#and certain parts of the fandom may say his newer books are bad but i like most of them

[riddlerosehearts]

seeing your pfp + url combination under a twst post gave me such a jolt omg... i've been out of the pjo fandom for a very long time but it's so cool seeing another twst & pjo liker! I still dip my toes back into the fandom from time to time like via searching the tags of my favourite characters, but i love seeing people like you still passionately into it around to talk about the series and its characters. now my question is... which of the cabins do you think your fav twst characters would belong in, or vice versa - which pjo favs in which twst dorms? for me, i think leo might work in ignihyde which i do kinda want to draw some time!

oh hey anon!! haha, i've been into twst for almost exactly a year now (literally started playing the prologue on february 18th 2023) but i've loved pretty much the whole PJO universe since i was a kid, and the TV show coming out recently got me thinking about it again and made me wanna switch to a nico icon for a bit. this is such a fun question! i'll start this by warning you that i tend to ramble and give overly lengthy answers to things.

hmm, i'll do twst characters in camp half-blood cabins first--my top faves are riddle and idia, so i'll sort them and also silver because i thought of an idea i like for him.

riddle: i definitely get the vibe that he's a son of athena, and maybe he could also be a legacy of themis, the titan goddess of law and order! also definitely becomes head counselor, probably at a fairly young age similarly to annabeth.

idia: i know this is an extremely obvious answer, but of course he and ortho are hades kids. though if idia would ever leave his cabin, he might find that he could get along well with some of the quieter hephaestus kids. also...

^ not my meme, found it on reddit a while back lol. ALSO like... he and nico both love nerdy things, used to be a lot more upbeat, and admired heroic figures until they were traumatized by the deaths of their siblings. and then for both of them their parentage and family history also plays a part in their isolation and jaded outlook on life. i guess this isn't really relevant to the question but i just wanted to say that it's crazy how similar their stories are.

silver: stays unclaimed in the hermes cabin for a while, and everyone thinks he must be a son of hypnos due to his tendency to fall asleep at random. it's very surprising when he gets claimed by morpheus, the god of dreams, instead.

and for pjo characters in NRC dorms... i wish we had a bit more canon info on what gets a person sorted into a particular dorm haha! let's see, though. my favorite characters in the original PJO books are nico and annabeth and my favorite of those introduced in HOO is leo, so i'll sort them! i know annabeth couldn't go there in canon but let's ignore that.

nico: obvious answer is that he'd end up in ignihyde, but another idea i had is what if he moved into ramshackle? i can see him feeling like he doesn't really fit in at ignihyde because of its focus on technology, and promising to keep the ramshackle ghosts in line if he's allowed to transfer.

annabeth: i think she'd be in scarabia! scarabia students are all about careful planning and strategy and are noted to generally be very resourceful and cunning, and all of that just fits her perfectly. i think it also fits because percy would definitely get put in octavinelle, and iirc scarabia and octavinelle are supposed to have a bit of a rivalry.

leo: i agree with you about ignihyde for him!! leo is someone who seems super energetic and outgoing but who actively seeks out quiet and personal space and literally gets along better with machines than with people, so i think he'd fit right in. if you do draw that then i'd absolutely love to see it.

[nagisasstunningpersonality]

The Character As A Tool: Why Your Fave Doesn't Get More Screentime

Please refer to this post

REMINDER THAT ALL VIEWS HERE ARE MERELY MY OWN OPINIONS 

In truth, one of the most common complaints I see within this fandom is the treatment of side characters. Meaning, in short, a fair amount of the fandom are less connected to what’s going on with our main group of Nagisa, Karma, and Kayano, and instead relate to some of the less obvious choices. Now, there’s no problem with doing this. Hey, if you see something you like in a less important character, then absolutely go for it!

What We Do Know

I discovered for myself, whilst making my About Ass Class series posts, that absolutely some characters’ actual canon information is very dry. Matsui gives everyone a few bits here and there in both the Roll Call book and Graduation Album. If you’re lucky, there’s further points you can pick up just from watching/reading.

Now, and this I want to emphasise I’m stating as an opinion, Matsui actually gives us quite a lot to go from. Even if not every character is highly developed, there’s still a genuinely very solid starting block to go from with your own headcanon. Perhaps it can be argued that it’s not the reader’s job to supply that, but I’d counter that it’s actually kind of fun to not be fed every piece of information. Though more facts and a deeper dive into interpersonal relationships would be admittedly nice, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with us as a fandom coming up with those ideas on our own, using the pointers Matsui does give us as a starting point. Honestly it would take the fun out a little if there was too much information, and we’d have less possibilities to play with.

Why Certain Characters Exist

I’m sorry to tell you, but one of the first things you’re taught in any kind of writing or literature analysis class is that characters are not people, they’re tools. This may feel a little harsh to say, and I’m aware that many people get attached to characters and have genuine feelings towards them. And that is totally valid! Definitely not on the same scale, but I too enjoy when people have real emotions towards my OCs, so I get it.

(rest under cut) 

To put it plainly: characters exist within a story as either a plot tool, or a message tool. A plot tool is someone who, as it sounds, exists to move the story along. Characters that need to exist in order for the story to happen as it does. Now, don’t get me wrong, you don’t need to have planned this out. You don’t need to specifically introduce Hara, for example, for the sole reason of her upping the stakes in the first Itona/Shiro arc. Characters existing for filler is still, in a way, a plot tool. It’s like… you set up a chess board. Sure, you might use the knight or the queen piece the most, but the pawns are still an important and useful piece, even if you don’t always utilize it for every move, or they don’t always stand out. Message tools are when a character doesn’t really do anything, but they help to assist in the message you want to send with your art/writing. There’s not so many examples of this in ass class, the best I can think of is either Yuuji or Sakura, who don’t do much at all but are beacons for what Matsui wants to say with them (which if you think about it is just ‘don’t do drugs kids’ and ‘stay in school’ :’)).

So free bit of writing advice for you: your character is your chisel. Once you’ve picked them up and started to work at carving out the story you want, then you can start adding all your fancy upgrades and personality points, which is what ultimately makes your character stronger. You grow attached to them when you’re done? Totally fair. Just… don’t go through this process the opposite way.

Without going too in depth with them right now, Nagisa Shiota is a plot tool. He is a plain easy to follow narrator whose observation skills intentionally mean the reader can see things clearly through his eyes. Where he loses relatability is when he displays his talent, but at that point he’s been so clearly introduced that it doesn’t matter as much, we can hear his voice. Him being more plain makes his talent more effective and shocking as it is. Karma Akabane is a plot tool. He exists so we have those somewhat comedic moments, and so we can have these big bad ass mental/physical fight moments. I actually think him not being the protagonist is something that makes Ass Class hugely stronger (and less cliché) as a series. Kayano Kaede is a plot tool. Admittedly, less so, but she has a lot of function as a back up to Nagisa, and then later is the catalyst for Korosensei’s backstory. The story starts to come to its climax due to her arc alone. As an aside I think a lot of criticism for Matsui isn’t that fair within the fandom, but I will openly say his treatment of her post reveal was not the best at all. He kind of lost control of what to do with her.

So, let’s talk about archetypes. I intend to write a whole meta about why Ass Class is predominantly written as a comedy series, but for now just take that statement as my opinion. Honestly, I do think Ass Class, with a few tweaks, could have worked with a bunch of unnamed characters. I’m instantly going to follow that up with: I’m very glad it didn’t. I love that it feels more like a large ensemble with a variety of characters. So instead of just plain filler, Matsui kind of makes good use of archetypes. You know, such as Takebayashi and Fuwa as otakus, Hazama as the dark occult girl etc. etc. All of this for comedic purpose, more than anything, which we really see in something like Koro Q which is more directly comedy. You might argue this is one dimensional, and I’d agree, but in this situation it’s achieving an effect. It’s genuinely better than having nothing. And honestly, they all do stuff. Some characters are far more effective and entertaining as a background character (i.e. Terasaka) than carrying a bunch of weight themselves.

Matsui Actually Does This Comparatively Well

Honestly, try and name another popular series in a classroom setting, with this many characters who all have individual personalities. Genuinely, the only one I can kind of think of is BNHA, and that’s not a fair comparison given the difference in story length. Comparatively to most series, Ass Class actually has really good side characters. If they were completely uncaringly written, nobody would stan them as hard. For the most part, I’d certainly argue everyone is memorable. Given that we’re juggling at least 30 people here (including teachers, Gakushuu etc.), I’d actually argue that’s kind of impressive.

And the thing is, Matsui does care. He cares enough to give everyone designs, hobbies, and personalities. A good portion of them have an entire chapter to themselves, although relative to the story as a whole they might not do so much (example: Kimura). Matsui could have been lazy with it, but he was not. I don’t want to invalidate anyone’s feelings with this, but I do argue here that those who think the opposite might be a little wrapped up in the character they stan. And I can totally understand that rightfully, you want the character you love to have more screen time. However, just because you happened to fall in love with them (figuratively I mean), doesn’t change the purpose they were originally created to fulfil.

It’s an unfair criticism that not giving every single person a huge arc makes Matsui a poor writer. Honestly, if everyone was equal without a few main characters getting a greater amount of the attention, the entire series would be a hot mess. It might be fun to reimagine the series that way, and go ahead in your own time, but as a series from start to finish, as a first time consumer, it would be genuinely very hard to follow. Not without changing the entire structure and many many plot points.

I do intend to write more about this too at a later point (because I will admittedly need to do more research), but in my opinion the biggest issue with Ass Class, and the cause behind the problems I have with it, is the genuine lack of time. It’s a relatively short story, compared to a lot of manga, and thus there isn’t the space to contain everyone’s story in deep way. I’m absolutely certain, had there been 50/100 chapters more, every character would have had a stand out chapter to themselves.

So thus I bring up the fun and stimulation that is headcanon.

The Issue with headcanons

(this point will go much quicker, I promise)

Ass class ended a looong time ago, let’s be fair. Whether you’re newer or older to the fandom, there’s still been quite a while since any kind of new content (Korotan D being the last official piece, Koro Q manga being the last anything, though I could be slightly wrong with that). That means, especially if you’ve cared about this series for a while, that we’ve considered the series to death.

Playing with headcanons is great! It’s fun! But, I do fear that especially when it comes to perhaps the more popular of the minor characters, a lot of us are getting wrapped up. It needs to be kept in mind that whilst these headcanons may have been around for a while, they are not directly correct to the source material. As a quick note, since I have seen people within the fandom getting kind of bothered over opposing opinions to the things they assume as canon. That’s not really anybody’s fault, but it does warrant saying, I think.

A Conclusion

Basically, loving a main character is great. Loving a more background character is great. You’re not a better or worse, more intelligent or more basic person for whoever your fave is. The point is, you see something you like in a character and you relate to them, or else just enjoy them. But as fun as that is, characters are tools. They exist for a specific purpose. Sometimes, that purpose doesn’t warrant them having a huge stand out character arc.

But hey, that’s totally okay because we’re fortunate enough to have such a community (arguably, I’d say a genuinely active one too) where we can dream that up ourselves. We can pretty much endlessly explore these possibilities. So, perhaps instead of negativity complaining about certain narrative issues we find (just putting this here: it’s fair to do this, but I don’t think it should be the FOCUS of conversation), we focus on driving that energy into creation. And there’s a lot to play with and create. And honestly, seeing HC posts and all sorts staring these more minor characters is great, and I’m pretty sure the majority would agree with me on that. I fully realise and accept that I have a platform here, and going forward I personally want to be a part of that. In a constructive way, rather than ‘deconstructing’ (yes, there’s a pretty big different as I see it).

(I realise that this last part comes off a bit call out post like, and I want to ensure that it is not intended to be that. I just have a general sense of some attitudes towards things floating around in a very generalised way right now)

[gunmaestro]

The (Subjectively) Bad Writing of the Current Arc in Bungou Stray Dogs

I respect Asagiri as a writer, and I love what he’s given us in terms of content and characters. However, with the translation of the newest chapter out I think there are a few of my opinions about this arc I would like to put out there for people to see and consider, regardless of whether or not they agree. To define this arc, I will be talking about all chapters AFTER “The Perfect Murder and Murderer, Part 3″, as I consider the three chapters with focus on Mushitaro to be chapters that link the two consecutive arcs together rather than belonging to either. This post is also being written at a point where the most recent chapter is 77, so keep that in mind if later chapters have been posted that contradict what I’m writing here.

First, let’s start with something not so terrible: the new characters we’ve been introduced to in this arc.

If you know me, you know I’m a fan of the Hunting Dogs. I like them very much and I wish for other people to see that they’re good characters. However, I will do my best not to let this impact what I say in this post. From what we’ve seen of them so far, the Dogs have been very interesting and well-rounded characters. I think up until this most recent chapter (that being 77, at the time I’m writing this), the Dogs have been developed excellently; more on why I believe this chapter set them back completely as characters later in this post.

I’ll give a part of this to Tachihara, because although he isn’t new, we’re seeing a side of him that we’ve never actually seen before, and he feels like a completely new character to me. I may be one of the few people in the fandom who liked the initial twist of him being the fifth hunting dog. And, despite me saying I hate chapter 77, I like the direction they’re taking his character with making him out to be more mafia than hunting dog. I don’t, however, enjoy the way in which they are choosing to show this; again, I will go more into that later.

Gogol and Sigma.. have been interesting. I like what we’ve seen of Gogol so far and I am very happy that they’ve brought him back. I want to know what they have in store for his character! Sigma.. eh. I liked Sigma when he first was introduced, but the plotline that he is a creation of the book diminished my interest in him by a lot. It just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the things in BSD. The same applies in general to the casino.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, here are some general thoughts about the arc.

I think Asagiri is cramming way too much into one arc. Actually, I would be fine with most of the things I have a problem with if they were more spread out. My problem started with the introduction of the Sky Casino and the ongoing chess game between Fyodor and Dazai. I think the arc should have been about the ADA, the Mafia, and the Dogs. I think they should have gotten the page back by now and Sigma and the Sky Casino should have had absolutely nothing to do with the book or the page, instead being introduced later as a completely separate thing.

I also think that upping the stakes as much as this arc has in such a short amount of time was a big mistake. The tone of the current arc has absolutely no resemblance to the tone of the first few arcs.

Thirdly, and this is a personal issue because I frankly do not enjoy Dazai or Fyodor, there has been WAY too much focus on their chess game. In fact, their chess game is detrimental to EVERY OTHER CHARACTER in the series. Though it advances both of them, I am a firm believer in the fact that the development of one character should not have to rely on setting every single other character back by miles. Not only is the chess game annoying, but it devalues literally every other character as.. independent characters, instead either painting them out to be reliant on Dazai or reliant on Fyodor. At least Fyodor’s comrades are all in on his plans, though. Dazai literally is using the Dogs as chess pieces WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE.

Fourth and finally, I think the exclusion of several major characters from the majority of the arc and focusing mostly on the newer characters is subtracting from the general quality of the arc, and this is coming from someone who ADORES Gogol and the Dogs. This arc should have included Ranpo, Kunikida, Chuuya, and Akutagawa more than it did, and it should have put less focus on the Decay of Angels. They should have entered the spotlight in the next arc or at least towards the end of it, in my opinion.

Now, the real dealbreaker of the arc: Chapter 77.

I am willing to deal with the Sky Casino, even if it is out of place for the series. I’m also willing to deal with Sigma being a creation of the book, and the Decay of Angels being able to bring people back from the dead. HOWEVER, there has been one thing introduced in 77 that has left a bitter taste in my mouth.

The decision to make it IMPOSSIBLE for any person in authority to believe that the detective agency is innocent is, suffice to say, a terrible choice for the plot and for the characters. This decision was made seemingly to raise the stakes and to further Tachihara’s development. I like the fact that Tachihara is getting development in this direction, but I don’t like that the stakes are being raised EVEN MORE, and that the choice to develop Tachihara using this method sets several other characters way back in terms of ever having the hope of being three dimensional, fully realized characters.

I’ve mentioned that I think the development of one character should not have to hinder any other character’s development, and that holds true here especially. By introducing this plot point---by FORBIDDING certain characters to come to realizations that might otherwise have come to---Asagiri is severely limiting the potential of the Hunting Dogs, and the police characters such as Minoura.

Tetcho and Ochi are two characters who were shown as being kind to the Agency and trying to help them, and from this readers were meant to get the impression that they might start believing in the agency. With the knowledge that they could not possibly come to that realization on their own and that the only hope of them coming to it at all is MAYBE Tachihara, we now know that none of the Hunting Dogs are capable of getting their own arc in the near future. NONE of them will be able to develop as characters enough to have their own thoughts on the matter, unless the unlikely scenario arises that they split from the law.

To conclude:

I’m tired of this arc.

[lechevaliermalfet]

West Across the Sand: A Look Back at Kazan

When I first got into anime and manga, I was in my mid-teens, and it was the mid- to late 90s.  And at least in my part of the world, it was a little like joining a secret society.  You practically had to already know someone on The Inside, and it was like getting initiated.  Whoever had been into it longer than you would want to show you the classics of the era: Ranma ½, Tenchi Muyo! (Which one?  All of them), Akira, Vampire Hunter D, or any number of choice others.  Soundtracks (if you were into that sort of thing) were hard to come by, and most of the ones I found locally came courtesy of either Son May or EverAnime – companies I later found out were Taiwanese bootleggers.  You could tell the discs were bootlegs because the prices were reasonable.

In those days, getting fansubs meant sending blank VHS tapes to total strangers you’d found online, and waiting weeks (or longer) to get them back with anime on them, and everybody had the Anime Web Turnpike bookmarked.  There’s still a website at its URL, though Wikipedia states it’s been offline as of 2014.  

If you want to know where anime got its reputation for violence and sex, this particular era is where you want to look.  The market for anime was small in those days, and the licensors and distributors really had no idea how to expand it.  So a lot of them (in particular Streamline, Urban Visions, and U.S. Manga Corps; now all defunct) catered to the exploitation-flick market – the gore-hounds and the porn junkies, and the people we would have called edgelords if the term had been invented yet.

This was a time when you could use the word “Japanimation” utterly without irony, and there was a good chance that nobody hearing it would cringe.

Manga, meanwhile, was a total wilderness.  You couldn’t find it in bookstores back then.  That you can today is thanks to Tokyopop.  Whatever their numerous and varied sins, they can claim to have done that bit of good, at least.  And Amazon and Ebay were somewhere off over the horizon.  So you had to go to your local comic book shop, and then you had to look around for yourself, because chances were that even the people who worked there didn’t know what in the hell you were talking about.

Most of the manga that was available came through Viz and Dark Horse (and maybe other avenues I’ve forgotten).  But mostly Viz.  Dark Horse got their hands on some great stuff (Ghost in the Shell and Blade of the Immortal, just to name two), but Viz got more stuff, and a wider variety of it.

At the tail-end of the 90s, there was the beginning of an anime boom that lasted until about the mid-aughts.  I was at one of Crispin Freeman’s Q&A panels at Anime Central a couple of years ago, and he likened it to a tide rolling in about every decade. The tide comes in, hits a high-water mark, and recedes.  Then it comes in again, a little higher this time, and recedes.  In the late 90s, the tide came in and largely stayed in.

A large part of this, I think, was Toonami, which took a crowbar (part Dragon Ball Z and part Gundam Wing at the start, followed by others later) to the whole situation and forced the door wide open.  A lot of what they showed was very commercial and fairly “safe” (or at least, could be made safe), but it accomplished what Astro Boy and Speed Racer and Starblazers and Robotech before had never managed, which was to make anime into a minor phenomenon.

In the wake of that sudden explosion, there were a ton of smaller and less established entities who got into the business.  More of these, so far as I can remember, went into manga rather than anime (though there were a few new anime companies, like SynchPoint).  It was probably cheaper than trying to get in on the anime side of things.  Suddenly, we had Tokyopop (first under their Mixx Manga label, then later their own name), and DrMaster, and ComicsOne (whose publications were later taken over by DrMaster when ComicsOne vanished into the ether in 2005; DrMaster would follow suit themselves, just four years later), and Yen Press, and Studio Ironcat, and Seven Seas…  Even reputable publishers like Del Rey got in on the act after a while.

It was an exciting time to be a fan, to have so many new avenues available through which to explore the hobby, each trying to find new and exciting material in order to carve out their own niche.  Today, a lot of these publishers don’t exist.  The market was growing, but didn’t ultimately grow enough to allow room for them all.  

A certain part of me actually misses the bad old days.  Like any rational person, I’m happy that one of my major interests is now at least sort of mainstream, easy to access, and at least somewhat cheaper (nowadays, companies like Aniplex only want an arm and a leg for a boxed set of Kara no Kyoukai; back in the day, they’d have demanded your firstborn).  If nothing else, the release schedules are infinitely better.  But there was something about being a fan back then that made me feel like I was a part of something, some group, some tribe.  There was a feeling of having some hidden, secret knowledge, of knowing a whole language of fandom that other people didn’t understand, of having a line on something other people didn’t know about and didn’t get.

Really, though, I think what I miss most is the newness of my hobby.  I miss it being strange and wonderful and full mostly of unknowns, of things yet to be seen and experienced.  I miss knowing that twenty years ago, if I’d come across a copy of Beast King GoLion in a vendor’s stall, I would have lost my damn mind.  Now, I just go “Huh. Neat,” and put it on my Amazon wishlist.

A few months ago, I was going through my old manga, and came across the three volumes of Kazan I owned, out of a seven-volume run.  They were some of the first manga I’d bought in what was, at the time, the newer (smaller) size format that’s now standard for manga. Mirror-imaging, or “flopping” the artwork was still common at the time, although that practice was on its way out.  If there’s one other thing we can all thank Tokyopop for, it’s normalizing the right-to-left format for manga in the U.S.

Kazan was written and drawn by Gaku Miyao, who was probably most famous for his character design work on the Devil Hunter Yohko OVA from the mid-90s.  It was published in the U.S. by ComicsOne from 2001 to 2005.  It’s out of print now, and it was never enough of a thing that anybody else cared to pick up the license after they vanished into the ether.

It doesn’t shock me that ComicsOne went under, really.  They didn’t only release total unknowns, mind.  They got Onegai Teacher and Onegai Twins.  There was also Tsukihime: Lunar Legend (though that franchise has played second fiddle to its younger sibling Fate for a long while now).  On the other hand, they also published Jesus, and the prophet from Nazareth has never really been what you’d call a favorite character in the anime fandom.  Then as now, almost nobody in the fandom stans Christ.  Except maybe Vic Mignogna, and, well...

I remember it being new and exciting when I was reading it.  Now, looking back, it’s very much a relic of its times.  Given that ComicsOne began U.S. publication of it in 2001, I’m guessing the manga was probably published in the mid- to late 90s in Japan.  The artwork is a lot closer in style to what you’d see back then, as well as the character tropes and archetypes.  

I’d always meant to pick up the remaining volumes – certainly I’d liked what I’d read – but I’d fallen behind on collecting them as they came out, and they were hard to find later on.  Kazan was never a major item on anybody’s radar.  It’s so minor that even danbooru has no images of it.  At least, none tagged.  Fucking danbooru.

My curiosity about the later events of the series had been going strong for close to two decades, so I finally broke down and bought the remaining volumes in an Ebay auction… and then didn’t read them, I guess because now that I had them, I could take my time.

I finally got around to re-reading the series just recently, and it’s been an interesting slice of nostalgia.

Kazan is a desert-punk story named after its protagonist.  Kazan looks about eight years old, is actually closer to eighteen, and is about ten-thousand percent done with everyone’s shit.  “Surly” doesn’t quite do it justice.  He’s searching for his childhood friend, a girl named Elsie.  

Back when he actually was eight years old, he was approached by a water demon who told him that his father Sheeroc had, in desperation at the prospect of dying alone in the desert, sold Kazan for just a cup of water.  Sheeroc, leader of the nomad clan known as the Red Sand, was at that time questing about for a way to give his people a more grounded way of life.  However, instead of Kazan, the water demon decided to kidnap his childhood friend Elsie, for reasons that go unexplained for most of the story.  The demon also decided to wreck Kazan’s entire village just for good measure, and Kazan winds up the only survivor that he knows of.

Since that moment, he has not physically aged a day.  The reason for this is also left unexplained for most of the manga’s run.  

Suffice it to say that some of his surliness comes from having to constantly prove to people that, despite all appearances, he really is not a child.  A lot of the rest of it comes from the whole “being sold to a water demon” thing.

His only traveling companion in the beginning is a giant white eagle with a red crest, named Kamushin.  The eagle is so large and strong (or Kazan is so small), that he can actually carry Kazan at least for brief periods.  Kamushin seems to be sentient at times, and whether he is or not, he tends to be the most level-headed one in the room.

Aside from the eagle, Kazan’s most easily distinguishable features are his shounen-hero hair, his tall red hat, and his knife, which he wields and throws with frightening accuracy.

It’s not long at all before he gains two additional companions on his journey.  One is Fawna, a young girl capable of manifesting water at will.  This power is a double-edged sword in a desert environment.  It’s helpful while traveling, but the things people might do to have control of her power – and of course, by extension, Fawna herself – mean she has to use the power sparingly.  She and Kazan initially come to blows once her ability is revealed, or rather, Kazan comes to blows.  Fawna comes to bewilderment and confusion in the face of Kazan’s accusations that she must be the water demon who stole Elsie years ago.  Why would she have the same power, otherwise? Eventually, though, he calms down.  As he (and we) get to know Fawna, the idea of her kidnapping anybody seems laughable.

Fawna is making her way west across the desert to a country called Goldene.  She has been summoned there, as Water People (this is the manga’s translation, and we’ll come to that in a bit) frequently are, as they are necessary for the control and upkeep of Goldene’s water supply.  She’s around seventeen, and spends most of the story unaware of Kazan’s actual age.  She seems to not really take his claims of adulthood very seriously.  In fairness, “My name’s Kazan.  I’m not a kid,” – practically his catchphrase, and usually a good sign that someone has a beating on the way – is pretty much exactly what you’d expect a kid to say.

With Fawna having the same water powers as the entity that kidnapped Elsie, and Goldene seemingly a place where people of that sort are gathered, Kazan decides that his quest is pointing him in that direction.  Despite some misgivings, he decides to accompany her.  Luckily, the two of them happen across another companion, an old woman named Arbey who has a talent for making explosives.  She claims to know the way there, having been a citizen of the country herself at some point in her past.

So they go.

Along the way, they are beset by monsters and difficult situations with other travelers, as well as occasional tussles with Messengers, fierce and deadly agents of Goldene out kill Fawna (their reasons are initially unclear) and capture Kamushin, who turns out to be the White Eagle of Goldene, making him an item of high significance.

Part of what initially caught my attention about Kazan was that it reminded me in a vague way of Eden’s Bowy.  This was a show I’d first seen fansubbed at AnimeIowa in 2000.  If you want another really good example of just how different things were back then, there it is: Conventions would show fansubs, because the industry had virtually no presence at any of them except maybe the absolute biggest, so they could get away with it.  I was nursing a minor obsession with Eden’s Bowy at the time.  The three or four episodes I’d seen at the convention had grabbed my attention for reasons I’m not entirely sure I understand.  Part of it was the creeping doubt over whether the show would ever get picked up for U.S. release (it did, in fact), and I figured I was unlikely ever to see it again.  So anything that put me in mind of it got my attention.

As it happens, the similarities between Kazan and Eden’s Bowy run no deeper than the surface. There are the common elements of a boy in (mostly) white crossing the desert with a mystically empowered young girl and an older adult as companions, and in both stories, they’re seeking out a city that in some fashion lords it over the rest of the setting.  Beyond that, they couldn’t be more different.  For starters, Yorn, the hero of Eden’s Bowy, is kind of the quintessential Idiot Hero of shounen manga and anime: naïve, trusting, and ultimately kind of helpless on his own.  Kazan, meanwhile, is intelligent, self-reliant, and aggressively independent.  Cynical and deeply distrustful, he resists all attempts at friendship or other emotional connection with other characters, and the vulnerability that goes with it.

Kazan isn’t the most likeable character, but his attitude at least makes sense, given his background.  He’s a very (understandably) angry young man trapped in a child’s body, and a lot of his problems come about as a result of his hardening himself against a world that seems destined by turns to betray him and refuse to take him seriously.  When we see him in flashbacks, he’s a sweet kid.  A bit of a crybaby, even.  

Still, in the present of the story, he can sometimes be an unlikeable little shit. His early relationship with Fawna is rocky, and gets violent once or twice throughout the story, which makes me cringe a lot more in 2019 than it did in 2001 or 2002.  In the interests of fairness, I should point out that he gets violent with quite a number of people, and all for the same reason as Fawna, which is that he feels what they are doing is either very wrong or dangerously stupid, or else he sees them as enemies.  He’s an equal-opportunity asshole, I guess.  So I want to say there’s nothing inherently sexist going on there.  Still, it’s not a good look, and please understand I’m not justifying it by any means.  But I do want to lend context.  

The story does wring a lot of natural tension out of the relationship between Kazan and Fawna as natural foils to each other.  Where Kazan trusts nobody and prefers to operate alone, Fawna is naïve and occasionally trusting of the wrong sorts, which gets her into trouble more than once.  And she has a tendency, early on, to lash out with her power in anger or to harm others.  This is sometimes for self-defense, but sometimes also motivated by anger.  Kazan is – oddly, given that he’s otherwise the one more comfortable with the occasional necessity of violence – adamant that she not do this.  Memorably, one of the times he’s violent with her is to stop her from doing something of that sort.  

The manga doesn’t ever really spell out Kazan’s hangup about Fawna misusing her water powers, but I have a guess.  I imagine that it has a lot to do with his initial association of Fawna’s water power with the water demon that kidnapped Elsie ten years prior.  He has a strong (but never quite articulated) belief that in a desert world, anyone with the power to create water – in practical terms, the power to support and sustain life – should not use that power for evil ends.  Fawna using her power only for good helps to mark a clear distinction between her innate goodness and the wickedness of the water demon.

Kazan himself, perhaps surprisingly given his anger and foul attitude for much of the story, tends to pull his punches.  He’s not above beating his attackers silly and occasionally dishing out pain to those he feels are deserving.  But he goes out of his way to spare people on a number of occasions, and when someone sharpens his knife to such an edge that it can cut stones, he actually requests that it be dulled again so that he doesn’t kill someone by mistake.

Refreshingly, there’s no will-they-won’t-they pseudo-romance between Kazan and Fawna.  I don’t object to a romance angle in a story in principle, but it often gets teased in a story like this, where the two leads are each other’s foils and love interests both, and it’s just done to death.  It tends to get shoehorned in because the creators of these stories (perhaps egged on by their publishers) feel that it’s necessary.  Broadening the demographics, maybe?  But there’s a sort of obligatory feeling to it a lot of the time, as if it’s clearly being done because, well, that’s just what we do with stories like this, right?  It gets to the point where you wonder why anyone bothers teasing it.  We all know from long experience how things are going to end up.  But Kazan is clearly fixed on Elsie and Elsie alone.  He and Fawna are simply friends and partners who, by the end of the story, understand each other, and work together, very well.

Another thing that’s nice about Kazan is the refreshing absence of much cheesecake fanservice.  A few characters are dressed in provocative outfits here and there, but even when that’s the case, the “camera” doesn’t really leer like you might expect.  There are one or two moments that had me sighing and shaking my head – a couple instances of the sadly typical Faux Sexual Assault As Comedy – but at this point I like to think I’m an old vet when it comes to this. It’s disappointing, but it’s the kind of thing you learn to resign yourself to if you’re going read much manga or watch much anime at all.

The final chapters of Kazan rely on a lot of last-minute revelations to explain everything.  It’s not really a matter of deus ex machina exactly so much as it is a matter of insufficient foreshadowing.  It would go down a little easier if some of these ideas had been set up maybe a little earlier in the story.  But it’s hard to complain too much.  Even as it clanks a bit toward the end, it never quite feels like the creator is pulling it out of his ass.  The ideas are sound; it’s their tardiness that’s the problem.  But even if it stumbles a little toward the finish line, Kazan’s ending is ultimately satisfying, and earned.  The last few panels are pretty much perfect, and exactly what I spent most of the manga’s run hoping for.  And of course, there’s still the entire rest of the manga before it, which is certainly worth the read.

If there’s one place where Kazan actually falls flat, it’s the translation. And that, at least, you can’t blame on the original creator.  

You could most charitably describe ComicsOne’s English translation of Kazan as workmanlike.  It’s not really a machine translation, but it does seem at times to veer awfully close to that territory.  It’s there, and things basically make sense; that’s about the best you can say for it.  Ultimately, though, it’s just lacking something.  There are places all over Kazan’s seven-volume run where the phrasing seems bland or off, where it lacks real punch and personality, and where it seems just plain awkward and stilted. There are times when it seems like the characters lack a distinct voice.  Spelling is also inconsistent.  The name of Kazan’s father is spelled Sheeroc in the earlier volumes, but Shiroc in later ones. And there are placement issues as well, where sometimes lines that are clearly meant to be spoken by one character are lumped in with the dialogue in another character’s word balloon.  Overall, the translation is some real amateur-hour work.  This seems to be a trait of ComicsOne; the one volume of the Tsukihime manga I own has some of these same issues.

But this isn’t a problem I can really hold against the manga, since it’s a problem that (to the best of my knowledge) wouldn’t really have existed in the Japanese version.  And it’s hard to fault the original creator for how translators handled his work after the fact.

There’s not much like Kazan out there that I’ve seen.  I don’t have a lot of recommendations in the vein of “If you like X, Y, or Z, then try Kazan.”

Part of the reason I enjoyed Kazan as much as I did is nostalgia.  Not for the story itself, but for the times it puts me in mind of.  The kind of story it tells; the specific way it handles its characters, and manifests their archetypes and tropes; the way it’s drawn; all of it is intensely reminiscent of its time.  There is a certain Look or Aesthetic I’m fond of in anime, and it tends a little toward the particular stylization and combination of traits that was very stereotypical at the time I was getting into it.  But even as that’s a stereotype, there’s something about it that I actually find visually appealing.  I suppose it goes back to my nostalgia.  When this was a new hobby for me, that look was practically shorthand for everything anime stood for.

More than that, it’s a time capsule, a snapshot of how things looked when I was first getting into my hobby.  I’ll probably never again have that feeling of things yet to be seen and done, mysteries yet to be uncovered and explored, at least not with this particular hobby.  But reading something like Kazan, I’m reminded of those times with great intensity.

There’s also the setting.  I have a soft spot for huge, wasteland vistas.  As much as I can recognize that, say, The Weathering Continent is not really a good movie, I still find myself drawn to its world.  This extends into video games as well.  One of the things I loved most about Shadow of the Colossus (either version) was simply wandering its world.  Something about characters surviving in such a hostile, sometimes even decaying environment just grabs my imagination and runs with it.  But I’m picky about these kinds of stories, too.  I prefer my environments and my characters to look and sound and act a certain way.

Despite the inescapable influence of personal appeal, though, I still honestly think Kazan holds up, and is very much worth a read.  It’s not going to be the easiest thing to find, but on the flipside, Kazan was a manga published by a company that never really achieved notability and stayed in business for a grand total of maybe six years at most.  So while the supply has never been very great, neither has the demand.  The prices haven’t gotten exorbitant, and I don’t see that changing in the near future.  

In all, it’s worth the effort to track down if you can.

[hopewritteninthestars]

A Few Thoughts on “End of the Skywalker Saga” and the premature mourning among the fandom for Ben Solo

Okay there seems to be a lot of ennui over that blanket term of “end of the Skywalker saga” that was used in the most recent press release. Mostly a lot of premature grieving over what people are claiming to be Ben Solo’s inevitable death.

Now I get it. That statement at first was very jarring and had a certain uncomfortable finality to it. But after sitting on it for a few days I’ve came to peace with it and don’t see it as being the cloaked figure of death coming and knocking at Ben’s door.

It’s best to look at the statement from all angles. This is the end of the Skywalker saga from a certain point of view I believe. But... But that does not exactly spell doom for Ben Solo.

This is the wrap up of the Star Wars story that has circled our collective imagination for decades now. A story of those who bore the Skywalker name. The story of the Skywalker children’s plight and then of the originator of the Skywalker line - the hopes rested on his shoulders and his fall from grace. All these points coming together and connecting all the way up to this chapter in the sequel trilogy. I don’t believe it’s really closing the book on the story than the characters.

By that I mean the nugget of truth in how important it was to make sure Leia was back. Not just Leia but Carrie Fisher. The reason Luke will return as well. These are the children bearing the Skywalker name. They’ve arguably held a more detached role in the sequel trilogy giving more attention to newer themes and younger characters but this is still very much there story. There story that was started all those years ago. The events here are ones that trickled down from choices made by them, it all connects and is ready to come to a head. They’ve always made a point of saying that episode 7 was Han’s episode, episode 8 would be Luke’s and episode 9 was to be Leia’s. We should look at that as the connecting pieces to bring this story in particular to and end. Going further Han died in 7, Luke died in 8 and if that’s anything to go on we could very well assume a properly written and plotted out goodbye for Leia was planned for 9. Therefore saying goodbye and bringing things we have known to a close.

Star Wars has thematically always been released in trilogies. It wouldn’t be too wild to imagine then that these 3 separate trilogies should be thought of as one big story of its own large trilogy. One story with 3 parts divided into 9 chapters so to say. A beginning, a middle and finally an end.

In conclusion what I want to state is that until we go further it would be wise to look at this as not a final goodbye all together but more so as a passing of a baton. Getting ready to place one large tome of a book back on the shelf and continue on with one that is new and unknown. Because if the main worry here is of Ben’s fate then we should remember that Ben may carry a quarter of the Skywalker blood but he is not himself a ~Skywalker~ if you get my drift. He is a Solo. So if we are closing the book on the Skywalker saga that is not to say that we may not soon open the next chapter of the Solo saga.

Besides the death of Ben Solo would not even fit well into this whole “end of the Skywalker saga”. We’ve been told that a lot of work has gone into crafting this, to make sure that the threads of all 9 films will tie together and make sense as a whole. The end of a saga would be rather unfulfilling if it came with no resolution or happy ending. That may sound contrite but it’s true. We’ve been through this 9 films, we’ve followed this story. We’ve fallen in love with characters and we’ve seen many of them die along the way. Should their death’s be in vain? To serve no purpose? What they believed in and what they fought for should be seen to fruition and not squandered. And what they believed in and preached to us the viewer was love. Plain in simple it has always been about the link between love, forgiveness and keeping up the good fight and never giving up. The love between family - whether that be the one you are born into or the one you make. The love between the friends made along the way. The romantic love that we’ve been shown before that found its way through times of war and adversity. Showing the power of forgiveness and the strength to choose another path for oneself. That sometimes there is bad in the universe but things aren’t always so easily divided into black and white but more so the shades of grey in the middle.

For all I just mentioned to be the connecting links throughout this story to not end in a resolution of these ideals would be a same and travesty.

So no I don’t believe Ben will die. I feel pretty confident on that. Because I believe we will say goodbye to the Skywalkers we know - with them achieving what they’ve fought so long for. And hopefully saying goodbye to them means we can confidently close that book and move on. Move on to new stories with the Solo saga. (Not to end my sappy ramblings on a practical note but do we really think Disney and a Lucasfilm are going to throw out these characters we’ve grown to love since 2015 with no future whatsoever? Recognition makes you a cash cow and we know how much Disney likes the green stuff.)