xparrot: Chopper reading (books)
An amazingly ambitious artist is embarking on a fancomic adaptation of my long Gintama fic Pandemonium. The first five pages are up here:

http://idlethoughts2014.deviantart.com/gallery/55970684/Pandemonium-comic

Check 'em out! Sadaharu is especially adorable. :)

on Gintama

Jan. 17th, 2015 05:36 pm
xparrot: Chopper reading (books)
Sooner or later there comes a time when a fangirl must just sit down and acknowledge that yes, as ridiculous as it might be, Gintama is one of their favorite animanga series of all time. Such as when you hear the anime has been renewed (again!!!) and shriek so loudly you terrify your cat. (As opposed to Gintoki's reaction (no spoilers))

So yup, the Gintama anime is rising from its final ending yet again. (Apparently now called Gintama悜 because crack.) I'm even more excited about this than I am about Durarara!!! being back (and I'm thrilled about that!) So many things I can't wait to see animated - the Rule 63 arc (for the entire cast!) Bodyswap! *censored* *censored*!!

And then last night I went and caught up with the manga and...ooooooooooooh boy. Spoilers for the Gintama manga through ch. 525 )

I love Gintama for its insane ability to switch from comedy to drama - I've never seen anything that goes from such extremes as Gintama can. There are a few things that come close. There are other manga like One Piece which are primarily action leavened with really silly comedy. Or there are comedies like Futurama, which is mostly wacky comedy that occasionally hit a genuinely dramatic chord, and it works in part because it's unexpected, because you're not ready to have your heart played like that. But Gintama is so ridiculous that when it does go dramatic-tragic, you're never prepared. Every single time it takes me off-guard.

Speaking of which - now to catch up with One Piece!
xparrot: (gintama cuteness)
I was going to rant about Star Trek (so! many! plotholes!) or rave about Fast & Furious 6 (so awesome in so many ways!) but then got sidetracked because the trailer for the Gintama movie coming out in July is up:



Being Gintama, they might be trolling us. But if the movie is a tenth as epic as the trailer...HOSHIIIII~~~~

(Though I don't know if my brain can take a smokin' Shinpachi, any more than Gintoki's can...)

Bonus secret message: I am now reading Nightwing. I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY (you know who you are :P)
xparrot: (omg yikes)
About two years ago I posted No Time Like the Present (No Present Like This Time) (also on AO3), a Gintama/Doctor Who crossover fic that starts out relatively dramatic and halfway through takes a sharp right into Gintama-appropriate 4th-wall-shattering crack.

Since posting that fic, I have repeatedly gotten anonymous reviews on ff.net helpfully informing me that Doctor Who has broken the 4th wall before. Usually that's all the reviews say; sometimes they specify a date for the first Whovian 4th-wall-breaking, or protest that "Of course this messes Doctor Who up." To date I have gotten 14 reviews of this nature (on a fic that's only got 16 reviews otherwise!) - a glut when it was first posted, and then coming in regularly every few months. The latest one was this morning. I've gone and deleted all of them since I didn't like how they were artificially inflating my review count - but I still have the email alerts and I'm tempted to post them all here for posterity.

As far as I can tell, though the reviews have been signed by different people, judging by word choice and sentence structure they're all by the same guy (I say "guy" because most of the names given have been male). I am so very curious who this person is! As far as I can tell, they aren't familiar with Gintama or at least don't care about it, so I can't figure out how they came across my fic at all, or why they bothered reading it. Though that's nothing compared to the real mystery, which is what drives someone to return again and again and again to a little-known fic to spam the reviews with Doctor Who trivia? What is it about this story that was so offensive and "unfair" to Doctor Who - a series approximately a hundred thousand times more popular in the English-speaking world than Gintama - that it garners such dedication? I actually went to the Doctor Who crossover section to see if it was some sort of trolling tradition, but found no other fics with such reviews.

Last year they did post one signed review, from mark3232, a completely unused account. I PM'ed back but never received a reply, but a month later my mystery "fan" was back (again anon) to correct someone else's review. I've now put up an amended author's note on the fic stating that I am aware of their thesis and I will be deleting any more such reviews I get, but I doubt this will have any effect; a mission of this importance cannot so easily be silenced!

(What makes it especially silly is that in the fic itself the characters discuss how they're in a non-canonical fanwork and not in their respective "real" universes at all...)
xparrot: (karkat omg yikes)
Shounen Jump just announced that the Gintama anime is ending - not going on hiatus again but actually ending. Now, this could be trolling the fans (wouldn't be the first time) but the wording is...awfully final. And the show did get in trouble a few times this year for pushing the envelope of offensiveness that much further...

...But why now? Right before it got to the Kintoki arc that I desperately wanted to see - and it's not going to adapt the current manga arc either (which I had been avoiding since I prefer to watch anime unspoiled, but had to check it out and oh my god it's got Joui flashbacks and backstory with Shouyou-sensei - that is to say, it's in the full-out shounen action mood that it does so very well, and the anime does even better...) The thing is, if the One Piece anime was canceled, I'd be unhappy, and I'd miss the seiyuu dreadfully - but we'd still have the manga, and the anime has never reached the original's quality, in art or pacing or anything else. But Gintama is one of the only series where I outright prefer the anime to the manga - it's such a loyal adaption, but the jokes are funnier animated and the art is far prettier (Sorachi's art has improved somewhat over time, but writing is still where his talents lie). Not to mention Gintoki without Sugita's voice is like...chocolate without peanutbutter! Fries without ketchup! Metaphors without food! (hmm, maybe I should go get lunch...) (Plus, it's really hard to find raws of the manga, and I can barely understand them as it is. The official manga translation was discontinued, and while there is a group scanlating it, the level of translation is about at my own - no offense to the translators; the series is a nightmare, but comparing to the raws I've found multiple lines that even I know are wrong, elementary Japanese mistakes like mistaking an emphatic 'ja nai' for a negative. The fansubs for Gintama aren't fantastic but better than the scanlators, so without the anime I'm going to be lost...)

There is always the hope of movies, of course, or endless OAVs like Hunter x Hunter. And yeah, until I know for sure otherwise I'm still going to keep a little hope we're being trolled. But all the same...sigh.

Also my silly cartoon Generator Rex has apparently ended; haven't watched the last eps yet, but I don't see how they could tie up the whole arc in the few they have left. Plus it means we'll never get the Rex-goes-to-Ben-10's verse x-over I craved, with Rex flirting with Gwen and Kevin flipping out and Ben & Rex making out... ;_;

In better animation news, am about halfway through Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood and loving it! Such an incredibly creative and unique story, and it's so much more satisfying than the first anime; the plot actually hangs together and is going somewhere. Plus Roy Mustang is 100x more badass, gaaaah Roy. (Also there is a particular character of whom I hadn't realized how fond I'd become, until suddenly that character wasn't that character anymore and I realized how very upsetting I found it. I do so enjoy it when a series can do that to me, sneak up and make me fall in love before I even realize it's happening (though man I am hoping said char is restored somehow, and being FMA I have no guarantee...!))

on Gintama'

Jun. 7th, 2011 01:37 am
xparrot: Chopper reading (gintama sword)
Gintama 211, second ep into the Kabuki-chou arc, and DAMN. I love this series because of, not in spite of, all its crack - but that once a year or so when it drops the comedy and gets its fight shounen on....yowza. The hiatus didn't change that any. And they were clearly saving their budget for this one, too, because it looks gorgeous:

Gintama ep 211

a bit of spoilery illustrated squee. warnings: have I mentioned recently how I love Gin-san way more than I really ought to? and also how I love seeing my favorites in pain? )
xparrot: Chopper reading (Default)
Back from Japan! Visited some of my favorite places, and while we were mostly staying in Kansai we went to Tokyo long enough to confirm is in fact still standing, mostly unscathed (though the lack of tourists feels weird) - went to the lovely Ghibli museum, gawked at Sky Tree already dominating the skyline and took the DRRR!!/IWGP tour of Ikebukuro (and dropped by Otome Road on the way, to refresh my doujinshi collection). And back in Kyoto we saw sakura on the Kamo river and climbed up to the monkey park at Arashiyama and on the last day we wandered down to Toji and lucked into a flea market.

More than anything it's great to know that I can go back to Japan and even if I forget most of my words (oh man...I can still understand basic Japanese but speaking it... orz) but I still remember how to use the trains, and Kyoto Station is still bogglingly enormous, and the Loft off Shinkyogoku has moved but the little Manraku used book shop and the Sanjo-Keihan Book Off are still right where I left them, and FamilyMart still sells FamiChiki (mmm grease!) Even if I've been gone a few years, Kyoto is still my city.

Also got to see [livejournal.com profile] naye (<3!) and [livejournal.com profile] shayera in Tokyo, and a bit of [livejournal.com profile] crashtestskater - not all together, so not quite a Saturday-nights reunion, but we did spend Saturday night watching stuff (note: gathering four Gintama fans in a small room to watch the latest episode is an ill-advised evening activity in a nice quiet hostel. Especially if it's the second ep of the 2-years-later arc (anpan-huffing! XDXDXDXD)

(Really, though, the new eps, ZOMG!!11!! Gintama in gear makes me laugh/giggle/hysterically shriek about as hard as any show I've ever seen...)

So, yay Japan, and have almost recovered from the jetlag!

In unrelated news, new new Who has started up - Moffat's in fine form, really bringing his A-game! spoilers for New Who 6x01 )
xparrot: Chopper reading (Default)
Here, have some angst! (I'd say that now I have to write something cheerful - but really, do I need to, when we've got the new season - one ep in and Gintama' is already going strong with the epic crack of cracktastic epicosity!! \o/)

Gintama: Resuscitation, 3/3 {6,660 words}
R; Gintoki/Katsura, Joui war-era

"Some things are more important than cold principles."

Read it on AO3
xparrot: (gintama cuteness)
New 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] 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.

Squee!! a bit spoilery )

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.)
xparrot: Chopper reading (gintama to the rescue)
AO3 now has author subscriptions~! So, I'm at faviconxparrot on the AO3. Fandoms in the immediate queue include Gintama, plus the backlog of SGA I haven't gotten around to posting. (You'll need to log in to see the subscribe button; if you want an invite to the Archive just ask, I can hook you up!)

They're also doing an April Showers Challenge, to encourage folks to upload all the old fic they might have lying about (doooooo iiiiiit! So next time I get into ancient fandom #314321 I'll have something easily accessible to read, rather than having to track through old geocities accounts on the Wayback Machine...)

And the first ep of Gintama' airs in about 12 hours~! ...if I had more self-control I might wait until it's subbed, but somehow I don't see that happening...
xparrot: Chopper reading (Default)
This chapter is...not as angsty as the last one will be. Sorry, Katsura-san...

Gintama: Resuscitation, 2/3 {6,447 words}
R; Gintoki/Katsura, Joui war-era
"For a while Katsura tells himself that it's no more than the camaraderie of the battleground."

"He hates the feeling that the Joui cause is held back because of him, is being further delayed by his weakness."

Read it on AO3
xparrot: Chopper reading (Default)
So I've written GinZura - but not happy OTP-compliant GinZura. Er, sorry? It's the same character continuum as "Everyone's got to write their own happy ending," but with far more sex and angst. Joui war angst, so about as un-Gintama in mood as it gets. Yeah, I dunno. Warnings for that and sadness and misleading fluff and not-very-graphic consensual sex between young men. Also potential OOC - since there's so little canon backstory to work with, the characterizations are mostly my own invention, though they may betray influence from various Joui-4 doujinshi I've read.

Gintama: Resuscitation, 1/3 {3,362 words}
R; Gintoki/Katsura, Joui war-era
"For a while Katsura tells himself that it's no more than the camaraderie of the battleground."

"The first time Katsura encounters an Amanto stun-shield, he literally doesn't know what hit him."

Read it on AO3
xparrot: Chopper reading (Default)
Since I think I'm not alone in needing a smile these days - here's crack. Much-longer-than-it-should-be crack. Warnings for stealth crossovers, backstory angst, and technobabble. Also Fourth Wall? What Fourth Wall? This is Sparta Gintama!

Doctor Who (Eleventh Doctor)/Gintama: No Time Like the Present (No Present Like This Time) {8,221 words}
PG; gen; Crossover, crack, blatant metaing
The Doctor embarks on a rescue mission for a young Time Lord lost in another universe.

Read it on AO3
xparrot: Chopper reading (Default)
Not quite sure what to say about this one, though I feel I should say something. First to warn that it is rather joke deficient and thus not in the proper Gintama spirit. Moreover it's quite uncanonical, as it's a few-years-in-the-future fic and it's an established part of Gintama canon that the chars don't age, being the stars of an episodic gag manga/anime. Various character interpretations and relationships are equally uncanonical. There's allusions to a few 'ships, while the story itself is kind of anti-ship, at least when it comes to Gintoki pairings. Not trying to diss on anyone's OTPs, and this isn't necessarily how I think the chars are; but it's how they look to me sometimes, in certain lights. I like that light, and this story is cotton candy fluff for me, but maybe it could be a little sad, especially if you find unrequited love painful.

Thanks to [livejournal.com profile] gnine and [livejournal.com profile] naye for reassuring me that it wasn't as pointless as all that. Any comments as always appreciated.

Gintama: Everyone's got to write their own happy ending. {~6,700 words}
PG, Futurefic
In which Shinpachi is married, Gintoki is not, Kagura is all grown up, and the Yorozuya will always be the Yorozuya.

Read it on AO3
xparrot: Chopper reading (gintama to the rescue)
On [livejournal.com profile] gintama the full lyrics were posted for the 4th OP of Yorinuki Gintama, Kaatoniago by FLiP (a.k.a. the totally badass, completely un-Gintama-like cat & crow opening), and I figured I'd have a go at translating them. Because, y'know, there's nothing like banging your head repeatedly against the wall of decoding Japanese lyrics, which make if possible even less sense than the words of your average English pop song.

The biggest problem I have with translating Japanese lyrics is that it's really difficult to figure out where to parse phrases, trying to work out whether a verb phrase is on its own or is actually modifying the next noun. Maybe there's a trick to it? (other than not being dumb as a post when it comes to comprehending other languages - oh god I am lucky I was raised an English speaker, because there's no way I could ever have learned it as well as any of the ESL folks on my flist ._.; You guys are seriously amazing.) At any rate, I tend to just go with what's grouped together within a verse, treating verses as single sentences, rather than translating lines individually. ...Which is to say, yeeeeeah, don't expect much accuracy or sense here.

on to the translation )
xparrot: Chopper reading (Default)
Yes, you read correctly - it is done! \o/ (*wild cheers from everyone on the flist who's patiently waiting for me to get out of crack!Edo and back to anything else* Eheh, sorry? ^^;) Those who have been reading, hope y'all enjoy!

Gintama: Pandemonium, 20/20 {3,110 words}
gen; PG-13; Yorozuya, the Shinsengumi, plus Zura and most of the rest of the cast

Chapter 20: All's not always well that ends; but at least everything does, eventually.

Read it on AO3




\o/

Congratulations to anyone who made it all the way here to the end! And my greatest thanks to everyone who's left comments or recced or bookmarked this story. This is, to my knowledge, the longest Gintama fic online, as well as the longest story I've personally written in years; when I started it I wasn't sure if anyone would read it except for me, so it makes it all worthwhile to know I'm not alone in loving these cracked-out characters in their cracked-out world. I can only hope I did them justice!
xparrot: (gintama cuteness)
So this was what interfered with my ficcing in the last week - crossing the final fandom frontier and making my first vid. An AMV, because that's where my fannish heart lies at the moment; a Gintoki character study, because, ditto.

Notes, download, embed, etc, under cut )

So, yeah. My first vid, if likely not my last, since I had far too much fun with it. Any & all comments most entirely appreciated!
(ETA: If you don't know Gintama, the vid's not especially spoilery - it's not really a series that can be spoiled, so much - although I can't vouch for what sense it might or might not make ^^;)
xparrot: (gintama cuteness)
So! I have - not quite finished it, but am on the epilogue, which is close enough to begin posting. Consider this a sort-of WiP; the first draft is pretty much done, but I take long enough to edit that I'll be posting in parts. It's somewhat over 60K words in total - the longest fic I've completed in a couple of years! \o/

This is completely indulgent; I wrote it so that later I would have the Gintama fic I wanted to read. Big thanks to [livejournal.com profile] naye, [livejournal.com profile] gnine, and [livejournal.com profile] snarkydame, for encouraging me to go through with it anyway.

Warning: I love the cracktastic humor of the series; I love the moments of epic drama as well. So this starts out silly, but that is not the tone maintained throughout the story entire. Also watch out for random Japanese jokes and references - I'll annotate the major ones; I can try to explain the others (though some might only make sense in my head anyway.)

As always, any and all comments appreciated more than I can say.

Gintama: Pandemonium, 1/? {4,448 words}
gen; PG-13; Yorozuya (the Shinsengumi, Zura, and most of the rest of the cast show up eventually)
Today's lessons for the Yorozuya trio: Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, don't count your chickens before they're hatched, and be careful when life seems too good to be true, because it might be a sign that everything is soon going to go very, very badly.

Read on AO3
xparrot: Chopper reading (gintama sword)
Looking over Gintama manga, scanlations and original raws, I noticed something odd. The scanlations I have are from the SJ chapters, while the raws are scans of the tankoubon - and they're different. The tankoubon raws have some extra pages - so far I've noticed 4 extra pages at the end of the Tama Virus arc, and one at the Character Poll arc. New art, new dialogue - did Sorachi expand them a bit for the tankoubon, or what? Also of interest, at least in the Virus arc, the added pages match the anime's end - the tag with the Leukocyte King fighting is in the tank. but not the scanlation. And the final lines before that are different as well (specifically the scanlation is missing the Leukocyte King's line about being a copy of a troublesome man who can't even say thank you or cry, and what would Gintoki do in this situation? And Gintoki's "Smile." (which exchange I <3, a lot.)) This doesn't seem to be a translation error, since the page layouts are different... (The line they have instead is also cute but rather different; wonder what the original Japanese was...?)

Or is this a common thing with manga and I've just never noticed it before? I know that Saiyuki's chapters were sometimes published with incomplete art and completed in the tankoubon, but that was a different situation, so...? OTOH, given the extreme deadlines weekly shounen mangaka operate under, it wouldn't surprise me...

(This is also making me curious - when looking at some of the later scanlations I've noticed translations that are completely different from what was said in the corresponding scene in the anime - and when I've looked at the raws, the anime lines seem to be what was in the original manga; I was thinking the translation was either really bad or was possibly being done from another source (like the Chinese version), but now I'm wondering if Sorachi actually adjusts the manga scripts when they get collected in the tankoubons, and the anime is done off the new scripts?)
xparrot: Chopper reading (gintama under my umbrella)
Thanks all for the birthday wishes! ^_^

Only 2 eps of Gintama to go (*SOB*) and I'm not going to watch them until the blasted fic is finished, damn it!

Have seen the Cat arc spoilers! )

One of the things I love about Gintama is that for all its crack, the chars are surprisingly coherent and developed . They've all got massive flaws and quirks and neuroses and obsessions, but they also all have their good points, too. What impresses me most about them, though, is that they're all structured such that they can ride the emotional rollercoaster that is the series. Pretty much all the chars are capable of both hysterically ridiculous and/or disgusting humor and genuinely touching drama, without becoming untrue to themselves. Gintoki is a lazy lackadaisical sugar junkie about 95% of the time, but when he gets serious and involved in that other totally badass 5%, he's still completely recognizable. It's not even that he has a shounen split-personality (really he doesn't, that we've ever seen; Shiroyasha was just a name, not an alter ego), just that sometimes his priorities shift. But they're all like that, the Shinsengumi, Zura, all of them manage to walk the tightrope between dramatic extremes. It's a nifty trick.

Speaking of extremes, there was the Onmyouji arc you know the drill! Also spoilers of eps before this arc, including Countdown, 189 and 194 )

But now only two eps left...waaaah! They gotta announce that they're continuing the series soon, they just gotta; without any promised date to look forward to I don't know how long I can resist going ahead and reading the manga (and I'd rather not do that; it's more fun watching the anime if you don't know what's coming...!)

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