Saiyuki Calendar Boys

[chomiji]

So I finally received my lovely 2008 Saiyuki Reload Calendar, and I have it artfully positioned so that I can see it from where I'm sitting by merely turning my head about 30°, but no one walking by my office can see it from the door.

And it is very artistic, and mildly distracting (it's Hakkai's blissed-out face that I find the most attention-grabbing on this first page), but it's not much use as a calendar. The numbers are really hard to see, and the day-of-the-week labels not much better. I'm going to have to print out one of those blank calendar pages available on the web, for practical purposes ... .

Comments

[freeradical9.livejournal.com]

Oh, that was great! Thank you so much for posting the scans!

My husband walked in as I was viewing #1 and said "They're all wearing purple shirts. That's appropriate." (He used to wear purple on fridays at his old job in support of LGBT equality. Hee.) ^_^

[chomiji]

Heh, I can't claim credit for the scans - I found 'em online. The site that has the pictures no longer has any calendars to sell, as far as I can tell, but the pictures are still there. The calendar is actually quite large - each page is poster-sized, so it wouldn't fit on my scanner anyway.

Much to my disappointment, none of the pages is a Hakkai/Gojyo pic.

Good for your husband! We live in a famously gay-friendly town - lawn signs calling for gay marriage rights are common. I'm curious though - why Fridays?

My husband is somewhat bemused by the popularity of Saiyuki among women (he likes it fairly well because it's funny) and by the whole slash thing.

[freeradical9.livejournal.com]

Much to my disappointment, none of the pages is a Hakkai/Gojyo pic.

Agreed. Nice group shots, though. I'd only seen 2 of the 5 pics before, so it was lovely to look at new art.

I'm curious though - why Fridays?

I'm not really sure. He was working on a college campus at the time, and I think it had something to do with student association activism. I thought it was a cool idea.

My husband is somewhat bemused by the popularity of Saiyuki among women

My husband doesn't understand it at all. *sigh* When he catches me with my nose buried in the manga, he often says "You do realize that they never actually *get* anywhere." *shakes head*

[chomiji]

Ah, but it's the journey that's important - not the destination!

The Borders had a guidebook to manga on sale, and it was clear that the (male) author had no concept of the value of angst and character interaction. He complained that Saiyuki was degenerating into nothing but bishies giving off snark and attitude, and that the villains in SDK were uber-powerful cardboard (more or less) - entirely missing the character development that's going on in each case. (Most of SDK's ultimate villains are characters in their own right, rather like the Kou-tachi in Saiyuki.) It was rather exasperating, perhaps even more so because I agreed with his analysis of some of the other series.