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Bus Gamer
Finally finished the copy of Bus Gamer I got a few days ago. For those of you who don't know, this is another Kazuya Minekura series that was started and then put on hiatus, then continued, then put on hiatus and eventually put on a back burner, but was eventually collected into a tankoubon, and has now been translated and published by Tokyopop. The story is just barely begun, and there's an afterward by Minekura saying that she fully intends on continuing it.
It's really good, once you get past the silliness of the setup. :) Bus Gaming is short for 'business gmaing' where corporations go head-to-head by fielding three-man teams whose jobs are to protect data disks with essential company files on them. The three-man team at the center of this story is made of three young men who all have their own reasons for taking on this crazy job (which pays well - if their team is the last team standing, they each get three million dollars).
It's hard to judge the story since it's just starting, but we've got lots of questions about the three being set up: on the surface, none of them seem to have a need for the money. We get a few hints about the past of one of the characters, but no more.
The art is great - using the mature Minekura style, similar to Saiyuki Reload, but with even more emphasis on the inking and almost no tones used (which is exactly what I want to do with my work). And you won't miss the nod to Saiyuki. XD
And speaking of Saiyuki, one of you guys mentioned seeing it as a Saiyuki reincarnation story....
------Below here there be spoilers-------
And I totally do, too. And I think it's deliberate, that Minekura is intentionally putting these parallels in, because she's matching the character designs with their personalities. I haven't read enough of Wild Adapter to know if she's doing it over there, too, but I don't think so. Or at least not to this extent.
Toki is the angsty emo one, a little too quick to grab and point a gun, with short hair and bangs down low over his eyes. He's also got Sanzo's lightbulb-head.
Nobuto is the smoker, beer-drinker, street-fighter, and womanizer of the bunch, with longer hair that he sometimes pulls back in a ponytail, and Gojyo's face shape.
Kazuo is the youngest of the bunch, with Goku's hair, love of food, naiveté, and roundish face.
I think Toki is rather like Sanzo without Goku ... he's the one deliberately pushing the others away and saying that they're not friends, but at the end, Kazuo does manage to make him break his facade a tiny bit. Nobuto is Gojyo pre-Hakkai, with a different girl every night, a sloppy apartment, a careless attitude, and a cold demeanor when someone tries to get too close. Kazuo is Goku without such a terrible past: he's got a family and is the heir to an electronics empire, but he's still searching for connections and friendship and it bothers him that Toki says they're not friends.
By the time you get to the point where the Saiyuki videogame shows up, that really hammers the parallels home, and I think it's both a shout-out to the fans and a deliberate reminder that we're meant to read the characters as possible reincarnations.
So ... where's Hakkai? The best candidate is the (female!) police officer who shows up in the second half of the book. She's absolutely got his hair, but she doesn't have enough screentime to really get a handle on her personality, which seems a bit more histronic than Hakkai, but she's got a healthy dose of self-loathing. If so, it'll be interesting.
Anyway there's no way to tell if Minekura is planning on deliberately exploring the parallels or if she's exploiting them and is going to bust them open in later chapters, if they ever get drawn and published. Either way, I think it'll be a wild ride.
It's really good, once you get past the silliness of the setup. :) Bus Gaming is short for 'business gmaing' where corporations go head-to-head by fielding three-man teams whose jobs are to protect data disks with essential company files on them. The three-man team at the center of this story is made of three young men who all have their own reasons for taking on this crazy job (which pays well - if their team is the last team standing, they each get three million dollars).
It's hard to judge the story since it's just starting, but we've got lots of questions about the three being set up: on the surface, none of them seem to have a need for the money. We get a few hints about the past of one of the characters, but no more.
The art is great - using the mature Minekura style, similar to Saiyuki Reload, but with even more emphasis on the inking and almost no tones used (which is exactly what I want to do with my work). And you won't miss the nod to Saiyuki. XD
And speaking of Saiyuki, one of you guys mentioned seeing it as a Saiyuki reincarnation story....
------Below here there be spoilers-------
And I totally do, too. And I think it's deliberate, that Minekura is intentionally putting these parallels in, because she's matching the character designs with their personalities. I haven't read enough of Wild Adapter to know if she's doing it over there, too, but I don't think so. Or at least not to this extent.
Toki is the angsty emo one, a little too quick to grab and point a gun, with short hair and bangs down low over his eyes. He's also got Sanzo's lightbulb-head.
Nobuto is the smoker, beer-drinker, street-fighter, and womanizer of the bunch, with longer hair that he sometimes pulls back in a ponytail, and Gojyo's face shape.
Kazuo is the youngest of the bunch, with Goku's hair, love of food, naiveté, and roundish face.
I think Toki is rather like Sanzo without Goku ... he's the one deliberately pushing the others away and saying that they're not friends, but at the end, Kazuo does manage to make him break his facade a tiny bit. Nobuto is Gojyo pre-Hakkai, with a different girl every night, a sloppy apartment, a careless attitude, and a cold demeanor when someone tries to get too close. Kazuo is Goku without such a terrible past: he's got a family and is the heir to an electronics empire, but he's still searching for connections and friendship and it bothers him that Toki says they're not friends.
By the time you get to the point where the Saiyuki videogame shows up, that really hammers the parallels home, and I think it's both a shout-out to the fans and a deliberate reminder that we're meant to read the characters as possible reincarnations.
So ... where's Hakkai? The best candidate is the (female!) police officer who shows up in the second half of the book. She's absolutely got his hair, but she doesn't have enough screentime to really get a handle on her personality, which seems a bit more histronic than Hakkai, but she's got a healthy dose of self-loathing. If so, it'll be interesting.
Anyway there's no way to tell if Minekura is planning on deliberately exploring the parallels or if she's exploiting them and is going to bust them open in later chapters, if they ever get drawn and published. Either way, I think it'll be a wild ride.
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Guilty (http://coffeeandink.livejournal.com/623485.html).
I read Toki as Hakkai, complete with intense and troubling relationship with mysterious and possibly dead sibling. But Sanzo's another possibility. I really like the histrionic cop, but I can't map her to a Saiyuki character.
WA reads very differently to me, even though Minekura basically uses the same character design for Kubota as for Hakkai; the characterizations and body language is so different.
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I'm getting Sanzo, missing Goku or missing Koumyou, from Toki but that may be because his design is almost exactly Sanzo.
The cop's got Hakkai's hair - the part, the straightness. I can't tell from here (work) if she's got a feminine version of his face shape, and since she's got wider, feminine eyes, it's harder to tell. It might be interesting if she were Kanan.
Of course this could all be Minekura scrwing with our heads ... well, actually, it's defintely Minekura screwing with our heads, but whether she's got an ulterior motive in mind or not is the question.
I read WA a bit in scanlations, bot got confused and couldn't follow the story, so dropped it. I may have to give it another try sometime.
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As for Bus Gamer, I hadn't thought about the parallels (though I loved the Saiyuki video game) and will have to ponder that some. Also, I've been following more recent raws and scanlations in the
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But not until I get home from work/shopping this evening. There can also be Wild Adapter involved if you wanted...
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yesplz!no subject
(Only because I'm going out of town Friday morning and won't be around all weekend, and will probably forget about them later. XD)
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http://savefile.com/projects/1017212
I can still do another file with the WA stuff which is scanlations. (I loves me some Emerald Eyes...)
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(I shall mark this to come back to in an hour or so and see if it'll let me download then)
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Let me know if I need to put it somewhere else...
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when my neighbors are downloading pr0nand some sites just won't connect.And if all else fails, I'm going to the apartment of someone who I *know* has a damn good connection, so I can make him burn it to disk for me or something, provided I remember about it. XD
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http://savefile.com/projects/1017222
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I like the cop too, but she does not seem to be an escapee from Saiyuki, unless there's someone I'm forgetting.
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(Good lord, Toki has a melon head. I think it's partly just his hairstyle, though.)
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I would definitely follow Bus Gamer if Minekura continued it.
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I get scanlationsit's licensed.no subject
I'm not too proud for scanlations. Scanlations, yay! Besides, I read the scans, then buy the licensed if I like it.