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Yokai night!
Three things about yokai make a post, right?
First, I posted some time back about Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai
, by Michael Dylan Foster, which is a scholarly look at the phenomenon of yokai, or spirits/monsters from Japan. I read 3/4 of it when I got it, then it got stacked underneath something else and I totally forgot. :) It was unearthed earlier this week, and I finished it off. If you are of a slightly more scholarly bent than the norm and also interested in yokai, this is the book for you. Foster traces the phenomenon from its appearance in 17th century compilations of natural history down to present-day versions, and the various meanings they'd have or been used for. Recommended.
Second, a couple of weeks ago I was in the bookstore stocking up on later volumes of Naruto for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
reread_no_jutsu, when I came across a manga I'd never heard of called Yokaiden 1
, by Nina Matsumoto. It may say something about my state of mind that I looked at the art and thought "Huh. This style's a bit more like what I usually see in American manga, not Japanese," without cluing in by the,say, binding from left to right, that it was maybe NOT JAPANESE. :D
This isn't a bad thing! It would seem that Nina Matsumoto is about as obsessed with yokai as I am, and she's created a book about a young boy in feudal Japan named Hamachi who wants to be friends with them. The problem is that the people around him fear them and think they should be killed. His grandmother dies under mysterious circumstances, so he takes off into the yokai world to find out who did it. Hamachi reminds me a bit of my kitten, Sora, in his ability to be serious and silly by turns. XD At any rate, my only major problem with it is that book 2 isn't due out until November (according to Amazon). *shakes fist* Darn you, Nina Matsumoto, for wanting to, say, make a living wage and not tossing everything else aside to work on the sequel! Everyone reading this should go buy a copy now so that Del Rey realizes that this is a good book and should not be cancelled in this economy.
Thirdly, I have the blog Hot Fictional GUys on my Bloglines blogroll, and I've been saving this show for a rainy day. Back in January, HFG posted a tribute to the guys of Natsume Yuujinchou, a show about yokai currently airing in Japan. You can watch it online (legally, even!) on Crunchyroll.* Takashi Natsume is a teenager who's inherited his grandmother's gift for seeing yokai. He finds the Book of Friends she owned, which is full of the names of yokai she fought and bound to her, and he decides to release them. He is, naturally, accompanied by a yokai who is bound into the form of a cute and cuddly cat most of the time, and who is a rampaging beast part of the time.*coughShounenOnmyoujicough* I watched the first episode tonight and OMG IN LOVE. It has a fairly laid-back feel to it, pretty mellow, with soft artwork. Recommended.
Fourth in my list of three things is a manga I bought a while back and never got around to posting about. Ghost Slayers Ayashi Volume 1
is set in the Edo period and involves a group of secret monster fighters hiding behind the name of the Office of Barbarian Knowledge Enforcement. The art is great - basically an updated version of classic manga/anime artwork from the '70s, if you get what I mean (The Tezuka influence is strong in this one!). The two stories in it are interesting, as they follow the formula of a yokai coming after a victim, and the Office people secretly figuring out why they appeared and then dispatching them. The characters all seem to have hidden backstories that will probably come out over the course of the manga. All in all ... it should have come together for me into AWESOMETASTIC, but failed to do so and I can't figure out why. I'll probably give it a couple more volumes to see if it hits its stride and sucks me in, but it may not.
Fifth in my increasingly-inaccurately-named list of three things is Antique Gift Shop, volume 7. Yay! Not enough Mr. Yang, but there never is enough Mr. Yang in the world to satisfy me. This volume contains one complete story and the beginning of another. The first story is about the aftermath of the death of a young police officer, who seems to have been living with a young girl, his brother discovers when he inherits the house. Things are, naturally, more than they seem and Bun-Nyuh may have to do a little breaking and entering to fix things. :) The second story is called "Kumari". I posted some time back, but can't find the post, about the institution of Kumari, which is a young girl who is chosen to be a living incarnation of a goddess in Nepal. The story is just starting, but it seems we may have a kumari incognito running into Bun-Nyuh and her shop. I can't wait until volume 8 to see what happens with it. :) (I will point out that the ... er, I don't know the Korean equivalent of "mangaka" ... creator has taken her info on the kumari from the standard, inaccurate, version. I book I reported on that I can't find is by a former kumari, who explains what *really* happens. But it does make for good fiction.)
And now I'm going to go watch episode 2 of Natsume Yuujinchou
* Which has SOLD OUT to THE MAN in order not to get totally sued, which I can't blame them for, and thus brings us cool LEGAL anime now. I shall have to figure out where I left off in watching Bleach and start making googly eyes at my f-list, since I can't get it through Crunchyroll anymore. :)
First, I posted some time back about Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai
, by Michael Dylan Foster, which is a scholarly look at the phenomenon of yokai, or spirits/monsters from Japan. I read 3/4 of it when I got it, then it got stacked underneath something else and I totally forgot. :) It was unearthed earlier this week, and I finished it off. If you are of a slightly more scholarly bent than the norm and also interested in yokai, this is the book for you. Foster traces the phenomenon from its appearance in 17th century compilations of natural history down to present-day versions, and the various meanings they'd have or been used for. Recommended.Second, a couple of weeks ago I was in the bookstore stocking up on later volumes of Naruto for
reread_no_jutsu, when I came across a manga I'd never heard of called Yokaiden 1, by Nina Matsumoto. It may say something about my state of mind that I looked at the art and thought "Huh. This style's a bit more like what I usually see in American manga, not Japanese," without cluing in by the,say, binding from left to right, that it was maybe NOT JAPANESE. :D This isn't a bad thing! It would seem that Nina Matsumoto is about as obsessed with yokai as I am, and she's created a book about a young boy in feudal Japan named Hamachi who wants to be friends with them. The problem is that the people around him fear them and think they should be killed. His grandmother dies under mysterious circumstances, so he takes off into the yokai world to find out who did it. Hamachi reminds me a bit of my kitten, Sora, in his ability to be serious and silly by turns. XD At any rate, my only major problem with it is that book 2 isn't due out until November (according to Amazon). *shakes fist* Darn you, Nina Matsumoto, for wanting to, say, make a living wage and not tossing everything else aside to work on the sequel! Everyone reading this should go buy a copy now so that Del Rey realizes that this is a good book and should not be cancelled in this economy.
Thirdly, I have the blog Hot Fictional GUys on my Bloglines blogroll, and I've been saving this show for a rainy day. Back in January, HFG posted a tribute to the guys of Natsume Yuujinchou, a show about yokai currently airing in Japan. You can watch it online (legally, even!) on Crunchyroll.* Takashi Natsume is a teenager who's inherited his grandmother's gift for seeing yokai. He finds the Book of Friends she owned, which is full of the names of yokai she fought and bound to her, and he decides to release them. He is, naturally, accompanied by a yokai who is bound into the form of a cute and cuddly cat most of the time, and who is a rampaging beast part of the time.
Fourth in my list of three things is a manga I bought a while back and never got around to posting about. Ghost Slayers Ayashi Volume 1
is set in the Edo period and involves a group of secret monster fighters hiding behind the name of the Office of Barbarian Knowledge Enforcement. The art is great - basically an updated version of classic manga/anime artwork from the '70s, if you get what I mean (The Tezuka influence is strong in this one!). The two stories in it are interesting, as they follow the formula of a yokai coming after a victim, and the Office people secretly figuring out why they appeared and then dispatching them. The characters all seem to have hidden backstories that will probably come out over the course of the manga. All in all ... it should have come together for me into AWESOMETASTIC, but failed to do so and I can't figure out why. I'll probably give it a couple more volumes to see if it hits its stride and sucks me in, but it may not.Fifth in my increasingly-inaccurately-named list of three things is Antique Gift Shop, volume 7. Yay! Not enough Mr. Yang, but there never is enough Mr. Yang in the world to satisfy me. This volume contains one complete story and the beginning of another. The first story is about the aftermath of the death of a young police officer, who seems to have been living with a young girl, his brother discovers when he inherits the house. Things are, naturally, more than they seem and Bun-Nyuh may have to do a little breaking and entering to fix things. :) The second story is called "Kumari". I posted some time back, but can't find the post, about the institution of Kumari, which is a young girl who is chosen to be a living incarnation of a goddess in Nepal. The story is just starting, but it seems we may have a kumari incognito running into Bun-Nyuh and her shop. I can't wait until volume 8 to see what happens with it. :) (I will point out that the ... er, I don't know the Korean equivalent of "mangaka" ... creator has taken her info on the kumari from the standard, inaccurate, version. I book I reported on that I can't find is by a former kumari, who explains what *really* happens. But it does make for good fiction.)
And now I'm going to go watch episode 2 of Natsume Yuujinchou
* Which has SOLD OUT to THE MAN in order not to get totally sued, which I can't blame them for, and thus brings us cool LEGAL anime now. I shall have to figure out where I left off in watching Bleach and start making googly eyes at my f-list, since I can't get it through Crunchyroll anymore. :)
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...really, when it comes to manga these days it just seems best to wear one's patience hat permanently. *sigh*
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natsume yuujinchou is wonderful, as is its sequel.
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I usually catch Bleach on Veoh or YouTube when I want to see it, but you can also find links to direct downloads from MU or similar sites here (http://getfansub.com/wiki/Bleach).
ETA: Fixed html.
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Thanks for the link. :D
torrents
what about IRC? that'd be an alternative option.
if you can't easily get them otherwise, i can let you suck them off the seedbox; you just gotta do it soon after release.
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Also, I keep feeling I should not find Nyanko-sensei nearly as amusing as I do.
Re: torrents
My standard habit of watching shows is to wait for very long periods of time, then throw myself into a bunch of eps at once - the whole ADD thing keeps me from being able to download on a regular basis, but thanks. :)
(It's not really been much of an issue, since Bleach is about the only one I want to see at the moment that's not available over here. BTW, is the person who was going around reporting IP addresses from torrents to ISPs still doing that? Someone on my f-list got her service cut off due to that person. I'd just get my boyfriend to download torrents - he's got AT&T Uverse and awesome bandwidth - but for *that*)
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I want to rub Nyanko-sensei on the belly. XD (In both forms! Totally destroying any dignity he's trying to maintain!)
Re: torrents
yeah, i watch in sudden, big spurts as well, but i download certain shows as the releases come down so i don't have to wait once i get in the mood for a marathon. especially when the show is licensed, because then i always wonder when the plug will get pulled.
the getfansub wiki is good for some things, but they use mostly megaupload, which is a bitch because of their limitations on how much you can download within a certain time period (unless you want to shell out for an account).
no, i have no idea about that person. nobody's ever reported me. that must keep them busy, i'd say. *rolls eyes*.
finding nyanko-sensei very amusing
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disturbing momentscalories, makes to feel like you've heard a good story.no subject
Also, I was looking back at my own tagged posts (http://rilina.livejournal.com/tag/anime:+natsume+yuujinchou) and am amused to see I also noticed the similarity to Shonen Onmyoji.
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I loved Natsume and it definately became a favorite for life after the first few eps. The Demon and the Peach ep was divinely moving.
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Youkaiden and Antique Gift Shop are probably going to be tackled closer to immediately, though; I've been hearing far too many good things about both!