Samurai Deeper Kyo

[telophase]

By Sunday morning I'll be up to the latest volume out, having mainlined half the series in 24 hours. I'm enjoying it a lot despite my complaints in the comments a post or two back.

I am very tempted to scan in a bunch of Yuya's :O faces and title it "The Many Expressions of Yuya."


(Spoilers might be in comments; read at yer own risk.)

ETA: chomiji - just remembered your review of Blade of the Immortal 4 & 5, and your mention of Rin in it - and she's pretty much playing the exact same role as Yuya, only done right, I think.

Comments

[maiteoida.livejournal.com]

About Yuya, it's funny reading some of your complaints...because she was a biiig factor in me dropping the manga eventually (well, her and the fact that at a certain point in time it just felt like I was reading fight after fight after fight with not much in between, but it's not like that's new or anything). She started off interesting and then devolved into the typical shounen female tag-on that passively helps to define all of the other characters (if that makes sense). I just didn't feel like she herself was evolving, and it was getting pretty tiresome. ^^; Alas, but I have a problem with a lot of female characters in shounen manga, so maybe it's just me.

Rin DOES seem like a Yuya done right, now that you mention it. Which may explain part of why I like Blade of the Immortal much better (aside from the fact that it's just awesome).

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

I'm really quite fond of Yuya, but I think her arc is fairly subtle. See here for Chomiji and my discussion of her: http://fmanalyst.livejournal.com/29519.html#cutid1.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

I actually like Yuya but I do agree with the above comment that her arc is not obvious at all and it IS buried beneath the standard shounen tropes of fulfilling the female sidekick/hostage victim/spunky role.

[chomiji]

Yes, I've frequently thought about the fact that Rin and Yuya are the exact same age! But SDK is very much a fantasy, whereas Blade is - except for the blood worms - pretty damn near historical fiction.

I started reading SDK because my husband brought home the frist few volumes. He hadn't been able to find any SF&F he wanted to read at the big bookstore near his office, and he asked the young male salesclerk what manga he's recommend. We owe that guy a big favor, because he took the time to ask the Mr. what he usually liked, and then he showed him SDK. I didn't think much of it at first - it starts out really badly, IMO - but I got hooked when Sanada Yukimura showed up.

It was the first manga I had ever read, and I didn't know that some of the things that fascinated and amused me are actually fairly typical of the genre, such as the little asides that break the reality of the story - for example, when they are first confronted by Shinrei at Muramasa's, and Yuya says she can tell he's the bad guy because he looks like the bad guy, and Benitora says something like "What do you think this is, a manga?"

Now that I have read a few more series, I still love it. I even love its over-the-top aspects, because it's so sincerely passionate about its convinctions. Kyo keeps claiming that he'll kill anyone who gets in his way, and that all these guys are his "servants," but it becomes increasingly clear that there's a lot more to it than that. Just look at Kyo's face when he thinks Shinrei has killed Hotaru: no super-tough guy would have that expression if one of his servants had been killed. And it's pretty clear that Kyo would rather win Shinrei over as an ally too.

Its huge ensemble cast now reminds me of Bleach, but most of the principal characters seem to have even more elaborate backstories and motivations (although I have to say that I'm only up to the latest English language volume released for Bleach, whereas with SDK I've read the scanlations of 29 through the end of the series, so I may not be making a fair comparison).

For example, look at Hotaru. We meet him as this totally psychotic killer, with those weird, dead eyes and the physique of a heroin addict. It's clear he doesn't like anybody, including his own comrade Shinrei, and he has a total disregard for human life. But over the course of the next several volumes, he becomes much more complex. Bit by bit, we learn that he's the bastard son of a prominent Mibu clansman who has been trying to kill him since he was a small child and who did kill his mother, that Shinrei is his half brother, that he was originally sent to Kyo's side as a spy, that he'll refuse food when he's starving if he thinks it will make him look weak to accept it (no wonder he's so thin!), and that he's never felt comradeship with anyone but Kyo and the Shiseiten - and posssibly Taihaku, for whose sake he torched part of the Mibu palace complex as a funeral pyre. In that context, his complete lack of empathy with most other human beings isn't quite so weird.

And that's just one character, who didn't even show up until a quarter of the way through the story ... .