Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann

Humanity lives (pretty miserably) underground in small villages, the existence of the surface being reduced to a myth. Only Kamina, a teenager with more attitude than brain insist it exists and repeatedly tries to reach it. One day, Simon the digger, Kamina's best friend and younger brother figure, finds a weird machine shaped like a human head; later on, a redhead girl with a big gun falls from a hole in the ceiling; quickly followed by an aggressive mecha and they fight it using Simon's new-found mini-mecha... and soon reach the surface. Sadly the surface is populated by beastmen piloting mechas who will hunt down and kill any humans who dare to live on it.



TTGL doesn't do a whole lot of thing, but what it does, it does very, very well. TTGL is a reconstruction of the mecha genre, with a lot of homage to old shows and lot of things working on trope, literally, (tropes like the Rule of Cool and Hot Bloodedness, especially) and whole fucking lot of EPIC AWESOME. Also a lot of silly. And a lot of things so silly they cross the line twice and go back into AWESOME. It would be an understatement to call TTGL over the top. TTGL is flying far, far over over the top. Even the sky isn't the limit for TTGL, for it knows no limits (or common sense). It will frequently make you OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK THEY DIDN'T? THEY DID! This is made particularly winningly entertaining by the utter lack of shame and amused self-consciousness the storytelling shows.

Stylistically, the art is aggressively shounen and very dynamic, frequently sketchy and with some notable daring art-shift to suit narrative moods. There's pretty much always something racing, bouncing, drilling, popping or exploding on screen. Fanservice is also endemic, with most of cast - including male characters - wearing stripperific outfits. As a machine in creating enthusiasm, TTGL is a thing of beauty, helped along by an earwormy soundtrack ("row row fight the power") and many judiciously repeated catchphrases. In a way its a bit scary how good this show is at creating rabid enthusiasm amongst its fans. It's just... very, very catchy. Like a virus.

In pacing, TTGL also pushes beyond all limits, with a virtually absent status quo. Events don't just happen, they rush in rapid succession of topping over previous events; yet still in a way that is easy to follow and distillates the mood perfectly. This does have the bad effect of having a bunch of secondary character who have very little development besides showing up and being named, although TTGL rests very knowingly on tropes to be confident the audience still knows what those characters are about.

Those aside, most characters are very endearing and sympathetic. Simon's character journey is very well told and I found him much more interesting than your average shounen lead, not due to originality but simply to the quality of the storytelling. Kamina is... pretty much indescribables, but very hard not to love. Yoko and Nia, the female leads, are both pretty awesome and likeable. Relationships between those four (and the few other regular secondary characters) are also pretty rich and compelling (also frequently very, very slashy).

Thematically, TTGL mostly works around the idea of the importance of self-confidence, guts and actually trying things and not letting yourself stopped by anything; a theme it pursues relentlessly with the use of the "Spiral" motif, which is embedded (and drilling) everywhere in the series from art to narrative to theme to the show's very structure (also drilling). If you want a show to cheer you up and motivates you, you could do worse. It also addresses shallowly themes of idealism vs pragmatism and in the third arc (my favourite ^_^) also perhaps without fairness enough to make it work fully.

Gender dynamics wise, TTGL is... not very good. Asides from copious amount of male fanservice and the existence of a couple of very cool female protagonists, it relies way too much on putting those female characters in weakened or dangerous situation for the express purpose of making male characters look cool, especially by the ending. Otherwise, there's one flamingly gay character whose campiness is played for laugh, although he's portrayed as very awesome and competent.

In conclusion, an extremely fun and entertaining show, thanks to clever and bold storytelling and stylistic mastery, especially if your taste runs to AWESOME and over the top.

Enough with the procrastination ^_^

Le Chevalier d'Eon

( cut for length & pic )

Kemonozume

( cut for length & pic )

I'm gonna be fast because I read most of those books ages ago

Rusalka by CJ Cherryh
Russian flavoured fantasy: a cynical party boy / dilettante must flee the city when he's accused of sorcery when the husband of the wife he was seeing dies suddenly; and enrols the help of a young hotel stable boy who has a reputation of ill luck and fears being a sorcerer himself. Out in the forest, they encounter quite a bit of sorcery.
There's some great ideas and flavours to the story, and I liked the characters' dynamics. I thought the pacing and plotting overall was much weaker though. Anyway, if you like Cherryh's other fantasy story - especially Forterss series, you'll probably like this one.

The Sharing Knife: Passage by Lois McMaster Bujold
Fawn, Dag and Fawn's brother go on a boat trip.
This volume has more plot than the previous ones, and as a result I rather liked it more. I also liked the setting, the use of the river, and the new characters of this book (especially the female boat captain who had a name which I forgot). On the other hand, I still don't like Fawn and Dag all that much and consider this series one of Bujold's weakest, so you know...

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
When his family gets murdered, and toddler escapes to a cemetery and gets adopted by the ghosts who live there, as well as the resident Undead. Each chapter cover a different stage of his childhood as he grows up.
Very nice story about growing up, transformations and the relationship to death. Great writing, pacing and characterisation.

The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia McKillip
Many years ago, on a battlefield at the gate of Pelucir, something horrible rode in and spread death because of the magic of the great wizard Atrix Wolfe, although nobody knows it and he has been hiding since, and the ghosts of the event still haunt the area. Nowadays, the young prince of Pelucir is studying magic when he finds a strange book written by Atrix Wolfe.
This is a gorgeous, wonderful, subtle and awesome book and you should read it.

The Two Pearls of Wisdom by Alison Goodman
In a chinese flavoured fantasy world, Eon is, despite a lame leg, a candidate for the position of Dragoneye, one of the 12 people channelling the powers of the Dragons of the Chinese Zodiac in order to ensure prosperity and good weather to the empire. Eon is also a girl in disguise, a secret which would cost her direly if it was discovered. But when the ceremony when the dragon of the year, the Rat one, chooses which candidate will connect with him, nothing happens as Eon and her master had foreseen.
A pretty good story, with nice plotting and solid characterisation. I really liked Eon as well as one of the main secondary character, Dela, a transwoman and Emperor's favourite, and who is pretty kickass. The book ends on a cliffhanger for a second volume which is not yet out.

Night Shift by Lilith Saintcrow
Boring by-the-number paranormal romance. I think that was the last chance I was giving to this genre.

The Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Third volume after Night Watch and Day Watch, this is probably the best of the series so far, with all three stories of the volume being very solid and well tied with one another. Excellent plotting full of twist, tying threads in unexpected ways, and many interesting ideas as well as many interesting characters, both old and new. One of the things I love about this series is how the writer sets up a very manicheist world in theories, then keeps on playing with the concept of Light and Dark thus defined in ways that bring a whole lot of greys and ambiguities until they are near undistinguishable.

Jhegaala by Steven Brust
Vlad Taltos walks into an Easterner village, trying to find out about the background of hi mother's family. The villagers eye him warily. Then the bodies and mysteries start piling up. Poor Vlad Taltos.
A very good Taltos story in the style of Taltos stories. I was missing the sarcasm, it had been too long.

House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones
Tied to the Howl & Sophie stories, but not really a sequel. Young book-loving overprotected girl is charged with looking after the house of her distantly related Great Wizard of an uncle. Hijinks ensue.
Not my favourite Diana Wynne Jones story by a lot. Not really bad either, but the beginning was fairly slow and I kinda got annoyed at all the awkwardness, but not a bad story overall.

In order of 'liked it most' to 'liked it least', no spoilers unless marked & whiteouted.

Aoi Hana

( Read more... )

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

( Read more... )

Spice & Wolf S2

( Read more... )

Taishou Yakyuu Musume aka Taishou Era Baseball Girls

( Read more... )

Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom

( Read more... )

The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi S2

( Read more... )


That's all for this batch. Will review Bakemonogatori (if i feel up to it because I have some very mixed feelings about this one) and Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood when they are actually finished.

Mushishi



In early 20th century Japan, but in rural areas where the time period isn't quite obvious, Ginko is a wandering Mushi-Shi, a man whose job is to deal with the creatures known as Mushi when they trouble the lives of people. What are Mushi? Invisible to most people but those who are sensitive to them, they are very much like supernatural faeries or ghosts, yet they are also described in very organic terms, as part of the natural world rather than part of the supernatural world. Mushi are also frequently just phenomenon, and few Mushi show intent and personhood in a way understandable to humans, and those few that do are still very alien, and come across as very differently than creatures from a yokai story. Yet they are forms of life, not beings either good or evil, just life that seeks to live its own life, and the ways they cross human beings' path is never simple, and never entirely good or bad.

Adapted from a seinen manga series, Mushishi is a thoroughly episodic anime, working on cases basis each time. In 26 episodes, only one character asides from Ginko is seen several times. Despite this, it manages some of the best characterisation and most beautiful storytelling I've ever seen. Seriously, this anime is sublime, utterly captivating in its melancholy atmosphere, quietly understated yet poignant, beautiful in its animation and gorgeous in its detailed natural landscapes. Each story makes splendid use of the 20-so minutes of an episode to be told fully, with a beginning, a middle, an end and often an epilogue, at a serene, deliberate pacing, yet with a storytelling alchemy and a fullness of conclusion that leaves you under its charm long after it's ended. Each story develops its characters with nuance, subtlety and a unique character design that let them be fully realised.

Thematically, Mushishi is also very strong and mature. Most mushi play as a metaphor for something of nature - not only nature as the wilderness, but also nature as the natural laws that affect human beings, from the things we use to survive and prosper like agriculture to the thing that plague us irremediably like diseases and aging. Some mushi are wonderfully beautiful. Some mushi are terrifying and horrible. Some mushi are useful. Some mushi extremely harmful to humans. Many mushi are both, to some extent. The solving of cases isn't ever a given, and frequently quite difficult. (Some of the episodes aren't about cases, as such). Most of the times, it's a matter of how you can live along, live with the problems caused by the mushi, or live without. A lot of stories have bitter-sweet endings. Several of them have sad endings. Some only end many years after the case. Some are up in the air.

I especially love how the anime focus on very ordinary people. That are several very varied range of mostly rural work and crafts underlain by the story, and there's something very refreshing in that kind of focus, and in the variety of ways people made their life, as well as the naturalistic treatment to storytelling.

Ginko himself is an interesting lead. He's not quite the cypher that the Medicine seller is in Mononoke, for example, he's got his own personality as a sardonic man who has his own ethical ideas about things yet is fairly cynical about people. Yet he's not at the forefront of most of the stories (there are several stories in which he appears very little) and is a rather quiet man. There's a handful of episodes dedicated to developing his character and his backstory, but not much. Of course, Mushishi is a great example of the less is more kind of storytelling.

In conclusion, this is easily one of the best anime I've ever seen. Watch it.

Baccano!



How do you summarize an anime that starts with a discussion on narrative and its arbitrariness prefiguring that the ensuing story will have no clear beginning nor protagonist, not to mention the fact it will be chronologically destructured?
Baccano! is a story set in the 1930's that involves robbers, mobsters, delinquents, cultists, assassins, innocent and not-so-innocent bystanders - a number of which are immortals - a newspaper agency and a train called 'the Flying Pussyfoot' running from Chicago to New York through three main separate interwoven time lines plus the flashbacks.
( Slightly more details than I would usually give in an anime summary, without being spoilery as such )

Despite the complex chronology and massive number of protagonists, Baccano! is remarkably easy to follow (after the somewhat confusing first episode) in what amounts to a brilliant masterpiece of storytelling. It is fast paced, compelling, with beautiful action and fluid animation, a glorious jazzy soundtrack, frequently gory and yet filled with a communicative feeling of joie de vivre. A remarkable number of the characters in Baccano! are kind of insane - from the sociopathic to the so stupidly eccentric it's crazy, going through the psychopathic and the people who clearly have big issues which would be hard to describe. You come to love all of them anyway, or, at least, those of them that do their psychopathic rampage with style (there are several).
I have only one complaint against Baccano! : I want more.

Daughter of 20 Faces (aka Nijuu Mensou no Musune aka Chiko, Heiress of the Phantom Thief)

Shortly after WW2, in Japan, Chiko is a 12 years old wealthy orphan being taken care of by her aunt and uncle when the famous phantom thief 20 Faces infiltrates her household in order to steal her family heirloom jewels; upon which he finds out that the aunt is doing her best to poison her ward and that the remarkably perceptive Chiko is doing her best not to be poisoned; and decides to take the young girl with him as he makes his usual dashing escape.

This anime had a lot stacked up for me to like, yet ended up being quite disappointing in terms of stories. Chiko is a great female lead, intelligent, stoic and relateable; and several other characters are also charismatic (although not 20 Faces himself, a fact which ends up being rather crippling). The animation is of decent quality, and gives us some pretty impressive action scenes, especially well done in terms of having the characters make smart use of the environment. The setting is a bit of a mixed bag - the time period is interesting in itself in how it deals with the wake of the war and how it's affected people, as well as the show having a entertaining amount of pulpish elements like mad scientists and, you know, dashing phantom thief schemes, however it isn't deep or clever enough in its use of the time period, and in one specific episode set in China is downright offensive with it. The big disappointment is the overall story, while having a lot of unforeseen twists, it gave me the impression of not knowing at all where it was going. I kept expecting the story to start in earnest, watching with mild irritation the episodes where Chiko is still young and learning the ropes with 20 Faces, and when I expected things to start, it was more tepid plots without much aim nor depth to them. The finale is particularly boring and disappointing in that.


I had two more anime to review but I'm too lazy to do them tonight!

All right, enough with the slacking!

Ghost Hunt



Young teenage girl Mai likes telling ghost stories with her friends. Someday a supernatural investigation is launched at her high school, and after a mishap where the assistant investigator is injured, she finds herself replacing him in helping 17 year old head investigator Naru (short for Narcissist, due to his charming and remarkably humble personality, nicknamed by Mai and everyone followed up through on that ^_^) in this investigation an later on taking on a part time job officially at the Shibuya Psychic Research Center.

Adapted from a series of light novels by Fuyumi Ono (aka the writer of 12 Kingdoms), Ghost Hunt is made by a series of a few episodes long case stories. The cases are pretty classical haunting and ESP based stories, and never very surprising, but all very solidly told in terms of pacing, atmosphere and storytelling and as a result very successfully enjoyable and entertainingly creepy, each one better than the previous one. They also manage well to be credibly build their world in a way that made me want to reach for my Second Sights book to play nWoD: Ghost Hunters, if you see what I mean.

There's also a definite appeal to the cast dynamics. Naru is a pretty amusing character - a rather antisocial, extremely intelligent, exigent and dry-witted young man - and he plays up to Mai - your ordinary cheerful high school girl with a spine and lots of natural curiosity - in a very entertaining way. The secondary characters - we've got a kind hearted Australian Catholic priest, a laid-back and fashionable Buddhist monk, a Shinto priestess with a bad temper, a famous Medium girl with a traditional demeanour; and Naru's protective and laconic assistant - also all have their appeal and their moment to shine.

Although it's not show where i can point out one thing and say : "this is why it's awesome", I really enjoyed watching it all the way through, it's just solid and well done overall. The animation is also excellent and very fluid, and the musical atmosphere quite good.

One of the only bad point i have against it is that the series ended short of adapting one of the key reveal from the light novel, which I had to go find out on the internet (there's manga adaptation which does go until there, for the curious) - and it's a shame because that's one reveal that made me even more interest in the characters and their relationship.

Ghost Hound



In a small village, eleven years go, Taro and his older sister were kidnapped and imprisoned in the disaffected hospital beneath the dam, and when their kidnapper died unexpectedly when he was chased by the police, it was three days before they were found. Taro's sister was dead then. Nowadays he's a 14 years old boy whose whole family is still trying to get over the trauma of what happened. When a new boy from Tokyo, Masayuki, who likes asking uncomfortable questions spurs Taro and another boyfrom the village, Makoto, whose father may have been involved in the kidnapping before killing himself; to go back together to the deserted hospital in an effort to exorcise their fear and the mysteries from the past, they all end up having an Out of Body Experience, opening up to the Unseen World.

All right, as you see it's not exactly a simple premises, it's got a lot of texture, a lot of interesting and intriguing details interwoven thematically. The pacing is pretty slow, but it's got gripping atmosphere served by some of the most creepy sound effect I've ever seen. The characters are all very well realised and compelling. They play onto your average anime archetypes, yet feel much more realistic (and flawed) than that, while still ending up making you feel concerned with them. The somewhat claustrophobic setting in a small village where everyone knows everyone also works great.

In terms of the main mystery, I found the end of the story a bit of a disappointment, with a rather anticlimactic ending which didn't end up solving as much as I hoped it would. In fact, the true emotional climax of the story is three episodes before the actual ending, playing up to the psychological and character development which was the true highlight of the story. Despite the disappointment in the overall story, it's still got some really effective ideas, mixing psychological, quantum physic, biological and mythological concepts from right and left and building up a fascinating tension, interweaving characters and thematics in a great way.

The animation and graphics are top notch, and a pleasure to see. I love how they designed the Unseen World, full of old extinct species done with very lovely CGI. I really love the OP, too.


The main characters from Ghost Hound : sweet and cute Taro, nosy and cocky Masayuki, troubled boy with an attitude Makoto, and Miyako, a sensible elementary school girl and daughter of the local Shinto priest who sometimes gets possessed.

(so yes, I did review the two Horror anime with very similar names together on purpose ^_^)

Black Lagoon

In South-East Asia during the mid-nineties, Rokuro is a salary man on a mission to deliver a CD containing important data when he's kidnapped by pirates looking to blackmail his enterprise and ransom him. However Rokuro's boss would rather kill everyone to cover all tracks - including Rokuro. Shocked by this ruthlessness, the now renamed Rock decides to join the pirate crew of the Black Lagoon rather than go back to Japan - which is the start of a whole new life for him in the crime-riddled city of Roanapur in Thailand.


The crew of the Black Lagoon, from left to right: Ben, an American Jew from Florida who handles hacking and all stuff related to communication and electronics on the ship; Rock, our Japanese former salary man who is good as negotiation and social skills in general and the occasional crazy awesome plan; Revy a Chinese-American gun slinger who is more that a little bit hot headed and violently inclined; and Dutch, also American, the leader of the team and pilot of the ship.

( rest of the review )

I've been reading a little bit more. Woot!

Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells
( Read more... )

The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
( Read more... )

Powers by Ursula K Leguin
( Read more... )

Old Tin Sorrow by Glen Cook
( Read more... )

Deliverer by CJ Cherryh
( Read more... )

I haven't been all that good about reviewing series as I was watching them. Soooo watching up on series I've finished watching a few weeks ago:

Mononoke

Continuing on the Bakeneko arc of Ayakashi, Mononoke tells the stories of the mysterious medicine seller, as he goes about historical Japan, finding malicious spirits and exorcising them by finding their nature, the cause of their existence and what they're trying to do (roughly).

( cut for pics not spoilers )


Spice and Wolf

In a Europe-like setting of the high middle age/early Renaissance, Lawrance is a wandering trader who goes about his business, when a pagan wolf deity of wheat (in the form of a young girl with wolf ears and tail) by the name of Horo hitches a ride on his cart and makes a deal for him to bring her up north to her native land.

( cut for pics, not spoilers )

Three Days to Never by Tim Powers
( Read more... )

Downbelow Station by CJ Cherryh
( Read more... )

Brazyl by Ian McDonald
( Read more... )

The first movie I watched was Trivial Matters by Pang Ho-cheung, which works as a series of shorts only linked by the thematics of sex and miscommunication. Many of those were fresh and hilarious, although not always in a tasteful way. Not usually liking short movies; I was surprised by how much I appreciated those.

The Chaser by Zhang Chi is a noir movie centered around a former cop pimp investigating on the reason why some of his whores are disappearing (a hint : extreme violence is committed against them). The movie got the price for Action movies at the festival, and it is indeed a well constructed, well filmed, well acted movie with tight storytelling. It is also a very violent movie, with most of the extreme violence directed against women in a way that I did not, in the end, found bearable; and with absolutely no ending in the storytelling to redeem or justify it. Slightly more sophisticated than a fridging, but in the end, not worth much more, so I would no recommend it if you care about feminism in the least.

Fireball by Thanakom Pongsuwan was the only genuinely bad movie of the lot, although in a hilarious way. The plot is about a game of basketball where you fight people at the same time, and a guy going out of prison looking forward to avenge his brother who was put in a coma due to the game. It is wonderfully cheesy and full of cheesecake, of course without any hint of real characterisation, and even the action sequence are pretty bad because they're badly cut and quite confusing. On the other hand, I had fun watching it ;)

The Moss by Derek Kwok is a more atmospheric noir movie revolving around several characters, it's a little bit difficult to sumarise : it revolves mostly around a brothel, there's a young girl child who arrives there to try to win money, one of the older whore who takes her under her wing, and she dates a crooked cop, there's the spoiled son of an organised crime lady boss who goes visit the brothel while carrying an emerald as a gift for his mother and who never got home, and the freakishly strong homeless guy who lives nearby. I mostly liked this one, perhaps because it was one of the movie where the whores character fought back (after the Chaser i needed that, although they take as many hits); and because of the overall fairy-talish atmosphere and the way the city itself is a character.

Island Etude by En Chen is a road trip movie where a hard of hearing college boy decides to bike all around Taiwan and meets various people as he goes. There isn't much of plot, of course, but it's still very pleasant to watch, very fresh in its postcard way and succeeds in making you want visit Taiwan :)

Kabuli Kid by Barmak Akram starts when a woman in a burqa abandons a young baby in a taxi cab after a course, the story revolves around the taxi drivers as he decides what to do with this burdensome package. One of the big interest of this movie was simply seeing day to day life in current days Kabul. I'm not sure there was much of a point to story (apart perhaps from life go on, even if it's difficult), but the slice of life aspect was very well done.

The Sniper by Dante Lam is a pretty generic action movie about a swat team of, you guessed it, snipers, which tries to talk about competition and vengeance and only manages being amusingly cheesy and fun looking. It's watcheable, mind you, and not badly done in its over the top way, and it's got some very pretty male lead characters, yummy.

A Frozen Flower by Yoo Ha was a breath of fresh shoujo-ish air after all the testosterone-heavy action movies I'd watched. It's a Historical movie set in Korea about a king who was in love with the captain of his elite guards, and convinced him to sleep with his wife in order to get a successor and not be overridden by another country (which I think is China, but is called Yuan). It's very well done, extremely pretty, melodramatic in all the right ways, has good action scenes as well, and some of the most risky and lush sex scenes I've ever seen.

The Divine Weapon by Kim Yoo-jin is another historical Korean movie, but more of an adventure one this time, and a pretty fun one. Rag-tag team of merchants are charged with protecting the daughter of an inventor in time for her to finish forging the ultimate explosive weapon they need in order to protect themselves from their neighbouring country (China again). There's no much surprises in the plot, but it's beautifully done, entertaining, has cool action, some very sympathetic characters (including several bad ass female characters!), and a rather endearing Excuse Me Princess romance. It's was ever so slightly 'explosive weapons kill lots of people, YAY' at the end for my comfort, but that's the only real criticism I would make.

Departures by Takota Yojiro. A cello player gives up on his musical career as hopeless, and return to his natal city with his wife. The only job he can find is as someone who prepare corpses for funerals. This is a beautiful both funny and deeply touching movie which I could not recommend more warmly for everyone to go watch if they have the chance.

All About Women by Tsui Hark is an over the top, extremely crackful and rather cynical comedy revolving around three women and their misadventures revolving about romantic (and unrequited romantic) lives. I found it highly hilarious and fun to watch. It is not feminist (by a lot), but the female characters are pretty well rounded and strong (if not exactly sympathetic), and they don't all end up happily in couple, in a turn of event that rather cheered me up (although the narrative may not have intended it this way).

That's all!

Shion no Ou

When Shion was very young, her parents were murdered in front of her, the trauma rendering her mute. Nowadays, she's a 12 year old girl on the verge of becoming a female pro of Shougi - Japanese Chess; as various events conspire to remind her of this still unresolved murder; while she meets two other pros; Ayumi - really a boy who crossdresses in order to win as much money as possible to pay for his ill mother's treatment bills among the less competitive female pros - and Saori a girl from a very well off family who is apprenticed to the Meijin - the current top player of the Shougi world.

I first encountered mentions about this anime around the Hikaru no Go fandom, and it's easy to see why, both being shounen series revolving on board games; yet they are very different kind of series apart from some fairly standard Shounen tropes , although both are excellent. Where Hikago is a fairly straight forward Bildungsroman; Shion no Ou is much more focussed on the main mystery's investigation and one main tournament of Shougi, held at a breathless pace. This is the anime's strongest point : I watched the 22 episodes in about 2 days, driven by the intense storytelling.
In terms of characterisation, it is a little bit uneven. Shion herself is a bit distractingly "moe" on first aboard, not to mention the difficulty of giving strong presence to an animated character whose voice is only heard during the occasional inward monologue, but eventually as the story progresses she's revealed to be a very strong person and compelling lead. Ayumi's the other compelling character (and my favourite) as a very intense and earnest boy in a difficult situation. Saori is also very interesting, although too much put to the side of the main story in the latter part. Other characters are pretty well done in their role - I particularly like how, in contrast with Hikago, parents, even those who do not play board games, aren't entirely sidelined from the story. There's a couple of characters who are a little mishandled due to how the mystery plays out.
About the plot itself : I liked how it came across as the intersecting of different characters' agendas and own secrets. The main mystery of Shion's parents' murder itself is only decent and fairly easy to guess, but works well because of how tied it is to the Shougi games and Shion's psychology.
Sadly the graphism and animation is quite ugly and barely watcheable; although occasionally interesting.
The show also makes a few interesting commentaries on gender, and sexism in the Shougi world is addressed, which was appreciated.
Overall a solid series, very easy to get into and very fun to watch.

Otherwise I finished watching a few series I've mentioned before:

Shounen Onmyouji: Had a pretty dull last tier. I'd hoped it would pull itself into an eventually interesting plot and antagonism but it disappointed me. I'm feeling very meh about this anime overall.

Saiunkoku Monogatori S2: Well, this was not an ending made of fucking awesome brilliance, what with so many interesting new plot threads only being hints; and any expectation of a sequel being unlikely to come very soon, what with the fact the anime already adapted almost all light novels it is based on; but it was still very decent, and made a nice counterpoint to the S1 ending. I really adore this series, despite some of its flaws.

Michiko e Hatchin: FUCKING AWESOME BRILLIANCE.

What's next? I'm currently watching Mononoke, Tobaku Mokushiroku Kaiji, Mouryou no Hako, trying to finish watching Zoku Sayounara Sensei, as well as watching Zoku Matsume Yuujinchou and Skip Beat as they're nearing to their ending. Currently wondering what I'll get into after I've finished those, so if you'vre got suggestions...

Was the last Sarah Connor Chronicles awesome or was it AWESOME? ( slight blabber on SCC )

But today I want to tell you about my other favourite show right now. Much like SCC, it does not just pass the Bechdel test, it passes it with flying colours and while doing a tap dance. And above SCC, if there's an equivalent to the Bechdel test for characters of colours, it passes that one too:
That's Michiko e Hatchin:



Produced by Mangaglobe, the studio otherwise known for Samurai Champloo, and directed by Sayo Yamamoto, Michiko e Hatchin takes place in a nameless country which is basically Brazil with the serial numbers removed and features more references to the 70s exploitation genre than a Tarantino movie, and revolves around one woman and a little girl travelling around searching for the girl's father while cops and gangs try to capture/kill them. So far 18 episodes out of a total of 22 have been broadcasted and can be found fansubbed easily.

( More in depth review, with pictures )

So, yesterday the SCC and Dollhouse subtitles (english ones, I'm a good reader/writer but I have a shitty ear, okay?) weren't up yet (though they had Italian ones, for both, I don't get it either); so I figured I might as well finally catch up on BSG. I have only one thing to say:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Okay not really:

( spoilers up to Someone to Watch Over Me )

Kannazuki no Miko is a short (12 episodes) story revolving around a romantic triangle, mechas and magical girls: Chikane is a very naive everygirl, friend to both Ohgami, a young boy raised by a shinto priest, and Himeko, the young high-class overachiever girl idealised by everyone at their highschool. Both Ohgami and Himeko are in love with Chikane, and Ohgami was going to confess when suddenly mecha attacked! (it happens...) The mechas are the Orochi, some kind of monster that regularly tries to destroy the world, and to do so, empowers and uses 8 humans who have reasons to despair. The only ones able to stop the Orochi are the priestesses of the Moon and the Sun, who are reincarnated into Chikane and Himeko, by doing a ritual to summon Ame no Murakamo to fight off the Orochi - so of course Ohgami's first mission upon awakening as an Orochi is to kill Chikane and Himeko.

I watched this anime because I saw it mentioned in the Utena thread at RPG.net as one of the rare yuri stories but the two girls actually end up together in an uplifting way. This information was not actually entirely correct:
SPOILERS
Since Himeko at one point rapes Chikane, even if there's an explanation to handwave it, and since Himeko eventually dies, even if she's supposed to get reincarnated and meet Chikane again. I think I'll take my happy-ending yuri fix from somewhere else. Athough at least this way it pushed my betrayal!angst button!
END SPOILERS
As a story, Kannazuki no Miko was just barely entertaining enough for me not to drop it. It uses a lot of obvious narrative tropes, some of which were appealing enough to me for purely buttons reasons (brothers set to opposite sides angst! Boy overcomes destiny of evil to save the one he loves! Meta commentary provided by one of the villain! Yuri! Unforeseen betrayal! Mindfuck!) rather than for any originality or cleverness in their execution and the ones that didn't appeal to me got on my nerve with their obvious Moe-ness set up (Chikane and most of the secondary character Orochi). Chikane is that kind of character who's supposed to be cute to your average anime fanboy, but who's really, really annoying to everyone else and feels like a 6 years old child was transplanted in the body of a 15 years old girl. She's not even genuinely kind and compassionate to overcomes her obliviousness, clumsiness and overall stupidity. Ohgami and Himeko are decent enough characters, if really generic ones. The visuals and animations are pretty good although I can't say I found the action scenes particularly riveting (of course I'm hardly a mecha fan). The yuri scenes were much better... and that's about it. I don't think I would recommend this anime to anyone but the diehard fans of yuri or perhaps the diehard fans of shinto mythology.

Ayakashi: Japanese Horror Stories is a series of three horror stories set in historical Japan of 3-4 episodes each. Each story have a fairly interesting and pretty visual design (the first one is done by Yoshitaka Amano, the other two by other people I don't know about).
The first story is a tale of betrayal between husband and wife leading to the ghost of the wife seeking vengeance. It's a rather gloomy tale where no one is particularly sympathetic, and then everyone die. In the hands of a very skilled storyteller that could make it a stark study of human nature, but as it was, it was pretty dull, with flat characters who you can't wait to see dying off.
The second story is a doomed romance between a falconer samurai and a beautiful fey girl (okay, she calls herself a forgotten god) who lives by preying on humans. It was somewhat more pleasant to follow and interesting than the first one, but rather lacklustre as well.
The third story happens as a household prepares to marry off their daughter, when they're suddenly attacked by a monstrous cat spirit, trapping them in their house as it kills family members one after the others. Thankfully a medicine seller is present who claims to be able to fight off the spirit if he is told by the family about what they did to provoke the spirit's grudge against them. This is the most successful story, both because of the investigation into the dark secrets of the family nature of the tale, and because of the claustrophobic huis-clot set up. The character of the mysterious stranger that claims to be able to help, and the young servant girl are both very well realised. There's a spin off of this story revolving around the same medicine seller called Mononoke which I will watch soonish-ly.
So overall this is a pretty mediocre anime apart from the gorgeous visual styles and the tie in with another series.

Cartomancy by Mary Gentle
A collection of short stories with very varied themes and settings but which have one thing in common : they almost all feature a female warrior or soldier character. ♥
"The Logistics of Carthage" is a novella set in the same world as my favourite novel by this writer, the Book of Ash. Set in a slightly altered version of our middle age where Carthage is still a big power, and set some time before the series, it talks about the day to day life of a band of mercenaries, amongst which is a women, with some consideration about the way women fighters get erased from (the official) History, through the refusal of the local people to bury one female soldier, and another of the female soldiers insisting for them to do that. It's a very interesting story, though oddly paced and not quite conclusive; and a pretty interesting addendum to the Book of Ash.
"Kitsune" is relatively short and straight forward paranormal/horror romance story between a woman who practice kendo and a female kitsune. Some time ago I had a discussion with apapazukamori about the complete absence of lesbian relationship as the main romance of the story in Fantasy, so I had this in mind when I read this short story as a cool example of just that. On the other hand, I was a little ill at ease with the treatment of Japanese culture which seemed to be to very shallow.
"The Road to Jerusalem" is another story with a uchronic treatment of History, giving us a modern day warfare where the knights Templar are involved; and revolving around the trial of a woman templar soldier for possible war crimes. It's an interesting look at the nastiness of war; confusions and petty power plays between factions involved at all scales and soldier's life. A solid story.
"Orc's Drift" is a short and silly story in the same style as Grunts!, that's to say high fantasy parody; and it's not a very funny one at that.
"The Tarot Dice" is a atmosphere story about revolutionaries, conspiracies and forbidden oracular tools. It's very prettily written and evocative, but left me quite confused as far as what the fuck is going on in terms of plot. So I have mixed feelings about it.
"The Harvest of Wolves" is set in a distopic future of the UK and is a huit clot conversation between an old woman who still dreams of forbidden freedoms and cynically comments on the present and the young man charged with monitoring her. While not the strongest story of this kind I've ever seen, it had an appealing brand of cynical twist at the end that made it work.
"Anukazi's Daughter" is a fantasy story about a female warrior and the betrayals she makes in order to be recognised as one. Thematically, I'd compare it to Abercrombie's First Law trilogy, it's an interesting look at what the usage of violence makes of us. One of the best story of the collection.
"What God Abandoned" is set in the Renaissance during a siege of Prague and features (among other things) a young Descartes and considerations about Rosicrucians. It also shows that relationships aren't always easy for genderbending metapmorphs. This made me feel like there was a setting worth exploring more; but I didn't care that much about the story as such.
"The Pits Beneath the World" is a pretty classic Social/Anthropological Science Fiction. Well done but of the been-there-read-that many times already.
"Cast A Long Shadow" is a nice horror story about a divorced mother having to deal with the creepy things her son is doing, with a help of a female friend. Gentle describes it as a comic book story, and I agree it sort of felt like a Sandman short stories in places. It's not a great story, but it does some nice stylistic things.
"A Sun in the Attic" is set in a steampunk-ish world, slightly uchronic, revolving around intrigues and the question of forbidding sciences that can have dangerous results. I didn't think it did a very good job at exploring those themes, but my favourite thing about this story is that the main characters are a polygamous family of one female head of the family and her two husbands who are brothers.
"A Shadow Under The Sea" is set in the same world as Anukazi's Daughter, and deals with similar themes of betrayal, but putting the character at a higher social position. It's almost as good as Anukazi's Daughter.
"Human Waste" is a short story of horror SF, and it does what it was meant to do very well, that is to say slap you in the face. It's kind of darkly funny, but it will make you feel bad for thinking so.

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
This is a take on the Mahabharata through the women's eyes, and in particular Draupadi who married five husbands and was the cause of the war that put an end to the third age of man.
Knowing next to nothing about Hindu mythology, I can't really provide much of a commentary on what kind of spin it gives to the original material; but a a story I can say I really, really loved it. From the beautiful and woven writing to the characters and the stories within stories storytelling and the drama of the war and the texture of the world. I was swept in and mesmerised and loved every minutes of it.

The Nightwatch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Urban fantasy were the forces of the Light and the forces of the Dark have made a peace agreement, and the Light magicians of the Night Watch try to fight against the Dark ones of the Day Watch while keeping the peace.
There are three tied in stories in this book, and all three are pretty good, solid read, although I found the third one slightly less good than the other (nothing much really happened). If you accept the manicheist setting, this is a pretty fun exploration of it, with solid world building and good plotting. Nothing very deep or mind breaking, but nicely entertaining with a few interesting characters. I'll probably try to read the sequels soon.

Last week I watched the Good, the Bad, the Weird, a Korean movie which, as the name indicates, makes a homage Sergio Leone as well as a bunch of other references which I could not get. Set in Manchuria during the Japanese invasion, it features a big bunch of various bandits amongst which our weird, a bounty hunter (the good) and a hired gun (the bad), and the Japanese army seeking a supposed treasure map from the end of the Qin dynasty.
It was very fun : it was pretty much action, action, action, comedy, action, pretty boys doing outrageously over the top badass posturing, action, comedy; at a breakneck pacing, and with a very interesting and cool cinematography. Stylistically very fun as well, from western remixed Asian style to the hilarious and gonzo action scenes and the gorgeous landscapes. Some of the action scenes dragged a slightly bit too long, and, you know, it doesn't pretend to depth the littlest bit, but overall FUN. Also interesting to see that kind of treatment of this period of history.

Yesterday I watched Slumdog Millionaire. Overall a good movie, but after the very strong and excellent beginning I was quite disappointed by the ending's descent into feel-good cheese. I guess I was hoping for a ending a la Usual Suspect, so, I was quite surprised when they set up one of the oldest rags-to-riches narrative and then played it utterly straight. Still a very interesting movie on several points, with great visuals and acting, and a well told story, but it left me with a bit of a "meh" feeling.

Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna
A 25 episodes anima adaptation of a shounen manga about investigations and complicated mind games around some mysterious Blade Children (English in the text) and the just as mysterious hunters who try to kill them; the hero of which is the very intelligent yet insecure high school boy Ayumu and his impossibly genki and quite awesome friend Hiyono. Spiral sadly utterly lacks conclusion, leaving me a bit at a loss as far as rating how I liked this series go, since the main mysteries isn't even close to being solved, and all we're left are teasing and frustrating hints which so far don't explain much apart from sounding grandiloquent. I bet the conclusion is in the manga though, but I haven't read that yet to know if it a was worth all the plotting before and I wanted to do my anime reviews as I go >_>;
So the stuff I did like: the characters are usually pretty interesting and fun to watch. I'm extremely fond of Hiyono, as mentioned, and Ayumu is adorable in his ways too. I'm also intrigued and pleasantly entertained by most of the Blade Children too, especially Kousuke and Ryoko. Madoka - Ayumu's step sister and a police detective - is pretty cool as well despite too little influence on the plot. There's generally speaking a good balance of male and female characters, with most of the female characters being awesome in some way or another and good at impacting the plot. More than just the characters, the relationships between characters are well done and sweet, whether as teamwork, family, or shipping. It's one of the thing that makes the show very pleasant to watch as well as following the ongoing plot.
The storytelling has those ridiculously complex crime scenes to solve, mind games and other "Just As Planned!" plots; which it does pretty well and cleverly despite their hilariously over-the-top set up. The pacing's also pretty good.
So on the flip side, it's full of what do you mean this is not awesome and annoying and meaningless catchphrases supposed to sound meaningful, or characters that are supposed to be super-cool angsty badass but you just want to point and laugh at because they try so hard to look cool and are just emo.
I'm not crazy about the graphic style - even for a shounen; and the animation isn't really anything to talk of about either.
So I guess if it sounds like anything that would interest you, I'd recommend reading the manga first (even if I haven't myself) and then watch the anime after while because it's probably more pleasant that way than the reverse. (Experience tells most manga are better than their anime adaptations anyway)

Fulfilling my resolution of writing reviews for series as I go, here's my opinion on the anime Natsume Yuujinchou, first season

An episodic shoujo series about a highschool boy, Natsume, who has the gift of seeing spirits and monsters; and which has always considered this as a curse - being seen as weird by his classmates, and being passed on from adoptive families to adoptive families. His grandmother had the same power and used it to bully spirits into forming many a "pact of friendships" which she collected in a book which is now in Natsume's possession. This brings Natsume a lot of unwanted attentions from yokais which want to steal the book for their own advantage, or to be released from their pacts of friendship. Natsume forms an agreement with one such powerful creature - Nyanko Sensei - which takes the form of a Maneki Neko to be his bodyguard against the other spirits, and in exchange will inherit the book of pacts once Natsume dies. Meanwhile Natsume will try to release as many yokai from the pacts as he can.

(this was my summary of the manga I just copy-pasted. I'm lazy, okay? :D )

Loving the manga a great deal, I was a bit apprehensive of the anime. I was wrong to be: this is an excellent adaptation, which manages overall to catch quite well the atmosphere and the characters from the manga, both in terms of animation, music and voice acting; and even manages to improve on it on a few points, such as making Natsume's school mates more present through out and fleshing their characterisation better (we also gain a bit on how Natsume look in their PoV, which is sort of funny in that he's much more cool in a mysterious way than when we're in his PoV). It also avoids to repeat the basis of the series as the very episodic manga did every chapter, also a plus XD and tied up a lot of storyline cutely together in the final episode (as well as including hints of some further developments in the manga, hehe) There are only one or two stories I found a bit weaker than their manga counterparts - stretching the pathos or cuteness too heavily; but nothing to really complain about. All in all, it has deepened my fondness for this series, and I'm now curious to see what the fandom is made up of and if there are fics with my ship.

Somehow I tried to take advantage of the fact I had a lot of free time this year to watch a whole bunch of TV series and anime. I didn't actually review most of them, so I'll try to compile my impressions there.

( The Awesome )

( The Good )

( The Flawed yet Compelling yet Flawed )

( The Okay I guess )

( The Boring )

( The Not Sure Yet )

Whoa. This took me so long to type I started yesterday and only finished today. Next time I'll try to do more reviews as I go >_>;

Anyway, I'm off to see the new BSG ep!

I never properly most of the manga I read. I justify this to myself by saying I don't like reviewing little bits of stories, but I don't even when I suddenly devour a huge chunk or even complete series - so, yeah. Let's try to remedy that.

Natsume Yuujin Chou - titled the "le Pacte des Yokai" in the French translation - is an episodic shoujo series about a highschool boy, Natsume, who has the gift of seeing spirits and monsters; and which has always considered this as a curse - being seen as weird by his classmates, and being passed on from adoptive families to adoptive families. His grandmother had the same power and used it to bully spirits into forming many a "pact of friendships" which she collected in a book which is now in Natsume's possession. This brings Natsume a lot of unwanted attentions from yokais which want to steal the book for their own advantage, or to be released from their pacts of friendship. Natsume forms an agreement with one such powerful feeling - Nyanko Sensei - which takes the form of a Maneki Neko to be his bodyguard against the other spirits, and in exchange will inherit the book of pacts once Natsume dies. Meanwhile Natsume will try to release as many yokai from the pacts as he can.
I've started hearing about the anime adaption of this series - mostly in good - a lot lately. There's three volumes of the manga translated in French so far, and it is very good. The art is very thin, delicate and expressive in a way that suits perfectly the sensitive and melancholy nature of the stories. There's also a lot of natural landscapes adding to the lovely poetic atmosphere. The characters and their relationship (Nyanko Sensei is a rather snarky trickster mentor) is well depicted. Despite their very episodic nature, the stories are well developped and usually quite touching, articulated around themes of loneliness, friendship and the difficult of connections between the human world and the spirit world.

Hyakki Yakou Shou - "le cortège des cents démons" in the French translation - is a series with a very similar summary : Ijima Ritsu is the grandson of horror stories writer and medium and has had the same power to see spirits and monsters since he was a little kid. Before his death his grandfather set spirit Aoarashi to protect Ritsu from other monsters - and to possess the just recently dead body of Ritsu's father. Follow episodic stories of Ritsu dealing with some kind of supernatural happenstances, being (snarkily) protected by Aorarashi and bemoaning about his power.
Despite the similarity of formula, Hyakki Yakou Shou has a very different mood from Natsume Yujin Chou, being more truely horror, with a touch of dark humour, and less focussed on feelings, and targetted to a slightly older audience. It's slightly less epsiodic in nature too, having a larger cast of regular characters, including two of Ritsu's (female) cousins who also have some medium powers if less powerful ones. It's just as high quality, though, very intriguing and compelling stories.
Sadly the translation was discontinued after the 6th volume due to lack of money (the series is still ongoing in Japan); and the scanlations available don't reach this point yet.

To keep going on with traditionnal Japanese supernatural stories, Onmyouji is an adaption from famous Baku Yumemakura novel which also had two movies adapted from it; about legendary onmyouji Abe no Seimei solving supernatural cases during the Heian era along with his friend court noble Hiromasa who plays The Watson to Seimei's Sherlock.
This is a gorgeous manga, with exquisite and detailed art (although I occasionnaly have trouble telling characters apart but I blame the Heian fashion - all those hats) and great storytelling. The stories are subtle, complex, sometimes creepy, sometimes touching. Seimei's character is awesome, mischevious and charismatic, and play up to Hirosama's earnest, clumsy and kind personnality with a lot of humour and chemistry. The French adaptation is also extremely well done, with several coloured pages, and annexes going into depth about historical, geographical and esoteric details. There's three volumes translated so far out of a total of 12.

Now for something completely different, Kami no Shizuku - "Les Gouttes de Dieu" in French - is a seinen manga about wine. More specifically, when a famous oenologist dies, his testament determines that the one to inherit his impressive wine collection will be, between his son, Shizuku Kanzaki, who's never tasted wine in his life so disgusted was he with his father's extantricities, and his adoptive son another oenologist; a contest in identifying 12 great wines from descriptions. In order to be his father's inheritor, Shizuku will have to learn all about wine very quickly, with the help of apprentice sommelière Shinohara Miyaba.
One of the thing I love about manga is the capacity to pick any random subject a tell a great story out of it. This is the case here : the art is beautiful, the characters are endearing, and the story is actually very compelling... Sure, it's far-fetched that Shizuku keeps on falling onto situations which his growing knowledge of wine helps solve and lets him develop his knowledge at the same time; and, sure, the way wine is described through full panel landscapes is a ridiculously case of what do you mean it is not awesome... but it works. It makes the idea of wine tasting as something cool, plot carrying and full of imagery accessible, and, also, it's hysterical. Characters both main and secondary and very well developed and plays in and out of the story showing a great mastery of storytelling. I've read up to volume 4 so far, and the plot develops, slowly but surely, with a lot of suspense, humour and entertainment. If this manga doesn't make you into an alcoholic, you have no heart.

That's it, I'm done making you drool about the stuff that gets translated into French for today.

Back home from my parents'. New year feasting went well. There were some interesting discussions.

While at was at my parents', I took advantage of my old library to re-read two manga series : Please Save My Earth and RG Veda.

Please Save My Earth is a late 80's shoujo manga involving a cast of seven high school characters realising that they are all the reincarnation of a group of aliens who used to study the Earth from a post of observation set on the moon. The past lives set of characters have convoluted and passionate relationships involving triangles, rivalry-friendship and one-sided loves which the real time sets of characters struggle with as they progressively remember them (if you think being a teenager wasn't confusing enough by itself, try being a young guy whose past lives was a woman who was in love with the guy whose current life is your male best friend) ; and to complicate matters one of them is reincarnated in a much younger 8 year boy, Ring, who seems to have a plot involving using the Tokyo Tower (what else? :) to contact the observation base still existing on the moon, and blackmailing/threatening/manipulating various people in order to do so.
PSME mostly focus on people's relationships, with a great flair for both the (melo)dramatic, the subtle and the heartbreaking. It's also got Psi-powers-based fighting scenes; volumes-spanning flashbacks, and a plot which ends up not being much at the end.
It's an old school manga, and it's got quite the silly idiosyncrasies. Our main female character, Alice, whom I adore nonetheless, is sadly not very proactive on the plot. And there's a face-palming inducing rape story which makes me ashamed of enjoying the male character involved anyway. The art hasn't always aged well (to say the least), and some cultural references haven't either (random saint seya references FTW!); and there's this hilarious use of dinosaurs as a motif... At the same time it manages juggling with an impressively large cast of characters (both lives of characters + secondary characters they interact with + other people getting involved in Ring's plot) and two timelines quite dexterously and continues being riveting and intense through a relatively (for a shoujo) long run of 21 volumes. I'm particularly fond of the characterisation - especially Alice and Ring and their past lives; but many other characters like Haruhiko, Tamura, Mikuro, Issei...
PSME was one of the first epic contemporary fantasy shoujo series I read some ten years ago along with Ayashi no Ceres and Basara, and one of my favourite ones. Upon re-read, despite all the silliness and idiosyncrasies; it still rings emotionally true to me, pushing the right buttons, and being a good story overall.

RG Veda is CLAMP's first professional manga, featuring a Hindu mythology inspired fantasy world where the rule of the Heaven has been overturned when Taishaku-Ten murdered the Emperor and the warrior god Ashura-Ou some 300 years ago; and where a prophecy about the being the destroyer of Heavens spurs Yasha-Ou, a young guardian god to find and protect Ashura, the child of Ashura-Ou, and revolt against Taishaku-Ten. Progressively, and in accordance with that prophecy, he is joined by several other gods who have their own reason to fight Taishaku-Ten.
RV Vega shows its age in its style of lavish, baroque, kinda of over the top art; yet i cannot help but find it gorgeous. The characters are very intriguing, likeable and amusing - I think they don't have quite the finesse or depth of characterisation that other CLAMP works show; but are still very appealing nevertheless. Thematically and relationship-wise this is definitely CLAMP's testing ground, showing their much-loved themes of fate, duality, the ties between people, eros/thanatos and strength. It is very much a tragedy, saved from melodrama only by the cheerfulness and grace typical of CLAMP characters. In terms of pacing it is slightly uneven, with several chapters without very much happening to Yasha, Ashura and co.
RG Veda is a manga I like comparing to X, for obviously thematic parallels : they're both tales of the prophecy of a world ending, except one's set in our modern world and the other in a fantasy world. The characters of Yasha and Ashura always reminded me a lot of Fuuma and Kamui; to which I sometimes like adding a parallel between Arashi and Karura. Upon reread, I was also struck with some parallels with latter arcs of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, and not only the parts about Fay and Ceres.
RG Veda was the first CLAMP I read which I really fell in love with - I had read several manga by them before (suki dakara suki, wish, 20 masks please, Magic Knight Rayearth and of course Card Captor Sakura), by impressions ranged from "meh" to "cute but not entrancing"; so along with Tokyo Babylon and X which I read a couple of months after RG Veda, it's one of the work responsible for my fangirlism of CLAMP overall. Upon reread I find it more uneven, but I still love it, and find myself extremely amused, especially at characters like Kendappa, or the villains like Shashi and Taishaku-Ten (Shashi is hilarious because she's so unredeemable, ruthlessly, unabashedly evil and power hungry and i guess the fact that she's easy on the eyes also help). Kujaku's still my favourite character, utterly adorable and cheerfully/teasingly mysterious, and the one I find the most heartbreaking. Kendappa/Souma's love story is still my favourite couple (they're also, sadly, CLAMP's only two sided femslash romance featured as prominently and as canonically). Ashura himself is adorable, and so is Yasha when he interacts with Ashura.