Minekura Kazuya - Saiyuki Reload, vol. 08-09 (Eng. trans.)
Sun, Jan. 25th, 2009 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterI barely remember volume 8, which acts largely as a bridge between 7 and 9, to provide enough time between Sanzo leaving the ikkou and their reunion so that the reunion is meaningful. I was glad that we get a female character, but sad that she serves as shorthand for Goku's interest in the female sex.
But volume 9! Oh! I am still not interested much in Hazel as a character, but as a misguided villain, he's great. The Burial arc type flashback for him made me fear for and fear him, and oh, Ukoku really does corrupt everything he touches, doesn't he? I think Goku would understand that the point isn't that the plant dies, but that it lives before it dies. But I love all the mentor-student relationships, the rabbit in the moon and the crows in the sun, the ever-present darkness battling forever with the memory of the moon and the rising of the sun.
I love muichi motsu and killing the Buddha and the patriarch but not dying before your friends, running from life when it is too much to bear only to find a hand reaching out toward you at the end of the road, the same hand that you once lifted out of bondage and out of solitude into a world of grumpy priests and not-entire-sane comrades. Just.. the hands! Oh, the hands!
(Though I had a hard time figuring out if it was Goku, because his old frilly wristband things have now lost their frills. But it couldn't have been anyone but Goku, not really.)
I love that it had to be now, that it couldn't have happened before, because all of them had to abandon the group, had to lose their sanity or their hope before Sanzo could, that Sanzo could climb out of rock bottom because he had helped the rest of them find their way as well. Because it's no longer his ikkou, but all of theirs, and because of "Who cares?"
This was so worth the wait.
But volume 9! Oh! I am still not interested much in Hazel as a character, but as a misguided villain, he's great. The Burial arc type flashback for him made me fear for and fear him, and oh, Ukoku really does corrupt everything he touches, doesn't he? I think Goku would understand that the point isn't that the plant dies, but that it lives before it dies. But I love all the mentor-student relationships, the rabbit in the moon and the crows in the sun, the ever-present darkness battling forever with the memory of the moon and the rising of the sun.
I love muichi motsu and killing the Buddha and the patriarch but not dying before your friends, running from life when it is too much to bear only to find a hand reaching out toward you at the end of the road, the same hand that you once lifted out of bondage and out of solitude into a world of grumpy priests and not-entire-sane comrades. Just.. the hands! Oh, the hands!
(Though I had a hard time figuring out if it was Goku, because his old frilly wristband things have now lost their frills. But it couldn't have been anyone but Goku, not really.)
I love that it had to be now, that it couldn't have happened before, because all of them had to abandon the group, had to lose their sanity or their hope before Sanzo could, that Sanzo could climb out of rock bottom because he had helped the rest of them find their way as well. Because it's no longer his ikkou, but all of theirs, and because of "Who cares?"
This was so worth the wait.