I'm reading the 7th and last volume.
Does anyone know whether Bisco Hatori (the mangaka, who also did Ouran High School Host Club) is launching a new series any time soon? I tried some searches but didn't find any news (except that she was a guest at Anime Expo this year).
All of my favorite mangaka seem to be dropping off the face of the earth, especially the seinen adventure series ones. Shirow Miwa (DOGS Bullets and Carnage)? Rei Hiroe (Black Lagoon)? Kazuya Minekura (Saiyuki)? *sigh*
Saiyuki Manga Comm on LJ seems moribund.
T-T
Somehow I missed the fact that someone has actually put this up on YouTube. It's my 585 theme song:
Everything but the Girl: "We Walk the Same Line"
Tracey Thorn's voice slays me. It's not that it's spectacular, but somehow it's super comforting and cozy to me.
(And yo, Dreamwidth, what's up with all the extra space? Grrr ... Ah ha, it was only in the preview.)
Check this out; you won't be disappointed.
Dreams You Can't Recall (10579 words)
by EnchanteRhea
Fandom: Saiyuki Gaiden, Saiyuki
Rating: Explicit
Summary: Kenren's knack for attracting all kinds of attention is both an excellent smoke screen and a source of Tenpou's amusement--until the day it inadvertently backfires on him and the entire unit.
Is Minekura getting into her crack character genealogies again?
I mean this thing. The only series she doesn't seem to have worked into whatever-it-is is Ibun.
As ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
indelicateink pointed out the other day, this is the anniversary of louiselux and emungere's awesome, many-chaptered Saiyuki 585 AU "Cupidity," which came out day by day, five days a week, for several wonderful weeks in November-December 2007. I'm rereading it again, and the scary parts still make my breath come short, the funny parts still make me grin, and the hot parts ... are still very hot.
The first chapter (of 27) is here and the rest can be found on that same account, under the tag Cupidity.
(Yes, I'm obsessed with this thing. Oh well.)
So ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tropicsbear was raising money for the victims of the horrible flooding in the Philippines by offering fiction. Here's the story I requested:
The Honeymoon Phase (PG, Saiyuki, Hakkai/Gojyo, Genjo Sanzo, Son Goku)
I enjoyed it a lot!
But I've been browsing around DeviantArt and found something tasty for those who ship Ukoku/Koumyou in Saiyuki.
theskywasblue was kind enough to give me the letter T, for which I now have to name five favorite characters whose names start with that.
I have here four manga characters and one lonely person from mainstream fiction. (Actually, it's amazing that I'd have anyone from mainstream fiction!)
Tracy (real name: Eustacia) Quinn is the shy, brainy modern-day heroine of Rumer Godden's China Court, a romance in which the most prominent character is really China Court, the Cornish house in which the Quinn family have lived for the better part of a century. Tracy's only happy memories from childhood were the few years that she lived at China Court with her grandmother. The very ending is problematic, but I have always sympathized very much with Tracy's shyness and her love of the house and the garden.
Tenpou Gensui (Field Marshall Tenpou) is an ancient Chinese god who ends up on the wrong side of a political struggle in Heaven, in Katsuya Minekura's manga Saiyuki Gaiden. He's a brilliant man but also a slob and a bit of a space cadet. He has a keen sense of justice and right. In Minekura's main series Saiyuki (with its continuations: Saiyuki Reload and Saiyuki Reload Blast), Tenpou is reborn as Cho Hakkai. His lover Kenren Taishou (General Kenren) is reborn as Sha Gojyo.
Tokine Yukimura is the female co-lead of Yellow Tanabe's manga series Kekkaishi. She is a teenaged 'barrier master," the current heir of one family of skilled magicians who can protect others from demons by creating magical barriers. Tokine is intense, loyal, studious, and skilled, but the series constantly contrasts her finesse with her male opposite number's magical strength.
Tokito Minoru is a troubled and brash young man with a strange clawed and furred right hand and hardly any memory of his past. In Kazuya Minekura's Wild Adapter, he becomes the friend - and likely more - of the nihilistic young criminal Kubota Makoto. Together, they are trying to find out the secret of the strange drug Wild Adapter, which may have something to do with Tokio's weird hand. Tokito is frank, almost fearless, down-to-earth, and fiercely loyal to the very few people he trusts.
Taki Tooru is a middle school girl in Yuki Midorikawa's manga series Natsume's Book of Friends (or Natsume Yuujinchō). She is able to draw a magic circle that will allow her and others to see youkai, spirits/monsters that are usually invisible to most. She becomes one of the closest friends of Natsume Takashi, a lonely boy who has been tormented by his ability to see youkai. Taki (usually referred to by her family name, as are all the school-age characters in the story) is remakably brave. At first she is quiet and withdrawn as a result of a curse that was placed upon her; later, she becomes lively and more talkative.
Let me know if you would like me to give you a letter too! (It may not be until tomorrow morning, though.)
So it's been a bit more than a month since whymzycal assigned me these seven things! Life has been rather complicated during that time, to say the least.
Saiyuki Reload Blast
Saiyuki Reload Blast
Saiyuki Reload Blast
Saiyuki Reload Blast
is returning!!!!
(As of the March 28 ZeroSum! Thanks to veronicacode for the first heads-up I saw this morning! And I do hope this means that Minekura-sensei is feeling much, much better!)
(And yes, I know lots of people have already posted this, but I just had to say something!)
The way this meme works is that you ask to do it, and then I give you four fandoms so you can tell us all about your favorite characters .
theskywasblue gave me: "... Saiyuki ... Bleach .. Lord of the Rings and ... Have you read Good Omens? (I don't know if you have, sorry! If not then your favourite character from any work by Diana Wynne Jones.)"
Actually, I have read Good Omens and I am fond of Pepper, but I don't think I can find any pictures of her. So ...
( Cut for the four I actually did ) This is what I've seen thus far. Some people have more than one offer, which is why they're listed multiple times.
Last update or check: 3/30/2011 at US ET ... One offer that was missed first time through (Mac Firefox pays attention to case ... ); it's the first one below
( Cut for list/links )List was produced by going to every single page and copying links.
Question: Should I cross-post this to Saiyuki comm? OK, I will cross-post.
Also called "cho plays with gradients and Photoshop brushes."
( clickez for graphics )... too much fun! Now I have the peony 58 one on the phone, but I have tried all of them.
Damn, it's been exactly three years since louiselux and emungere wrote that.
Three years. It seems unbelievable, somehow.
I've just finished the chapter that ends with Robin telling Angel to trust him and jump off the cliff, in Faerie.
But I'm tired and feel like crud - had my flu shot today, among other things - so I'll have to continue tomorrow.
If there are any Saiyuki fans reading this who haven't read this epic - you should remedy that.
I won a story from what-we-dream (who wrote "Forfeit") in the help_pakistan auction.
She has written a wonderful, slightly spooky tale - just right for this time of year - about Gojyo and Hakkai in that in-between period of their lives when the Banri incident is behind them, they're first starting to work for Sanzo regularly, and their relationship is deepening. Although stories that have Hakkai involved with ghosts are not uncommon, this one has a special twist to it, as well as a very charming, nuanced look at Gojyo and Hakkai's relationship at this point.
Please go read Hungry Ghosts!
It's rated PG-13 and is worksafe except for some swearing and violence.
1. I know your favorite pairing, but who is your favorite Saiyuki character (including Gaiden)?
Gojyo, hands down. He's a very comfortable fit for me as a point-of-view character - that desperate longing to belong and be loved, the fact that he's stuck always between two worlds. And his off-handed swearing and willingness to call people (even himself) on bullshit make me smile. Also, the fact that he doesn't have a special magical talent - except to always be the last man standing, and drag the others to safety.
2. How did you get into manga to begin with?
The Mr. was looking through the SF&F section of a bookstore near his office and getting increasingly disgusted with the selection. So he glanced at the manga section next over and asked the young store clerk what he'd recommend for someone who liked fantasy. He came home that night with the first volumes of Samurai Deeper Kyo. The rest is as blogged here on LJ!
3. If money and language barriers were no object, and you could live anywhere in the world, where would you want to live?
I'm living right where I want to live, pretty much! I grew up around here, and it fits me quite well. I love the varied population, the fact that we have so many great museums and restaurants from all cultures, the fact that I can buy Shabbat candles and sushi rice at the regular grocery, that no one blinks twice if I say that I'm leaving work early Friday because of Yom Kippur. The lush softness of the landscape, loud with birds and bright with flowers and butterflies, full of glens and dells with little streams flowing through, is a part of my heart. But if money were no object, I'd fix up the house. (I like to visit other places, but this is home.)
4. What was your first fandom, and how/when/why did you get into it?
Hee, what a question! It's a tie somewhere between Star Trek: the original series and LOTR. I found Star Trek on TV (to the disgust of my very girly best friend of the time, who preferred Lost in Space), and was given LOTR by my parents. By my early teens I had all of the meta-stuff that was available for both (David Gerrold's The Making of Star Trek, for example). I attended one of the last of the big NYC Star Trek conventions when I was 16. And in college, I had a card file of Elvish vocabulary and later reconstructed proto-Elvish for my historical linguistics teacher.
5. What's a favorite quote of yours? (I'm assuming there's no one favorite and what it might be might change over time.)
For a while now, it's been the Philip Pullman quote that I used as the title of my writing LJ: "'Thou shalt not' is soon forgotten, but 'Once upon a time' lasts forever."
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.
The amount of Full Metal Alchemist fic has gone up, and Saiyuki is now in the #4 position under "Anime & Manga" instead of the #3!
branchandroot