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just looking
in English
Resources Aestheticism Series Kohri no Mamono Locus of Blue Online Shopping Cybershoppe fromjp.com Fujisan Jamall Mangaroo Mangaroo@pitas in Japanese
Resources Animate News BCNU archive comic line-up Artists Soh AOKI Yu ASAGIRI Shinri FUWA K. HIGASHIZATO Reiichi HIIRO Shiuko KANO Kazuma KODAKA Sanami MATOH Modoru MOTONI Rie NAKAMURA Youka NITTA Mamiya OKI K. TAKASHIMA Bookstores Amazon Book1 Book Service ES Books Honya Town Publishers Biblos Core Magazine Gentosha Houbunsha June-net Kousai Shobo Movic Sanwa Shuppan Shobunkan Taiyo Tosho Take Shobo Tosuisha Publishers: shoujo Akita Shoten Hakusensha Kadokawa Shinshokan Shogakukan Shuueisha Video & CDs Cue Egg Label Pastel/Vivid archives
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Friday, January 31, 2003
Fruits Basket
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
I had another surreal dream last night and meant to log it as soon as I turned on my computer at work, but I got tied up in the stuff they pay me to do and by the end of teh day, couldn't remember a bit of it. Except I do know it had no Japanese/anime/manga "hook," so it didn't really belong here, anyway. Must keep the blog pure.
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Where did I hear that the 2/2003 issue of Be Boy Gold would have an essay by the editor who attended Yaoi-Con 2002? Nix that source: no word.
Edited on 1/30 to add
Monday, January 27, 2003
In dreams, we're all Gillian Anderson. Must have been because I had heard her voice in the dubbed Princess Mononoke yesterday. In my dream, she was Scullyish, escaping from who-knows-where when she traded her sober sedan and a dark night for wheeling a shiny chrome shopping cart down a sunny suburban highway. I know this road -- with its tall green grass -- from other dreams. Usually I'm driving down it. But on the side Scully is walking with her cart there's supposed to be an intricate network of lakes and rivers just beyond the first view-obstructing grassy hill. Instead, it seems to be a grassy plain, and there's construction work going on at the gate at the roadside. Scully is determinedly wheeling her cart through the construction workers, when suddenly I'm inside the house at Tara's party. Huh? The construction work on the gate turned out to be decorating for a birthday/graduation party for Tara. I'm in the entrance hall of a mansion, not actually an invited guest at the party. Tara's partner comes down and shows me a magazine featuring a scandal that had just been uncovered involving Harrison Ford covering up a Mark Hamill peccadillo at a Star Wars premiere party (what would that be? 25 years ago?). Our conversation is awkward, and she goes back upstairs. In the "all lesbians know each other" theory of dreams, Diane (my college roommate) comes down and is chatting with me when she's joined by Tara and Tara's partner. Tara's partner and Diane seem to be the same height, but Tara's partner is clearly taller relative to Tara than Diane is. This anomaly fascinates me. I'm trying to find a graceful way to exit the not-party, while Tara is implying that I could be incorporated at the table for dessert. I wake up. My cable guide's blurb for Princess Mononoke: A prince gets mixed up in an environmental conflict involving samurai, an iron-mining colony, and forest gods in this anime tale set in 14th-century Japan. Title character, anyone?
Sunday, January 26, 2003
I agree with both of me The Odoru Daisousasen television series, specials and movie make a perfect arc. Part of me fears that the new Odoru Daisousasen movie will spoil that. Aoshima has learned and sacrificed and taught and accomplished and sacrificed. Muroi has risked and learned and risen and sacrificed. Can a second movie sustain the tension between the two? But Odoru Daisousasen fandom was fading even in Japan and I'm hoping a new movie will energize it -- perhaps even introduce the characters to English-speaking fans.
picture read this  Reiichi Hiiro's Love Hustler
Saturday, January 25, 2003
more misfanthropic muttering When I first became wired, nine years ago, fan mailing lists included insightful analysis that increased my enjoyment of the shows. (The shows in this case were X-Files and Lois and Clark.) That level of analysis seems to have been subsumed by fanfiction. It's seen a pseudo rebirth with the popularity of Television Without Pity's recaps, but slyness and snarkiness, while entertaining, rarely enlightens. I don't leave a snarkfest understanding more about the show or the characters. Now maybe I'm just lookig for love in all the wrong places. Mailing lists, which were a refuge from the appalling signal-to-noise ratio of newsgroups 5+ years ago, have been supplanted by webforums (for those "the more the merrier" and "fandom is my performance art" folks) and weblog circles (for those who simultaneously seek exclusivity and an audience). Maybe all the thoughtful analysis without the attendant demand to write a fanfic has drifted there. Or maybe analysis is alive and well on gen lists and my preference for slashy goodness has doomed me to disappointment. It seems that most slash fans need to see the homosexual relationship in print and in character to make it "real." Sure, there are a very few fandoms with canonical homosexuality (Queer as Folk, Velvet Goldmine, etc.), but the culture is rooted in source texts that will never fulfill the fans' visions in that way. So analysis is relegated to serving fanfiction. blech.
Friday, January 24, 2003
Hypocrisy, thy name is...me I placed an order with jpqueen for some out-of-print/hard-to-get manga titles. Just remember, with jpqueen, it's caveat emptor. Most used manga stores in Japan charge 300-350 yen for their BL titles in fine condition; new, these books cost in the neighborhood of 562 yen (check this currency converter and do the math yourself: that's about US $5.10). If jpqueen is charging more than $3.50 for a used BL manga, they're overcharging you. And if they're charging more than $6 for a recent release, you can get it cheaper new from bk1.
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Fujisan responds... ...that my orders are now being shipped from the LA fulfillment center, so I should patiently wait another week for my manga zasshi to arrive. One of the reasons I could tolerate having to pay tax on my Fujisan orders (lucky people who don't live in California) was that the shipments arrived ridiculously quickly, since we were in the same town. Now I might as well be living in Boston. Better off in Boston, actually, since I could visit Sasuga Books there.
Fannish fretting
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Jamall just cancelled my Motto! G-Defend order, so it's back to Fujisan, which has me verrrry nervous: Fujisan has marked my Gold shipment and my last manga shipment as shipped on 1/06 and 1/09 respectively, but I have yet to receive them.
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
The term "out-of-character" raises my hackles when people are talking about fanfic. In doujinshi, I see something that more closely approximates my own sensibilities. Doujinshi artists often focus on a particular facet of a character and represent that quality iconically. Same with a relationship dynamic. Muroi is isolated and tightly wound. Aoshima is eager and well-intentioned. Put those qualities together and this is how it looks.
Sunday, January 19, 2003
I'm spending the weekend cataloging my manga for the XML project. It's slow going, made slower by the measures I'm going through to include cover scans without having to scan them in. I've done the two shelves in the kitchen and one shelf from the bedroom and I'm already at 230 volumes. If I multiply that by the $6 I spent per volume...well, let's not go there. Apparently, I never did pick up HanaKimi 17, which strikes me as odd. I'm torn between ordering it now and waiting until I've done the data-entry on the rest of the collection, just to be sure. One think I do know for sure: I don't have room for all of these and never will in this apartment. It's a conundrum. I'm not moving out of my rent-controlled shoebox, and I'm not getting rid of the manga. I need a hammer space storage system.
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Friday, January 17, 2003
This should be an entry droning on about all the anime on DVD I'm buying (because I want to put some money where my mouth is...though, really, it's times like these I wish I could just say "ore no kotoba" instead), but I have been killing an entire day by ambling through quizzes. While the questions in this one aren't well-constructed, the quiz does embody a concept I have to applaud: finding a more creative way to critique annoying fannish phenomena. I am so bored with narrow-minded rants. No, I won't tell you which butchered LotR character I was.
Thursday, January 16, 2003
My Aestheticism order arrived today: Balalaika #8 Japalish. Pleased as I am to have it, I was rather hoping that the "flat" waiting for me at the PMB was last month's issue of BeBoy Gold. I want to know if there is an essay on Yaoi-Con, and -- if so -- what the editor has to say.
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Woohoo! My Kengamine Bishowjobu doujinshi, ordered via fromjp.com on December 7, arrived today. I haven't made sense of volume 11 yet, but the side story about Hiko and baby Sei trading places (Bouhatsu Sunzen, Count 1) was hilarious...and now I think I understand the title, which roughly translates to "on the verge of an accidental discharge." And more good news: Count 2 was released (hee!) for Winter Comiket, 2002.
 http://me.halhal.net/~hdi/frame/frameD.html The books smell of something I can't identify, though it makes me think of a pizza place I used to go to in college. It's not particularly appealing or repellant. It's just there, reminding me that there is so much I don't know about Japan. Is it a potpourri used by the circle? The odor of my package's neighbor during shipment?
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
What's with the weepiness lately? First, I can't make it through an episode of Fruits Basket without bawling (the title story, told by Tohru, and the story of the Foolis traveler, told by Momiji devastate me). Now I'm crying at Yuusuke's funeral in the first episode of YYH? When I've already seen it before, subtitled? What's next? Hallmark commercials?
Monday, January 13, 2003
Closing Time, a NYT editorial on the closing of the Oscar Wilde Bookshop after nearly 36 years, offers: Yet sad though it is to lose the Oscar Wilde Bookshop — or, for that matter, any bookshop — the fading of the gay bookstore as an institution is far from a tragic sign. Yes, in part these independent booksellers are a casualty of competition from bookstore chains and Internet booksellers. But their decline is also a reflection of something very positive — namely, the entrance of gay Americans into mainstream culture over the last decade or so.Is slash a world that takes homosexuality seriously? I think so, yes. Sometimes pedantically so. Is BL becoming such a space? Maybe, in a niche or two, but niches in Japan have the rather intimidating ability to become trendy overnight. Trends flourish then wane, leaving their focus somehow more deflated once the hoopla is over.
Sunday, January 12, 2003
My January order, placed though bk1. It's an experiment in ordering directly from Japan. If I continue using them as a distributor, I may have to place semi-monthly orders.
Saturday, January 11, 2003
And Cartoon network moved its anime programming from Saturday night to weeknights...late weeknights. Well, tonight was a bust wasn't it?
Thursday, January 09, 2003
Irony? I'm in the middle of full rant mode against scanlations on one yahoogroup, and another group dedicated to scanlating shoujo manga sends me an invitation to join. What madness is this?
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
I always thought that, under stress, my dreams became bland and workaday, but lately they've been quite colorful. From two night ago: I still remember sitting on a Tokyo corner (although this was a Marmalade Boy version of Tokyo, with a pastel-colored building on one of those triangular intersections) while Superman and Lois Lane had an adventure in the alleyway which was designed to resurrect the Lois and Clark tv show. I'm so busy that I haven't had time to make up my January order yet. If I wait too long, I worry that I won't be able to get Love Mode. Yes, I worry a lot.
Sunday, January 05, 2003
Keep sleeping through Cartoon Network's adult swim on Saturday night, featuring Inu Yasha and Yu Yu Hakusho. Grrrr. Not to mention the fact that I have no idea what dramas KTSF is running at 7 and 11pm anymore. And, since this seems to be a whine fest of missed television opportunities, did I mention that I missed Meteor Garden when KTSF broadcast it?
Friday, January 03, 2003
Koi mo 2 dome daze by Jingorou Horii Slashers into SM would like this title. All of the encounters are consensual, though the "SM" is limited to bondage, vibrators, and a bit of candle wax rather than the elaborate scenarios from Maia Tori's ouevre. The men are muscled and vulgar (that treasured western myth: the real man), and even this picture reader can figure out that they're not spouting poetry or cooing sweet nothings to one another.
Thursday, January 02, 2003
Romance and feminism The only feminist issue here is choice. So long as women can choose what they want to read, the thought police can stay out of our reading preferences thankyouverymuch. Saying that women (or girls) should read insert genre here instead of romance is reminiscent of the days when women's reading material was limited to the Bible and books of manners. dream, slipping out of my consciousness (1) I'm in a 9-story building in Tokyo (2), looking for someone or something. On the eighth floor, which turns out to be the Sony offices, I need to go to the restroom. In the corridor behind the receptionists' desk are the elevators and discreet entrances to what I assume are the men's and women's rooms, but walking in an unmarked door I find that the restrooms are co-ed. And there are no stalls, merely commodes lining the sea-green and gold walls. Some have discreet covers you can place over your lap when you sit down, some do not. The room angles a few times, and at some of these angles are low wooden walls, providing further much-needed privacy. At one of these walls, an old man seated at a coverless commode seems to be holding court. The room is surprisingly busy, but he's not going anywhere. Less-desirable (coverless) toilets become free, and I wave other women ahead of me, including one with a baby. I look around a curve in the room and discover a smaller alcove with a covered commode free. I sit down, and see behind me that there are video games embedded in the low counters that run behind and between the commodes. At one end of this short alcove is what looks to be a cashier's counter. Seated at the next commode is a large western women who appears to be perfectly comfortable with her coverless commode and the situation in general. She starts to give me advice about not fearing the men in the room, just think of them as the effeminate figures they are. (She doesn't use the word effeminate, but gestures toward the old man next to the wall in the other room (3) and describes him as an old baba.) She continues on about not fearing or being amazed at the games, and her opinions about how I should behave are starting to wear on me. Suddenly, I feel very tired and drift in and out of her monologue until there's nothing but blackness and I hear an indistinct voice in the distance. "Of course we won't be able to take the body home immediately, but we will eventually." I'm behind a glass wall. Suspended in fluid or just in suspended animation. The woman is speaking to a nurse-figure and is passing herself off as my mother, but I know it is not my mother. It is my aunt. (4) My aunt is arranging to have me euthanized. Sometimes I'm me behind the glass and sometimes I'm a smallish dragon. Gray and dull green scales with black eyes and jointed wings. Claws come out of the joints I associate with my shoulder bones. Children are brought by on school outings. I seem to be something of a mascot to them. They don't know I'm about to be put down. I wake up.
1) Not manga, but I'm slipping it in because it takes place in Tokyo. It contains elements that appear in a lot of my dreams, though probably not the elements you think.
Wednesday, January 01, 2003
Not an earth-shattering epiphany, but a comfort. Just when I thought reading was dead for me (seriously, I'm a little frightened by the fact that most of my leisure reading material these days is stuff I can't read), I realized that I still associate my friends with what they read. Reading isn't dead, it's just displaced.
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