Dream with Our Eyes Open

lady_ganesh wanted to know about "Top five characters more dangerous than they look." Because proving this about a character always involves a reveal, there are spoilers (which I have covered) in each answer.

Cho Hakkai from Saiyuki (right). On the surface, a mild-mannered, absent-minded young man. But cross him, and you'll find out that he's totally bad-ass - even before he takes off his power limiters and becomes a youkai covered with prehensile vines and whose strength and reflex speed greatly exceed those of virtually every other youkai we've seen in the series.

Sanada Saemon-no-Suke Yukimura from Samurai Deeper Kyo (in the post icon), a cheerful short guy whom we first see as a harmless drunk with a woman on each arm. A few minutes later, he's puking his guts out. Who would suspect that he's one of the only swordsmen in Japan who can give the notorious Demon-Eyes Kyo a good fight ... and can chop lesser opponents in half vertically with a single stroke?

Yoshino Dōa from Blade of the Immortal (right), a very petite, very young Ainu woman who turns out to be a ruthless, blood-thirsty swordswoman with ultra-fast reflexes who takes out male opponents much larger and stronger than herself with fearsome efficiency.

Sister Yolanda from Black Lagoon, an elderly, sweet-faced one-eyed nun who is the Mother Superior of a church outside of Roanapur, Thailand, who packs a a gold-plated Desert Eagle pistol and is efficiently running an arms-smuggling and intelligence-gathering operation. (Sadly, I have no Sister Yolanda icon ... )

Ayasegawa Yumichika from Bleach (left), a fey, vain, eccentric little goofball who's too pretty for his own good and seemingly too refined to even perspire, yet in actuality is the Fifth Seat of the notoriously combat-ready and violent 11th Division of Soul Reapers, meaning that he can whip the ass of just about any even semi-normal opponent without ... breaking a sweat.

Samurai Deeper Kyo vol. 37/38!

And Del Rey included Kamijyo-sensei's pencil-only postscript, which I had seen online and in the Japanese original that telophase snagged for me! I am very, very pleased!

Also, I found 20th Century Boys vol. 9 and Bamboo Blade vol. 5.

(I had a very nice and yet very awkward conversation at the Borders manga section with an androgynous teen who was over 6 gangly feet tall, clad in jeans, a black camisole, strappy red suede fingerless gauntlets, black-and-red head wrap, and long dangly crystal-red-and-black earrings. I think the awkwardness was simply because we were both shy.)

Press release here.

"Fumi Yoshinaga’s Ooku: The Inner Chambers (volumes 1 & 2) explores an alternate version of feudal Japan, in which a plague has killed three out of every four boys. In this world, young men are protected and sheltered; women have secretly taken positions of authority and power. The Japanese ruler or shogun and the feudal lords are women and much of the story takes place among the men in the shogun’s harem. The title of the work refers to the living quarters for the shogun’s harem, contained within Edo Castle.

"The selection of Ooku: The Inner Chambers marks the first time that manga has been chosen for the Tiptree Award. Though no one on the jury is an expert on manga or on Japanese history, the jurors fell in love with the detailed exploration of the world of these books ... ."

Thanks to james_nicoll for pointing this out.

I am so behind in reviewing things, because November and December were big months for other kinds of writing. I read a number of things though - enough that my INFP brain can't figure out where to start.

When Endo Kenji was a kid, he and his friends had a clubhouse in the middle of a grassy field, where they played an elaborate let's-pretend scenario in which they were heroes who prevented a worldwide holocaust involving germ warfare, laser guns, and giant robots. Later on, he dreamed of becoming a rock star. Now that Kenji is grown, his life revolves around his dreary job managing a chain convenience store - which used to be his family's liquor store - and his beloved infant niece Kanna, who was abandoned to Kenji and his mother by his older sister Kuriko. But when Kenji hears of the mysterious death of his childhood friend "Donkey" - who had been leading a happy life with a wife, child, and enjoyable job as a science teacher - he discovers that the club's childhood daydreams are becoming real-life nightmares.

Who is the mysterious cult figure known only as "Friend," and how is it that he is using the gang's special symbol as the badge of his movement? Why are leaders of other cults dying mysteriously? What happened to Otcho, another club member, who went abroad to work and disappeared in Thailand? How can world events be following their childhood game so closely? As Kenji gets deeper into the mystery, he discovers that even someone leading a life as uninspiring as his still has a lot to lose.

The mystery itself is engrossing, and the series seems to be developing the team/family themes that I need in fiction. There is a certain amount of physically repulsive stuff depicted as a result of the germ warfare incidents, but the gross-out level is nowhere near the level of, say Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service. The lead cast is mainly male at this point, but Kenji's old friend Yukiiji, who as a girl used to beat up bullies much larger than herself and who now works as a customs official (with a massively goofy sniffer dog), is a strong character (although I wonder when we're going to see her again), and Kuriko has several poignant scenes in flashback.

The artwork is very good - much less stylized than that of many manga, yet not as realistic as that of Vagabond or Blade of the Immortal.

You know, the Tokyopop site is a real work of art piece of work. It is nearly impossible to find the release dates page(s), which are now handled as a blog by an account named releasedates. (Also: no news about upcoming releases in any of the three series I checked.) And the Dark Horse site is not much better, despite having a much lower Pointlessly Grunge quotient. DelRey's isn't bad, although they have a major response time issue (perhaps because they are part of the much larger Random House site, which may need to consider a resource upgrade). So far, the best one today has been Viz - that is, if one defines "best" as: it was easy to find the Manga page, easy to find the list of series, and then easy to find the series in which I was interested.

In related news, Amazon's search engine has become unclear on the concept of Vol. vs. Volume. If you search on Manga Title Vol. 3, and the actual listing says Manga Title Volume 3, it craps out - and the same if the situation is vice versa (and both situations exist, which doesn't help). It did not used to be quite so easily confused.

Via inkstone on Dreamwidth:

... TOKYOPOP lost the license to Samurai Deeper Kyo! But that explains why volume 35 has been impossible to find, no matter what Amazon says. I can't believe it though -- there are only 4 volumes left! (Never mind the fact that SDK is supposedly one of their better sellers. This can't bode well for TP if they lost the SDK license and the final English volume of Furuba is released soon.) On the other hand, it also appears that Del Rey has the license to the final 4 volumes and if the listing for volume 35 is accurate, they'll be released in double-sized volumes. Let's hope it's true. That'll be imminently sad if SDK ends its English run with only 4 volumes to go!

You can take a look at the Delray catalog listing here.

Volume 35 of Samurai Deeper Kyo was supposed to be available yesterday. But Amazon says "usually ships in 10-12 days," which is not like them. And there is absolutely no word anywhere on volumes 36, 37, and 38.

C'mon, Tokyopop - there are only 4 more volumes and then it's all over! Please? Please?

(Yes, I know what happens next. But that's not the same as having the actual books!)

The Black Lagoon is a World War II–era PT boat — small, sturdy, fast, and maneuverable. Her crew, mercenaries and couriers of illegal goods, are stoic, tough African-American Vietnam vet Dutch; quirky blond Jewish-American tech/mechanic Benny; and psycho curvaceous Chinese-American gunwoman Revy (short for Rebecca), also known a Two-Hand for her ability to use a gun in either hand or both. During the first volume, their number increases by one when they obtain Japanese salaryman Rokuro - now known as Rock.

Rock is the reader's POV as the story follows the adventures of the Black Lagoon crew all around the teeming criminal underworld of Southeast Asia, with the fictional port city of Roanapur, Thailand, as their base. Kidnapping, arms smuggling, recovery of treasure from wrecks, murder, terrorism, exotic and disgusting porn, mayhem of all sorts, drugs — it's all part of Rock's world now. And although he's still often repulsed by what he's helping to accomplished, he proves surprisingly adept at coming up with outlandish but effective schemes to wreak havoc on the Lagoon squad's enemies.

Volume 4 takes a different turn as Rock and Revy accompany the elegant, way-beyond-ruthless Russian mob boss Balalaika on her mission to the yakuza in Japan. I miss Dutch and Benny and hope that the group will eventually be reunited.

In many ways, this should be only a guilty pleasure. It's violent as all get-out (rather like Blade of the Immortal with modern weapons), and scantily-clad buxom women are all over the place. One reviewer noted that most of the female characters are stereotypes in one way or another. But somehow the vibe is, in its way, bizarrely liberating. The women aren't any more exaggerated than the men, IMO, and they're often the more interesting characters.

Warning: the "Hansel and Gretel" plotline in vols. 2-3 involves child pornography. The subject is definitely not glorified, but it's very disturbing. It's also easily arguable that the Muslim terrorist Ibraha (vols. 3-4) is an unfortunate stereotype, although I don't know that he's any worse than anyone else in the story. You have been warned.

 
These are for series I'm currently following:

ETA: xxxHolic, which I somehow forgot!