punchline: existential dread's Topics (31)

Yeah, no. Can't stand the woobification of the protagonist, the unrelenting grimdark tone, or the author's gratuitous, self-serving depiction of disability to farm cheap sympathy. If I never read about another yakuza victim paying off a father's debts it'll be too soon.

A classic.

RIP "I'll fuck you to death"

Sorry, I'm just over here just mourning the loss of the best line in translation.

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Edited to add: I'm referring to the conclusion of chapter 2 - a different translation had Udou grit out "I'll fuck you to death" rather than "I'll kill you." Hot. Unfortunately it got supplanted in subsequent uploads because it wasn't accurate? Sigh. It was great while it lasted.

I'm wholeheartedly of the camp of thought that translations should hew less to complete accuracy and instead inflect/adapt the tone of the original text, even on occasions serve as a playground for the translator's own tonal sensibilities - or the "literary approach," as they call it in linguistics/translation studies. ᶦ ᶠᵉᵉˡ ᵏᶦⁿᵈ ᵒᶠ ˢᶦˡˡʸ ᵗʳʸᶦⁿᵍ ᵗᵒ ᵃᵖᵖˡʸ ʰᵉʳᵐᵉⁿᵉᵘᵗᶦᶜˢ ᵗᵒ ᵉʳᵒᵗᶦᶜᵃ ˡᵒˡ ᵇᵘᵗ ᶦᵗ'ˢ ⁿᵒᵗ ʷʰᵒˡˡʸ ʷᶦᵗʰᵒᵘᵗ ᵐᵉʳᶦᵗ ᴵ ᵗʰᶦⁿᵏ

i keep coming back to this story and ruminating on it. i love it so much.

ume is a wonderful protagonist. he's the perfect mix of restraint and vulnerability. he keeps everyone at arm's length not out of callousness, but out of a deep-seated past hurt that wounded his ability to connect. (yoneda kou's really good at writing those kinds of protagonists, and only littering in tantalizing tidbits here and there about said past. anyone want to swap theories??? i have many!)

everything about this story is small-town charm and i love how yoneda kou explores social class in japan as well: ume's cousin attends a prestigious (private?) school on a scholarship, while ume, who transferred in from another prefecture or town (under extenuating circumstances that have only been hinted at and have yet to be revealed), lives off the charity of his aunt and uncle, and attends the general-ed tract at the town's public school. take takes the technical tract - he comes from working-class roots - a large, boisterous family of brothers (and there's this one really hilarious anecdote embedded in the story about living off of hand-me-downs that illustrates so much of his character - his kindness and consideration, his family's financial circumstances, and also his amusing bluntness - in one fell stroke).

the meat of the manga is the relationships between ume, saki, take, and ochi, and watching them puzzle each other out. the dynamics between them are all *delicious*, replete with body language, hedging, lies, truths, double-speak, and small-town tact. they're all such well-developed characters that dialogue off of each other, always trying to read each other, gauge the other parties's measures of character, gauge what things are being left unspoken, etc. it's like i'm actually being transported to the same small town they inhabit, aping their mannerisms, reading their thoughts, carefully gauging each interaction and mining them for all their hidden depths.

i think any romance literature that takes the time to explore more relationships than just the principal pairing is literature worth reading. the incipient feelings between ume and take develop not in a vacuum, but in a petri dish—kou leaves space and matter for all the characters to bloom. her approach really is so understated and elegant.

forgive the essay, but i have this surfeit of affection for this story and i really needed to express it haha

no one:

literally no one:

izumi: gets distracted from his own homophobia by horses

" lust gauge" - i immediately spit my drink

edit: ok, so i hadn't even clicked on the first chapter yet when I posted this comment - at that point I thought it was some scanlating group's quirky euphemism for a stiffy. turns out it's exactly what it is. a lust gauge.

( ° ʖ °)

I'm a big Ougi Yuzuha fan, flaws and all. She's the real deal. Just read her afterwords. She's not some fresh-faced two-bit hack. She's a whip-smart, genre-savvy veteran. I know this is a weird work of hers to stand by because it's among her more sophomore professional output and because at a passing glance it's all pomp and frivolity, but this is Yuzuha brandishing the tools of the trade to wreak some unbridled fun and havoc at her own expense. You can say there's even some pretty sophisticated class humor here—shenanigans of the obscenely rich and influential, who spend their obscene wealth and clout on the obscenely wasteful. What a great premise to go ham with. Ougi is everything I find endearing about Japanese humor on crack. She knows exactly what she's doing and she's not here to apologize for it. It doesn't hurt that the sex is peppered liberally in her stories either. Look at how she weaponizes lust even in such a ridiculous premise—how she manages to make it so palpable.

"josei in disguise" - really astute comment from someone else that i just have to crib. thanks in advance, mangago user Gwaine, i'm stealing it

read this a long time ago because i was curious to see what this established shoujo mangaka ventured out of her comfort genre to accomplish. reread this again today. verdict? really all-round solid entry into the historical/tragedy/psychological drama genre - a lot of class intrigue, mystery, and abuse and hurt/comfort, and, of course, incest. what historical yaoi tragedy is complete without incest? not exactly my cup of tea, but required reading for any yaoi enthusiast.

i also recently watched the handmaiden and i've just been struck by the realization that the two are really similar in spirit and atmosphere, and even certain plot points mirror each other - taishou era aristocracy, a cherry tree hanging, incest and familial secrets - ?????????

could park chan-wook have - ? no. couldn't have. perhaps both are based on similar source material?

(could also argue how it's almost a wuthering heights in the guise of a japanese period drama. tagami is totally lockwood, with maybe some edgar/catherine (linton AND prime) in the mix - ahhh i'm rambling about literature again lol. i don't make sense. like, i think i mean, really, the whole outsider perspective looking in, gothic kinda thing. ok i should stop)

like, ok, this manga should not be this entertaining for how objectively horrible some of its characters act. i also like how it's chock-full of all the usual trope suspects - meddling brother, arranged marriages, cockblocking kid, ex-womanizer, miscommunication - but they're all flashing so fast it's a pinwheel of just... sheer entertainment. maybe it's also how dated everything feels - the art, the plot devices - maybe that adds to the hilarity.

i was wheezing at how little toudou akira gives a fuck about appropriate circumstances. like, remember when his son shouta ran away because yuuhi, his first proper caregiver (other than his dad, who SHOULD NOT BE A DAD FOR REASONS I WILL BE EXPLORING), went MIA for like a week? toudou just sends shouta to his room without even consoling the poor kid and proceeds to push yuuhi down on the living room floor and marathon desperate make-up sex until morning. at which point shouta stumbles on them in bed. like, think about it. the poor kid was, emotional neglect aside, probably deprived of dinner. and it all gets handwaved in the jauntiest manner possible. this is just one example. probably not even the most egregious. i'll take that time his kid caught him fingering yuuhi for 500 please. like my finger is this close to dialing child protective services. ( ° ʖ °) oh, man. yaoi.

10/10 will read again for shouta.

i can't believe i remembered this! this was an old favorite from god, nearly seven years ago. it's always been a pity to me that english and chinese scanlations never quite caught up (though chinese scanlations seem to be slightly ahead, so i read them all). not sure if i trust bakaupdates on whether or not the series has concluded in japan either.

what an old gem though. got a little heavy-handed with drama in volume three and four with the (ar)rival, but the supernatural and mystery elements are absolutely captivating. narusawa is frustratingly aloof and guarded at times, but as mentor and object of infatuation, i guess that dour reserve only makes those moments when he lowers his defenses so much sweeter or poignant. and what struck me most - volume one, narusawa talks about the limits shin must cross and abide. what sounds should one acknowledge as a voice? and what sounds should one discard as a noise? it's tied into this mythology behind their powers, but also serves as a powerful metaphor for how we as humans let others into our lives, how we guard our limits, our boundaries, and how we release our guards into vulnerability.