Believe in your Splash Panel and you can achieve anything!

[foxinthestars]

After a three month delay I have finally read Kokoro and am working on reviewing the next part of Aoi Bungaku. I may be a bit scattered, though; I'm watching it right now but I keep wanting to pause it and pace around or something. ETA: I now think I may put this off for a few days as I'm trying to get my hands on the 1955 film adaptation, too. Bets are now being taken which one I'll like better. =P

Or post here. God help me, after branchandroot's brilliant indictment got me ranting all over again about the ending of Chobits, I got it in my head to write a fanfic about it. I plan to dash it off in a half-assed manner and not invest too much in it, however, when I got to the library Wednesday (finally didn't get snowed out of my dentist appointment), I checked out what I could of Angelic Layer for background research. I could only get volumes 3-5, but I didn't feel like I was missing too much, and, well... It's kind of stupid. Snarky thumbnail descriptions would include the post title (What just happened there? Well, the writer decided Misaki Wins basically...), or to be more thorough, "Intelligence, Experience, and Hard Work prove helpless against the power of Unearned Talent and Favoritism." Wonderful.

Also, and I think this is a broader complaint about CLAMP, but I have to wonder whether they've never seen an actual child or they just don't care. Five-year-olds are simply not capable of functioning like that, and to expect them to IRL is a big-time recipe for trouble (not that I think people take CLAMP that seriously, but still*). I suspect it has more to do with pandering to a target audience, and the whole thing is pretty much classifiable as "power fantasy for young girls who love dolls."

For my intended purpose of getting a better understanding of Ichiro, it's worth it, and even kind of fun (plus CLAMP's usual "look, pretty!"), but yeah...


*This is actually one of the reasons I don't want to have children myself; I don't think I could suspend my inability to suffer fools gladly to the point of having developmentally appropriate expectations of a child. Hell, I don't even have the proper patience with myself; I'll reminisce and, like, get upset about what a moron I was when I was five.

Comments

[branchandroot]

I think your thumbnails are dead on. Alas. The anime of Angelic Layer was, if possible, even weirder, since it involved, for the climax, Girl and her Mother beating each other up at great length, vicariously. /Great/ length. It's really kind of alarmingly brutal.

[foxinthestars]

Not nearly as disturbing as that, but I was also struck by the emphasis on loving the Angels---and apparently the best possible expression of love is to try your dangedest to break them. You invented incredibly maneuverable mind-controlled dolls for goodness sake! I'll grant this as one inevitable application, but the best and only one? Did I miss other things done with Angels in the first two volumes? (Doll theater, for example, seems equally inevitable.)