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

[la-vie-noire.livejournal.com]

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.

And the inverse happens in USA or European fiction.

I think that is exoticism playing. Like every Latin-american person has that typical 'not-so-dark skin with brown hair' look; even if European, Asian, and African descendants are as common as everyone here. I remember once reading someone saying that actors in telenovelas were 'all white people!' and I was like, "no, they aren't."

There is this need to define who 'the other' are. They can't look like 'us.'

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

There's one called Neji/Screw, which is very early and sf; there are scans but I've never read it. And there's a very creepy, bloody, disturbing series of fairytale retellings about a sadistic prince named Ludwig or Leopold or something who is clearly modeled on David Bowie.

[shati.livejournal.com]

If you haven't read it, Gravel Kingdom is worth it for the proto-Yuki -- the art is SO MESSY and the prince has a loyal bodyguard and there's angst and betrayal and I think a water goddess. Totally get the rentboy serial killer one; it is the most bizarre. Ludwig Revolution is Kaori Yuki + Grimm's, which is on the one hand a match made in Heaven and on the other hand kind of overkill (esp. in terms of treatment of female characters ...). Also I feel the leads are like a less interesting Cain and Riff. Also also, have you read Kaine, which is not Cain? It's the music one. I can't remember Neji/Screw or Cruel Fairytales very well at all, but Blood Hound might be worth reading for having a female protagonist (sadly, I didn't actually like her, or the vampires).

I just found out that my local library has both Godchild and Angel Sanctuary in the YA section. I can't decide whether this is awesome, or likely to lead to a lot of traumatized kids. Or both.

[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.)