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Not content to consider me not a real American (and gee, that’s historically unprecedented and not at all scary), the McCain campaign doesn’t think I’m a real Virginian either. [Edited to correct misattribution.] I believe I will let my real Virginia vote express what I think of that. Also, my new icon’s going to hang around for the next few weeks. Incidentally, I voted early (other US folks, check out Vote for Change to see where/whether you can too). My husband asked if I didn’t want to wait. He: “Something might happen to change your mind.” Me: “… Demonic possession?”
Kazuya Minekura, Wild Adapter, vols. 1-3: Kubota’s a cool, collected guy who doesn’t care about much, but due to family circumstances and innate talent, he gets deeply involved in a Yakuza gang, until he decides to walk away, and also picks up a stray—Tokito, a guy with a twisted, animalistic hand that might have something to do with the new drug, Wild Adapter, that’s killing people in strange and disturbing ways. Slashy way beyond subtext, but I think the combination of translation and utter dead cool on Kubota’s part didn’t work for me when taken together; I wasn’t sharing enough of the learned understandings of the culture that make ironic silence a useful narrative stance.
Setona Mizushiro, After School Nightmare, vols. 1-8: Mashiro is physically a boy above the waist, girl below (um, don’t ask what that actually means; it’s not going to be the last disturbing handwave), attending boarding school as a boy. His boarding school is sparsely populated, though, and it seems like people might keep disappearing, but they’re never remembered. As it happens, there’s a special afterschool class he needs to take, in which he and some of his fellow students are trapped together in a dreamworld, looking for the key necessary to graduate. The key is hidden in a student’s body, so one must kill the other students to progress. The reward is, he’s told, the thing he wants most, which in this case is to be a real boy; since we never see students post-graduation, though, readers may wonder whether Mashiro has the whole story. Instead of killing other students, Mashiro starts protecting a fellow student, Kureha, a sexually traumatized girl who wants him as a boyfriend.
Meanwhile, skanky player Sou is convinced there’s something special about Mashiro. Sou wants Mashiro to be his girlfriend; Mashiro says he hates Sou, but he still gets kissed by Sou on a regular basis, and occasionally kisses back. Though minor characters are willing to suggest that Mashiro might be gay without any apparent judgment, Mashiro himself defines his gender identity by the sex of his partner: he likes girls, therefore he is a guy; if he likes guys, he must then be a girl. Guys are strong and girls are weak, except in the ways that girls are stronger than guys. Mostly the other characters, especially the main ones, agree with all these rules, heteronormativity aside. The gender issues flip from incredibly disturbing to so disturbing that they function as a critique of gender roles, and then back, and then again. I can’t look away. This will either end brilliantly or I will want to un-know everything I’ve seen.
Kazuya Minekura, Wild Adapter, vols. 1-3: Kubota’s a cool, collected guy who doesn’t care about much, but due to family circumstances and innate talent, he gets deeply involved in a Yakuza gang, until he decides to walk away, and also picks up a stray—Tokito, a guy with a twisted, animalistic hand that might have something to do with the new drug, Wild Adapter, that’s killing people in strange and disturbing ways. Slashy way beyond subtext, but I think the combination of translation and utter dead cool on Kubota’s part didn’t work for me when taken together; I wasn’t sharing enough of the learned understandings of the culture that make ironic silence a useful narrative stance.
Setona Mizushiro, After School Nightmare, vols. 1-8: Mashiro is physically a boy above the waist, girl below (um, don’t ask what that actually means; it’s not going to be the last disturbing handwave), attending boarding school as a boy. His boarding school is sparsely populated, though, and it seems like people might keep disappearing, but they’re never remembered. As it happens, there’s a special afterschool class he needs to take, in which he and some of his fellow students are trapped together in a dreamworld, looking for the key necessary to graduate. The key is hidden in a student’s body, so one must kill the other students to progress. The reward is, he’s told, the thing he wants most, which in this case is to be a real boy; since we never see students post-graduation, though, readers may wonder whether Mashiro has the whole story. Instead of killing other students, Mashiro starts protecting a fellow student, Kureha, a sexually traumatized girl who wants him as a boyfriend.
Meanwhile, skanky player Sou is convinced there’s something special about Mashiro. Sou wants Mashiro to be his girlfriend; Mashiro says he hates Sou, but he still gets kissed by Sou on a regular basis, and occasionally kisses back. Though minor characters are willing to suggest that Mashiro might be gay without any apparent judgment, Mashiro himself defines his gender identity by the sex of his partner: he likes girls, therefore he is a guy; if he likes guys, he must then be a girl. Guys are strong and girls are weak, except in the ways that girls are stronger than guys. Mostly the other characters, especially the main ones, agree with all these rules, heteronormativity aside. The gender issues flip from incredibly disturbing to so disturbing that they function as a critique of gender roles, and then back, and then again. I can’t look away. This will either end brilliantly or I will want to un-know everything I’ve seen.
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