No news report today, I’m off to the MoCCA event in NYC.
Archive for the Miscellaneous Category
34-sai Mushoku-san Manga Vols. 1-4 (34歳無職さん) Guest Review by Bruce P.
It’s Guest Review Wednesday once again on Okazu and I couldn’t be happier…but that’s because I’ve already read today’s review and I can’t stop laughing. Once again it is my sincere pleasure to welcome back Okazu Superhero, longtime friend, traveling companion and amazing Guest Reviewer Bruce P Yaaaayyy!
I picked up a copy of 34-sai Mushoku-san (The Unemployed 34-Year Old), (34歳無職さん) Volume 1, by Ikeda Takashi, with the not unreasonable thought that the author of Sasameki Koto might have included some Yuri along the way. I was wrong; four volumes later, and there hasn’t been a hint of Yuri. Instead what we are given is a viciously drawn-out interior monologue of boredom, hopelessness, and personal failure. It’s cruel, peculiar, glacial, and grindingly depressing. Plus it makes me laugh. What a great manga.
The protagonist, who is never named, is a 34-year old woman who lives alone in an apartment and who has lost her job. The first chapter starts right off with a gag–she wakes up and can’t find her glasses (they’re on top of her head). The jokes continue. She doesn’t get up in time to take out the recycling. Her vacuum cleaner falls over. And then it falls over again. What we have here is a wacky slice-of-life story, as our madcap heroine searches for love and employment in the big city! Except…she doesn’t actually ever do any searching for love, or for employment, and as the same jokes begin to repeat, and repeat, it becomes clear that they are not jokes at all. They are symptoms, and despite her best excuses she is a woman in serious trouble.
Though able to deal marginally with others, even if there aren’t many others she ever deals with, at home she lives in a state of almost total paralysis. She cannot pull herself out of her futon until late afternoon, or up from under the kotatsu – Yui from K-ON! all grown up when it is no longer cute. You get the sense that losing the job may not have had much to do with the economy after all. She’s isolated from her family (including a daughter) and has only one acquaintance, a woman she meets occasionally for dinner and who is blatantly drawn with eyes always shut. Her only real companion is her apartment. She just swirls slowly, sleepily around in the drain of her well-vacuumed world. And if that doesn’t make you want to shell out for the multi-volume set, be assured that in Volume 2 she takes dramatic steps to change her life, by contemplating possibly taking dramatic steps to change her life. Contemplation of these steps continues in Volume 3 and Volume 4.
It sounds grimmer than kidneys on toast. Why read it?
(1) Asymmetric though she is, her character is strikingly realistic, and in more spots than are comfortable I can see, in her, a reflection of some of my own unlovely edges. This is both disturbing, and of value when I’m trying to get out of bed in the morning.
(2) It’s beautifully and brilliantly drawn, which nicely counters the subject; some chapters contain no words at all, but are simply picture plays as she bleakly and languorously contemplates her empty life. It’s like mime, in two dimensions, though not as depressing.
(3) Ikeda-sensei has a nice comic touch, and it really is quite funny. Even if laughing at all the pratfalls feels somehow misdirected, like appreciating the Hindenburg disaster on account of it being all bright and sparkly.
(4) Nothing has changed in four volumes. I’m still waiting for the thing to happen.
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Ratings:
Art: 9. Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Story: 5. Not so much a story as a slowly deteriorating situation. I’m betting on something happening; it eventually did in the classic gently-paced series Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou when Kokone reappeared. My suggestion is to add robots.
Character: 18. She’s not honestly sympathetic, but credit for every year over the age of 16.
Yuri: 0. Unfortunate, but ideally Yuri requires a second character.
Service: 2. A few sponge bath scenes, if you’re desperate enough.
Overall: 8. 34-sai Mushoku-san will not be to everyone’s taste. However, I have never been a fan of action series, and with this one I hit the jackpot.
Kill La Kill Contest Answer!
There was, as I said, only one right answer to “Who Was the Best Character?”
As amazing as Ragyo was – and she was the most fabulous villian of the last several years – and as excellent as Ryuuko and Satsuki were, there really can be only one best character.
The Banchou of Honnoji Gakuen…Manshoku Mako.
Those of you who voted Mako in the comments, please email me at yuricon at gmail dot com with your name, age and mailing address and I will send you a present in recognition of your wisdom. ^_^
YNN is Off Today
March 8, 2014. The first day of 2014, and the first day in approximately 3+ months that it’s nice enough to go outside. YNN is off today while I expose myself to the glowing ball in the sky. Go out, get some fresh air and enjoy your day. We’ll be back tomorrow with a review. ^_^
Yuri Fanfic: Courtly Tales of Crystal Tokyo
In the late 1990s, (when I was writing a lot of fanfic) it seemed sort of obvious to me that the Senshi, archetypal as they were, would make good crossovers with legends of King Arthur.
I wrote a fanfic called Kuroko, Senshi of the Kitchen. Sailor Mars became burning Sir Cai’s later self, the bitchy seneschal Sir Kay and Sailor Saturn became Sir Gareth, Gawain’s youngest brother. Chibi-Usa plays Lynette in that tale. This was followed by Sailor Jupiter and the Green Knight, which was loosely based on the rather famous epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
I really enjoyed mashing the Senshi with these timeless Arthurian stories (versions taken from a favorite book from my youth, The Boy’s King Arthur, which when you think about it explains a lot about me.)
In the Senshi’s Challenge, I rewrote Gawain and Gareth’s brothers, Agravain and Gaheris as Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, while Sailor Pluto took up the role of Merlin. And it all still made perfect sense to me. ^_^
In 2006, I was contacted by a women writing her thesis on the way Arthurian legends are reinterpreted and she did a chapter that discusses Sailor Jupiter and the Green Knight. As we corresponded (me, from the rather mythic town of Padstow, England) we discussed the remaining stories. She asked me who Mercury and Venus were and I had no hesitation when I said that Mercury was Bedwyr and Venus Lancelot…and I’d get to those stories eventually.
Years passed and I never did write them.
Last year, I realized that Mercury was not Bedwyr, but his later incarnation Parsifal…and I knew instantly how the story would go. I finally had a chance to write Senshi of the Grail.
The idea for Venus’s story came to me in Padstow in 2006 as I talked about how she’d be a perfect Lancelot…after all, wasn’t she strong because her heart was pure? The very idea of spoofing her “heart crystal” episode from Sailor Moon S, the play Camelot and T.H. White’s The Once and Future King in one sentence was too juicy. Added to that, I have a very deep loathing for White’s handling of the Lancelot and Elaine story. So, I fixed it. ^_^
I present to you the very last of the Courtly Tales of Crystal Tokyo – The Morning Star Burns Brightly
I hope you enjoy it.
