X Never Marks the Spot

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. :)

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)

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...!))

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 naye (<3!) and shayera in Tokyo, and a bit of 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 )

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 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.)

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

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

On 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 )

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 ^^;)

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?)