The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese

Mizushiro Setona is, IMHO, one of the best shoujo/BL mangaka out there. It's not because of her art (which was honestly, pretty awful when she started, but has improved by leaps and bounds), but because of her writing and characterization. It actually is incredibly puzzling to me that she isn't more popular, especially as she does both shoujo and BL, and thus could get both audiences.

( blather about my issues with romance manga )

"The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese" starts of with a fairly clichéd BL scenario: the main character, Kyouichi, is a salaryman, who is in a pretty lifeless marriage, but he honestly doesn't care that his wife only loves shopping. It turns out that she's hired a detective to follow him around and investigate him, and the detective is his college kouhai, Imagase. Imagase is gay, and has always been obsessed with Kyouichi. He has found evidence of Kyouichi's past affairs, but will keep quiet about them if Kyouichi agrees to make out with him. Kyouichi agrees. Anyway, to cut the cliche part short, Imagase keeps his promise, but Kyouichi's wife divorces him anyway. Later, Kyouichi, while continuing to insist he's straight, sort of starts fooling around with Imagase, who repeatedly declares his love for him...

My mini summary was really bad, because it doesn't explain the interesting stuff. One thing I found refreshing is that yeah, Imagase is gay, and has relationships with other men. One of the obstacles in the relationship is that Kyouichi doesn't want to have sex with Imagase because of the meaning of that act in that context. The story really isn't about, even though it starts out with blackmail, Imagase victimizing or harassing Kyouichi. Imagase himself admits he's a stalker, but he shows himself willing to back off if Kyouichi really wants him to, and even leaves. Kyouichi, though, is willing to make steps that draw Imagase back, and doesn't outright reject him, because.... he cares about Imagase enough to feel bad about hurting his feelings, but not enough to stop, or to "take responsibility in the relationship." Bleh, that was a bad summary also: I guess what I mean is that the dialogue here and the plot is compelling, and there are two volumes (the sequel has a different name and isn't completely translated) so you had might as well read it and make up your own mind.

( okay, time to be entirely without mercy and just talk about the manga to people who have already read the manga )

I have yet to read the second manga, so please no spoilers yet. XD

Preliminary Thoughts on Musou Orochi

This is a pretty hilarious game, but difficult to take seriously because Orochi and Dakki are such boring villains. I keep on thinking someone should write a fanfic AU where it is revealed that the real motivation of Orochi and Dakki is that they are HUUUUUUUGE Sengoku era/Sanguo era fans and so therefore they kidnapped their idols (fans gone wrong) in order to stage dream match-ups and like, resolve age old questions of who would kick whose butt.

Well, also it doesn't help that so far (I've played Wei, Shu and Wu a bit, haven't done Sengoku yet) that I tend to be thinking about the stories as follows: Shu is really like Super Mario World. Zhao Yun is Mario, and he defeats the level boss, but then he learns from the mushroom guy (Yuan Shao's hat is kind of mushroom shaped, ain't it?) that the Princess Liu Bei is in another castle. Wu seems to be all about the Sun family sitcom. Oh dear, there goes Dad again, insisting on staying behind oh-so-heroically, thus negating the entire damn mission to rescue him. I haven't finished it, but I'm sure it ends in like a family group hug. Maybe I'm biased, but I like the Wei storyline the best so far, although I ended up thinking strange thoughts like "so the relationship between Cao Cao and Cao Pi is kind of thematically like (in a v. tenuous way) the relationship between Nanjiroh and Ryouma in Tenipuri.(Wei no Ouji-sama?)"

Um, anyway, the gameplay seems significantly harder than the regular games, and actually, IMHO the amount of emphasis placed on the specials really alters things. Hard mode is really hard. Also it is kind of annoying to be having to play through on levels with everyone so that I can get more abilities. The weapons system is nice, though, as is the ability to give other charas more exp points.