#but it's just interesting to me to see the difference in how daigo and aoki utilize their influence and responsibility

[todayisafridaynight]

uugghh when you said you like aoki because of leaning towards characters in position of power I FELT THAT ASHDHFKD even since I was a kid I somehow liked the leaders of the groups the most and it HASNT CHANGED HELP (maybe its the sense of responsibility, god knows i dont have one)

stanning daigo like look at this depressed dude steering this cruiser called Tojo out of the rocks to sink gracefully at the shallows after the previous captain (cough kiryu cough) abandoned ship. You’re doing great sweetie i’m cheering you on. Keep pretending you’re all serious and know what you’re doing king 🫡

i like it when characters are evil cause its funny to my brain :) but no real shit cause Being In A Position Of Power is so tremendous and. Powerful LIKE you are responsible for so many people ... what you do with that responsibility can be frightening or benevolent and ouuuggh.....

i've gone EXTENSIVELY into why i love daigo but a major part of it is his character progression and the fact he tried so hard for the tojo until he couldnt. i wont get TOO into it lest i end up typing TWO Why I Like This Character essays in a day but how his attitude and his experiences change over time is so cool to me and i love it so much...

[itsybitsylemonsqueezy]

So I finished watching Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon. Spoilers under the cut. 

(Mainly positive take, some criticisms. C+/B I’d give it.)

So, first of all, I didn’t play it, I just watched people on youtube so my perspective of gameplay should be taken with a grain of salt. But I really liked the turn taking fighting style! Like a real JRPG, I thought it was fun, it seemed fun anyway, and the strategies to JRPG make more intuitive sense to me than fighting games, which I don’t know at all. I did end up missing the hand-to-hand combat like... aesthetically and it kinda breaks universe rules a little. But, like, Ichiban seeing combat as a sort of heightened fantasy reality actually helps with that and the plot still treats us like average combatants. Like, there’s still no murder, despite a lot more weapon use, including guns. So... it’s a little sad and weird universe-wise, but seems fun to play. 

Ichiban is a great protag! Definitely not Kiryu! He has two dads, like 8 spouses, a lot of hair... He’s only 7 years younger than Kiryu and that’s... that’s a choice ^^; But he’s got a lot of good things going for him and I like his build. Interesting rage-grief he has going and a thing about revenge that Kiryu never had. And I like that actually, I like that Ichiban gets hit with different things than Kiryu did, but he still has flaws. Kiryu was never blind with rage the way Ichi got, but then, Kiryu also didn’t save his brother. Like, they have VERY different shit going on, which is GOOD. So I’m kinda annoyed that in the end we took Ichi’s dad and brother, just like Kiryu’s? Like... damn :/ Lame. Lazy. 

I love Ichi’s team! I love Adachi, Nanba, Saeko, Joon-gi, Zhao. Top notch peeps! I like that they all just like him and are here for a fun adventure with him. They’re all here for something different, which is also really cool. Zhao is sort of redefining who he is in... retirement I guess? Trying out being a companion rather than a leader. Saeko is longing for family, connection, a place to belong. Adachi was here to accomplish a goal, to restore his honor and provide justice. And Ichi’s been a big help to that. Joon-gi is... a whore. I’m sorry! He’s just this beautiful, obedient man who’s just here on lend and he does whatever the fuck you say. Do not put him in charge of decisions, he’s terrible at them, but he knows a lot and has a vast network. But he appears just to be here to serve everyone’s needs, so to speak, and to moon after Ichiban like everyone else. And Nanba. Nanba hates adventures. He hates germs. He hates people and friends and danger and doing things. But he’s here. Because Ichi makes him hate things a little less. Nanba is a cynical, cowardly bastard, and Ichi’s a fucking sunshiney idiot always trying to fix shit that isn’t his problem. And he makes Nanba get up and fight. He makes Nanba believe in tomorrow. Nanba doesn’t trust people, Nanba doesn’t hope. He’s a pessimist and lives only to complain. But he is first in line to get shot for Ichiban every fucking time. He’s always the first to Ichiban’s side when he’s in trouble. Leaving and betraying Ichiban broke his fucking heart and my ship is probably showing A LOT here but I don’t care. I fucking love Nanba, I love his arc, I did NOT see it coming. And they are definitely my ship out of this. The fact that Nanba without fail is always the first to put himself in danger for Ichiban guts me. With how much he doesn’t believe in good things ever happening, it destroys me that he’ll dare it all for Ichiban. Fucking wild. 

I thought it was cool to bring up a political villain, but... we didn’t really carry through on Bleach Japan’s thematic importance. We revealed them to be cruel and hypocritical, but we didn’t end up actually saving the slums or proving why the slums needed to be saved and that’s... kinda lame :/ 

I was really hoping that we might make a stand on why grey spaces were needed, on why organizations like the yakuza are needed but instead we... disbanded? And I don’t even know why? 

Like, it was to fuck over Ryo Aoki. But... he was a TEMPORARY problem. All you had to do was move the organizations underground until he was unseated, which the Tojo already was??? 

But instead... we brought down Tojo and Omi and... WHY?! Like, SERIOUSLY, can ANYONE tell me WHY! Because I have a LOT OF FEELINGS about why that’s a BAD CALL.

What are all those guys going to do now? “Oh, we’ll just make a security company” YOU’LL WHAT?! THOUSANDS of guys used to shake downs will now be hired to patrol rich estates and cover banks and business buildings?! Fighting WHO, themselves?! A LOT of that job is just watching some fucking cameras, what... what the fuck are you talking about Watase?! 

But I guess that’s still better than Daigo’s “I have no fucking idea” plan

NO WONDER Majima’s depressed at that funeral you JUST TOLD HIM his new job is BABYSITTING SOME RICH FUCK’S BUILDING. Fuck you guys! 

And HAVE WE LEARNED NOTHING ABOUT POWER VACUUMS?! CRIME doesn’t disappear just because there’s no one there to manage it! That just means it gets worse! And rasher, crueler people grab power in the interim. Smaller but rougher groups will appear. More and worse crimes will happen now. You just disenfranchised thousands, not all of them are going to come with you to play security detail and not all of them WANT to. So why EXACTLY did we disband the yakuza? What problems did that solve??? 

What about all that shit about the yakuza being a home for people who didn’t fit in? What about people who fell through the cracks in the system, who don’t have anywhere else to go? 

If the yakuza, as an idea, was so fucking bad, WHAT WERE THE LAST SIX GAMES ABOUT?!

You can’t have an established series that accepts the idea that crime and violence are sometimes necessary or are even good things and have a compelling protag who does that, ONLY to turn around at the last second and pretend like it was always wrong!

If you were gonna act like the idea of organized crime is a Bad Thing, THEN THAT NEEDED TO BE A CONFLICT FROM THE BEGINNING

But you didn’t even do that!

We DIDN’T disband the yakuza because organized crime is inherently morally corrupt, no we disbanded because some prick thought he could use us! A PRICK WHO IS NOW DEAD! THE FUCK?! 

And DON’T GET ME STARTED on how this reframes Kiryu’s narrative. KIRYU WASN’T RIGHT FOR LEAVING YOU FUCKING BASTARDS. 

THE WHOLE POINT OF KIRYU’S ARC WAS THAT HE WAS FUCKING WRONG TO ABANDON HIS RELATIONSHIPS I- *screams into pillow*

AND why does Kiryu need to be dead now?! There is no more yakuza! Who does he need to hide from?! 

OH no wait, my mistake! We didn’t disband ALL the yakuza, just Omi and Tojo! You know, the two biggest cities in Japan. I’m sure THAT won’t have Fucking Consequences. But Kiryu still has to be dead for uh... Reasons.

This was just such a fucking dumb universe-building move. It’s not been thought through, it betrays the whole point of the franchise up until now, and I’m honestly just mad that they didn’t even feel the need to address it? Like, the yakuza’s just gone now, but it’s whatever. Who would even care about that. Like, that’s not going to be a plot point next game. It won’t matter, at all, I promise you. All of the in-universe implications this has, none of it matters. And I’m not even mad I’m just... tired. And annoyed a little. that you can’t be bothered to tie up your own rules. You won’t give your own writing decisions weight and that’s just... kinda sad. It’s just lazy and sad that they don’t care enough to connect the pieces. But I’ve had my heart broken enough by yakuza writing decisions. Of course they would do this, of course they haven’t thought enough about their own series to really consider what ending the yakuza would mean. Why would they? 

I’ll still watch the next game. Like, Ichiban is likeable enough and I’m interested in his arc enough that I’d play or watch next time. But... *sigh* We’re the Yakuza series with no yakuza. And y’all gonna act like that’s a good thing or pretend it doesn’t even matter. And I really don’t know what to do with that since you haven’t bothered to examine it either. 

On a nice Kiryu note, I did like that he was scaled appropriately, I like that Ichiban is Wiped Out after almost every fight. He’s a good fighter, but he has human endurance. Kiryu’s still god. He hits the hardest out of anyone you fight and you Don’t win and that’s As It Should Be. I’m REALLY glad they at least let me have that. I’m glad they let us fight Kiryu and we passed and it was a cool passing of the torch. I was so worried they were going to destroy Kiryu’s legacy and at least they didn’t do that. 

The coin locker baby thing... it was cliche and convenient, but in the way that Yakuza is cliche and convenient and melodramatic and over the top. It was sort of fitting and familiar that way. Shame we ended Swashiro like that, I think we could have done more and cooler shit with him but, eh. 

SPEAKING OF MORE AND COOLER SHIT

...all that effort, just to kill him? Alllllll that long time, that hard conversation, that break down with Ichiban... just to kill him. Just to make him Nishiki, all over again. 

I... fuck you. 

Why do you refuse to write a goddamn redemption arc

Fuck, you don’t even have to write it, have it happen off-screen if you’re so fucking afraid of it. Just have him recuperate in a goddamn hospital and, I don’t know, by next game just show that he’s doing better and is getting therapy and whatever.

Jesus fucking christ, he doesn’t have to MATTER in the next game just... don’t kill him. Jesus. Please.

All that fucking work and you’re STILL going to give Ichiban the trauma of losing someone he was trying to save. 

I just... it’s really gutting how much you don’t like your characters and you don’t like to write and you’re cowards. You won’t take risks. You’re too afraid of fucking up so you won’t do what the narrative calls for. 

Killing Masato was lazy-ass, punk-ass, coward shit and I wont’ stand for it. I did not expect to care about his ass by the end but you guys REALLY made an effort in making him a three dimensional character there at the end and explaining why Ichi would care about him and I was willing to come with you! I was willing for us to invest in this dumbass. We walk him all the way up to the edge and step him back. We let him let go. And then you just. fucking. gave up. You goddamn cowards.

I’m so tired of this shit

For all that, it was genuinely a really fun game and a really fun story with a lot of likeable characters. I think a solid C+, even a B. I really did enjoy most of it. It’s just... in usual Yakuza style, they only fucked up 2 things but they were a REALLY IMPORTANT 2 things. 

Oh and I did like the fact that Ichiban Still Doesn’t Know. No one tell him.

[recentanimenews]

My Week in Manga: January 2-January 8, 2017

My News and Reviews

Last week at Experiments in Manga the winner of the Kuroko’s Basketball giveaway was announced. The post also includes a list of some of the tournament and competition manga that has been licensed in English. As per usual these days, there wasn’t much else from me, but there is some other very exciting Manga Bookshelf news: The Manga Critic is back! Be on the lookout for some great content from Kate Dacey. Last week I also read Makoto Yukimura’s eighth Vinland Saga omnibus which was, as expected, excellent. (I highly recommend the series as a whole.) However, you won’t find a quick take of it below because I’m going to try to write up a full-length review of it instead. We’ll see how it goes!

Elsewhere online, The OASG has started a new series called How Fans Can Help the Anime & Manga Industries Grow in which industry folk share their experiences an thoughts on the subject. So far, the responses from Charlene Ingram, Viz Media’s senior manager of marketing, and Charis Messier, lead translator at Cross Infinite World, have been shared. Another interesting read courtesy of Sakuga Blog is a translation of a roundtable with three manga editors (Tatsuya Kusunoki, Katsuyuki Sasaki, and Ryouji Takamatsu) discussing the growth of the yuri genre. As for boys’ love, Khursten at Otaku Champloo takes a closer look at the Dangerous BL Manga list for 2017.

Quick Takes

Firefighter! Daigo of Fire Company M, Volumes 2-10 by Masahito Soda. I enjoyed the first volume of Firefighter! well enough to seek out the rest of the manga (while the entire series is now available digitally, most of the individual volumes are well out-of-print) and I am so incredibly glad that I did. I’m only halfway through, but Firefighter! is fantastic. It has exciting action, compelling drama, and engaging characters. The titular Daigo is a rookie firefighter who, although he seems to have good instincts, has a lot to learn. Each rescue he’s a part of is more audacious than the last and he frequently ends up in the hospital as a result. Daigo hasn’t lost anyone yet, but his unorthodox ways, disregard for direct orders, and tendency to go overboard puts his own life and the lives of other rescue workers at risk. It seems like it’s only a matter of time before tragedy will strike, but no one can deny that he has saved people who would have otherwise died. Firefighter! is intense and thrilling, but it actually has a fair amount of humor as well. (For all his bravery, Daigo is kind of a goofball.) I’m definitely looking forward to reading the series’ second half.

Horimiya, Volumes 2-4 written by Hero, illustrated by Daisuke Hagiwara. While I wasn’t quite as taken with these few volumes as I was with the first, I am still enjoying Horimiya a great deal. After accidentally discovering each other’s secrets, Miyamura and Hori have developed a close friendship which is slowly evolving into something more. It takes some time, but eventually they’re able to recognize their feelings and actually act on them. In large part, Horimiya is a manga about relationships of all types. Friendship and family are just as important, and are sometimes even more important, than the series’ romance. It’s also a manga which excels in depicting the characters’ multifaceted natures, showing how they behave differently depending on who is present. As more characters are introduced (including Hori’s father and some of Miyamura’s friends from middle school), the social dynamics in the series naturally change. Horimiya isn’t a manga that has me on edge desperate to know what will happen next, but the characters are tremendously endearing and I do want to see things work out for all of them.

Warning! Whispers of Love by Puku Okuyama. So far, only two of Okuyama’s boys’ love manga have been released in print. I had previously read and wasn’t overly impressed by the more recent Caramel despite liking some of the manga’s individual elements (in fact, overall I can’t really say that I enjoyed it much) but I already had a copy of Warning! so I figured I should at least give it a try. I’m happy to say that I enjoyed Warning! much more than I did Caramel. It’s a collection of rather silly boys’ love stories ranging from the subtly amusing to the overtly goofy. They tend to be fairly cute as well and generally any physical intimacy that is shown is limited to a few kisses and chaste embraces. Most of Warning! is devoted to the story of Hajime, a first year at an all-boys school, and the incredibly awkward relationship that develops between him and an upperclassman who seems to want nothing more than to clean the wax from Hajime’s ears. It’s easily the most ridiculous setup in the entire volume but it can be legitimately funny–all the boys’ love tropes and jokes that would typically be applied to sex are applied to ear cleaning instead and it’s surprisingly effective.

Wandering Son directed by Ei Aoki. Takako Shimura’s manga Wandering Son is an incredibly important series to me personally, so I was greatly saddened when Fantagraphics stopped releasing it in English. Initially I wanted to read the entire manga before watching the anime adaptation but, seeing as the rest likely won’t be available any time soon, I finally gave in. The Wandering Son anime is a lovely series. It’s not an exact adaptation of the manga, but it is faithful to the original story and characters. In general, the narrative style of the anime tends to be a little more linear than that of the manga. However, both series provide an empathetic exploration of gender identity, following a group of middle school students who are learning who they are. It’s a fairly realistic portrayal, meaning that society isn’t always the most accepting which can be absolutely heartbreaking. However, seeing the characters become more confident in their selves even when that goes against what is expected of them is exceptionally validating. The anime only adapts a portion of the manga and doesn’t provide much of a resolution (though it does go beyond where Fantagraphics left off), but it is still very well done and well-worth watching.

Save

By: Ash Brown