Fushigi Yugi, Disc 1
Sat 2005-08-13 21:42:31 (in context)
- 41,026 words (if poetry, lines) long
- 64.75 hrs. revised
So... yeah. It's anime night. Anime night means that John and I and some of John's coworkers and gaming friends all get together for pot-luck and DVD viewing. It happens about once every other week, Saturday nights. We started the year with Gazuraki (if you're curious about Gazuraki, my advice is don't), we continued with Read Or Dream: The TV (to reward ourselves for suffering through Gazuraki), and last time we watched a couple of disks of Full Metal Panic (which was also much better than Gazuraki).
(Look, it really is that bad. You just wait until the "clearance from the U.N." scene. It's bad.)
Today: Fushigi Yugi ("The Mystery Play"), Disk 1.
(Yes, I know they translate it "Mysterious Play." They're wrong. I'm allowed to call them wrong. On the first episode, a teacher asked a student to translate "El libro está en el biblioteca," and the English subtitle on the Spanish phrase had nothing in it about libraries, books, or location.)
Fushigi Yugi is pretty darn classic, as anime goes. Lots of chibi stuff, lots of preadolescent crush drama, lots of sweat drops and gluttony, lots of scenes where everything freezes, the heroine is pictured against a starry sky, and internal monologue occurs in abundance.
I'm, er, not a fan.
The story is great! Don't get me wrong! But I've just never been fond of these weird motifs that anime fans feel entitled to get when they sit down for another feature. I mean, I was convinced I hated anime until I saw Lain: Serial Experiments. Lain represents adult-level anime with total lack of childish tropes. Love it love it. (It also involves classic adult anime themes, such as cyberpunk, characters who might have been made-not-born, and total brain-breaking upfuckédness.) Other non-juvenile anime features I like: Cowboy Bebop. Wolf's Rain. R.O.D., both the movie and the TV. Oh, and FLCL, which John will tell you he absolutely has not seen, nope, didn't see a thing, the abomination never happened. But, FLCL notwithstanding, if I never again see another cartoon character develop a feline split lip to indicate how pleased he or she is with him- or herself, you know, that's just fine with me.
Still, looking forward to next fortnight's installation.
Meanwhile, over at the WIP, the current spate of dialogue progressed another 400 words, and another character made an entrance. The pieces, slowly, are being put into place. Mwa-ha-ha-haaa.