subdee

Keiki has a deadpan sense of humor. Less prissy, more dryly sarcastic. Meanwhile Rakushun is nawght but simple country folk if he don't say so himself. It definitely works but at the same time it's kind of disorienting: weren't these characters different in the Japanese? Or am I wrong? I haven't read the original so this is just going by gut and, and second-hand reports of excessive keigo usage, not to mention canis_m's Yoko/Keiki fanfics.

Here's what I mean:

( Keiki )
( Rakushun )

Which is to say, it does work. It might not even be that far off: what do I know, anyway?

As long as I've written this much I might as well do Shoryu and Enki:

( Shoryu and Enki )

I'd planned to talk a little about chapters 4-8 here, but this is getting a little long. (Aha.) Guess I'll save it for next time. (Homework, what's that?)

Twelve Kingdoms! ( That last fic is bothering me because... )

Loveless! ( Things I like about the manga that you never, ever see in fanfic. )

Before I forget: updated gmail with H2 volumes 3-8. More H2 to come over the next few days -- or if you don't want to wait for me, go here. Baseball manga, classic.

I took a short break from livejournal to read the first book of CJ Cherryh's Dawnbreaker trilogy and watch anime. Catching up is really starting to kill me; I might have to read on filter once school starts, although I have no idea what I'd cut out beyond a few increasingly annoying communities.

( book&anime babbling )

HIGHLIGHTS from the last week.

( Twelve Kingdoms )
( Initial D )
( Pally's Collab Corner )
( Princess Tutu )
( Naruto )

Fandom Relief Efforts
Pellaz offers fic in exchange for Katrina donations <-- I'm doing this as soon as my House!finances are settled.
Blood for fic <-- exactly what it sounds like. Measures like this are too inefficient to really be effective, but they don't hurt either.
News and help links <-- yasminm is always on top of these things.

I didn't think I'd ever been to New Orleans -- even though Umich always schedules Spring Break to coincide with Mardi Gras -- but I've just realized I have. We took a detour on the way back from Florida (Boca Raton), I think I was five or six. I remember sitting at an outdoor cafe, on a second-story balcony, French Quarter, July, millions of hanging flowers (mostly pink), and I accidentally dropped a really nice fork over the railing and onto the street. After we'd paid the bill we saw that the fork was still there, only it'd been flattened into sheet metal by the traffic.

I still have that former fork.

My overall impression is AUGH DEAD FROM LACK OF ENDING. The Twelve Kingdoms spends half its time developing a storyline that’s never fully explained, and what’s worse is it was clearly all planned out and if only the production company hadn’t run out of money...! The credits say “adapted” but of course this is from a series of fantasy novels I’ll never read. AUGH.

The Twelve Kingdoms--Junni Kokki--is a Romance of the Three Kingdoms version of El Hazard, sort of. The setting is the real star, but the characters are pretty cool too. And it is REALLY well done. I've got the commercial DVD rip, so I listen in English (the English voice acting is surprisingly good). I also keep the subtitles on, so that I can compare the literal and interpreted translations and maybe triangulate myself back to the original from there. Umm but this may only be me.

The series starts off slow and confusing and with annoying major characters. But you shouldn't be discouraged, because they get a lot more likable. One of the major themes of this show is "becoming a better person."

ALSO, love the foreshadowing. It wasn’t treated like an ominous narrative device at all, more like a regular part of the story that didn’t make sense at first but later did.

ALSO, for many many episodes character development is the plot. *thrills*

( WIP, The Twelve Kingdoms (part 1 of 2) )

The second half should be up by the end of the week. I meant to finish yesterday, but I realized I was defeated at about 2am when all of my sentences were coming out only four words long.