on Gintama and Saiyuki
Apr. 6th, 2011 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotNew Gintama - waaaaaai~~~! Absolutely as awesome as I expected it to be, if not more, since they went ahead and started with the 2 years later arc!! Which makes sense but I didn't see it coming, and yeah, it's as hysterical as I knew it would be. Especially Shinpachi's scream (gif courtesy of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nemissa) which, I won't lie, was what I was most looking forward to seeing animated from this arc (that and Okita, which will come next week - can't wait~!)
In the last week I also went and reread/read the whole Saiyuki manga series (I'd never read the second half of Gaiden or Reload) and oh man, it's such ridiculous, angstastic, at times nonsensical, unabashed emo-porn - and it's still one of my favorite series of all time. Minekura's art (and all her boys) are gorgeous and her characters and stories push so many buttons of mine. Nothing brings the h/c quite like Saiyuki, and their particular flavor of always-at-odds-and-pretending-not-to-care-about-each-other-although-in-truth-we-really-really-do is about as perfectly tuned to my own tastes for that kink as anything I've ever seen.
The way they get along in spite of themselves - or don't get along but love each other anyway - is irresistible. They get into these huge fights and moral clashes and sometimes they split up, but they always find their way back to each other in the nick of time. I love Gojyo leaving them during the Kami-sama arc, and then them leaving Sanzo during Even a Worm (oh man, that whole sequence in that arc, from Goku going down and Sanzo totally losing his shit and Hakkai going youkai and Gojyo stopping him with only a look and generally just being awesome - yoooow...)(Even a Worm hasn't been animated, has it? Siiiiigh!)
(Then the end of the arc, and they're all (as usual) lying on the ground too beaten to actually move ("We can't fall asleep here, one of us will definitely be dead by the time we wake up in the morning." "The dead guy's the loser." "You know you're most likely to be that guy, Sanzo...") and yelling at one another to stop being dumb because it hurts to laugh and janken'ing to see who has to haul Sanzo's broken body back to Jeep - with Sanzo playing too, even though he can't walk, because he won't suffer one of them dragging him - whahahah awwww...)
I think Gojyo's still my favorite (he cares so much and is so bad at hiding it! <3333) but I don't really know, because I love them all, in all their fucked-up borderline-psychotic co-dependent glory. Sanzo might be Minekura's special woobie but she gives all of them their fair dues. And I love that it's not quite BL, so there's no confirmed pairings and instead she just hints at everything - any combination of the four has a unique and intense bond. (For the record my 58/93 OTPs are UNTIL THE END OF TIIIIIIIME...but that doesn't mean I don't love the various shades of brotherly love between everyone else, too.)
Also I adore Kougaiji and his crew (and how they are so much better at being heroes than the Sanzou-ikkou) and I actually got rather fond of Hazel, enough to feel sorry for him and Gat by the end (even if I know better than to get too attached to any non-major chars, since their stories almost always end tragically...)
...And okay, I kind of can't help but love-to-hate-going-on-actual-love Ukoku because, uhhh, glasses-wearing evil genius sociopaths are my type? ^^;;;
Wasn't there a Gaiden OAV? Should go hunt that up...(Though I vaguely fear watching the anime, when Hakkai now will sound like Zura ^^;)
(And now I've gone and tracked down a translation of the actual Journey to the West, since it's a little odd that Saiyuki's the only version I'm really familiar with...roughly akin to Men in Tights being one's only knowledge of Robin Hood, or Merlin being your primary experience of Arthurian legend.)
nemissa) which, I won't lie, was what I was most looking forward to seeing animated from this arc (that and Okita, which will come next week - can't wait~!)In the last week I also went and reread/read the whole Saiyuki manga series (I'd never read the second half of Gaiden or Reload) and oh man, it's such ridiculous, angstastic, at times nonsensical, unabashed emo-porn - and it's still one of my favorite series of all time. Minekura's art (and all her boys) are gorgeous and her characters and stories push so many buttons of mine. Nothing brings the h/c quite like Saiyuki, and their particular flavor of always-at-odds-and-pretending-not-to-care-about-each-other-although-in-truth-we-really-really-do is about as perfectly tuned to my own tastes for that kink as anything I've ever seen.
The way they get along in spite of themselves - or don't get along but love each other anyway - is irresistible. They get into these huge fights and moral clashes and sometimes they split up, but they always find their way back to each other in the nick of time. I love Gojyo leaving them during the Kami-sama arc, and then them leaving Sanzo during Even a Worm (oh man, that whole sequence in that arc, from Goku going down and Sanzo totally losing his shit and Hakkai going youkai and Gojyo stopping him with only a look and generally just being awesome - yoooow...)(Even a Worm hasn't been animated, has it? Siiiiigh!)
(Then the end of the arc, and they're all (as usual) lying on the ground too beaten to actually move ("We can't fall asleep here, one of us will definitely be dead by the time we wake up in the morning." "The dead guy's the loser." "You know you're most likely to be that guy, Sanzo...") and yelling at one another to stop being dumb because it hurts to laugh and janken'ing to see who has to haul Sanzo's broken body back to Jeep - with Sanzo playing too, even though he can't walk, because he won't suffer one of them dragging him - whahahah awwww...)
I think Gojyo's still my favorite (he cares so much and is so bad at hiding it! <3333) but I don't really know, because I love them all, in all their fucked-up borderline-psychotic co-dependent glory. Sanzo might be Minekura's special woobie but she gives all of them their fair dues. And I love that it's not quite BL, so there's no confirmed pairings and instead she just hints at everything - any combination of the four has a unique and intense bond. (For the record my 58/93 OTPs are UNTIL THE END OF TIIIIIIIME...but that doesn't mean I don't love the various shades of brotherly love between everyone else, too.)
Also I adore Kougaiji and his crew (and how they are so much better at being heroes than the Sanzou-ikkou) and I actually got rather fond of Hazel, enough to feel sorry for him and Gat by the end (even if I know better than to get too attached to any non-major chars, since their stories almost always end tragically...)
...And okay, I kind of can't help but love-to-hate-going-on-actual-love Ukoku because, uhhh, glasses-wearing evil genius sociopaths are my type? ^^;;;
Wasn't there a Gaiden OAV? Should go hunt that up...(Though I vaguely fear watching the anime, when Hakkai now will sound like Zura ^^;)
(And now I've gone and tracked down a translation of the actual Journey to the West, since it's a little odd that Saiyuki's the only version I'm really familiar with...roughly akin to Men in Tights being one's only knowledge of Robin Hood, or Merlin being your primary experience of Arthurian legend.)
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-07 02:16 am (UTC)I have a lot of friends who are fans of Saiyuki and I keep meaning to start it! (I even have the scanlations in my bookmark tab.) But I just need to find the tiiime *sobbb*
(Omg what is this you say? Ishida voices Hakkai? He'll never be anyone but Zura to me. That is going to be a weird experience to say the least. Then again, I probably won't watch the Saiyuki anime in favor of just reading the manga.)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-07 02:45 am (UTC)Anyway, I think when you have the time that you'd like Saiyuki - as long as the, er, loose interpretation of JttW doesn't throw you too much! ^^; (though I'm biased; it's one of my major animanga fandoms, I've ficced for it and all; it just hits so many of my nakama-ship buttons. ^^ But then I know you share some of those buttons with me, so~)
(and hee, yup, before Gintama, Hakkai was my major association for Ishida! The seiyuu are pretty much all the anime has going for it. They're fantastic, but otherwise it's kind of a mess, low production values, runs out of manga. The later series and some of the OAVs are worth checking out but yeah, the manga's definitely superior.)