Angstorama

[telophase]

This is from a comment I made in a locked post (the Project Blue Rose in-progress filter, WHICH YOU ARE NOT ON! *evillaughter*), but I figured it deserved to see the light of day.

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I took a break and ran by the bookstore, where I ended up getting book 2 of Monster and book 1 of something that promises to be schlocktastic called X-Kai- (yes, the final dash is part of the title).

The thing that tipped me over the edge into getting it was that I flipped trhough it to check out the art, and the toning looked simple in the way I wanted to do PBR.

The cover has a tall, angsty, dark-haired bishounen with a poet's shirt and also with what is either an enormous longhaired-fur collar or dramatic feather boa draped around his neck, or some sort of animal that is trying to eat his head. And flowers in the background, and black floaty feathers. The blurb reads:

By day, Kaito is a florist, but at night, he is a ruthless assassin who is brought orders to kill by a mysterious woman.* But Kaito is an assassin with a conscience--and his life is made difficult when he has to take care of his sick brother...

Part hardboiled romance of solitude, part meditation on the meaning of life and death, the long-awaited manga series is filled with love, blood, murder, and plenty of white lilies.

It gets better: the picture on the first page when you open the cover is the guy, with the shirt ripped up, a tie askew, and a tattoo of a cross with a rose wound around it.

THE ANGST IS DRIPPING OFF THE PAGE.

ETA: rachelmanija? The main character tends to wear glasses:







* This is the point at which I was "Wait! I saw this anime! Only there were four florist-assassins!

Comments

[crispypoohs.livejournal.com]

LOL! I read X-Kai- about a year ago? The story is pretty much every cliche thing you can take from the WieB Kreuz genre. It's pretty boring, but it's pretty, so I can see why TP picked it up.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I'm not expecting anything from the story, and I can see where the mangaka takes shortcuts with the art - the backgrounds start out more elaborate, but get simpler as the story goes on, and (her?) figures are pretty stiff. There's nothing really outstanding about the art or toning, but it's exactly the sort of toning I'm looking to do for PBR, and I always need reference when learning something.

O.O

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Dude, that totally sounds like Weiss Kreuz.

Re: O.O

[telophase.livejournal.com]

But .. but ... it's NOT WK! There's only ONE angsty bishounen! How could it possibly be ANYTHING like WK? And the main character TOTALLY does not look like Aya! picture just added to the post.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

Well, at least he didn't assume the name of his sick brother.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I haven't read very far yet. He's just confronting the sleazeball doctor who hired him to assassinate a sweet blind girl, and I fully expect the doctor not to survive another page or two.

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

I saw that and I could not believe that somebody actually *liked* the concept of "Weiss Kreuz" enough to do it AGAIN. Surely they don't think no one will notice?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

It's nothing like WK! There's only one assassin!

I dunno, I watched all of WK, the OVA, and Gluehen entirely for the train-wreck factor, and there's a lot of others who have, too. Mind you, WK has the extra cheese factor produced by it being a vehicle for a boy band, so that it becomes kitsch instead of just tacky, and thereby has some sort of vague cool to it.

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

Oh, hell, WK was one of my first anime fandoms, but I think I was fully aware the entire time of what a glorious, fabulous, horrible train-wreck it was/is. This manga sounds way too serious for its own good.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I may do a review of it Ong-Bak-style, but that'll have to wait until I get at least one more page of Project Blue Rose done. (I'm so close to the end! Arg!)

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

Four angsty florist assassins and the hot guys who pwn them at very turn? What's not to like?

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

Hey, I myself have written some ridiculous fanfiction for WK, but I believe you have answered your own question. ;)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Glasses fetish!

[redsnowpenguin.livejournal.com]

It's by tohjo asami, isn't it? Her art style changed so much :\

I liked her middle faze, where there's angst, smex, and twisting bodies. Now, there's just impossibly huge thingies waving around...

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering what her schedule is, and how many pages a week she's doing. The art is inconsistent, simplistic, stiff. The writing is ... crap. The whole thing reads like she's trying to do too much in one week, and the art and writing is suffering for it.

I haven't run across her earlier art, so I have no idea what it looks like. I'd have pegged the mangaka of this one as a beginner.

[redsnowpenguin.livejournal.com]

she's actually a major mangaka with biblos (before it went bankrupt a few days ago...)

http://tojo-asami.com/

X-Kai- is one of her very early works, I believe (or it might be because she's having a busy period, like you said). Her recent art is very different from X-kai-. The writing hasn't gotten much better...but the art definitely has, ignoring impossibly large waving penises XD

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

There are certain concepts that only work the first time, and Weiss is one of them. XP

[telophase.livejournal.com]

What year did Weiss come out, actually? This was originally published in Japan in 1998.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Either 97 or 98, from what I see.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

So it's not so much a matter of X-Kai- following in the footsteps of Weiss, but that at least two producers/publishers thought it was a good idea at the same time.

Which is really more frightening.

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

Or the one just jumped on the bandwagon pretty quickly - WK was one of those sudden fads when it first came out. (Probably due to the fact that the merchandising folks knew to do lots of fanservice and didn't always keep it PG-13.)

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

About fifteen years ago, and all more-or-less simultaneously...

Two movies came out about volcanoes erupting in America, Volcano and Dante's Peak.

Two movies came out about talking pigs, Babe and Gordy.

Three movies came out about boys in men's body's, Big, Vice Versa, and one whose name I forget.

As far as I know these were all coincidental rather than rip-offs of each other. Sometimes ideas are just in the air.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

FLORIST ASSASSINS! :) At any rate, I've now read it, and except for one bit of interesting moral quandary near the end, it's more-or-less forgettable, and not eve really bad enough to be entertaining. The main character does masquerade as a male prostitute at one point, though.

VIVA MEXICO!!!!

[marith.livejournal.com]

My brother presented me with a copy of X-Kai last week, saying he figured it was exactly my sort of thing. I will never live down the embarrassment of once being a Weiss Kreuz fan, will I?

[cicer.livejournal.com]

Dear Lord. That florist-by-day-assassin-by-night theme is really getting popular, isn't it.

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

I picked this up the other day, looked it over and thought, "Well, I've never actually seen Weiss Kruz. But that's because everyone told me it was bad."

So instead, I bought the shoujo manga about cutting. ^_^

[telophase.livejournal.com]

WK needs to be seen! It's so bad it's good! The characters are based on the stage personas of a boy band, for God's sake! It's fine, fine cheese.

To be truly appreciated, it really needs to be seen in the company of a few like-minded individuals, with lots of booze, and with the fansubs that are so bad you have no idea what's going on.

I looked at the manga about cutting but that was way emo for me. I went for cheese, and toning.

[mistressrenet.livejournal.com]

I have to disagree with telophase on one point: the cut scenes from the dub are hysterically funny. Though you can find those online.

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

I second telophase on this, especially the part about booze and friends.

[snarp]

Apropos of nothing, googling "* by day, * by night" is kind of disappointing. Too many people use it on their blog profiles, and most of them are singers by night. Cannot people sing at decent hours? I ask you.

[seajules]

But if there's only one of them, who's going to sex him up watch his back?

So what we're faced with here is that florist assassins might have actually been some kind of minor movement. That's just.... I'm going back to my brand new goth crack now.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Since there's no one else, he's forced to pretend to be a male prostitute at one point.

It may be more than a minor movement. You may be well-advised to assume that any florist you come across is an assassin until proven otherwise.

[seajules]

The world should be so cool.

[lady-noremon.livejournal.com]

I read it a long time ago.

The part with the cat made me go *;-;*

but I like the whole thing with Renge(?), or whatevet the little kids name is.

And the flower in the ear bit >_<

Also it is very pretty. Not that much of a developed story, but I still want to get Vol.2 once I get-up to the shopping mall again (I live in a rural community of less than 1500 people).