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 03:09 am (UTC)I keep going long stretches without thinking about Saiyuki, and then somebody posts something (pokes you) or a picture shows up somewhere, and then there it is, in the front of my brain again. Oh the horror. ;)
(although I will admit -- I get the pairings, that's fairly obvious, but I never understood where the numbers came from? It's a puzzle.)
New Gintama! Now I really need to catch up.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-07 03:25 am (UTC)And I do the same thing with Saiyuki - I haven't read it for years, even while in Japan I was only looking at it now and then; but whenever I come back to it I love it as much as ever. It's just pure fangirl crack, is what it is.
The numbers are Japanese fangirl sorta-puns, hence them making no sense in English! but in Japanese - go = 5, ha(chi) = 8, kuu = 9, and san = 3. (Hakkai and Sanzo's names actually begin with the kanji for 8 and 3 respectively; Hakkai's name means "8 Commandments" and Sanzo refers to 3 branches of Buddhist sutras.)
New Gintama! Now I really need to catch up.
YES, YES YOU DO!!! If the first ep is any indication, Gintama' is going to be EPIC~~~~! (it has to be, really, because they're going to do Kabuki-chou arc, which is made of awesome!)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-07 04:05 am (UTC)Epic Gintama is the best thing. :D