I must admit I hold Tokyo Babylon in high regard for what it meant to me the first time I read it. At first, it was an admittedly pretty ugly art with barely no backgrounds, an over the top female character that I could barely stand and a spineless male lead two sweet and innocent for me to get fond of. But then, CLAMP started to give hints about a secret past and Seishirou being more than met the eye and I got hooked.
I'm growing sort of used to the Japanese mysoginic view of life and I don't take it much into account unless it reaches unbearable levels. Although I tend to think of Hokuto as a rather strong and clever woman (it's just that I can't stand her and I think she pushes Subaru way too much).
But what I really loved about Tokyo Babylon was the ending, because, naïve as I was back then, it totally blindsided me. I didn't expect it. At all. In a million years. And that traumatized me so much that I had to talk to people about it (when I rarely talk about things that I like with my friends if I suspect they don't love it the same way that I do) and I actually went to the budding Internet (it was a long time ago and Internet was a pretty new thing) in search of more info about it, because I needed some closure to the relationship, some meeting point, some... I don't know, something. So, you see, Tokyo Babylon was the reason I got into yaoi fanfiction in the first place. And that's another reason why I'm fond of it.
And, I must confess, that even if the art is not as worked and beautiful as in other stories, I really liked Mokona Apapa's style and I actually miss it in the newer mangas. X or RG Veda are really beautifully drawn and it's something that I deeply related to CLAMP and that I now can't find in their work. And yeah, I miss it.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2015-03-08 08:43 pm (UTC)I'm growing sort of used to the Japanese mysoginic view of life and I don't take it much into account unless it reaches unbearable levels. Although I tend to think of Hokuto as a rather strong and clever woman (it's just that I can't stand her and I think she pushes Subaru way too much).
But what I really loved about Tokyo Babylon was the ending, because, naïve as I was back then, it totally blindsided me. I didn't expect it. At all. In a million years. And that traumatized me so much that I had to talk to people about it (when I rarely talk about things that I like with my friends if I suspect they don't love it the same way that I do) and I actually went to the budding Internet (it was a long time ago and Internet was a pretty new thing) in search of more info about it, because I needed some closure to the relationship, some meeting point, some... I don't know, something. So, you see, Tokyo Babylon was the reason I got into yaoi fanfiction in the first place. And that's another reason why I'm fond of it.
And, I must confess, that even if the art is not as worked and beautiful as in other stories, I really liked Mokona Apapa's style and I actually miss it in the newer mangas. X or RG Veda are really beautifully drawn and it's something that I deeply related to CLAMP and that I now can't find in their work. And yeah, I miss it.