Initial fraction
Sep. 21st, 2009 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraI was overseas and in a manga shop, and mentioned that I was eagerly awaiting v5 of Pluto.
Counter guy: Oh. That came in yesterday morning.
Me (turning to look at shelves expectantly): Ooh.
Counter guy: And sold out by the end of the day. It’s our most popular title.
Me (exhibiting a broad and deep vocabulary): Oh, man.
Counter guy (quite possibly just toying with me): Would you like to buy the volume I read once lightly on the train home last night?
Me (not actually lunging): Yes please.
And it was very good.
Pluto. This series is much tighter than Monster, and yet the whole story’s so lightly told – amazing example of getting so much (story, character, emotion) across in a very small space. I have very little idea where it’s going (volume 4 had an event that completely flat-footed all my expectations), but I’m enjoying it a lot.
20th Century Boys. I really want v5 to come out, because then I can watch the first movie. Very, very good, and I love that we’re going further forward in time as well as back. Also, Kenji in a pink rabbit suit is surprisingly attractive (okay, the panel where he’s getting changed out of it, but that actually sounded more dodgy). And the building a giant robot by committee sequence was brilliant.
Ooku. This looks absolutely gorgeous and has a great set-up – it’s set in an AU historical Japan, where a plague wipes out much of the male population, and women take over leadership roles, so there is a female Shogun, who has an inner chamber (Ooku) of attractive, guarded, men… It’s let down by a teeth-grindingly off-key translation, which has thee and thou and forsooth all over the place but inconsistently, with "you" and "thou" in the same sentence, and as Yoshinaga's stuff has a lot of talking it's painful and hard to settle into.
My current main sources of manga are on-line ordering and attending international conferences (at the most recent one, my hotel was two blocks away from the manga shop, which was also having a 25% off sale). The latter is certainly effective but leads to moments of panic when I show up at the airport with 17 more books (volumes, whatever) than I left with, and have to put my suitcase on the scales. This time I was 400g under, thus demonstrating my remarkable restraint... and the fact that the manga shop was out of volumes 1-4 of Oishinbo.
(I did pick up v5. It was good.)
Counter guy: Oh. That came in yesterday morning.
Me (turning to look at shelves expectantly): Ooh.
Counter guy: And sold out by the end of the day. It’s our most popular title.
Me (exhibiting a broad and deep vocabulary): Oh, man.
Counter guy (quite possibly just toying with me): Would you like to buy the volume I read once lightly on the train home last night?
Me (not actually lunging): Yes please.
And it was very good.
Pluto. This series is much tighter than Monster, and yet the whole story’s so lightly told – amazing example of getting so much (story, character, emotion) across in a very small space. I have very little idea where it’s going (volume 4 had an event that completely flat-footed all my expectations), but I’m enjoying it a lot.
20th Century Boys. I really want v5 to come out, because then I can watch the first movie. Very, very good, and I love that we’re going further forward in time as well as back. Also, Kenji in a pink rabbit suit is surprisingly attractive (okay, the panel where he’s getting changed out of it, but that actually sounded more dodgy). And the building a giant robot by committee sequence was brilliant.
Ooku. This looks absolutely gorgeous and has a great set-up – it’s set in an AU historical Japan, where a plague wipes out much of the male population, and women take over leadership roles, so there is a female Shogun, who has an inner chamber (Ooku) of attractive, guarded, men… It’s let down by a teeth-grindingly off-key translation, which has thee and thou and forsooth all over the place but inconsistently, with "you" and "thou" in the same sentence, and as Yoshinaga's stuff has a lot of talking it's painful and hard to settle into.
My current main sources of manga are on-line ordering and attending international conferences (at the most recent one, my hotel was two blocks away from the manga shop, which was also having a 25% off sale). The latter is certainly effective but leads to moments of panic when I show up at the airport with 17 more books (volumes, whatever) than I left with, and have to put my suitcase on the scales. This time I was 400g under, thus demonstrating my remarkable restraint... and the fact that the manga shop was out of volumes 1-4 of Oishinbo.
(I did pick up v5. It was good.)
no subject
Date: 2009-09-21 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-22 11:29 am (UTC)Actually, they're usually pretty good about 1kg over. I've had to pay for 5kg over (hand luggage also pushing border!), and I'm still traumatised by the time when I turned up at the airport and found I was 20kg over the weight limit (I was moving countries and in deep denial about how heavy my suitcase was!). They gave me a student weight allowance, which got me an extra 15kg, but I had to dump shoes, toiletries, notepads etc (and then keep trudging back to the scales) in order to make the weight.