puddingcat: (JLA)
[personal profile] puddingcat
Saying "It was as bad as I expected" would be an easy way out, and wouldn't let me share the sheer pain of this book with you :D

*Takes deep breath*
Bear in mind that I had my mouth open for most of this, and really felt as if I should have one hand covering my eyes while the other warded off evil.

So. It appears that one1 can be a half-vampire, half-werewolf who turns onto a girl under the light of a full moon. Obvious, really.

Marlo's father is a vampire, and a very traditional cloak-and-dinner-jacket one at that. His mother is a werewolf , who can avoid transforming by wearing sunglasses. They live in a craggy castle (hurrah!) and watch Hammer Horror films for fun2. Unfortunately, they all have absolutely appalling taste in clothes (DJs excepted) - they wouldn't look out of place in a 1988 Stock, Aitken & Waterman video.

The girl bit is explained by Marlo (or "Marlene", as his very accepting mother starts calling him / her on the relevant nights) being a genetic throwback. Apparently, there was an all-male tribe of werewolves. On the night of the full moon, some of them transform into women. Yes, the rest transform into wolves. I really don't want to go any further with that3.

It's almost a shame that there's a sub-Mills & Boon "romance" going on between Marlo / Marlene and his best friend (David, another vampire). Having said that, the asides and background humour (especially Marlo's mother) have almost empted me into buying the second volume; it's only a two-book series, after all...

I'll bring it to the knitting and probably-no-porn weekend; after that, I'm happy to post it to anyone else who wants to see its insanity first-hand, on the agreement that it gets passed on through as many as want it and ends up at me again sooner or later.


1. Just one, thank goodness.
2. At this point, I was thinking I might have struck comedy gold.
3. Except that there's a little sketch of a very concerned girl looking askance at an equally concerned-looking wolf-in-a-suit...


=====


Anyway, after that I needed my Saiyuki fix. Only one volume to go now (and it's sat on my shelf, calling to me) and I'm up to date with ...Reload. Dammit, I'm now half-way through two stories where I want to give everyone big hugs and make everything better. The "Burial" arc and - well, Hakkai in general, but especially his interactions with Gojyo - quite appropriately left me feeling as if I'd had my guts ripped out. Comics shouldn't be able to do that to me.

Date: 2007-02-24 10:00 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] daegaer.livejournal.com
Hakkai and Gojyo rip everyone's guts out.

Date: 2007-02-24 10:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] puddingcat.livejournal.com
Can I blame my sniffling on an overdose of Day Nurse, then? *I don't cry at comic books*. If I say it enough, it'll become true (unless Media Player keeps playing "No-One But You" at me...).

I'm so glad I found WK and YNM before Saiyuki. I love them both to bits, but they'd have been such an enormous disappointment after this genius.

I need to go & make icons; my Hakkai-knitting one isn't angsty enough for this onversation.

Date: 2007-02-24 10:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] daegaer.livejournal.com
Saiyuki is fabulous - I can recommend the art in Wild Adapter (I haven't read it in English yet) and the frustratingly abbreviated Bus Gamer - like most people, I can't decide if the Saiyuki boys have been reincarnated in WA and BG, or if that's just how Minekura draws. (What she does do is have sneaky or silly cross-referencing - in one panel of WA, Hakkai and Kanan can be seen in the background, doing their grocery shopping, and in BG, a character plays a computer version of Saiyuki!)

Have you read anything by Fumi Yoshinaga? She's the author of Antique Bakery, which starts out frothy and sweetly funny (4 misfits running a cakeshop) and turns into something bizarrely darkly psychological. It's only 4 volumes long, and is very sweet yaoi. Her 2 volume work Gerard et Jacques is more explicit, and set in 18th century France, about a pron writer and his reluctant servant.

I know what you mean about WK and YnM being disappointments if found after Saiyuki. YnM is awfully pretty, but I find the swelling music distracting. WK is awfully insane with touches of genius, but the animation leaves a lot to be desired.

And if you're looking for new anime to not cry over, I have about half of Le Chevalier d'Eon (alchemy, gender-bending, general WTF-ery) and a third of Victorian Romance Emma (no magic, just true love not conquering all) uploaded at the moment!

Date: 2007-02-24 11:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] puddingcat.livejournal.com
I ordered WA vol 1 along with the last few Reload books this time; I'm hoping it'll stave off the withdrawal until Volume 7's published :)

Is the anime of Saiyuki worth sticking with? I found the first episode on YouTube and got irritated by Goku's flailing and the "Cities of Gold"-style characters.

Antique Bakery's on my recommendations list - I'll probably get around to it sooner or later, although I'm not keen on the cover art.

I love WK to bits, mainly because it was my first (snerk), but I do feel sorry for the (deep and complicated) characters for being stuck in such a poorly-realised series (I can see Meta!Schuldig bewailing his fate, with a perfect hand:staple:forehead expression). I can see why people choose to ignore various parts of canon. (Speaking of canon, is Side B out in English at all, or is it a matter of hunting down scans online?).

YNM is beautiful, I love both the manga and the anime, and really want to find out what happens In The End (and also more Tatsumi backstory...), but it does seem to be going on with no real end in sight; stories happen and new ones start, and it just isn't moving on. And it does attract teenybopper fangirls; there's a dearth of good fanfic, and I'm not sure why. There's certainly enough holes in the story to fit in some good, meaty backstory, and I can't work out why nobody's written it. Grrr.

I'm downloading your happy!anime right now :) y brain's complaining about anme needing to be Japanese and not set in England or France, but I'm sure I'll get over that :)

Date: 2007-02-25 02:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] darktalon.livejournal.com
for some reason there I thought you were reviewing Blood and Chocolate...another bizarre werewolf film from the "producers of Underworld" :P

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