It has been one heck of a weekend.
Savage Kitten and I spent all of Saturday and Sunday in the sack.
No, it's not what you think.
Would that it were. And had it been, I would certainly NOT be posting about it.
Instead, it was disease.
On Saturday I sounded most like leaky steampipes, on Sunday she surpassed me.
Hack, spit, cough. Hoest, rochel, kuch. Braaaaaaachchchch!
So what do a sick toad and a sick kitten do when bedbound by respiratory distress?
They read.
As you may have noticed from some previous entries, I'm on a manga kick. Current series I'm reading are:
Lady Snow Blood (修羅雪姫, Shurayuki-hime - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Snowblood )
A totally bonzo gloomy splatter saga with moody illustrations. Blood, death, gore, and cold hard steel.
Chibi Vampire (かりん, Karin - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karin_(manga)
A sweet off-the-wall tale about a shy and easily embarrassed defective vampire and the fellow high-schooler she has a crush on - in volume six, matters come to a head, she very nearly admits her feelings, and the last page is a cliff-hanger.
Volume seven does not come out for several more weeks, volume eight sometime in Spring.
GTO - Great Teacher Onizuka (グレート・ティーチャー・オニヅカ, Gurēto Tīchā Onizuka - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Teacher_Onizuka ).
Horndog biker slacker college grad decides to become a teacher after peeping up girls skirts at the mall. But having gone into teaching, he discovers that he is handicapped with a sense of ethics that prevents him from exploiting people. Seemingly he is the only person in the classroom he teaches who is so cursed, as his teenage students consist of thuggish louts, hot sluts, blackmailers, nasty girls, young toughs, and violent sleazebags. It's a darn good read.
Both Chibi Vampire and GTO are funny. Lady Snow Blood is only humorous if you are warped. Or have a brutal sense of irony.
This is Japanese literature at it's finest.
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NOTE - OTHER MANGA SERIES WORTH MENTIONING:
Ranma½ (らんま½ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_%C2%BD)
I already read all of Ranma½ in Chinese, so I kinda lost interest in the English-language version a while back. But it's a fun series, and well worth reading.
InuYasha (犬夜叉 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InuYasha)
After a while it becomes repetitive. Just how much can you read about a high-school girl and a dog-demon? Evenso, it is very beautiful.
Both Ranma½ and Inuyasha are by Rumiko Takahashi, a very well-known mangaka, whose other works are also worth looking into. Lum (Urushei Yatsura), Rumic World, Rumic Theatre, Maison Ikkoku - some very good reading here.
Ai Yori Aoshi (藍より青し - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Yori_Aoshi).
If you're a male, this is a likeable piece of sexist fluff, and an incredibly easy read - primarily because not much goes on, for sixteen chapters, at the end of which childhood sweethearts Kaoru Hanabishi and Aoi Sakuraba finally do get married. It is all very easy on the eyes, and illustrates abundantly that the Japanese have a breast-fetish that beats Americans out of the water. They trump us, we might as well admit it, their breast-thing is far bigger than ours.
As is their panty thing - I don't think Americans even have a panty thing to speak of.
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6 comments:
GTO - Great Teacher Onizuka This one sounds cool, is it in English?
Yes, it is in English.
All of them have been translated into English.
My reading-knowledge of Japanese is severly limited.... the Kanji (Chinese characters) present scant problem, other than that the Japanese often do not pronounce them the same (sometimes tow or three different pronunciations in addition to a native Japanese term given with that character), but the kana.... problem so far. Haven't really swotted kana.
[Hiregana = syllabic script used mostly for native Japanese words. Katakana = syllabic script mostly used to transcribe pronunciations, mostly 'foreign' words.]
Three Chinese-into-Japanese usage examples from the posting above:
修羅雪姫 (Shurayuki-hime):
Approx Chinese pronunciation: Hsiao-luo hsueh chen.
Approx meaning: 'fold-gossamer snow court-lady'.
犬夜叉 (Inuyasha):
Approx Chinese pronunciation: Chuan yeh cha.
Approx meaning: 'dog night fork' (note: I believe 叉 stands in for a more complex character that means demon or ogre).
藍より青し (Ai Yori Aoshi):
Approx Chinese pronunciation: Lan something something ching something.
Approx meaning: Indigo "brings forth" blue.
No Panty Thing?!?
You, Sir, have obviously not been exposed to AMERICAN APPAREL's advertizing campaigns, which appear to consist solely of what seem to be anoretic heroin addicts dresed in nothing but their skivvies. This Great Country is developing a Panty Thing, thank you very much: it is just a diseased and unwholesome Panty Thing, lacking the brio which makes the Japanese Panty Thing such a "natural, zesty enterprise".
BOTH
Here's the Brezhnev video, btw. Go to 2:50 secs or so to see the drunk, burping Galina Brezhnev!
here
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