Eschewed Obfuscation

Sorry about the dearth of booklog posts; for various reasons, I haven't been getting much read. Frankenstein must be finished by Thursday, though, and I have a lot of half-finished stuff. Including the Logorrhea anthology, which shall be much fun to discuss! The stories in it are varied and fascinating.


Fruits Basket vol. 19
by Natsuki Takaya
? pages (paperback)
Genre: Fiction/Graphic Novel

I don't have much to say, really; manga for me is pure speed-fluff. Volume 19 reintroduces a lot of long-absent characters--Kisa! and just about everyone in the Zodiac--which was nice. The series is winding down well and Tohru/Kyo is definitely growing on me. They are so obviously and obliviously cute together!

Negatives: I found the plot spacey and hard to comprehend, maybe because I read the whole book in an hour. There's a lot of random thinking panels where it's not clear who is thinking. And some of the minor female characters look exactly the same when they smile. But, um, I've had 3-4 straight nights of less than 6 hours sleep a night. Not entirely coherent right now.

That's about it. Wish I could say that I'm off to bed, but I still have things to do.

Fruits Basket vol. 17
by Natsuki Takaya
~200 pages, ch. 96-101 (graphic novel)
Genre: Fiction/Manga

Furuba is always lovely for me, but some volumes resonate more than others. Volume 16, for instance, with the Cinderella play, gave me hysterics. This one was touching in a completely different way--the Akito/Kureno/Shigure relationship is absolutely gorgeous. The paneling, too. And of course, this volume contains the reveal of Akito's big secret.

I do wonder about gender roles in Fruits Basket. The zodiac is predominantly male, but the Sohma females in general have very little power. Even Ren.

More later, perhaps. I need to think about it some more.

194 pages
Genre: Fiction/Manga

Firstly: I <3 Furuba. And I'm terrible at analyzing graphic novels, even more so than films. For me, all manga is fluff. I like the pretty pictures, but really I'm more interested in plot. It's fun to read other people's panel-by-panel analyses, but I' m just a casual browser.

So I guess I'll talk about more universal things, like character, plot, and setting (the three mainstays of all story--no, theme is not a prequisite). Where was I? Oh yeah. Plot.

Frankly, the first half of this book, where Yuki things about his past, was boring. I'm getting tired of Yuki as the series progresses--15 volumes of wallowing in self-pity is a bit much. But the second half is about the class play, Sorta Cinderella. Tohru is the evil stepsister, Hana is Cinderella, Kyo is the prince, and Yuki is the fairy...guardian. With the last page of Chapter 86 (another loving Yuki-Ayame interaction), hilarity begins. It's the funniest manga sequence I've ever read--I couldn't stop laughing. Totally makes up for the Yuki-angst. It's just...indescribable.