various things, #890786

[charmian]

1. Seriously, LIMERICKS? Isn't there something more useful LJ staffers could be doing? WTF?

2. Posted elsewhere my thoughts on SW3 CG scenes (tl;dr version: LOL, and man, they really changed around some of the non-historical relationships), Aoi Hana (tl;dr version: too lacking in structure?, or maybe I just hate slice of life. Bailed after two vols), and Saiunkoku spoilers (tl;dr version: stuff happens, but a lot of stuff fails to happen yet. As usual recent Saiunkoku reads a lot better if you like the higher officials).

Comments

[canis_m]

Had to respond to some of your impressions of Aoi Hana because they're just so wildly different from mine lol, also because yours is the first negative response I've seen. (Poss. others who don't love it avoid saying so in order to spare my feelings. XD;) I love the series to pieces and find it emotionally rich and affecting and am forever on the edge of my seat waiting for the next chapter(s).

Pacing: imo the biggest problem is that Shimura is bad at scene-to-scene transitions, so often the reader can't tell when a flashback has begun or ended, which can be completely bewildering. The anime adaptation tends to clarify those moments and the structure in general.

Dispassion: I don't get this from the characters at all--the reverse, actually; the emotion(s) feel authentic and on-pitch to me precisely because they're understated, not hyperbolized, though every now and then someone cracks and has a voluble moment--which is all the more affecting because it's the exception to the rule. In general the main characters feel very "real" (?) to me, like real kids who could really exist, although at the same time they and the setting and the story as a whole also have a vaguely idealized quality. Granted, I do have a high tolerance not to say preference for fiction in which conflict per se is minimized, and I like stories about fundamentally good-natured mild-mannered characters. -_-;

OTOH I think Aoi Hana absolutely is a love story, just a less conventional one, and in terms of overall plot, or what the story's "about," it's about Fumi and Aa-chan eventually getting together--and everything that has to happen first in order for them to get together. Though Shimura's starting point is far enough back in the chronology of that arc that apparently not all readers immediately get that impression.

RE: cast, confusingly large--this from a fan of Saiunkoku and RoT? Ahaha.

On another note, I think I may have recced Honey & Clover at you at some point, but if you don't care for Aoi Hana you should know that in terms of pacing and "slice of life" quality, H&C is not dissimilar. (Shimura and Umino Chica are mutual fans.) H&C has much more comedy, though, and probably a wider appeal in terms of themes.

[charmian]

Yeah, the scene to scene transitions might be a factor there, in making it more difficult to follow the story.

Like I said, I find that the way the emotion is portrayed is too understated for me. It simply doesn't come through for some reason, and it becomes hard to follow, but I could have taken that had the plot structure been more clear.

Ah, is that what it's about? It's sort of hard to tell that from the beginning, but as I said, I bailed after two vols, so perhaps I didn't get to the part where that starts.

Cast: Well, you have to recall that Saiunkoku is a nineteen volume long light novel series and seventy episode long anime series! It didn't start off with that many characters, and is formed into fairly suspenseful plot arcs with a great deal of conflict. Also, "what the story is about" is fairly clear from the start (seemingly, although it changes later, which is a problem with the novel series) The cast of Aoi no Hana isn't incredibly large, but I felt too many characters were introduced at the beginning.

RoT is kind of a different sort of animal: it's not character driven, but strongly plot driven (and also it's kind of like 'fan-fiction' therefore, you probably know who most of the characters are already: In other words, Cao Cao can just waltz in with the various Xiahous and Caos at his side because we know who Cao Cao is and are waiting for him to arrive before he even gets there), thusly the events are at the center, so it's not as big of a handicap that the characters are numerous. (And plus, it's like 30 vols at this point. The author doesn't actually start off introducing a ton of characters at once, but with action scenes that don't involve too many characters)

I \disliked the art of Honey and Clover, so I stopped reading it, though I intend to start reading it at some point.

[lennan]

I do like Aoi Hana, but I also find that the transitions are very strange, especially in some chapter to chapter ones where the problem is exactly as canis_m stated, that they're really confusing. And there are a number of times I haven't been sure who's monologue was whose as well.

I wasn't confused by the number of people being introduced though, but I'm pretty good at keeping people straight at first go, so that might be part of the reason I wasn't so confused. I do find a lot of the emotions to be very spot on, actually. I've also seen the anime in addition to reading the manga and this might have made keeping track of the story initially much easier because it clarified things for me. Or I might have become used to the way things go in the manga. But I definitely think that the anime makes things a lot more solid, at least for me.

[charmian]

The transitions are bothersome. I really dislike that kind of thing in manga. Did you read it in Japanese, though? Were the monologues still confusing there?

It just annoyed me because I didn't really see a reason for there to be so many, though.

[lennan]

Yeah. It was confusing in the Japanese, but a lot of that is because the speech patterns aren't really that different from each other. Or rather they're much subtly possibly because most every one is a girl. The monologues were only really confusing when they were transitioning from one scene to the next or one chapter to the next. One scene, the volume I can't remember was a transition where I wasn't watching the personal pronoun and so missed that the monologue was Fumi and not Aa-chan. The really confusing one is I think in volume 4 where I'm pretty sure now that the person who's monologuing is Kyouko, but the story events are transitioning to Fumi and Haruka where Haruka is going to tell Fumi that she thinks that her sister's lover is a woman. That really threw me, at first. Another one is I think is where the scenes transition between the end of Volume 4 and the first chapter of the next, where the scene moves forward with regards to the Mishima play but then backtracks to Aa-chan and Fumi's conversation regarding Fumi's confession. After that I mostly read the English translated chapters since I have no access to the raws. But it's mostly the monologuing that really trips me up.

I don't mind the monologues per se, but I wish that she wouldn't use them as transition points, since that's the only point where I really have a bone of contention with the series. Used sparingly like that it's fine, but she does it a lot.

[lennan]

I've found the emotions to be powerfully portrayed, as well. I've also noticed that she's really good at using "silence" as a mode of communication or internalizing events the characters are going through, particularly when they become more introspective.

I've also been skimming Hourou Musuko, which gives off a lot of the same vibes. Although with that one, I'm left thinking, "I just want these transgendered kids to be happy D= ". That's not something I get from Aoi Hana, possibly because I get the sense that a lot of the characters are really comfortable with who they are and not questioning it so much? Or maybe it's the difference in maturity level between high school students and elementary/middle school students and whether or not you're starting puberty.

I really like that the love story in Aoi Hana is less conventional, since I think that it would really turn me off of the series if it were otherwise. But that may be because I'm not a big fan of the usual kind of love story I've seen where the love drama was really contrived. Here it's seems like it's going more in the direction of self-discovery and growth towards each other.

Like you, I have a pretty high tolerance for low-key, slice-of-life stories. Sure I like the more dramatic stuff and "epic" as well. But sometimes it's just nice to read about people who might be like those I meet in the world dealing with real situations.