Tangled in red strings, no less
Aug. 25th, 2012 09:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foxinthestarsCrossposting from my sleeply little Psychic Force LJ-comm where I post comic scans every week. Today I had fun babbling about what I posted (and gender, vulnerability, and sex appeal here as opposed to American comics), so what the heck, just to post something...
(Also, I suddenly want Anthropomorfic of manga demographic genres. And I want Josei to be the main character.)
I told you I had an extra-special circle-book for you this week, and here it is: BURNG by Ohnuki Ken’ichi, the original Psychic Force character designer. This is the first in a series of Psychic Force doujinshi he made, upon which the OVA was loosely based, or so I hear --- I realize that for some of us the word “loosely” might be the only note of recommendation in there, but it does appear to be the key word, and the art is luscious in its bombastic shounen sort of way. Ohnuki-sensei’s professional career in animation, art direction, and character design goes all the way back to the mid-80s and continues to this day, and his official website has an impressive list of credits, including Dirty Pair, Shin Megami Tensei, Major, Gundam, No. 6, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
In this installment of our story, Burn has a near-miss in his search for Keith, Wong introduces himself, and then he and Keith go to London to recruit Brad. Gates also gets a cameo right at the end.
Enjoy!
at Dropbox
at MediaFire
I also tried harder at restitching the pin-up this time; there’s still a big line on the right side where the lighting changes, and some of the highlights got blown out pretty badly, especially on Burn’s hand, but at least the lines don’t jump around... (Seriously, tho, I like GIMP well enough for the most part, but I need to get myself something with a mesh warp...)
And, perhaps due to the quasi-official nature of this one, I feel more like babbling about it than usual, so...
I immediately pegged this as a shounen kind of book, since the very first thing that happens in it is something exploding for no readily apparent reason. A few pages later the reason turns out to be Keith, ‘natch. It’s all pretty unclear (the story just offhandedly cuts to him in a cape at NOA HQ with no explanation of how much time has passed and where this stuff came from), but Wong shows up addressing him as “-sama” and he readily assumes command, leading me to suppose that he was already organizing on his own and had a plan to blow this place up --- a plan that apparently included “get myself captured.” Which seems kind of crazy, but hey, that doesn’t mean Keith Evans wouldn’t do it.*
Or maybe it’s not as crazy as all that, if the enemy’s policy is to let their superpowered prisoners run around unsedated --- quick tip: cuffing his hands doesn’t help that much when he can make a flipping dragon with his mind --- with personal photos staying magically unrumpled in the pockets of their fanservice-cut jeans, even. ...oh god, the button’s undone...
That actually brings me to another point. As mentioned, I pegged this as shounen, and recent listings I’ve seen agreed with me, but for a time the shop I was buying these from listed the BURNG books as josei (shoujo’s less famous big sister, manga aimed at young adult women), and maybe I can see that, too. Back in the day, I hung out at Girl-Wonder.org for awhile, and the feminist media-critic superhero comic fans there would of course point out how American comic-book women tended to be displayed in these vulnerable, sexy poses that the guys wouldn’t be caught dead in (even if they weren’t too busy flexing their improbable muscles, brandishing absurdly-large weapons, and shouting so as to unhinge their jaws). Well, things have long been different in Japan, and here we have Keith Evans to show the guys how it’s done. It’s not exactly news that he can manage to play The Heavy and The Damsel both at once, but he’s really working the damsel angle in the pin-up --- tangled in red strings no less! --- eventually we’ll get to vol. 4 where he shamelessly drapes himself over the information page with a light scattering of flower petals... On second thought maybe cuffing his hands does help depending on just who it is that’s trying to achieve what...
(And I would personally be lying if I said this stuff didn’t work... ^_^;;;)
Anyway, once they head for London I love how Keith’s cape just fwaps Wong in the face during their dramatic entrance, but maybe that put him in a bad mood; granted, Brad was a problem customer, but the trading company president is surprisingly bad at closing a sale here. And on the last page I’m puzzling over the cigarettes; we didn’t see anyone smoking earlier, I didn’t know Gates *could* smoke, it’s just very curious...
(*My own Keith-muse actually wouldn’t ever pull something like that, not because it’s too crazy for him but because it would get into a whole “not going back in the box” mindscream that he’s trying to paper over rather than deal with, but that’s just me. I actually find Keith relatively open to interpretation as the canon for him is kind of slippery/self-contradictory. Speaking of, I had never pictured Evil!Brad as a sexual predator as implied here --- that’s typical of a serial killer and I see him as more of an indiscriminate spree-killing type --- but again, individual interpretation...)
PS: Monday’s my birthday. ^_^
(Also, I suddenly want Anthropomorfic of manga demographic genres. And I want Josei to be the main character.)
I told you I had an extra-special circle-book for you this week, and here it is: BURNG by Ohnuki Ken’ichi, the original Psychic Force character designer. This is the first in a series of Psychic Force doujinshi he made, upon which the OVA was loosely based, or so I hear --- I realize that for some of us the word “loosely” might be the only note of recommendation in there, but it does appear to be the key word, and the art is luscious in its bombastic shounen sort of way. Ohnuki-sensei’s professional career in animation, art direction, and character design goes all the way back to the mid-80s and continues to this day, and his official website has an impressive list of credits, including Dirty Pair, Shin Megami Tensei, Major, Gundam, No. 6, and Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
In this installment of our story, Burn has a near-miss in his search for Keith, Wong introduces himself, and then he and Keith go to London to recruit Brad. Gates also gets a cameo right at the end.
Enjoy!
at Dropbox
at MediaFire
I also tried harder at restitching the pin-up this time; there’s still a big line on the right side where the lighting changes, and some of the highlights got blown out pretty badly, especially on Burn’s hand, but at least the lines don’t jump around... (Seriously, tho, I like GIMP well enough for the most part, but I need to get myself something with a mesh warp...)
And, perhaps due to the quasi-official nature of this one, I feel more like babbling about it than usual, so...
I immediately pegged this as a shounen kind of book, since the very first thing that happens in it is something exploding for no readily apparent reason. A few pages later the reason turns out to be Keith, ‘natch. It’s all pretty unclear (the story just offhandedly cuts to him in a cape at NOA HQ with no explanation of how much time has passed and where this stuff came from), but Wong shows up addressing him as “-sama” and he readily assumes command, leading me to suppose that he was already organizing on his own and had a plan to blow this place up --- a plan that apparently included “get myself captured.” Which seems kind of crazy, but hey, that doesn’t mean Keith Evans wouldn’t do it.*
Or maybe it’s not as crazy as all that, if the enemy’s policy is to let their superpowered prisoners run around unsedated --- quick tip: cuffing his hands doesn’t help that much when he can make a flipping dragon with his mind --- with personal photos staying magically unrumpled in the pockets of their fanservice-cut jeans, even. ...oh god, the button’s undone...
That actually brings me to another point. As mentioned, I pegged this as shounen, and recent listings I’ve seen agreed with me, but for a time the shop I was buying these from listed the BURNG books as josei (shoujo’s less famous big sister, manga aimed at young adult women), and maybe I can see that, too. Back in the day, I hung out at Girl-Wonder.org for awhile, and the feminist media-critic superhero comic fans there would of course point out how American comic-book women tended to be displayed in these vulnerable, sexy poses that the guys wouldn’t be caught dead in (even if they weren’t too busy flexing their improbable muscles, brandishing absurdly-large weapons, and shouting so as to unhinge their jaws). Well, things have long been different in Japan, and here we have Keith Evans to show the guys how it’s done. It’s not exactly news that he can manage to play The Heavy and The Damsel both at once, but he’s really working the damsel angle in the pin-up --- tangled in red strings no less! --- eventually we’ll get to vol. 4 where he shamelessly drapes himself over the information page with a light scattering of flower petals... On second thought maybe cuffing his hands does help depending on just who it is that’s trying to achieve what...
(And I would personally be lying if I said this stuff didn’t work... ^_^;;;)
Anyway, once they head for London I love how Keith’s cape just fwaps Wong in the face during their dramatic entrance, but maybe that put him in a bad mood; granted, Brad was a problem customer, but the trading company president is surprisingly bad at closing a sale here. And on the last page I’m puzzling over the cigarettes; we didn’t see anyone smoking earlier, I didn’t know Gates *could* smoke, it’s just very curious...
(*My own Keith-muse actually wouldn’t ever pull something like that, not because it’s too crazy for him but because it would get into a whole “not going back in the box” mindscream that he’s trying to paper over rather than deal with, but that’s just me. I actually find Keith relatively open to interpretation as the canon for him is kind of slippery/self-contradictory. Speaking of, I had never pictured Evil!Brad as a sexual predator as implied here --- that’s typical of a serial killer and I see him as more of an indiscriminate spree-killing type --- but again, individual interpretation...)
PS: Monday’s my birthday. ^_^
