(And if anyone wants an invite code, I’ve got a bunch, just say the word.)

( Spoilers, of course )

( Eh. )

So, in general, I thought the anime was fun in places and not dreadful, but I definitely won’t be re-watching it.

Want another manga issue now, please.

Contemplating this, however, made me think about a few white authors who did manage to get something right and keep their awareness live. And I wanted to document them as examples and possibly useful starting points for authors who wish to likewise learn to keep their pants up. I am in no way suggesting that any of them Got It Right, since I don’t think any author ever manages that on any issue, but these are a few who got something right.

( Hambly, Weber and Clayton, oh my )

So what about you? Are there any authors you would point to who get something right?

Spoilers follow.

The plot is fairly standard “save the world by fighting monsters and the Other Side who is sending them” fare. Hung on the plot, however, are some very tasty character dynamics. We have the hero (kind of), Akira, who’s a pretty-boy slacker thug, kind of like Ichigo redrawn as a gen-x cliche, and the reincarnation of a high spiritual entity. Only he doesn’t remember a lick of it. We have his dippy boy sidekick, Kengo, who can get a bit annoying but is probably the nicest person in the whole cast. We have the amazingly non-token-like girl, Aya, a prefect, disciplinary committee, kendo club (I think Hibari would like her) who smacks sense into Akira because she’s the one who actually gets how important this all is and what fighting spirit is all about. We have Akira and Kengo’s older buddy Kou, the hentai who tries to grope Aya and gets righteously beaten up for it and who is, incidentally, the otherworldly liege man of Akira’s past self. We have our anti-hero (kind of) Shirogane, the counterpart high spiritual entity who drags Akira into all this, most likely has an agenda of his own, and really, really demonstrates the adage “it’s always the nice ones you have to watch out for”. Also with long, long silver hair, just to round off the tastiness.

While there are some bobbles starting out, as the characters are settling into their narrative relationships to one another, they develop very nicely. Akira and Kengo are unspeakably teenage boy like and have fist fights to show their affection. Aya is clearly not a romantic interest of anyone yet, which makes my heart sing even when she isn’t very competently slicing up the landscape with a sword. The tension between Akira and Shirogane, made up of the secrets Shirogane keeps, the way he cares for Akira, the almost-student-mentor bond they develop, and the yet unknown relationship Shirogane had with Ryuuko, Akira’s past self, is simply delicious. It’s garnished delightfully with the tension between Shirogane and Kou, neither of them trusting the other with Akira but both bound to a sort of alliance through Akira.

And there’s a totally psychotic villain and at least one character on his side whose allegiance and actions are shrouded in mystery, which always makes things interesting.

The anime, alas is utter trash. I say this with great woe, because Suwabe Junichi voices Shirogane, and I was hoping for better. But no, not only does it devolve into total crack (I mean, overtops tenipuri level crack), not only does it make Shirogane into a wuss and Aya into a wimp (unforgivable), it entirely reorganizes the storyline into dreadfully cliche sentai shenanigans and thereby surgically removes all the dramatic tension. It cranks up Akira and Shirogane’s relationship to bona fide BL, though without any real emotional or even eyecandy payoff, but after the delicate tension between them that the manga sustains it’s way too slapstick to do anything but roll one’s eye s over.

So read the manga, don’t touch the anime.

( Spoilers ensue )

So if those things have been altered in the anime Ciel, I don’t think I’ll find him nearly as fascinating. And if they haven’t been altered, then the ending won’t fit at all, which is always distressing.

Well, minus the filler arcs that roll back character development.

But reading the latter two thirds of the manga, I’m convinced that Takahashi didn’t actually know where he wanted to go for the first third. That he hadn’t yet decided exactly who or what the puzzle spirit was. It wasn’t until he hit on the card game that he really locked in and started to create a coherent meta-story. That’s the point at which the games stop being so deadly a case of instant karma, the weighing-and-testing aspect of them becomes more a matter of trial by combat, and the whole story becomes less ambiguous-horror and more typical shounen-fight.

It shows in the drawing style, too. Styles always change over time, of course, but the early manga puzzle spirit is drawn scary. He looks like he’s absolutely psychotic. Once past the crossover of Death-T, he becomes far more classically shounen-heroic.

So when the second series anime starts with the cards, reduces the early games (and the grievousness of their results), skips Death-T and re-casts Kaiba’s entry into events in the “trial by combat” pattern that the later manga established, that may actually be the truest interpretation of Takahashi’s project.

I still wish, wistfully, that they had kept Ogata Megumi as the voice of the puzzle spirit, though.

This is, after all, why I own three quarters of everything Mercedes Lackey has ever published.

But, first off, id-candy is a different thing from good writing. The joybuttons don’t care about bad grammar or triteness or slop, they just resonate to the character shapes that hit one’s kinks. Kinks are often trite and cliche, when you think about it. Id-candy is enjoyable exactly because it doesn’t make your brain engage, it doesn’t deal in subtleties, it doesn’t make you do any work. To get enjoyment out of genuinely artful prose, you generally have to think, to ponder even, to put in some work.

Saying that you enjoy your id-candy immensely and saying that your id-candy is great writing are very different statements. Among other things, the first is true and the second generally isn’t. (Unless you’re using a completely Utilitarian definition of “good”, and when people try to compare Rowling and Tolkien it is unfortunately clear that they are not employing such a definition at all.)

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying the hell out of trite, cliched slop, of course.

Let us consider Misty, for example. She’s the Queen of Exposition, has a tendency to extremely moralistic and preachy narrative, and drives home her morals with a ten pound sledge. She is guilty of the most egregious cultural flattening and caricaturization and the only thing that comforts me even minutely is that she does it to everyone, whitebread, ‘noble savage’ and orientalist alike. (I maintain that Ancient Egypt should take out a restraining order on the woman.) Her characters are flat, their angst is repetitive, and half the time the stories read like SCA handbooks instead of novels.

Nevertheless–three quarters, right there on my shelf, and I reread handfuls of them at fairly regular intervals. This is because they are excellent brain-fluff emoporn.

Also because they are not toxic. Her moralism can get wearing awfully fast, but at least they are morals I can agree with. Mostly.

That’s the second thing. You have to be careful of the id-candy that uses a moral framework that’s harmful to you.

The Twilight books are a prime example of this. The writing is no worse than most id-candy, but the value system those books are hung on is poison. It’s misogynist, racist, deterministic, conflates obsession and stalking with love, and runs the mobius strip of nihilism and femininity myths at full speed with special emphasis on death by/for childbirth. (I would not want to be this woman’s therapist, not without hazard pay). This id-candy has a razor blade in it.

Some people probably bemoan the loss of innocent fun now that we chop up Halloween candy before eating it to make sure there aren’t any evil surprises in it. I expect some people feel the same about their id-candy. But, you know, I’d much rather take the time to chop and evaluate than swallow a needle.

Not only do we have the experiment at Crunchyroll.net, the new Fullmetal Alchemist series is being streamed, subbed, a bit less than a week after each episode airs, at Funimation.com. Having watched it, I think it may be worth waiting a few days for. The quality of translation is actually higher than the fansubs that came out more quickly. (And thank goodness the commercial concerns have finally figured out that sub fans tend to prefer minimal ‘cultural translation’.)

Presumably this is supposed to pay for itself via advertising, kind of like network television, and also provide a market draw for the permanent media (download and dvd) sales. I hope it works out, because this seems to me to be a very positive direction for anime distribution to take. Certainly the approach of licensing for permanent media distributed months or years after the series airs and is fansubbed has signally, and predictably, failed. A prompt, high quality, free release in a medium not easily recordable, certainly not at anything approaching original quality, followed by reasonably prompt sale of individual episodes alongside dvd collections has certainly worked for domestic television shows. I see no reason it shouldn’t work as well for anime.

For those who want to watch these versions, bookmark the show page.

Spoilers ahead, of course.

She had an opportunity to do some really good character interaction and development, here, and she made it about halfway. Bianchi, as the voice of older experience, provides a frame for the idiocy the boys have recently been displaying; through her eyes we see all the younger characters in perspective, with sympathy for their emotional dilemmas and uncertainties but also a clear understanding that they are acting foolishly and immaturely. Through Bianchi’s prodding, Tsuna actually gets his head out of his ass and realizes that he’s been very selfish in his attempts to ‘shelter’ the girls, and tells Kyouko what’s going on. Kyouko, in her turn, provides some much needed insight into the relation between Tsuna and his box. This is all lovely, and pretty sophisticated narrative.

Unfortunately, it’s undercut by the other things going on this issue.

The most bizarre one is the juxtaposition of explicit fanservice, in The Bath Scene, with Bianchi’s mature-person explanation. The combination of the wound over Chrome’s back and the shot of her bare ass was especially peculiar. Through the whole thing, over against the emotional and psychological complications, we have the kind of deliberate full-body nudity shots one expects to find at the start of an ecchi manga. The text-subtext clash was weird and distracting, and I have to wonder why Amano chose that particular setting and emphasis. Bathing scenes can be done in a non-fanservice way easily enough. Why did this moment of wisdom and insight need to be so explicitly sexualized, hm?

Then there’s the girls’ reaction to Bianchi’s explanation, which boils down to “Yes, the boys are being selfish and immature, but they’re manly to do so; let’s not try to hold them accountable any more and instead continue to enable their domestic helplessness”. Once again, the girls’ actions get used as comedy and not to actually spur significant action or development. Bianchi has to lie about what’s really happening to spark Tsuna’s realizations, which has the structural effect of emphasizing only his emotional growth. This badly undercut Kyouko’s display of insight regarding the Vongola box; I was very disappointed, because her character deserves better than to be a two dimensional yamato nadeshiko.

I didn’t find the aforementioned domestic helplessness particularly amusing, either. The reinforcement of exclusive gendered spheres makes me gag. The events of this issue would make a perfect set-up for allowing both the boys and the girls to learn and contribute a little something across those lines, but I do not, for one instant, believe Amano will take the opportunity. The way she handled this issue indicates nothing but a desire to wear the main characters even deeper into their gendered segregation.

Amano, get a grip on your Issues, please.