misc jottings

The title of this book is somewhat misleading, as in the original it was more like “The Fall of the Japanese Language...” rather than just language generically, and the real meaning is really more about the fall of Japanese literature (the novel) rather than how the health of a language is nowadays determined in the eyes of linguists (which is dependent on how many speakers it has and what role it plays socially, not on whether people write good novels in it). As the author, Mizumura Minae explains in the English language preface, one thing omitted from the English version was a passage in which she addressed the book to readers mourning the decline of Japanese literature, and having done that, she felt little need to justify this claim (because it is so widely shared, apparently; although when the book was published in Japan it was both highly popular and incredibly controversial). But this really makes the last part of the book confusing, because if that’s what the title means, it would seem important to explain why the current Japanese novel is so bad. I have this book in Japanese (I didn’t realize it was actually the same book and thought it was a continuation) so maybe when I read that version there will be more information, as Mizumura says she rewrote the last chapter for the English version. 

After awhile I hit a snag in reducing my backlog, and then I added more titles, so I am over 30 again, orz. 

However, I finished watching Jojo Part 3 (finally), which is very faithful to the manga, although it has been so long since I’ve read part 3 that I forgot a lot of the details (oddly I forgot the most in the final fights for some reason, maybe because they were so long? Or fairly complicated?) Anyway it just continued to feel weird that they portray all the gore by blacking things out, and I’m not sure if the fact that I remember these gory scenes from the manga makes it more weird or less. Also, the way many of the characters (ok, not so much Jotaro, but it seems like everyone else) likes to helpfully monologue and give the audience lengthy explanations is feels especially jarring now that the narrative has started to emphasize time as a factor, so then it makes you think about things like “uh, they fell like fifteen feet, yet had time to talk for like thirty seconds?” or “dude, you said you stopped time for five seconds, but you were clearly going on longer than that.” 

Holmes of Kyoto:  I started this series on a whim and usually I don’t really like detective shows that much, and I have been trying to avoid light novel based anime, but that didn’t work out this time, ha. I guess the problem is that I like these shows because often the writing seems better, but then I realize the story is continued in the light novel and become annoyed. Anyway, this show is about a young antiques appraiser, Yagashira Kiyotaka (nicknamed Holmes, which is sort of a pun), a high school girl, Mashiro Aoi, getting over a breakup who starts to work at the shop, and how he ends up having to solve these mostly non-murder mysteries he either is asked to solve or accidentally runs into in the course of normal business. There’s lots of interesting information about pottery, woodblock printing, painting, etc. All of this takes place in Kyoto and at times I did wonder whether they got funding from a Kyoto tourism board. Also, there’s Enshou, a master counterfeiter turned monk, who is improbably gifted in various arts and seems to have decided on his own to be Moriarty because it gives him some purpose in life. (Despite leaving the monastery once he is exposed, he continues to dress as a monk). Aoi’s issues with her ex are relatively quickly solved, and she and Kiyotaka (who first offers her a job because he suffered a similar experience where his ex left him for some Osaka guy; his ex-gf, Izumi shows up a lot to ask him for help with a lot of her problems!) soon start to have a lot of UST which is noticed by everyone but neither of them can get around to starting a relationship. (this develops in the light novel). I also was intrigued by how Holmes explains that the other reason he dislikes Enshou so much (besides the fraud and Enshou being a jerk in general) was that he envies Enshou’s artistic talent (which Enshou perversely refuses to use to create original works). 

I have recently started watching more things on Crunchyroll (never let it be said that I don’t support the anime industry!) as most of the time I ignore it and let my backlog sit around. I currently have around 35 or so things in my queue. 

How to Keep a Mummy:  Painfully cute story about people keeping fantasy creatures, although it has more serious parts about the threat to the creatures and the issues the main characters face in their friendship. This was better than I thought it would be, although I’m confused about what the abilities of the mummy (up until one scene it seems like Mii-kun is really lacking in abilities compared to the other ones, especially the baku) are and other basic questions that the show doesn’t really delve into. (I was also unclear about whether the various creatures are adults or babies. Conny, the oni, seems to clearly be a baby who will grow up to be an human sized adult who can talk, which makes things actually pretty weird when you think about it. Ok, maybe the scene where the critters all learn how to write at a preschooler level too)  

Sengoku Night Blood:  I played this game for awhile, and I enjoyed some of the art, although the paltry story hardly went anywhere, and like most free games, I hit a wall after awhile so I got tired of it and uninstalled. So I tried watching this wondering if they ever reveal anything about the main plot. No, they don’t, this game has so many characters you can’t really do anything in 12 eps, and the heroine is incredibly uninteresting even by mobile otome standards. 

Diabolik Lovers:  Most otome anime should not be watched, but I watched this one because I was curious about the game but not enough to play it. However, it is even worse than Sengoku Night Blood and mainly exists as an excuse to animate the heroine, Yui, having her blood sucked by the vampire boys. I’m told the second season is even more incoherent. 

The Royal Tutor:  This is a fun, ridiculous shoujo-ish (based on a manga running in G-Fantasy) show about a tutor (who looks like a little boy, but is an adult man) summoned to teach four difficult princes. He quickly wins them over and helps them grow and become candidates to the throne. Anyway, though I enjoyed this anime, it really illustrated a “problem” (most people don’t have an issue with it) that I have with anime these days. Most anime is based off an ongoing manga, and when I finish the anime I become annoyed because the manga isn’t finished. I think a lot of people who watch anime prefer watching anime and are anime fans, whereas I find manga just as good of a way to experience a story and only feel a strong need to watch the anime if I’m very curious about how it was animated or want to see how they changed it. So if I were told both an anime and a manga existed, I think generally I would be more interested in reading the manga. 

I did go and catch up on spoilers for the Royal Tutor and really the crux of the story is why the King feels it is so necessary that all of his younger sons be suitable for the throne, and the reason is because he secretly thinks his eldest son is not qualified, despite most people thinking he is highly suitable. Conveniently, this reason is a secret which has yet to be revealed in the manga, although if it’s just that he’s terminally ill or whatever, the behavior of Count Rosenburg (his steward who attempts to disqualify the younger princes) is also puzzling. 

Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi:  Regarding the English title, I kind of find “bed and breakfast” incongruous for what seems more like a resort hotel? Anyway, this is based off of a shoujo light novel where the protagonist, Tsubaki Aoi, was raised by her grandfather after being abandoned to starve to death by her mother, who rejected her because she could see spirits. Aoi was saved by a mysterious ayakashi who gave her food. Her grandfather, Tsubaki Shiro, teaches her how to defend herself from ayakashi by giving them food. Because of Aoi’s high spiritual power, her food has the ability to restore their strength. After her grandfather’s death, Aoi is spirited away to the world of the spirits where she finds out that her grandfather promised to marry her to the Master Innkeeper of Tenjin-ya, in return for his massive debt. Aoi refuses to marry the Master (an oni whose name is unclear, everyone calls him by his title), and instead opens up an eatery at the hotel, with the help of the nine-tailed fox Ginji, who I guess is sort of like the assistant manager. I find all the various titles they have at these inns (there are two of them, Tenjin-ya and Orio-ya) confusing, as is a governmental structure where inn managers are also the regional governors... 

The story is mainly how Aoi (who is much more brash and reckless than she seems at first) wins over ayakashi who are at first hostile to her, through the power of her cooking and her insistence on helping others despite her not having any real obligation to in many instances. There’s kind of a vague triangular relationship between Aoi, the Master of the inn, and Ginji, although I feel sorry for Ginji, since he’s clearly not going to win, both in a structurally obvious way from the beginning, and for other reasons later revealed. 

Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted here. I’ve simply gotten out of the habit of blogging on Tumblr, mostly because I post on Discord and other fora these days, but now that Tumblr has banned a lot of content (while continuing to run poorly in many ways), the platform seems to be declining in earnest. In any case, here’s some books/tv shows/whatever that I’ve been watching:  

Houseki no Kuni (anime):  This is really worth seeing because it does CG animation fairly well (especially with the sense of space and action scenes), and it’s nice to see the characters in color. Would be great to have a sequel, especially when the manga is finished, although given the glacial pace, that will be awhile. 

Advisors Alliance (season 1, up to episode 30 or so):  I watched this on my own up until episode 20 or so and am now rewatching and beyond in a fairly leisurely way with a friend. I’d like to watch the second season if I can figure out how to find it. (The first season is on Youtube). Wish I spoke Chinese (or even read it, given that there are Chinese subtitles). The other thing which really gets me is that although the real title also adds that it’s about the great military advisor, Sima Yi, he uh, in the first season does not seem to do much military advising at all, other than going on a diplomatic mission to convince Sun Quan to ally with Cao Cao so they can get rid of Guan Yu. Which is not a small thing, but I think it gives a misleading impression of what the show is about, especially when a major subplot is civil service hiring reform (whee!). 

Cells at Work (anime):  If you’ve ever wanted to watch a pretty fluffy show about, surprisingly, mainly the immune system, this is the anime for you! Not much to say about it otherwise. 

How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read (book):  An enjoyable exercise in sophistry/trolling. The philosophical author concludes that all books, including the ones we have actually read, are books that we haven’t read. Given that is true, this book is really how to talk about all books. 

Crazy Rich Asians trilogy:  This was better than I expected, since the author clearly loves Trollope and other 19th century comedy of manners sorts of books and is trying his hand at writing a modern version. It suffers from the common flaw (?) of these books that the main characters are often the most boring, especially since the real point is to do these small portraitures of the various types of insane wealthy folk. (Astrid and Kitty have better stories, I feel) The writing feels more convincing when he focuses on Singapore itself, rather than the other settings. 

A Court of Thorns and Roses (trilogy):  This was worse than I expected. When I read these I wanted to write a blog entry about them, but I never got around to them. I started to read them because I was intrigued by one of the plot developments I’d read about. This series is either YA or Adult Fantasy, depending on which country it is published and who you ask, and some aspects of the early story remind me of the hunting scenes in the Hunger Games, but much of that is swept away later in favor of it becoming a big epic fantasy series set in fairyland. What is wrong with these books? I am not entirely sure. I think it’s partially the prose, and partially that the writer has good ideas but fails on the structure and execution, and a lot of the endless beautiful and powerful fairies etc. is harder to pull off than it looks. Many of the plot important scenes feel perfunctory and unconvincing, although the more fairy tale like scenes often are pretty effective. I feel like someone out the probably has written something that does explain what are the problem(s) but I can’t find the post. 

The Shaman and the Heresiarch:  A New Interpretation of the Li Sao:  The Li Sao is one of the long poems in the Songs of Chu, and is often interpreted to be about Qu Yuan’s problems in his career as an official. This is really interesting as it argues that the poem is mainly about spirit possession and conflict between factions of Confucians and shamans. 

I finished reading the five volume Devilman manga in preparation for seeing the latest anime. This is a short, intense read. It starts out as vaguely Lovecraft-esque horror, turns into action/horror/battle for about two vols, and then the protagonist addresses the reader with a warning, and then it turns into the apocalypse, and ‘is humanity worth saving---- wait, ok, that’s kind of a moot point now, and now it’s time for the story to shift to Satan for the last scene.” Then I read summaries about what had happened in the sequels/prequels, which both clarify and confuse. (Go Nagai created Devilman after doing another devil-themed series, which was inspired by a campaign against an ecchi manga he had previously done) 

I just got around to finishing up the Houseki no Kuni manga (or Land of the Lustruous, in the official translation), which has recently been animated. The premise is that in a far future earth, where most land has been destroyed from objects hitting it, humanity has been wiped out and the remaining land is now inhabited by beings made out of gems. The gems are actually crystals in a humanoid matrix held together by microorganisms, and they are based off of humans somehow, as are the mollusk people who inhabit the ocean and the moon people. There are only twenty-eight gems, who are genderless and led by the mysterious Kongou-sensei, who resembles a Buddhist monk. The gems a re threatened by the moon people/Lunarians, who attack them (in sort of a kaijuu way) in order to use them for decorations. However, things are more complex than that. Sensei is really the character whose non-actions everything revolve around, really. 

The really elongated and stylized character designs take some getting used to, and to me have a retro feel in keeping with a lot of the visual design and paneling in the manga. The simplicity of the lines and the amount of negative space also lends to the otherworldly feel, as does the strange mix of vaguely the vaguely modernist ‘school’ and the Buddhist designs of Kongou-sensei and the moon people. Personally, I found the character designs often hard to keep straight, since only a few of the gems play really important roles in the story and they all have the same body type. (Color of course would help a lot, but it’s manga). 

The story is not one with a lot of filler; Phosphophyllite, the protagonist, is a weak and klutzy gem in the beginning, but changes vastly through the story:  quite literally and amazingly quickly, by manga standards. Anyway if you’re annoyed by Phos’s personality at the beginning, stick around (although you might be annoyed by them later, it will be for other reasons). 

For me I think the main appeal in the story is for the worldbuilding and the plot, although in some ways (although in vol 8 we get a huge amount of important information) I feel like it’s at a risky point in the story, as we might even be nearer to the end. 

SPOILER COMMENTS TO FOLLOW:  

I started reading an extremely long novel in Japanese, Tesso no Ori, by Kyogoku Natsuhiko. This is around 1367 pages in bunko form, and concerns the unsettling murders of some monks in Hakone. I have to say, I kind of wonder whether it really had to be THIS long. I am currently about a fifth in and so far there has been one definite murder, a possible other murder, and long stretches in which major characters sit around an inn. Also, we have been treated to passages about the tourist industry in Hakone. 

I watched this with several other people based off of some rec, but while I feel that I hadn’t wasted my time watching it, I’m not sure I’d recommend it to others. Parts of it are visually stunning, especially the earlier parts that are more based off of real sites, but in the end as a fantasy story, I felt it was somewhat of a mess and the character it should have been about, in terms of who is driving the story, wasn’t the actual main character(s). The problem is that the story goes at a leisurely pace and then in the last few episodes everything is explained very quickly and somewhat unsatisfyingly. It feels almost like one of those fantasy or mystery novels where the earlier parts are amazing, mostly on an aesthetic or suggestive level, but then when the author must inevitably reveal everything, it goes downhill. Also, my recommendation is not to watch episode 0 (because it’s incoherent and everything is shown later) or episode 10.5 (because contrary to what I read somewhere on the internet, it really doesn’t reveal much). Instead just watch it all the way through and don’t expect too much. Below the cut spoiler-related thoughts. 

I finally finished Yuri on Ice, via a two-day group watch through. Two days is great way, IMHO, to watch 12-13 ep anime. By now everyone has probably said everything that needs to be said about it. I caught some of it from a distance:  it’s a gorgeous anime that is compelling to watch, and it doesn’t waste time, which is always good nowadays.  (spoilers cont) 

As the title implies, this is a manga where one of the main characters is Huang Yue Ying, Zhuge Liang’s wife. It’s a 4-panel comic that runs in Manga Home (a 4-koma manga magazine). Like most 4-koma manga I’ve seen, the style is pretty cartoony/SD, and mostly light slice of life. The story starts basically with the marriage, but as a romantic comedy, everything proceeds so slowly it’s like almost nothing happens for chapters and chapters as the main characters attempt to improve crops and agricultural machinery. But that’s ok, because I was mostly interested in the details about life during the end of the Han Dynasty. Then more characters, such as Pang Tong and Xu Shu, begin to show up. Like Zhuge Liang, they’re underemployed graduates of the same school. 

I’m trying to watch more things on Crunchyroll to justify my subscription (although now it is hard to justify for another reason:  the damn thing keeps skipping and pausing, and from what I read on forums, others are experiencing this too).

Just finished reading what was available of this manga. The type of setting and tone is somewhat like... I guess you could say the more refined or philosophical slice of life, but the themes and action are heavy. Basically, this manga is about a boy, Tasuku, who lives in a famously picturesque town, Onomichi, who is saved by a mysterious, nameless woman, after he considers suicide when he fears the fact that he is gay may be revealed. The nameless woman introduces him to a non-profit group who restore houses (basically like many small towns, there are a lot of disused houses). He soon learns that some of the group members are also LGBT and tries to figure out what he should do next. 

This is kind of a bad summary and makes the manga sound really didactic, it’s really visually strong and does make me curious about what sort of manga it will shape up to be. 

Strangely I think it almost makes more sense for the father to be the protag if the story is going to be this jerked around by his terrible actions (like in Karei Naru Ichizoku), since if her were the protagonist we would understand his motivations better. 

Yesterday I got through about 1/3 of the Uchouten Kazoku novel sequel. It is kind of tiring to read because the vocab is, while often delightful, very rich. (This wouldn’t be a problem if it were in English; I think if it were in English I would read it more slowly to savor it, and also because the pacing in the first parts are often leisurely (despite dramatic things happening like a formal duel, etc). It would be nice if there were a series of books I could read that would suddenly give me a college-level vocab, but that’s not how it works. )  Also the vaguely magical-realism-esque way it tells the story is skillful (I feel like it’s a high level move, in that it is at times more surreal than fantasy, and it feels like a satire or a fable at points, even though I’m not sure if it is) In some ways, the story is very realistic in that there are so many concrete details of places and things, and the subtleties in the relations between characters.

Picked this up from the library and had to frantically read through it when I realized I couldn’t renew it a second time. (Why does the library have this policy...). This is a visual dictionary about the meanings of the various motifs (not necessarily stylized ones, more symbology) appearing in Chinese art, in full color. The motifs are organized thematically (plants, insects, birds, groups of humans, inanimate objects) etc. 

It’s especially interesting to see which plants and animals are considered symbolically significant, and which ones are rarely depicted, especially in comparison to Western motifs. The rose, for example, existed in China, but was not really made much of, and the owl is rarely shown as well. Another interesting point is the extreme stylization of some animals makes them difficult to identify:  the bat (frequently appearing as a symbol of good luck) is often extremely abstracted, so it barely appears to be an animal at all, and the bear (important because it appears on the robes of military officials (military officials have beast emblems, civil officials have bird ones) could be mistaken for a stylized Chinese lion (you can tell because the mane is straight).