"All you trawlermen, come on / forget your snapper and your prawn / it's out of Ballina we'll sail"

From Naomi Yamauchi's manga adaptation of The Changelings, an anonymous 12th century Japanese novel: "My daughter favors archery and horseback riding; in addition, she excels in the flute, Chinese poetry, and masters the arts better than most boys. Then she ends up dressing like one. Sadly, it suits her incredibly well. I am both troubled and shocked."

Said daughter also has a half-brother who is beautiful and feminine and mistaken for a woman, and even before their coming-of-age ceremonies they get embroiled in imperial court politics, with additional layers of roles and misunderstandings. Needless to say, I'm all over this. Enough so, I'm now reading the translation of the original novel. Which I more or less had to because the scanlation is only two chapters in -- a shortcoming (so to speak) that prevents judging the manga difficult. I note, though, that in the process of converting a more-or-less straight-faced novel to a shoujo romantic comedy, several incidents have been added by way of providing character motivations and comic interludes, the siblings get a personal name,* and at least one major character is created whole-cloth.

I like the novel's aside, a few pages in, where the narrator says in effect, "This is confusing enough, so just so you know, I'm going to refer to everyone by their assumed sex." You also have to like a book where a captain of a division of Imperial Guards is EDIT: eight six** months pregnant and still carrying out his duties with no one the wiser -- not even servants. And deals seriously with the emotional issues of getting pregnant by your wife's lover, who is also your best friend.

Speaking of other versions, btw, another variation on the Usagi Drop/My Girl/Yotsuba&! premise: NicoNico Diary. The caretaker's a single woman in her early thirties and the suddenly arriving girl is eight, but it's recognizably the same kind of story. And since it's a josei with a protagonist of suitable age, we get an incident of being called "oba-san" ("ma'am") for the first time. Bonus thematics: protagonist is a freelancer with security issues.

Bonus versioning: Reading Tennyson's "Ulysses," I can't help but wonder how it would have turned out in Browning's hands. Boundless Victorian energy can be tiresome, but surely it'd be a better vehicle for self-serving restlessness than Tennysonian elegiacs. Not to mention, that last line is Browningism distilled.


* Kira.***

** ETA: I was misreading the timestamps, combined with forgetting that the narrative works on strictly lunar months.

*** Both of them. Bonus confusion!

---L.

"All you trawlermen, come on / forget your snapper and your prawn / it's out of Ballina we'll sail"

From Naomi Yamauchi's manga adaptation of The Changelings, an anonymous 12th century Japanese novel: "My daughter favors archery and horseback riding; in addition, she excels in the flute, Chinese poetry, and masters the arts better than most boys. Then she ends up dressing like one. Sadly, it suits her incredibly well. I am both troubled and shocked."

Said daughter also has a half-brother who is beautiful and feminine and mistaken for a woman, and even before their coming-of-age ceremonies they get embroiled in imperial court politics, with additional layers of roles and misunderstandings. Needless to say, I'm all over this. Enough so, I'm now reading the translation of the original novel. Which I more or less had to because the scanlation is only two chapters in -- a shortcoming (so to speak) that prevents judging the manga difficult. I note, though, that in the process of converting a more-or-less straight-faced novel to a shoujo romantic comedy, several incidents have been added by way of providing character motivations and comic interludes, the siblings get a personal name,* and at least one major character is created whole-cloth.

I like the novel's aside, a few pages in, where the narrator says in effect, "This is confusing enough, so just so you know, I'm going to refer to everyone by their assumed sex." You also have to like a book where a captain of a division of Imperial Guards is EDIT: eight six** months pregnant and still carrying out his duties with no one the wiser -- not even servants. And deals seriously with the emotional issues of getting pregnant by your wife's lover, who is also your best friend.

Speaking of other versions, btw, another variation on the Usagi Drop/My Girl/Yotsuba&! premise: NicoNico Diary. The caretaker's a single woman in her early thirties and the suddenly arriving girl is eight, but it's recognizably the same kind of story. And since it's a josei with a protagonist of suitable age, we get an incident of being called "oba-san" ("ma'am") for the first time. Bonus thematics: protagonist is a freelancer with security issues.

Bonus versioning: Reading Tennyson's "Ulysses," I can't help but wonder how it would have turned out in Browning's hands. Boundless Victorian energy can be tiresome, but surely it'd be a better vehicle for self-serving restlessness than Tennysonian elegiacs. Not to mention, that last line is Browningism distilled.


* Kira.***

** ETA: I was misreading the timestamps, combined with forgetting that the narrative works on strictly lunar months.

*** Both of them. Bonus confusion!

---L.