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foxinthestarsWhoa, like one drive-by comment in over a month...
And, incredibly, it's three weeks until my birthday.
I'm behind on some of my anime, and remain in this strangely quixotic mode. Still obsessing over Psychic Force and failing to conquer writer/artist's block, but on the upside the part of my Psychic Force Comics collection that can be completed is (all the official anthologies are either on the shelf or on order, and even I realize that stressing out over having all the doujin is insane; it's like stressing out over whether you've read every fanfic ever posted on the internet for something, there'll always be another one somewhere and you may or may not want to find it).
While I was at it, if Branch remembers a passing comment I made, I did end up with that pile of old Locke the Superman manga. In the last few years I have done some "searching for roots" with my anime/manga fandom, and it's its own kind of thrill after all this time to read Riyoko Ikeda, Hagio Moto, Keiko Takemiya... I started on the manga of "To Terra..." but haven't finished it yet (when I read Keiko Takemiya, I'm always torn between "Oh god, this woman was a genius" and "oh god, this stuff is depressing"). I got to Locke the Superman in that kind of vein, it being one of the cult classics from the '70s and stuff, but the manga is just not findable in English; even looking for raws netted a lot of broken links, hence purchasing a pile of stuff... But the raws I did scrounge up, it does look quite fun.
And I watched all four of the Locke the Superman anime that were made. In a way it felt like coming full circle; when I first discovered anime through my big sister's university club, I saw Totoro and some Kimagure Orange Road, but the stuff I really ended up watching over and over again was Nausicaa, Bubblegum Crisis, Dominion Tank Police, and Project A-ko. Looking back on it, Nausicaa of course is still a classic, Dominion seems kind of embarrassing, and Project A-ko in hindsight seems like a weird starting place (the whole "watching a parody without seeing any of the stuff it's a parody of" aspect) but we loved it, but somehow Bubblegum Crisis is the one I would always reference when I told people how humbling it was to look back after seeing Evangelion...
But now I've lapped myself, watching Locke the Superman, a series that pioneered interplanetary cyberpunk and superpowered prettyboys (the manga is actually still going, BTW). Yes, the first couple of anime (the "Witch Era" movie and the "Lord Leon" OVA) were old-school and campy, but I really enjoyed them. The "New World Command" OVA probably felt the most like where I started from, and I actually didn't care for it quite as much; it was a bit "grittier" and felt like anime was also infected with an '80s "dark age" like American comics or something. "Mirror Ring" was made 10 years after the others, so it was just kind of different and not a bit standout as anime goes, but still, if I do Yuletide this year, I have something up my sleeve to request...
To be totally honest, Psychic Force did lead me into this old school stuff; in the 4koma books, there's a strip calling Keith out on his "family resemblance" to some of those older characters...
I also almost fell into Legend of the Galactic Heroes, but managed to pull out of the dive just in time... Don't want to take on a 100+ episode thing when I'm behind on Kuroko's Basketball and still haven't made good on promising myself Natsume Yuujinchou...
I am not behind on Hyouka, though, and I'd say it's still my favorite currently-running thing. Last time I commented on it, lo these months ago, I was afraid it was all going to be downhill after episode 5, and it is absolutely not, it turns out I was just on a couple of filler episodes at the time, and the next arc was back to awesome. In particular, episode 10 ends on a wonderfully mundane gut-punch, a sweetly painful place to sit for a week, and in the next episode, a couple of the mains were maybe harsh at first, but we ended up with a very nice meditation on it --- even a brilliant answer may not satisfy if you weren't clear with yourself on what the question was. Of course now the next arc after that is looking ready to come in for a landing any time now... Hyouka is ostensibly a mystery series, but I think the slice-of-life element is actually stronger, with the mystery there as an acknowledged and negotiated spice. It's a flavor I like, anyway.
I signed up to wrangle it on Ao3, too; so far it's terribly easy because there's only one 'fic and it had nice canonically-formed tags... And I read the fic while I was there and it's very sweet, so I'll end with a rec...
when life treats, it treats me to you (1382 words) by
tanyart
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hyouka
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Fukube Satoshi/Oreki Houtarou
Characters: Fukube Satoshi, Oreki Houtarou, Chitanda Eru, Ibara Mayaka
Summary:
tl;dr: Birthday coming, still on the Psychic Force kick, Locke the Superman and Hyouka are awesome.
And, incredibly, it's three weeks until my birthday.
I'm behind on some of my anime, and remain in this strangely quixotic mode. Still obsessing over Psychic Force and failing to conquer writer/artist's block, but on the upside the part of my Psychic Force Comics collection that can be completed is (all the official anthologies are either on the shelf or on order, and even I realize that stressing out over having all the doujin is insane; it's like stressing out over whether you've read every fanfic ever posted on the internet for something, there'll always be another one somewhere and you may or may not want to find it).
While I was at it, if Branch remembers a passing comment I made, I did end up with that pile of old Locke the Superman manga. In the last few years I have done some "searching for roots" with my anime/manga fandom, and it's its own kind of thrill after all this time to read Riyoko Ikeda, Hagio Moto, Keiko Takemiya... I started on the manga of "To Terra..." but haven't finished it yet (when I read Keiko Takemiya, I'm always torn between "Oh god, this woman was a genius" and "oh god, this stuff is depressing"). I got to Locke the Superman in that kind of vein, it being one of the cult classics from the '70s and stuff, but the manga is just not findable in English; even looking for raws netted a lot of broken links, hence purchasing a pile of stuff... But the raws I did scrounge up, it does look quite fun.
And I watched all four of the Locke the Superman anime that were made. In a way it felt like coming full circle; when I first discovered anime through my big sister's university club, I saw Totoro and some Kimagure Orange Road, but the stuff I really ended up watching over and over again was Nausicaa, Bubblegum Crisis, Dominion Tank Police, and Project A-ko. Looking back on it, Nausicaa of course is still a classic, Dominion seems kind of embarrassing, and Project A-ko in hindsight seems like a weird starting place (the whole "watching a parody without seeing any of the stuff it's a parody of" aspect) but we loved it, but somehow Bubblegum Crisis is the one I would always reference when I told people how humbling it was to look back after seeing Evangelion...
But now I've lapped myself, watching Locke the Superman, a series that pioneered interplanetary cyberpunk and superpowered prettyboys (the manga is actually still going, BTW). Yes, the first couple of anime (the "Witch Era" movie and the "Lord Leon" OVA) were old-school and campy, but I really enjoyed them. The "New World Command" OVA probably felt the most like where I started from, and I actually didn't care for it quite as much; it was a bit "grittier" and felt like anime was also infected with an '80s "dark age" like American comics or something. "Mirror Ring" was made 10 years after the others, so it was just kind of different and not a bit standout as anime goes, but still, if I do Yuletide this year, I have something up my sleeve to request...
To be totally honest, Psychic Force did lead me into this old school stuff; in the 4koma books, there's a strip calling Keith out on his "family resemblance" to some of those older characters...
I also almost fell into Legend of the Galactic Heroes, but managed to pull out of the dive just in time... Don't want to take on a 100+ episode thing when I'm behind on Kuroko's Basketball and still haven't made good on promising myself Natsume Yuujinchou...
I am not behind on Hyouka, though, and I'd say it's still my favorite currently-running thing. Last time I commented on it, lo these months ago, I was afraid it was all going to be downhill after episode 5, and it is absolutely not, it turns out I was just on a couple of filler episodes at the time, and the next arc was back to awesome. In particular, episode 10 ends on a wonderfully mundane gut-punch, a sweetly painful place to sit for a week, and in the next episode, a couple of the mains were maybe harsh at first, but we ended up with a very nice meditation on it --- even a brilliant answer may not satisfy if you weren't clear with yourself on what the question was. Of course now the next arc after that is looking ready to come in for a landing any time now... Hyouka is ostensibly a mystery series, but I think the slice-of-life element is actually stronger, with the mystery there as an acknowledged and negotiated spice. It's a flavor I like, anyway.
I signed up to wrangle it on Ao3, too; so far it's terribly easy because there's only one 'fic and it had nice canonically-formed tags... And I read the fic while I was there and it's very sweet, so I'll end with a rec...
when life treats, it treats me to you (1382 words) by
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hyouka
Rating: General Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Fukube Satoshi/Oreki Houtarou
Characters: Fukube Satoshi, Oreki Houtarou, Chitanda Eru, Ibara Mayaka
Summary:
Sometimes it's not all bad.
tl;dr: Birthday coming, still on the Psychic Force kick, Locke the Superman and Hyouka are awesome.
