I LOVE KEKKAISHI

I think I've figured out that the main reason why I love this series so much: the sibling rivalry. 

In this series, a mark appears on the body of the person who will succeed as the next head of the household, and a while back it showed up on the apathetic-toward-spiritual-battles middle son who wanted to be a baker of impossibly crazy cakes when he grew up, not a clan leader.  The dedicated, hard-working, ambitious oldest son was baffled (along with the rest of the family) and angry.  He left, joined some slightly shadowy otherworld organization, doesn't really keep in touch.  It's all quite awkward and strained and embarrassed. 

As time in the story passes, the middle son finds his sense of responsibility and starts working harder and comes up with a plan to stop the madness (he's still working on the details).  He misses and looks up to the older brother, but the older brother doesn't seem to want to have anything to do with him.  It creates a unique, gentle, realistic, and sympathetic tension I really haven't found anywhere else.

I do like the action and adventure, the intrigue, the mistrust and backstabbing, the mystery, the unrequited feelings, the actual and stunning deaths, the mysticism, and the character growth, but it's the quiet, domestic drama in the background that really makes me love this series. 

I wonder if this affection stems from my similarly awkward (sans the supernatural shenanigans) relationship with my older sister who really wanted nothing to do with me for years. 

I just feel for the poor main character, and I wish his brother wouldn't hold all this against him, if that's what he's doing.  I wish they could just be friends, but as a person, I understand that they have grown apart.  And as a  reader, I am privy to more about his older brother than he is.  I understand the whole looking-up-to-the-guy thing (he is pretty powerful and awesome), but I don't know if I can trust him. 

I want to believe he's one of the good guys, but he's ambitious and his motives are, at best, murky.  We don't really get inside his head, so we're only able to build our picture of him from his actions and words (which mostly take place in very delicate and highly charged political situations which sort of preclude frankness).  It's maddening and kind of brilliant. 

I want the author to keep pulling Kekkaishi off with this quietly sad internal tension.  I want, somehow, for the two brothers to be reconciled and trust and love each other.  I want their relationship to become strong and beautiful.  Or is that my relationship with my older sister I'm longing for?  I guess it doesn't really matter. 

I want the older brother to be one of the good guys.  I also don't want him to die.  I really don't want the main character to get him killed.  I want an end to jealousy and resentment.  I suspect I am wanting a lot of impossible things here, but I don't mind.  As long as this story is compelling, I will stick with it and love it.  Even if it has an unhappy ending.

I'd also like the anime to be great.

Code Geass: Where everyone loses

One of the things I liked about Code Geass was how there wasn't really a hero.  (I know that's one of the things that turned a lot of people off it.)  I mean, the protagonist was definite anti-hero material, but the guy who looked likely to be the hero was, well, hardly spotless himself.  (I'm trying to avoid being a spoiler monkey here.) 

In fact, it's hard to really pick who's "right" in this situation because there's so darn much necessary evil being thrown around that you'd have to seriously redefine "right" to pick a winner.  You have two people who have the same goal, are going about it through different channels and are 100% committed to doing whatever it takes to reach that goal.  Needless to say, there's a lot of conflict in the show.  (And that's not even including the 60 gojillion other characters who have things at stake.)

Many people have mentioned how over-the-top and melodramatic this series is.  They mention the hilarity of some of the overblown dialogue. (I would probably argue that it's not unintentional, as many claim.)  They mention the swamp it makes of morality.  They also mention how a viewer can notice all these things and still be addicted to the show.  For all the near-camp content, it did win awards for a reason.  It's a glorious, flashy, attractive, sometimes even thought-provoking (if you can spare the time to think) mess.  Everyone loses, and I still watch it.


If you've seen Code Geass, do you dislike Lelouch and Suzaku equally, or do you harbor a soft spot for one of them?  Why?

Guru Guru Pon-chan: Creeptasticly Cute Fantasy Romantic Comedy

Wow, after a two year gap, I finished up the last of Guru Guru Pon-Chan, one of the earlier series Del Ray published. 

 
VAGUELY SPOILERIFIC

As a writer, I wanted not to forgive the story for the cheap ending.  I was actually crying there for a while during the last few chapters, sad at where things were going and wishing for the cheap ending, and when it came, I was irked.  Were my tears for nothing?!  How dare they jerk me around and then cop out?!  But it's Pon-chan, so I got over it.

END OF VAGUELY SPOILERIFIC

If you never ran across it, GGPC is a cute but slightly disturbing series about this baby labrador retriever who falls in love with the boy next door.  (The human boy next door.)  There is a mad scientist involved, so of course something is invented that will allow her to become human.  This is intially hilarious because she's a very young puppy, so her first transformation is into a baby with the mind of a puppy, so there are hilarious poop-related scenes and embarrassing first impressions.  Anyway, puppies grow up fast, and eventually she's a teenager like the boy she loves, and then it gets into definitely unique romantic comedy territory.

The main hurdle for me in GGPC is the slightly creeped-out feeling I get whenever I think of this manga as a true love story between a dog and a human.  (It's not bestiality-related; get your minds out of the gutter.)  There have been other manga with similar creep-out factors, like when people fall in love with children somehow in adult bodies or adults who revert back to childhood mentality.  Then again, there's a lot about Japanese relationships that can creep one out . . . 

I'm hardly a raging feminist, but something in me gets irked at the idea that certain traits openly identified as immature are considered beneficial for women to have in Japan.  Of course, no one should read a goofy manga like this like a social science textbook, but the connection is still clearly being assumed. 

Just think of how annoying it would be if a teen girl acted like a half-grown dog (short attention span, overly excitable, always hungry, happily naked, always getting into trouble and having to be rescued, socially crippled due to a lack of common human sense).  Such behavior in a sixteen-year-old human would not be endearing at all. 

But because she tries so hard, in the end, she wins the affection of everyone and the love of the hero because true love conquers all and stuff.  Including me because I sheepishly admit that I found the story cute and fun even with the creep factor present, and, as I already mentioned, I cried even after two years away from the series. 

Maybe that's why it won the Kodansha Award: it's so charming despite its flaws that you're willing to accept it all with a silly half-grin on your face.