(no subject)

We're just about to head off to Din Tai Fung for Shanghainese soup dumplings, but before I go...

Everyone, go take Rachel's poll.

As a bit of an explanation, we were looking through some of her Harlequins last night, wondering why all the Exoticised Ethnicities in the titles (The Greek's Secret Passion and In the Spaniard's Bed. These are real titles, by the way.) were Greek, Italian, Spanish, or Sheik. Yes, Sheik seems to be a minority.

And so, we started coming up with our own alliterative titles, which get progressively more on crack, because we are twelve.

Actually, I think doing this may have lowered my mental age to eight.

As you can all probably figure out, there was a whole lot of cackling involved. "Penurious? No, that's not romantic."

"How about: The Werewolf's Weeping Widow?"

"What's a country starting with W?"

"Uh......"

"Indian! We have to do Indian!"

"Indigenous Indian? Wait, wait! Infernal!"

"Ninjas! We must do ninjas!"

"Nerdy? Nincompoop? Argh!"

"Nasty! A nasty ninja!"

"Oh my god, I would totally read that."

"We have to include Africa! We must be equal opportunity!"

"The Ethnic Ethiopian's Eternal Embrace!"

"Oh my god, he's a vampire, like the Vietnamese one!"

Yes, my friends, this is what my SAT-enhanced vocabulary goes to.

Amakawa Shimizu - Cross, vol. 01 (Eng. trans.)

*points to icon*

My icon is even more appropriate for this manga than usual.

Cross is in the tradition of Yuki Kaori and CLAMP; that is to say, it is drenched with arcane Catholic and Kabbalistic imagery, a cracked out notion of Victoriana, black lace, poison, demons and lots and lots of crosses.

Amakusa Takara is a priest. A young, high-school priest who performs exorcisms. One day, he wanders into his father's cathedral (literally his father, as well as a priest, which will apparently be explained later), and finds a woman wrapped in a sheet on the pews. She lets the sheet drop, stands there in her underwear, and points out the strange Kabbalistic sign painted on her back by her evil, Satanic parents. Satanic as in: they worship Satan.

It's hard to describe just how very cracktastic this manga is. Every other page, there's something like an anti-cross with a serpent twined around it. On the serpent's head is "666." The Satanic rites. The voodoo doll that Takara's classmate has made using a magic nail. The half-naked women. The angelic nun. The fact that Shizuha (the half-naked woman) tells Takara that she realized that her parents were evil when they brought a man in to the hospital. Only the next day, the man had turned into.... (dun dun DUN!) a quivering lump of flesh.

Also, Takara's code name is "Cross."

This is because a small cross actually comes out of his forehead (dripping blood, of course), leaving a cross-shaped bruise.

To further illustrate, in the second half of the volume, the villain mutilates, disembowels and exsanguinates pigeons and cats to gain power and make herself more beautiful, because long ago, her cruel classmates threw sulfuric acid in her face.

I'm telling you, you can't make this stuff up.

Also, in the climactic battle with the villain, Takara manages to get himself tied up and beaten, in which the author juxtaposes this with a picture of an icon of Jesus on a cross. In case you don't get the symbolism, the next page features a bruised and bloodied Takara juxtaposed with a broken icon of Jesus on a cross.

The best part about all of this is that this is probably impeccably researched, complete with footnotes explaining the Kabbalistic symbols, the Hebrew, and scriptura that appears on Shizuha's body. Also, there's even a glossary in the back, explaining things like "amen" and "magic nail."

Oh wait, no! The best part is the author's notes! She says that she usually likes innocent yet sexy women, but in this case, she made her heroine an older schoolteacher. On this: "Hence, from the very beginning, the half-naked heroine. In chapter three, Takara's clothes are coming off too. This is my way." I love it! It's just like Watase Yuu and her reasoning behind Absolute Boyfriend -- "I had this picture of a pretty boy, naked, in a box, so I decided to create a manga series around it!"

Anyhow, Cross isn't actually good and cracktastic, the way Kaori Yuki or Laura Kinsale can be. But it is incredibly cracktastic, which is something in and of itself.