Back to reading manga!

[xparrot]

Since I've been reading xxxHolic for a while, figured I should finally catch up with Tusbasa Reservoir Chronicle. So, just finished that.

...

There is not enough "OH CLAMP" in the world. In the world.

(For those not familiar, CLAMP is one of the most popular shoujo manga makers; they have gorgeous art and storylines which OTT can't even begin to describe. Tsubasa was a foray into shouen manga and an excuse to revisit most of their previous series. Basically imagine if Joss Whedon's next show was a Sliders ripoff with Buffy & [insert pairing partner of your choice] and a couple new friends going on an epic quest across the dimensions and meeting AU versions of every Joss!verse char. Then add a random supervillain, magic feathers, and time-travel. That's Tsubasa.)(Oh, and wildly angsty backstories and oodles of barely subtextual slash. But that's only to be expected with CLAMP.)

Fry is his own grandfather and Lister is his own father, but Tsubasa!Syaoran has to take the temporal paradox cake, for being the son of the cross-dimensional reincarnations of his own magical clone and the magical clone of his true love Sakura. There is no universe in which this is not completely batshit awesome.

Sakura herself is disappointingly shounen-ified - it's one of the reasons I was always reluctant to read Tsubasa, because I adore her in Card Captor Sakura and Tsubasa!Sakura is rather lessened to let the guys take center stage. Even if there's in-plot reasons for it, it's still sad to see her so subdued and ineffectual for most of the series. She may have improved toward the end but by then the crack count had climbed so high that I was too busy WTFing to appreciate it.

Kurogane & Fye. If xxxHolic's Doumeki/Watanuki are a semi-disguised 'port of doujinshi!ZoSan (which I've suspected for a while, and considering the anime cast Nakai Kazuya as Doumeki I think I'm not the only one who saw it) then Kurogane/Fye were made from all leftover bits of dj!Zoro and dj!Sanji - pour in a few gallons of angst, simmer over a low heat and there you go. Or maybe not. Though when Fye loses his eye (as you do, when you're a CLAMP char) it is the same eye that Sanji keeps covered. I really want to know if one of the CLAMP ladies is a OP fan.

And then there's all the Fun With AUs! - AU!Subaru is the pure-blooded vampire twin of Kamui, hunted obsessively across the dimensions by Seishirou, and gotta love that that's a happy, functional version of Seishirou/Subaru, compared to the original. And apparently in any universe Fuuma (Seishirou's little brother, hee~) will be CLAMP's second-hottest man (after Clow Reed, natch :P)

Really CLAMP's style adapts rather well to shounen (such is this is shounen, which I'm still iffy on, what with Kuro & Fye and the X/1999 boys and the epic love stories. But then Shounen Magazine did put out GetBackers as well. Apparently Shounen Mag believes that what guys really want to read about is lots of pretty boys with ambiguously intense friendships...) Artistically I don't find Tsubasa as appealing as some of their other work but it's still awful pretty. And hey, it's nice to get a CLAMP series with an actual, you know, ending. However cracktastic that ending may be.

So, overall had wtfun with it, which proves I really am back in a manga mood; CLAMP is too much for me otherwise (with the exception of the original Card Captor Sakura in all its almost frightening and questionable adorableness (reading it now to practice my Japanese, in fact), and xxxHolic which sort of snuck up on me without looking.)

I've also been watching Gintama, but that is deserving of its own post. In a nutshell: OMGWTFBBQLOLOLOLOLOL4EVER!!11eleventy1!

Comments

[greyias.livejournal.com]

I've also been watching Gintama, but that is deserving of its own post. In a nutshell: OMGWTFBBQLOLOLOLOLOL4EVER!!11eleventy1!

Hahahaha, welcome to the Madhouse! XD

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

My bro and I are nearly 100 episodes in and would be further except we can't watch more than 3-4 eps at a time, otherwise our brains end up in little broken piles on the floor...! (If I'm not actually fanning on it yet, I am very, very close, so...)