )
Speaking of manga and chapters, last night, at work, I picked up Volume 5 of Ōoku: The Inner Chambers.
naomikritzer bought volume one of this series for me as a Solstice/Christmas gift this last year because the premise sounds right up my alley (and it sort of is.) The manga is an alternate history where sometime during the Edo period, the men of Japan are all afflicted with a disease that wipes out a huge percentage of the male population. Women rise to power and men become, well, breeders, really. Many are sold off to brothels, etc. The main plot, however, revolves around the men in the "Inner Chamber," the shogun's own harem/concubines. So there is political intrigue and lots and lots of men being "debased" for the shogun's pleasure.YET, despite that fabulous premise, this manga could be a lot hotter than it is, honestly. Despite the warning of "explicit content" there's only a little hint of m/m and most of the sex is a pan to the left and IMPLIED.
The other problem with the story, IMHO, is that there are a lot of time jumps. Like, right now, I'm not actually sure where I am in the timeline. It started when the female shogun was well established, but then jumped to tell a story of the first "Swain" (the concubine in charge of taking the Emperor's maidenhead and then falling on his sword) and then jumped again to tell of the rise of the first female shogun. I THINK we've been moving slowly back to the "now" from that second story-in-a-story, but I'm honestly not sure.
Unfortunately, this is a two part problem, one that falls squarely on my shoulders, and the other I will blame on the mangaka (a woman named Fumi Yoshinaga).
The problem that's mine is that Japanese names don't stick very quickly in my head. I have to be hammered with a Japanese name for several issues before I remember it (even when the characters are wildly different looking, like in Bleach--thank fate for the Bleach Wiki and the fact that Byakuya kept saying "Renji" over and over and people introduced themselves at each fight...) and... the second problem is that the mangaka seems to have one image in her head of "hot guy" and so the guys that catch the shogun's eye (even different shoguns) are all kind of the same TYPE. Worse, everyone is sporting the same hairstyle, purposely copying the Hot Guy. So, I've had a hell of a time figuring out if I'm following the first Hot Guy or a new Hot Guy.
BUT, despite this criticism, I'm still reading. I even picked up the last two volumes 6 & 7, with the thought that I'll see this through. The universe is interesting enough to keep me reading and the titillation is titillating. (I've got a good imagination, after all.)
Plus, as Naomi well knows, this sort of set-up is a big guilty pleasure of mine. I really enjoyed (far too much) Catherine Aasaro's LAST HAWK, because it's this same thing, only in that case the Hot Guy is a crash-landed fighter pilot captured and thrust into the harem of a matriarch on a matrilineal planet. Similarly, I pushed through Wen Spenser's A BROTHER'S PRICE because it was a future where there was another plague that affected only men, and... yada, yada harems and brothels full of desperate men. Similar-but-different, I really adored ABSOLUTE BOYFRIEND a six-volume shojo manga about a girl who mail-orders the perfect android boyfriend (from the future, but that's kind of a side story.)
Clearly, I love this set-up. It's like some kind of gender-swap Slave Girls of Gor and I'm really not sure what it says about me.... and I'm not sure I want to know.