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larryhammerSome things I've been reading lately:
Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde - Finally got to this -- I know, I know, but rather than play the blame game, let's just move on. Specifically, I read the original 1890 magazine version, before Wilde toned down the "immorality" and padded out the backstory. Initially, it appears to be a homoerotic love triangle wrapped in gobs of enormously entertaining piffle (I hadn't known it was possible to talk in paragraphs of epigrams -- I must reread to figure out how Wilde pulled that off), but then genre-shifts to something that tries to be a morality play but ends up a gothic melodrama. Unfortunately, those parts without Lord Henry on stage, which is most of the moral-playing, has very little piffle, forcing the story to succeed on its own slight merits. Recommended for anyone who hasn't read it, with the understanding that it's okay to stop at the time-skip.
Much like many manga, if it comes to that. And speaking of manga:
Last Game, Shinobu Amano - Recommended for fans of Akagami Shirayuki-hime, Kimi ni Todoke, and Special A, as unlikely a combination as that may be. This is technically mainline shoujo (it runs in LaLa) and certainly is playing many shoujo tropes, but the main story takes place while the characters are in university. Thus showing audience expectations are not as set in stone in Japan as in the States.* The main characters are a poor but hardworking girl of limited emotional affect and a privileged rich boy who can't get over how she always beats him academically. After several years of one-sided rivalry, in high school he eventually hits on his plan of revenge: make her fall in love with him, and then dump her.
Because this trick always works.
It isn't until they're in university that he realizes his obsession with her includes no small amount of attraction to her -- and she in turn, after deciding to put new effort into making a friend (or even two), starts showing signs of being not indifferent to him. Not that she quite understands what's going on herself, being a little inexperienced at this whole socializing thing. And at emotions.
The art and characterization is very similar to Sorata Akizuki's, though the latter is not as delicate with Amano, and the sense of humor similar to Karahu Shiina's. The tropes, they are legion, both played with and played straight. I'm having a lot of fun with this one. Unlicensed, scans available through chapter 9 (which should be early volume 3 when the tankobon comes out). And speaking of fun:
The Ingoldsby Legends, "Thomas Ingoldsby" aka Richard Harris Barham - You can find references to this in novels throughout the second half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th, but after that it seems to have become largely forgotten** except for a single anthology piece, "The Jackdaw of Rheims." Which is a shame, as Barham is a dab hand at comic narrative verse -- he knows how to keep the pace up and not get bogged down in clever rhymes and cleverer details. He's also got an deft hand at adapting stories, especially medieval tales, to his time.
Before recommending it, I should probably mention that his misogyny is about par for the 1840s, and his retelling of The Merchant of Venice is vicious in its antisemitism. I'd suggest skipping that one, but here for once he's adapting a well-known story, thus giving one a gauge to how much he changes from his sources, so I'll weaken that to you may want to. Otherwise, there's good reasons the Legends were read and loved by at least three generations.
* Witness Yotsuba&!, a comedy about parenting a five-year-old girl that's aimed at teenage boys.
** A half-exception: someone reads it in Half Magic, but since that's set in the 1920s, it's a period-appropriate detail.
---L.
Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde - Finally got to this -- I know, I know, but rather than play the blame game, let's just move on. Specifically, I read the original 1890 magazine version, before Wilde toned down the "immorality" and padded out the backstory. Initially, it appears to be a homoerotic love triangle wrapped in gobs of enormously entertaining piffle (I hadn't known it was possible to talk in paragraphs of epigrams -- I must reread to figure out how Wilde pulled that off), but then genre-shifts to something that tries to be a morality play but ends up a gothic melodrama. Unfortunately, those parts without Lord Henry on stage, which is most of the moral-playing, has very little piffle, forcing the story to succeed on its own slight merits. Recommended for anyone who hasn't read it, with the understanding that it's okay to stop at the time-skip.
Much like many manga, if it comes to that. And speaking of manga:
Last Game, Shinobu Amano - Recommended for fans of Akagami Shirayuki-hime, Kimi ni Todoke, and Special A, as unlikely a combination as that may be. This is technically mainline shoujo (it runs in LaLa) and certainly is playing many shoujo tropes, but the main story takes place while the characters are in university. Thus showing audience expectations are not as set in stone in Japan as in the States.* The main characters are a poor but hardworking girl of limited emotional affect and a privileged rich boy who can't get over how she always beats him academically. After several years of one-sided rivalry, in high school he eventually hits on his plan of revenge: make her fall in love with him, and then dump her.
Because this trick always works.
It isn't until they're in university that he realizes his obsession with her includes no small amount of attraction to her -- and she in turn, after deciding to put new effort into making a friend (or even two), starts showing signs of being not indifferent to him. Not that she quite understands what's going on herself, being a little inexperienced at this whole socializing thing. And at emotions.
The art and characterization is very similar to Sorata Akizuki's, though the latter is not as delicate with Amano, and the sense of humor similar to Karahu Shiina's. The tropes, they are legion, both played with and played straight. I'm having a lot of fun with this one. Unlicensed, scans available through chapter 9 (which should be early volume 3 when the tankobon comes out). And speaking of fun:
The Ingoldsby Legends, "Thomas Ingoldsby" aka Richard Harris Barham - You can find references to this in novels throughout the second half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th, but after that it seems to have become largely forgotten** except for a single anthology piece, "The Jackdaw of Rheims." Which is a shame, as Barham is a dab hand at comic narrative verse -- he knows how to keep the pace up and not get bogged down in clever rhymes and cleverer details. He's also got an deft hand at adapting stories, especially medieval tales, to his time.
Before recommending it, I should probably mention that his misogyny is about par for the 1840s, and his retelling of The Merchant of Venice is vicious in its antisemitism. I'd suggest skipping that one, but here for once he's adapting a well-known story, thus giving one a gauge to how much he changes from his sources, so I'll weaken that to you may want to. Otherwise, there's good reasons the Legends were read and loved by at least three generations.
* Witness Yotsuba&!, a comedy about parenting a five-year-old girl that's aimed at teenage boys.
** A half-exception: someone reads it in Half Magic, but since that's set in the 1920s, it's a period-appropriate detail.
---L.
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Date: 2 July 2012 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 July 2012 09:24 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 3 July 2012 02:13 pm (UTC)If you've ever seen a certain Blake's 7 episode, this is ROFLMAO.
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Date: 3 July 2012 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 July 2012 08:59 pm (UTC)Speaking of manga, have you read Akatsuki no Yona? It's by the author of Mugen Spiral and NG Life, and it's my new favorite thing. Tropetastic fantasy/adventure shoujo: heroine is a princess whose schemes to marry her childhood sweetheart go awry when childhood sweetheart murders her father and seizes the crown. So she ends up on the run with her cranky bodyguard (who is in obvious-to-everyone-but-her love with her), and of course there's a prophecy and they have to collect the magical warriors and clearly there's going to be a gyaku-harem.
I love all of the above tropes, but what really won me over was (a) its handling of the "childhood friends torn apart by drama and betrayal" trope, and (b) the princess's I Will Get Stronger! storyline. Which is not only pleasingly girl-power (as of ch. 17, one of her stated goals is to become able to protect her bodyguard), but also a little more complex than you might expect: her father was famed (and by some people despised) for not liking to fight, childhood-sweetheart-turned-usurper has sworn to make the country more gloriously strong and military, and it's basically being implied all over the place that the heroine will have to find her own solution to the war vs. peace problem.
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Date: 2 July 2012 09:31 pm (UTC)Hmm. Akatsuki no Yona sounds promising, especially the sweetheart-turned-usurper part. However, comma, I loved the beginnings of Mugen Spiral and NG Life but lost interest enough to give up mid-volume 3 of both of them. Based on comments, it sounds like that's where this starts to pick up, though. I'll add it to my list of things to try. Thanks!
---L.
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Date: 3 July 2012 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 3 July 2012 11:04 pm (UTC)---L.