Yuki Kaori - Parfum Extrait 0 (Chi. trans.)

[oyceter]

Saikawa Kanade and his half-Japanese, half-French cousin Anais solve three perfume-related mysteries. I feel this plot seems deceptively simple compared to the tangles in Angel Sanctuary and Cain Saga/Godchild, but given that it's only a one shot, what can you do?

I was bored a little by Kanade, despite his angsty backstory rivalry with a fellow perfumer, but I love Anais. She is half-French so Yuki Kaori has an excluse to give her blond hair and blue eyes*, and amazingly, there are no incestuous vibes between her and Kanade, despite the fact that they aren't actually related by blood (she's his aunt's stepdaughter). She is grumpy and tall and beats people up and glares sullenly from the cover. I wanted to get more backstory about her childhood bond with Kanade, but only tidbits for me.

Sadly, the crack is not quite up to normal Yuki Kaori levels, though there are goth girls, dead bodies galore, lots of evil women, and an evil MTF to boot. Oh Yuki Kaori, why?

Still, the art is gorgeous and there are enough cracktastically insane bits to please me, but it's definitely not among her more memorable pieces of work.


* I do not understand all these half-Continental-European characters running around in manga and anime and how they all have blond hair and blue eyes. I mean, obviously there is no set way to look if one is half-Asian and half-European, but it'd be nice if one of these half-Continental-European characters had brown hair and brown eyes for once.


ETA: I am going to the comic book store tomorrow, so tell me what in Yuki Kaori's backlist I should get! (Besides the rent boy serial killer one, which is, uh, already on the list.) Bonus points for letting me know if the plot involves crazy terminology like "organic angels," which will be a little confusing in Chinese.

Comments

[snarp]

(Repost because I fail at formatting.)

Neji is very uneven - I think there was some sort of big time gap partly through its publication, because there's a sudden huge shift in the art style. It is sci-fi and contains all the expectable Kaori Yuki things, like dead people coming back to life in ways that don't work out well for anyone, and evil women and dead girls.

it'd be nice if one of these half-Continental-European characters had brown hair and brown eyes for once.

I have found two (2) examples of dark-haired mixed-race manga people ever, one being Clow Reed (the CCS version) and the other being a guy in Yuu Watase's Sakura Gari. (Also I just wrote a big long meandering thing analyzing this phenomenon.)

[oyceter]

Oh, interesting! I just got it, but haven't opened it to flip through the art yet.

Clow Reed is mixed-race? Interesting! (I haven't read CCS.) I mean, I don't mind the blond hair and blue eyes, it's just... it would be nice to acknowledge that mixed-race people have a variety of looks!

I can't remember if Asuka in EVA is mixed race or not, but she has red hair...

[snarp]

CCS!Clow is English-Chinese, as you can totally tell from his name. Totally. CLAMP thinks you can tell. I don't remember how/why he was connected to Japan, which is where CCS takes place.

(Read CCS! Everyone should read CCS! It's great! Sometimes it's icky. But mostly it's great!)

[oyceter]

Bwahahahaha! Um. At least he is not named like the Death Note characters?