Sakura of DOOM

Several people reading this is making me want to catch up too!

I figure the cut-tag text is not spoilery if you are reading shounen...

( Spoilers face even bigger bads! )

OMG. I have been down with this stupid cold for a good week now, after trying to sleep it off Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and I am still tired and stuffed up and my throat hurts so much sometimes that I dread swallowing. I just want to run around flapping my hands at it telling it to just let me get better kthxbai. Or at least let me breathe unhindered?

In other news, I wasted the entire weekend by sleeping through most of it and reading trashy books when I wasn't sleeping.

Happy birthday, coffeeandink! I hope the year to come has lots of good things in store.

At least this year I'm getting it out before Chinese New Year! Though that's mostly because it's super late this year...

As usual, these are my favorites out of the sequential art I've read this year, as opposed to what came out this year. The "new-to-me" series aren't actually always new to me; some series in particular are on the list because though I started the series earlier, what I read this year was enough to put them on my favorites list.

I was pretty terrible about writing things up this year, thanks to grad school getting increasingly busy every semester. If it's linked, I wrote it up, but feel free to ask in comments about anything!

Overall, I largely paused in my attempt to read more manhua, as there's still not very much being published in Taiwan right now, and the quality isn't so great. I am so sad there has been nothing new by Nan Gong Yu! At least I saw her series running in a magazine, so I'm fairly sure she's still writing. Just... very slowly?

I also read much less new stuff, at least, that's how I feel. I started two massive rereads during the summer (FMA and Fruits Basket), and mostly I was looking for rereading or at least a continuation of a series I knew thanks to my brain being extremely worn out by school. I also went on a brief superhero comics run to find out what happens to Catwoman; unfortunately, aside from Selina's Big Score, which I loved (and which started me on said spree), the rest largely reconfirmed that I'm not much of a superhero comics fan.

( Favorite new-to-me series )

( Also recommended )

( Favorite ending series )

( Favorite continuing series )

Total: 236 (74 rereads)

( All sequential art read in 2009 )

Joy Kim recently posted on female friendships in shoujo, and I found myself doing a lot of "It's not shoujo, but..." Ergo, another list!

What are good manga series that respect and celebrate female friendships? And because it's so rare to find in manga, good manga series that respect and celebrate female romances as well?

Since Joy's list has the shoujo series, anything but shoujo here!

Here are some of mine:

Azumanga Daioh, by Azuma Kiyohiko - Not only is there a LOT of female friendship in this, there are only two or three male characters I can think of. And out of those, only one is human!

Claymore, by Yagi Norihiro - Like AzuDai, the ratio of female to male characters is heavily weighted toward the women. I love that the series takes all my favorite shounen tropes—being willing to literally give your comrades your arm, "I will get stronger to protect my precious people!," "I must defeat you one-on-one to prove my strength!," and camaraderie in the face of near-impossible odds—and gives almost all the major roles to the women, leaving the few men to be damsels in distress, comic sidekicks, or villains. There is so much depth to all the relationships among women in this series.

Emma, by Mori Kaoru - Although the driving plot is het romance, I love the many secondary female characters, from Mrs. Stowner to Aurelia and Mrs. Meredith's friendship to Emma's friendship with the maids to Eleanor and her sisters to Eleanor and Grace to Grace and Vivian. I particularly appreciate the many age ranges of the female characters.

Gunslinger Girls, by Aida Yu - Possibly controversial, as Aida also did the character designs for a hentai game that I think eroticizes underaged girls. But I very much love the bonding among all the little cyborg girl assassins and how they are each others' only family, makeshift though it may be.

Yotsuba&!, by Azuma Kiyohiko - There's the Ayase sisters and Mom, Ena's friend Miura, and Asagi's friend Torako. And, of course, Yotsuba! I like very much that the friendships are between sisters, mother and daughters, and across quite a few ages as well.

Sadly, I have read next to no yuri. Erica Sakurazawa is a bit hit-or-miss for me, and the Utena manga is nowhere near as awesome as the anime. There was a super-cute (and very NSFW) all-color yuri romance that I think octopedingenue recced to me, and I know I've seen several mentions of Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl and Maria-sama ga Miteru on my reading list. And, of course, Rose of Versailles, which I also haven't read.

Although I think both Naruto and Bleach have some great female friendships, what I've read of the series constantly underprivileges the female relationships for het romances or for the male friendships and rivalries, which is why I'm leaving them off this list. And though I love Urasawa, he tends to do the "single girl/woman." His female characters are frequently awesome, but they're also almost always the lone woman in a world of men.

Julian Southwood, Earl of Erith, will stop at nothing to be the next keeper of notorious courtesan Olivia Raines. Blah di blah notorious rake blah di blah courtesan's heart at risk blah di blah he will show her greater pleasure than she has ever known.

I am not sure why I keep picking up Anna Campbell, given that I threw Claiming the Courtesan and Untouched against walls after getting halfway through and two chapters through, respectively. Rape! Amazingly not sexy or romantic!

But I'm glad I did, because this book went completely against my expectations.

( Minor spoilers )

I very much enjoyed that the book had a heroine with tons more angst than the hero, that the emphasis was on the hero learning to be not an alpha male, and that the hero's dead wife was not denigrated to make Olivia his One True Love. Again, it's sad that I'm amazed that the book acknowledges you can be in love for reals more than once in your life, but there you have it.

Unfortunately, the book loses steam around the 3/4s mark, and to generate more conflict, Campbell comes up with something that feels entirely out of character for Olivia and throws in bonus class issues and the couple from a previous book to boot. It's not enough to ruin the book for me, but I do wish it had ended more strongly.

Still, very interesting. So. Is it worth it for me to try Untouched again? (I hate the whole "I will totally assume you are an evil whore!" thing) How about Captive of Sin? (I am wary of PTSD from the hero's time in India and the Indian secondary character.) I'm still not trying Claiming the Courtesan again, as I was halfway through that and just hated the hero more and more as the book went on.

So the first day I got back from Taiwan, I had a bowl of soup... and then promptly threw it back up. Thankfully, I was able to keep down some egg cakes and therefore crossed out the Dread Wiscon Stomach Flu, but my stomach was really not too happy for a few days after.

Also, my netbook has been infected by the Antivirus Live virus. I am going to try uninstalling it before wiping the entire hard drive, especially because my disc with Windows XP on it may be somewhere in Taiwan.

California is getting flooded right now, and I have zero appreciation for the rain given that I have to walk a mile to school every morning. My umbrella has turned inside-out 6 times already. And alas, wearing rain boots doesn't help much when the rain is coupled with giant gusts of wind, nor does taking a bus over walking, as I discovered yesterday while waiting half an hour outside for a bus that never came.

On the plus side, jet lag is making me wake up at 6 in the morning! Very handy for 9am class.

(transliterations taken from Wiki, as doing the Chinese-to-Japanese-to-English transliteration is a bit beyond me)

Do I even need to do a plot summary for this? Anyway. Tsukino Usagi is your normal 14-year-old girl: perpetually late for school, not too studious, and a bit of a klutz. Until one day she finds a talking cat, who then informs her that she is Sailor Moon, defender of love and justice, or some such.

I read bits of this back in eighth grade in the dentist's office when I was getting my braces tightened; the dentist only had pieces of the series, so all I remember is picking up whatever volume had the prettiest cover and reading it that way. I also used to watch episodes when they were on right after school. Even though my sister and I made terrible fun of the Chinese dub, how much of a cry baby Usagi was, and how boring the monsters of the week were, there was still enough to it to make me look up fanfiction back in high school.

Now that I've read the entire thing, I think it is a flawed series, but I can also see why it had such a following. The characterization is nearly non-existent; the inner guardian sailors outside of Usagi and Chibi Usagi are basically collections of random traits. Ami is smart and likes blue, Makoto loves baking, and etc. When we meet the outer guardians, things are much more interesting, although they still don't get as much time as I remember them getting in the anime.

And yet. Takeuchi has created an extremely compelling world and not fully filled it in (which is why I think it is so great for fic). There's reincarnation and flash forwards, and each additional story arc continues to expand the universe, both in terms of what we know of the past and what will happen in the future. I also forget how female-centric the series is when I'm reading; there are extremely few male characters, so much so that you don't even notice how female-centric it is because female is so much the default. There's also remarkably little about romance and much, much more about wanting to protect your most important people and the world.

( Spoilers for the first three arcs of the anime and the manga even though I feel a bit silly spoiler protecting for something this well known )

Overall, the series is both cool and frustrating; cool for all the ideas and concepts, and frustrating because I keep wanting characters and situations to be explored much more than they are.

I have been binging on romance novels ever since school got difficult, and thankfully, I managed to glom onto Mary Balogh, whom I haven't read before and has an extensive backlist I can dig into. I've previously picked up her books before, but was unimpressed by the prose and dialogue, which tends to be fairly expository rather than lively. Balogh also tends to do giant series in which all the other protagonists show up, usually with lots of children.

However, she also writes non-alpha heroes and focuses a lot on the heroines, and for that, I will suffer through a lot of sequelitis. Plus, because I love many of her characters so much, I am less annoyed to see them show up happy (although the Bedwyns still grate on my nerves a bit). Balogh's heroes tend to be quiet and honor-bound, and even the rakes I've encountered have not been very rakish. They also usually fall in love, rather than lust, with the heroines, and I very much like that many of her books are about the heroines deciding if they will be able to live with the heroes, even if they are both in love. Her heroines also tend to get quiet angst and character development, as opposed to existing solely to nurse the hero through his angst, which I also approve of. I wish there would be a few more commoner heroes and titled heroines, as opposed to vice versa, but as I said, I will forgive a lot for romances that read like actual romances and make me believe the hero and the heroine are genuinely in love and will remain so.

( At Last Comes Love )

( A Precious Jewel )

( Simply Magic )

( Slightly Dangerous )

( Slightly Tempted )

( A Summer to Remember )

So what Balogh books do you guys rec, and which ones should I stay away from?

Back in Taiwan! Sadly, only here for another few days before school starts and I have to go back to the US.

三槍拍案驚奇/A Simple Noodle Story - 張藝謀/Zhang Yimou's newest movie, and a damn weird one too. It's based off of the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple, but from what rachelmanija says, this one is actually more Coen Brothers-esque than the original! A murder takes place in a tiny noodle shop in a deserted region of China, and half-hilarious, half-grotesque hijinks ensue. It has Zhang Yimou's now-signature color-coding and beautiful camera-work and all the violence and awkwardness of the Coen Brothers, with the addition of noodle throwing and a truly bizarre song-and-dance sequence at the end. I don't think I'd recommend it unless you're really up for something weird, and I'm still not sure I enjoyed it, but it was definitely an experience!

花木蘭/Mulan - With 趙薇/Zhao Wei/Vicki Zhao from 赤壁/Red Cliff (she played 孫尚香/Sun Shangxiang). An adaptation of the story of Hua Mulan, done with lots of extras, battles, and etc. I didn't remember much of the original poem at all when I watched this, save the loom and the twelve years, but it's interesting to see that the visit to the emperor is canonical! The beginning feels more like the Disney Mulan, though with less emphasis on the disappointment. I thought it was interesting that they still stuck with her sneaking off, especially since the press I've seen on this indicates that the director really wanted to make something different from the Disney version. However, most of the movie is not on Mulan's personal growth to accept who she is; rather, since she's in battle for twelve years, most of it is about her becoming a great general. The director also set this in the Wei Dynasty battling the Rouran nation (tribe? It feels weird using "nation" pre-nation-state-formation, but "tribe" feels so dismissive). Unsurprisingly, the Rouran are portrayed as more barbaric with furs and skins and such, but the movie mostly lays the blame on one Rouran ruler rather than all the people. And the Rouran princess was unexpectedly awesome and part of one of my favorite parts of the movie.

( Spoilers )

Overall, more character development and less wuxia than I had expected. Some pacing problems, but I enjoyed it a lot.

終極三國/K.O. 3anguo - OMG people. Someone in Taiwan has remade Romance of the Three Kingdoms as HIGH SCHOOL AU! Like, this was actually filmed! Since I was only able to get through 15 minutes of it, that is all I can report on. 關羽/Guan Yu and 張飛/Zhang Fei have been kicked out of way too many schools, and when they meet a guy named 劉備/Liu Bei, he promises he can get them in one. There are also four time travelers (don't ask me).

All seven of the guys I have met so far have distinctly different hairstyles, which is really an accomplishment in and of itself. It was very handy for character identification.

Also, Guan Yu presses a button on his watch to magically zap his weapon into existence.

And then, the time travelers drop a coin which ends up tipping over a boulder that squashes Liu Bei right after the three swear to be brothers. (Seriously, don't ask me.)

I am not even describing the extremely bizarre and strange sound effects, visual effects (picture the heads of Guan Yu and Zhang Fei on little cartoon bodies), and plot or complete lack thereof. And did I mention the time travelers? That's about when I stopped watching!

One of my friends says it is fairly popular in Taiwan. I am completely at a loss.

Sherlock Holmes - I succumbed and watched! It was suitably funny and snarky, though I didn't appreciate the totally-non-subtext of "Women ruin everything between two men!" I desperately wanted to love the Irene Adler character, but she needed a much better actress. They really should have cast someone with the chops to stand up to Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law, but sadly, they seem to have gone for looks instead. The movie also continues the rule that Satanism in fiction makes things funnier (thankfully, the movie was not very serious about the Satanism). And finally, although I am sure I will enjoy the snarky Holmes/Watson that fandom is inevitably writing right now, what I really want is fic with a much snarkier Irene Adler outwitting Holmes a lot.