Takaya Natsuki - Phantom Dream, vol. 01-02 (Eng. trans.)

[oyceter]

Otoya Tamaki is the son of a family destined to battle jaki, evil emanations/spirits that arise out of humans' negative emotions. Volume 1 is mostly one-shots about assorted jaki, with a chapter or two at the end that kicks off the main plot. I think the main plot concerns a rival family, branch families unconvinced of Tamaki's suitability as the successor of the family, finding your important person to protect, and the power of love. I am not actually sure, however.

This is Takaya Natsuki's first series, and it shows. There is none of the character design or the elegant paneling that is so integral to Fruits Basket, nor is there any of the pacing or choosing dramatic reveals over piling on information. On the other hand, although you have to work extremely hard to excavate the plot, the character development, and the world building, what's there underneath all the bad art is very interesting.

For one, the innocent, loving shoujo heroine, who is very Tohru-like, is having sex with the hero. In his house. With his mother's approval! I realize this is not surprising for many teenagers, but it's a fairly large departure from shoujo tropes. rachelmanija hadn't even realized it at all and didn't quite believe me until I showed her a few panels with the two naked in bed together.

RACHEL: I thought it was metaphoric nudity!
ME: Metaphoric nudity rarely has nipples.
RACHEL: It was just so unexpected that my brain just didn't register it!

Other themes seem to be how generations of dysfunction mess people up, dysfunctional family relationships, and how we are strengthened by finding an important person to protect or by never trying to kill the part of ourselves that loves someone. It feels very much like a thematic precursor to Fruits Basket, only with a lot more magic, monks, avatar animals, and evil spirits. And did I mention the bad art?

In fact, the art and the character design is so bad that I frequently couldn't tell characters apart, which made it ten times more difficult to work out the already complicated plot. There are three characters with short blond hair, maybe two with long wavy blond hair, and several characters that look like two different people, depending on the angle. Tamaki's mother has a low ponytail that frequently disappears when you view her face head-on, which makes her look like someone with short black hair at particular angles.

Small spoilers

It was so bad that Rachel was reading in bed and exclaimed, "[Name] just got his arm lopped off!"

Two seconds later: "Oh wait, I guess that wasn't him. He just showed up with his arm, so it must have been someone who looked like him."

Two more seconds later: "It actually was him! He had just regenerated his arm! I am so confused."

Also, as mentioned previously, there is absolutely no attempt at pacing. Instead, Takaya simply throws information and terms at the reader randomly, and frequently doesn't bother to explain or introduce the first five terms before piling on ten more (and I'm fairly sure they are terms Japanese audiences would have to remember as well, such as the names of avatars, different family names, the names of different power levels, and the names of weapons). And to top everything off, each page is so visually crowded that it only adds to the information overload.

Still, I think I'm going to end up reading more, just to see where she's going with the plot.

Comments

[larryhammer]

I bounced off the first volume, when I tried it. The art and (especially) character designs left me too whirly with confusion to keep up with it.

If the larger plot gets more interesting, though, I may try it again.

---L.

[oyceter]

Yeeeaaaah... I would recommend holding off for now. The art is really so bad! And I'm hanging in there more for the glimmers of potential, as opposed to something substantively good.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I think I will let you read more and tell me about it rather than reading it myself!

[oyceter]

That is probably an excellent idea! Ha, not that this is very high on my tachiyomi list...

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

Oh, volume 2 is out? Yay!

I like the thematic similarities to Fruits Basket, since I find it interesting to see how Takaya-sensei developed her approach to them, but it's really not subtle. Right now I'm interested in the fact that Those With Wings doesn't seem to have much thematic overlap so far, but Dream and FB and Hoshi wa Utau all seem to. (I'm also increasingly amazed at how solid FB was right off the bat, since I didn't think the first [double] volume of TWW was much stronger than Dream.)

The really obviously sexual nudity startled me too, since most of the characters who're explicitly lovers in FB had such incredibly mild sexual contact where the readers could see.

The terminology issue turned out to be more difficult than I was hoping when vol. 1 was being worked on--some of the mystical terms (I gather) might translate fairly tidily, but others seemed not to, and it seemed like a bad idea to translate some and not others. (By the time "jaki", "jashin", and "shugoshi" all seemed to not translate smoothly there didn't seem to be much point in, say, calling the juzu beads a "rosary", even without the Catholic implications in North America.) Add that to the lack of any empty space ANYWHERE to put notes, and it got a bit complicated. >.> But I am so glad we didn't try to translate "jaki" directly, since it turned out to mean something a bit different in vol. 2 than it initially seemed to in vol. 1.

Personally, I find the story gets less confusing as the series goes on, but I've only read through vol. 3. The influx of new mystical terms seems to have slowed dramatically, though, which is good.

[oyceter]

Oh! I didn't realize you were doing this one! Cool.

Yeah, my impression was that all the terms would be confusing anyway, even in English, just because they seem to mean such specific things in the world.

I started reading some of TWW, and nothing caught me... the art is just as bad, although there are fewer of the issues with terminology. And even though it touches on different themes, I wasn't particularly interested in those themes! Or possibly I just didn't hit the part where there's an actual plot arc, as opposed to one-offs. And I wanted more about the relationship between Kotobuki and Raimon; they seemed to partner up waaay too quickly.

But yeah, I'm really amazed FB looks and reads the way it does, unless TWW somehow magically improves later on. Because the difference is really very stunning.

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

Yep! And being such a Takaya fangirl, I'm inordinately happy about it. *^^*

I do think they're very specific. The translated options we had for, say, "jaki" were "evil spirit" and "demon", neither of which really works, and "shugoshi" seems to be a very particular type of exorcist (or a title), rather than just corresponding to the word. And then "higoshi" just unpacks to something like "defenders of the shugoshi", and on and on it goes. Whee!

So far TWW isn't doing a whole lot for me (although I still wish I'd gotten to work on it. ^^;), but I'm hoping to find it more engaging as it settles into the story. I trust her not to keep it too episodic, so it may go somewhere more interesting.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that Fruits Basket was one of those once in a lifetime achievements, but that doesn't mean I respect her work on it any less. No one gets to be that brilliant all the time.

[oyceter]

*nods* I haven't been keeping up with Hoshi wa Utau (up to v. 3), but I do think it has a lot of potential. Maybe it is not paced as well as FB because it's starting with the angst very soon, but I'm really intrigued by the seeming lack of magic and I love the heroine's angst.

[hysteriachan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think the pacing has a lot to do with why I'm not connecting as well with Hoshi wa Utau as I'd like, but I'm very curious to see how it plays out.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

*skips spoilers due to not having read vol 2 yet*

My reaction to the nudiy was "no what wait really?" Then I remembered that it's implied in Fruits Basket that 2 charcters were having sex at I think 14...

[oyceter]

Yes! And I do not disapprove of teenage sex at all; it is just so not the norm in shoujo this early on in a series that I was very surprised. I mean, usually when you see it in shoujo, it's many volumes into a relationship and it's a Big Plot Point, not something just floating around in the background. I like it though; it's very refreshing.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I'm not sure what i think about it yet beyond it being proto!Fruits Basket, but I do like that it starts with them already in a relationship that seems fairly secure, with the complication being that his family will make him marry someone else, even though that isn't a preferred plot of mine. I'm curious to see how Tsubasa: Those With Wings is.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

...I still can't believe that I assumed the sex was metaphoric!

[oyceter]

I do not blame you! It is not the sort of thing one expects on the tenth page of a series by the Fruits Basket mangaka... even if Furuba does have some scenes of its own (though not in v. 1).