Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

The other night, I noticed that I had a tennen tate-roll (just one, on the right). This reminded me, I don't know where the stereotype that such a 'do is sported by rich ladies (as exemplified by the source for the subject line, which applies just as well to me as to Ms. Azumano; also includes three-point ellipses, which are somewhat half-assed according to the Yuri Dōjō in a recent issue) originated. The only support that comes to mind is Ms. Daitokuji from PROJECT "A" KO, which was itself a parody (in her case, of a character from the original Macross, if memory serves; I never saw it anyway).

Closer to my heart is the much more commonly obvious trope of the character with a lot of melanin in the skin but not in the hair. (I call it a trope because it doesn't seem to appear in real life, except where darker hair has gone gray/white or has been artificially changed. I've never encountered any accounts of such localized albinism. It's probably also popular because of the abstraction needed to differentiate characters when all but one human race in the real world seem to have the-same-colored hair, a point that the Japanese unsurprisingly have a tradition of stylistically avoiding. Incidentally, I also have found myself unable to find reference information about races' physical characteristics on Wikipedia, which makes it difficult for me to check the authenticity of my work. On example that I don't plan to use but that has bothered me for a while: I don't recall having ever seen a man of American descent with facial hair. Is this genetic or cultural?) As far back in time as I've traced it (through idle thought, not actual research, as I don't know any good places to look for such information on Japanese media), there are two main possibilities:

1. Ms. "Storm" Munroe of Ame-comi fame. As Watsuki's liner notes often illustrate, these are well known in Japan (although not enough that she influenced him to use a similar character design in Ruro-Ken, even though, despite the fact that all but five of the characters in the 28 books are native Japanese, he goes quite far in variety, including at least a 1,000% range in height of grown men; maybe he was just too lazy to cut all that tone). Unless we can find someone way back there who was so direct about his influences, it would be pretty impossible to pin this one down.

2. The Dark Elves from Lodoss-tō Senki (an island whose name, despite the official Romanization, is spelled exactly the same as "Rhodes"). In case you were living under a rock in the '80s as I was, this series was a thinly veiled retelling of a Basic D&D campaign, as illustrated by the fact that the starting lineup consisted of six of the seven classes from the original "blue box" (excluding only the one that was stolen entirely from Tolkien's creation). Even back in those days, there was already the policy that the dark-skinned subraces of the good peoples are the evil ones, but D&D avoided some flak by saying the drow were actually black-skinned, not a human skin tone. Whether it's because they hadn't made that point yet or because of creative differences, that safety was not present in Lodoss, so (other than the being evil part) it translates just fine to humans in versions of the real world. This one could be easily confirmed or denied by asking someone who's actually watched the major Japanese animation and read Japanese comics from before that whether or not there were any examples then, but I don't think I know any such person.

By the way, in one of the extra stories from Sapphism, Ms. Lee (Ley?) tries to talk Ms. Yang down by telling her that her loss would devastate all the dark-skin fetishists. Of the examples given, I recognized only Akamatsu (no doubt due to my lack of attention to mainstream stuff), but all were called "-Sensei," so I imagine the other two are of the same ilk. But from what I've read of Akamatsu's, he's less so than I am: no major character in his first work, one who starts ranking at fifth-most-important then is displaced further by new ones in his second. As if it's not maniac enough already, my taste is mostly restricted to the illustrated versions, as in real life I'm more narcissistic, preferring my own two races (now that I've been out of high school long enough to break down my prejudice against non-white blood). I feel as if I don't much like real-world African features, which is a hell of a generalization considering that they're thought to be the oldest and thus now most diverse human race. (The aforementioned Ms. Munroe looks good, particularly with the 'do in the third movie.) I don't seem to have any such preconception about ladies of South Asian or American descent, probably because I don't see as much of them in American TV and movies.

In terms of more general tropes, is there some name for the one where the hero thinks up a clever plan but keeps it a secret from his friends in order to maintain audience suspense? I'd look around on the eponymous wiki, but from what I've seen it just seems to be a bunch of people typing whatever they feel like typing, so I'm not bothering to learn how to find things there.

We were hiding out in some Japanese school.

I remember almost nothing from this one, but it was a combination of Raki☆Sta (particularly the bit starting here) and another school series. (It's been so long, I've forgotten what the latter was.) I've never even read or watched the former, but it's one of the ones blitzcon told me he was going to show me long, long ago (but not early enough that I could actually get the videos), so I've been breaking my usual rule in its case. Consequently, most of my knowledge of it is from Ms.?† Maitake's illustrations and comics (although I haven't actually been reading the posts since I haven't even started the series yet), which is undoubtedly skewing my preconceptions of its content.

†You may remember that I fouled up a while back and that I later decided not to worry about it. I neglected to mention that Ms.? Maitake replied the very next day and pointed out that it was clearly stated on the site that duplicating things without permission was prohibited, which rather scuppered a post I'd made.

Meanwhile, when I contacted her/him to ask whether I could post direct links to individual posts, I decided to ask about her/his gender so I could address her/him less awkwardly, but she/he declined to say. (Japanese writers/illustrators sometimes take PNs that would suggest genders different from their own, but I've never seen anything proving that any have made false claims about this. Then again, nor do I have any proof that any Japanese comic writer/illustrator has ever been captured on camera (with the exception of Akamatsu, whose mug I do not fondly remember seeing, particularly considering that he's actually married to a lady who's more than 13 years his junior now), so that's hard to say with certainty, either. You can take this into account for my generalizations in the next paragraph.) I would tend to assume that she/he's a man like me due to the demographics (?) of what she/he seems to find interesting, but that's a bit of a disservice to Ms. Hayashiya, Ms. oneirotsai, and many others. Of course, in English, there aren't any honorifics‡ except title prefixes, so it doesn't make much difference; in Japanese, I've just been using speech patterns somewhere in-between.

I do find it interesting that I see ladies who draw stuff aimed at male audiences all the time (with Ms. Takahashi being the classic example), but never confirmed examples of men drawing stuff for ladies. (The fact that ladies draw lots of yuri, yet I never hear about men drawing much yaoi, is less surprising.) The closest I've seen is Fujieda, who has been suppressing his style (judging by Iono Sama Fanatics, his only independent work I've read) in various YuriHime Comics mooks (and of course the compilations), but although they always use feminine second-person pronouns, the content of even the main series is more moe than shōjo, so he's still a bit short of Jack Nicholson.

‡In my research for Projects Abdiel and Homuncupunk, I was surprised to find that in modern English, the one language I've encountered that has almost no ways of showing respect, we have retained the plural/formal singular objective from the early modern variety as our sole (before conjugation) second-person pronoun.

Japan has almost no devoutly religious people, but they love ceremonies, so they take the best holidays from wherever they can get them (mostly Shintō, Zen, and Catholicism). One example that I find amusing is that they go to Shintō shrines to celebrate the Chinese zodiac's changing of the guard on the Gregorian New Year. Of course, I don't follow any of those, so I'm more interested in entertaining traditions such as the hatsu-yume. For those of you who didn't watch AZUMANGA, there's apparently something significant about a dream that you remember on the night of the new year, often something to do with hawks and eggplants.

I was reminded of this by the extra booklet included with the January issue (despite amazon's numbering scheme) of Comic YuriHime, which included a lot of supernumerary stories with new-year themes. (The previous issues of it and S haven't arrived yet, so I decided to save those for later, but I'm not buying Wildrose, so I read the ones related to that. Only one of them had sex in it.) Unfortunately, I hadn't remembered at the actual time, so I've missed it this year as well. The night after Chinese New Year, I just had something about a bunch of humans traveling to an arboreal land of monsters.

Meanwhile, another benefit of this, as well as the fact that they don't have this weird Western idea that comics are supposed to be commentary on real life, is that they can write stories were organized religion is the bad guys without getting in trouble. Oddly, I don't seem to remember many that would be well known on this side of the pond, just FINAL FANTASY TACTICS and ~X, but my bookcase alone has a good half-dozen or so.

On the topic of the subject line: I can't believe we tried to do a skit about dialects and just used funny voices. Then again, how would one expect high school students to know multiple dialects?

On the topic of the post: you might have noticed that my comments about limited-edition products here and here seem contradictory. I don't like the concept, but I don't have much of a problem with taking advantage of it when it's convenient. With comics, I can get pretty stuff legally, and with miniatures, I have two reasons: 1. there's no point in just collecting the same miniatures everyone else has, and this helps me get something semi-(or completely, if I can think of a conversion)unique; 2. if I don't want it, I can likely sell it at a profit as a collectors' item after it goes out of production.

I of course bring this back up because this seems like a good deal. In essence, you're paying $18 for a limited edition version of a mini that normally costs $10, and you still get three issues of a magazine about a great setting and two great wargames. (The RPG is rather crudely written because the company doesn't care about it, but it's still good, as you might guess by my support for it.) I was going to try the zhevras first, but it turns out the upstarts have a great deal (in the sidebar to the right; doesn't say anything about a limited duration, but better act fast) going on, so I'll have to stop by there instead.

These days, I have so many Japanese books to buy that by the time I get one, I don't remember what I'd read about it that prompted me to put it on the shopping list. This means, for one thing, that I generally go into each one with a clean slate, no spoilers, preconceptions, or particular expectations. This is especially true in the case of Aka×Pink, which I put off from a previous order because it was another novel that I'd bought accidentally. (For all I can remember, this one may predate "Yuri na Hibi.") Now that I've finally read it, I have enough kansō to fill an entire post.

Of course, in the interim, this one spent a lot of time sitting around the room, so I'm well acquainted with the cover illustration. I thought it just reminded me of Sai-Kano because of the content, but upon closer inspection, it's by the same guy. (I didn't remember the name because I didn't give a damn about that innovative-but-borderline-harem series in the first place.) Since I don't pay attention to prose, I hadn't heard of a major comics guy doing illustrations for novels before. Then again, there are only two real illustrations in the entire book. . . .

Anyway, from the blurb on the back, you'd get a certain idea of what sort of book it's going to be. But despite the fact that most of the characters are very unusual people, it's written pretty straight. (It isn't often that you read a book where the most normal guy in the cast is also the chief comic relief. He's the source of the quote in the subject line—yes, in Roman letters.) I suppose a human might have trouble taking such eccentricities seriously (although not so much as in Sai-Kano), but I like the way it explores these innovative personalities in a respectful manner.

In a similar way, despite the fact that the participants in the central fight/hostess club have to have cheesy/fetishy stage personae and outfits, and the matches are partially just for show rather than competitive, it's compared to MMA (with an octagon cage, despite the fact that PRIDE takes place in a square ring with ropes) rather than pro wrestling. I never had much interest in MMA, where the main MA (particularly among Brazilians and Japanese) is jūjutsu, because I don't much like seeing men rolling on the floor and grappling. (I guess that's in focus because it's effective in bare-handed combat. You don't need to choke someone out if you can stab or shoot him.) This one, however, focuses more on (somewhat) more dignified striking and stand-up. (I find it amusing that the one who admires "Mirko-san" is known as "Mīko-san.")

The story focuses on three main heroines, with each narrating one chapter. They are three very different individuals, but their common ground (other than occupation) is their seeking to understand what they want in life and reconcile it with what others want of them. (Incidentally, they also all use "watashi" in hira-gana, including the tough one who sees herself as a man and uses according speech patterns otherwise.) Although the different narratives overlap a lot in the same scenes, it's rather interesting to see which heroines feel it significant to describe which parts in full, and which they didn't seem to perceive at all.

Of course, yuri was still my main incentive behind this one. It's hard to say much without spoiling some of the interesting psychological elements, but suffice it to say that many of the most significant relationships in the story are between the heroines, and the line between friendship and romance, like much of the tale, is rather ambiguous. I quite liked it, with the exception of the fact that one of the relationships ends with a rather loose end.

All in all, I quite enjoyed this one and recommend it highly. Besides that, my ability to get through it led me to think that I might be willing to actually try some more novels on purpose—but, then again, I hardly have any shortage of reading material. It would be more useful to get back into reading prose in English, in case I might become able to write novels of my own, which would circumvent the problem of drawing that's currently my only real obstacle.

By the way, I was interested to see that the author is a lady who has a "my boom" about a particular color of lipstick, and who pumps iron at least once a week. The elements about practicing kara-te (she's a black belt who made it to the national championship in '02) and receiving a love letter from a younger lady are apparently autobiographical. I guess that like me, being an unusual person gives her a viewpoint that allows her to portray things differently from normal people.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, archlords sent to me...

Twelve ladybronwyns drumming

Eleven comics piping

Ten ethics a-leaping

Nine shadows dancing

Eight wargames a-milking

Seven cats a-swimming

Six headbutts a-teetotaling

Five bu-u-u-usiness suits

Four video games

Three cryptic interests

Two long coats

...and a cyberpunk in a fantasy.

Get your own Twelve Days:

Hmm, I must have a lot more interests and less friends than aseop_ does—as if I didn't know that already.

In 2008, archlords resolves to...

Drink four glasses of night every day.
Give up long coats.
Ask my boss for a honor.
Overcome my secret fear of business suits.
Connect with my inner logic.
Go to the comics every month.

Get your own New Year's Resolutions:

As you can see, it's based on interests and friends, and doesn't know whether a word is pronounced starting with a vowel or a consonant sound.

Typing of posting on daily_yuri, I happened to find a torrent of the only MY OTOME comic version that doesn't have the main character as a drag queen with a harem. (I still somewhat regret having bought Satō's entire MY HiME series, considering what he did with Tate, Ms. Kuga, and Ms. Fujino—although seeing Ms. Suzushiro and Ms. Kikukawa in a mutually open relationship (or am I reading too much into that?) was rather nice.) That means I have plenty of digital stuff to post, but since I already have it on order anyway, I decided to wait until it arrives so I can read it more conveniently. Of course, there is the fact that it seems weird to post pages from comics there, since it gives people various spoilers and out-of-context chunks of text, so I'll probably just be posting a few stand-alone pictures. (Hopefully, photobucket won't mind the hot-springs one, as it technically doesn't have nudity （ギリギリだがな） by my definiton, and one of my colleagues (figuratively speaking)' albums proves that they don't censor everything.)

I'm also planning on providing a bonus supplement to my next post here, but that'll have to wait, because I've already reached the title quota.

Edit: Come to think of it, the subject line here is a counterpart to the (spoiler that I've already posted many times before) unique status of Ms. Kuga and Ms. Fujino in the show. Being a HiME was somewhat cheapened in the comics, but Ms. Suzushiro and Ms. Kikukawa are the only example shown, if (partially suppressed) memory serves.

As part of my research for Project AnthraXX, I was looking through this. (You can probably guess why if you look carefully enough at my notes, but I know you won't, so you'll have to wait until it's hypothetically drawn so it'll be obvious.) Sadly, one of the problems with Wikipedia, just like its English counterpart, is that for fiction, almost the entire article is under the "spoiler alert" tag, so you can never be sure not to learn something you weren't supposed to learn yet unless you've already read the entire thing. It's especially difficult with Japanese comics, where the writers can get information from the serials, while I have to wait for the compilations. Naturally, I did happen to run into one.

Meanwhile, I was actually motivated to go back and read the seven volumes that I have. I stopped following the series a couple years back due to the refocus of my priorities, but it's still an entertaining series. I was particularly surprised at how much of the Millennium stuff I didn't remember after reading once (particularly the part about Walter and the tall, stoic, nameless Werwolf captain), as compared to the parts up to the HELLSING/Iscariote meeting, which I had read in two languages and seen in the TV series. Now that I'm more experienced and had already read through it, I was able to catch more of the design elements.

I remember one of the first impressions I had of the series was Arucard's crazy eyes. Now that I look at it more carefully, the same trait is displayed by pretty much every adult male character (and Ms. Blitz). Even the unaltered humans like Maxwell look positively abnormal. Of course, that is not terribly surprising, as a good proportion of the principal characters is made up of bloodthirsty megalomaniacs. The series also has possibly the highest eyewear quotient of any I've seen, between the spectacles (apparently vampirism can cure aging, but not astigmatism), sunglasses, Walter's monocle, and Doc's goggles. The illustrator particularly likes to show people with their faces shrouded in darkness (even when standing in places where the rest of their bodies are illuminated) and glare off their lenses. I also noted that people seem to have really long arms (reaching about to their knees), but I don't have anything in particular to say about that.

Another thing that struck me when coming back to the comics was the gags. I've said before that I don't believe in the concept of the "smart joke" (although there are certainly some more intellectual than others), but I find it hard to call these ones even jokes. I liked the fact that they removed them from the TV series, but I hear that they have been retained in the OVAs.

Also, another unusual thing for an action series is that we never have to worry about the hero. The introductory stories (the village of Cheddars, the Northern Ireland mission, and the Valentine Bros. siege) serve mostly to introduce us and Ms. Victoria to the fact that Arucard is ridiculously powerful. In fact, among all the weird monsters, the chief protagonist is often the one who seems the most hideously inhuman. He also uses my favorite speech patterns (after a brief attempt at "ore" in the first chapter, later retconned), but so does half of the rest of the cast.

Incidentally, it appears that, officially, the TV series is now known as Hellsing Rescript, while the OVAs are just HELLSING. This is because this was another one where the TV series got ahead of the original comics, so they had to make up their own ending. This has happened with all three of the animations of Young King Ours series I've seen; no surprise, as they say that HELLSING only runs every other month, which means about one volume a year. In the meantime, I see that Koyasu plays Luke Valentine in both versions. It's different from my image of him for him to get such a zako role, but at least unlike his brother, he was supposed to seem like a tough guy. After all, he plays the part that shows us to the full degree that Arucard is so ridiculously powerful. Many of the other parts have been recast for the OVAs, resulting in Andersen being played by Wakamoto. I would be quite amused if it turned out that his true form is an unidentifiable round yellow creature.

For some reason, it wasn't until after I posted that I realized that I could raid Mother's CD collection. I'm only copying them onto her computer, after all. . . . I'll get to that when she goes to bed.

Also, I forgot another comment that I was going to make in relation to this post, particularly considering the fact that the game draws on so many multicultural sources. The Japanese, when taking concepts from other languages, tend to either make new Japanese words for them or pronounce them in a more primal (close-to-the-origin) form than we use. For instance, in our areas of expertise, we often run into words like "Deutsch," "Italia," "kentauros," and "minotauros." However, one thing that the Japanese don't do well is plurals, as these are almost used in Japanese except in the cases of animate creatures, and the ones they have depend on your opinion of the noun to which they're appended rather than things like the language of origin or ending sound. (For a loanword, they often colloquially add an "s," just like a stupid English-speaker.) Consequently, there are some things that end up as always plural, like "fruits" (although they may have used "tsu" in the old days for an ending "t," before "to" became popular for the same purpose). Some of the most common I've encountered are "seraphim" and "cherubim." (Despite the use of the plural in all cases, the latter （「ケルビム」） is at least more accurately pronounced than in common English.) In the same vein, I can only assume that this is pronounced "nephil" (because I'm too lazy to look up each letter individually).

Well, I haven't read any of the books, so I don't know the traditional characteristics of any house but Slytherin, but I can hardly resist a meme. No spoilers past Order in the discussion (as if!), please.

( A hat of many wearers )

Meanwhile, this is a good time for other things I've noticed about Hollywood recently:

In his TV debut (an '80s paper-towel CM), Adam looked almost exactly like Rupert Grint. I'm also amused that, in the second season, they had an engineer named "Scottie." (Hey, she doesn't have the accent, but she still does it better than arifyn. . . .)

I also found (The) Hulk quite interesting—and not just because I knew Bruce Banner better as an Israeli assassin and James Bond's boss. In my usual style, I haven't seen any of his previous appearances except in MARVEL VS. CAPCOM 2 [and Robot Chicken], so I knew him only as a bad-tempered, muscular, green guy with a penchant for elastic purple trousers. Anyway, the comic-book-inspired split-screen editing didn't impress me, but I was surprised to find out that he also had bioluminescence (although he would have been even better with photosynthesis!) and grew his muscles through regeneration (proving that, at least in Hollywood, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger). The origin story was also rather original, as was Nick Nolte's role—although I never would have seen him as a supervillain (probably because I've only seen him in one movie before). I also saw it coming (and was giddy with anticipation) when they finally dropped the catchphrase, although reworded to fit the scene.

( ミカエル、一生の不覚 )

When my brother was home for Spring Break this year and playing Ogre Battle 64, I realized that it was yet another Japanese video game where the hero deserts the evil empire and joins the resistance. I thought that this seemed odd, considering how traditional and conformist Japanese society is (although it's starting to change). I guess that's a sign that fiction is a radical, non-mainstream element of society. Just to illustrate this, I decided to list a bunch of adventure stories I knew from modern media and see how they add up. Hopefully I wasn't too biased in which ones came to mind.

For these purposes, "establishment" is the main power in the setting, whether it's the most powerful nation, the state religion, the secret society behind the throne, the student council, the local gang, super-powerful invading aliens, God, destiny, or whatever. Where the protagonists' motives change throughout the story, I list the one that they choose in the end (as far as I've seen). Where there are multiple paths, I list the main one. Where the series has more than one separate storyline, I hope I've listed which I mean. Where I couldn't decide (for instance, in SIMOUN, where it's a war between as-far-as-I-know two equally powerful nations), I've left them out. I've also recused (?) sentai and mahō shōjo shows, as they'd almost always end up in the first one—which means, of course, that there is a bias there. Meanwhile, haven't bothered to use official capitalizations, as it's too much trouble to look them all up. And no, I'm not making links for all those. You can find them yourselves.

Protagonists for Establishment: Akira, Bleach (Shinigami Daikō-hen), Cain Series, Cattō Ninden Teyande~! [sic], Chrno Crusade, Cowboy Bebop, Godzilla, .hack//SIGN, .hack/Tasogare no Udewa Densetsu, Hellsing, Peace Maker Kurogane, R.O.D Read or Die, Rurōni Kenshin (Kyōto-hen, Jinchū-hen), Shin Seiki Evangelion/Neon Genesis Evangelion, Tenchi Muyō!, Uchū no Stellvia, Versailles no Bara, Yami no Matsuei

Protagonists against Establishment: Abenobashi Mahō Shōtengai, Biohazard Code:Veronica, Bleach (Soul Society Kyūshutsu-hen), Blue Drop, Chrono Trigger, Devil & Devil, Dystopia, Escaflowne, Et Cetera, Eternal Arcadia, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy Tactics, FLCL, Fushigi no Kuni no Miyuki-chan/Miyukichan in the Wonderland, Grandia II, Hagane no Renkinjutsushi/Fullmetal [sic] Alchemist, Himitsu no Angelis, Hōshin Engi, Kannazuki no Miko, L A S T E X I L E, Loveless, Mahō Kishi Rayearth/Magic Knight Rayearth (first series), Mononoke-Hime, My HiME, My Otome, Ogre Battle, Ogre Battle 64, R.O.D the TV, Rurōni Kenshin (Bakumatsu-hen), Samurai Champloo, Samurai 7, Seiken Densetsu II, Shichi-nin no Samurai, Shimpi no Sekai El-Hazard, Shining Force, Shining Force II, Shōjo Kakumei Utena, Slayers TRY, Super Mario Bros., Tenjho Tenge, Tenshi Kinryōku/Angel Sanctuary, Texhnolyze, Tokyo-under Ground, Top o Nerae!/Gunbuster, Top o Nerae 2!/Die Buster, Yōjimbō, Zelda no Densetsu