(no subject)

Vampire Hunter D - I'm a little over halfway through and while I don't regret spending the money, it's not a great literary experience (not that I was expecting one). Some is probably due to the translator, but a good part of the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of Hideyuki Kikuchi. This is basically a low-budget anime in novel form. Unsurprising, since it was indeed made into a low-budget anime by excising a major subplot, however the basic story remained essentially the same. and I'm aware that sentence made no sense, but I can't be arsed to rewrite it bcuz I r lazee.

The author tends to describe an impossible action first, then stop dead for a paragraph or so to explain the handy-dandy superpowered tech or superhuman abilities that made it possible, and also spends way too much time (to my mind) trying to justify why traditional vampires and werewolves and so on exist in the year 12,090 and why they don't just destroy the human race. I mean, come on! The explanations are unconvincing and you are wasting vauable space that could be taken up by mindless action! It's like that movie that had dragons fighting attack helicopters. When it comes to something that implausible, don't even bother to explain it, because you can't. Just fill up the screen with some more explosions, because that's what we came to see. (Your opinion may vary on the subject, but I find most half-assed explanations to be distracting and annoying and would rather they not try if it's just going to be stupid.)

The prose tends to be clunky and the adjective "gorgeous" is used way too often for an omniscient narrator - if it was from the 17-year-old Doris' POV, I could understand her thinking that since she's got a major crush on D, but it's written as more-or-less omniscient, with occasional diving from head to head and some awkward phrasing when the narrator is trying to stay out of D's head and make his actions seem mysterious. I'm assuming a good part of that's the translator's fault, but I could be dead wrong on the POV section. I don't know enough about how Japanese is structured to say anything on the issue, but I'm sure someone or other who reads this can tell me if the prose reads more-or-less the same in the original. It reads to me basically like some of the better fanfic out there, where the author is more competent than most, but hasn't quite made it over the hump into "publishable" yet.

Anyway, it's an amusing pulp horror/action book aimed squarely at 14-year-old boys and I'm going to finish it because: dude, it's Vampire Hunter D! It's not going to keep me awake tonight because I just have to finish it, but I think it'll be a small guilty pleasure.

Qwan - I picked up this manga on a whim. I've only read one chapter and already I'm in love. It's set in ancient China and seems to be about this mysterious young boy who devours demons, and who travels with this ne'er-do-well medicine seller. The first chapter is how they meet and start traveling together, and how the medicine seller learns of the existence of demons. It's got tiny, headless, six-legged, winged dogs, demon tigers with the heads of humans, and a roguish guy with an eerie resemblance to a character I have in a currently-defunct project. What's not to love?

And I am totally in love with the art. Great pen-and-ink rendering, characters with fluid expressions on their faces, a deft touch with the tone, and good pacing on the action sequences sucht hat I didn't lose track of what was going on even though I skimmed it.

Here's hoping the rest of it doesn't suck - although I'll probably keep buying it just for the art.