Things I've Seen or Read Lately

[laceblade]

BBC's Sherlock - for some reason I hadn't realized that the source is only three 90-minute episodes. I watched the first one last night with Antoine; it was pretty great! I love Watson, and can now pay proper attention to people's related icons and fandom posts. Do people really like Sherlock as a person??
Despite knowing things about Sherlock Homles/Watson, this is the first time I've ever actually watched an interpretation of it (no, I've never watched House).
I've never read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, but I think I'd like to someday.

Love*Com: The Movie - based on the manga series by Aya Nakahara. The basic premise is the budding relationship between a taller-than-average girl and a shorter-than-average boy who are both in high school. They keep trying to find romance while also constantly bickering with each other, and then realize that all their friends/classmates are rooting for them to be together. Can they get over their height complexes to do so?!
I liked this a lot more than I expected to! The actress playing Risa could contort her face magnificently. I still need to finish reading the manga, but I think I like the anime the most. The Kansai accents were best in the anime, IMO.

Among Others by Jo Walton - Did not love this as much as everyone else did, I don't think. We'll see if my opinion changes after we discuss it at Book Club. I still like Walton's writing, etc.

Ooku by Fumi Yoshinaga - Don't have tons to say about this. I think I like her Flower of Life series better??

Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy!! by Fumi Yoshinaga - BWAHAHA, amazing. The manga-ka writes a mostly-autobiographical tome about visiting restaurants and eating with her friends. I guess she's a big foodie. She visited lots of pricey places, though, so I only made a photocopy of the bagel/bread shop instructions/hours for our upcoming trip to Japan.

Soul Eater by Atsushi Ohkubo - the first two volumes of the manga are about how far I had seen of the anime. I think this works better for me as a manga? It certainly cuts down on how long it takes me to get through it, :D I love the trippy/drippy backgrounds in this series. I think Maka is a great protagonist. If this were a regular shonen series and she were just a secondary character, I would be upset. I hope this series does not disappoint me like Bleach and Naruto did (focusing on endless power-ups/battles that I didn't care about).

Glee, season 1 - I KNOW. I KNOW. I watched it and I recognize the fail and I would absolutely not "rec" this series. BUT. It's an easy thing for me to mainline when my brain is dead, and sometimes I like watching popular shows just so I know wtf is going on in pop culture (and so I understand the Fandom Secrets about them, lol).

Saturn Apartments by Hisae Iwaoka - This is one of the few manga series that I know of that focuses on class issues as a central theme and doesn't shy away from it. In the future, people no longer live on the planet surface, but instead in rings that surround the planet. The ring is tiered, upper/middle/lower, which corresponds with the class identification of most people who live in that ring level. Our protagonist is Mitsu, a member of the lower class-ring who joins a window washing guild. As window washers, they clean the windows outside of the apartments of those who live in the other classes. Mitsu navigates around the ring levels/classes, and also learns how to get along with his co-workers, who all knew/worked with his father before his death.
There are no epic plots here, just following Mitsu throughout his (sometimes) normal days of working, vacation, etc. The art style is unconventional for manga, but I find it very endearing.

Comments

[liseuse]

I don't like Sherlock, the character, exactly, but I do enjoy not liking him very much. He's very easy to not like, but in a very interesting way. The TV show was the reason I finally got around to reading the Sherlock Holmes stories.

[laceblade]

True, true! Perhaps I should clarify: I don't like Sherlock, but I love watching him, :D

[liseuse]

He is fascinating to watch. And occasionally I would get flashes of a part of him that I did like, and that made it all more interesting when he reverted back to being someone I didn't like.

[wrdnrd]

I kind of like Sherlock. But then, i AM married to Andy, so let's just say i have A Type. Possibly i also have ISSUES.

[the_andy]

I don't know whether to be offended or honored you think I'm a smug superior asshole of Holmes's degree.

[wrdnrd]

You're more amusing.

[laceblade]

There are lots of things that Sherlock says out loud that I think Andy would never say! (Maybe he would think it, though, bwahaha.)

[wrdnrd]

Andy's response, "The bruises would indicate i HAVE said them."

[calculus_of_destructions]

I loved the first episode of Sherlock, but you should probably skip episode two. It...was problematic in a lot of ways.

[the_andy]

So many many ways. However, if you don't watch it you can't participate in our conversations about how much was wrong with it. And I recall Watson's love interest being a good part.

[calculus_of_destructions]

Eh, that bit was alright. Not great, though, and she was used as a fuckin' damsel-in-distress by the end. Ugh!

[the_andy]

Ok, yeah, that was crap. But up until that point I liked her.

[wrdnrd]

I was extremely disappointed at how Sarah started out as being someone ready and able to be involved in the action (the way she wielded the sword after the interrupted performance) to being completely useless in the later scene in the sewer/tunnel.

[laceblade]

I've heard that it's race-faily (possibly among other things), but I'm probably going to watch anyway. I don't necessarily avoid things *because* they're problematic, but I definitely appreciate the advanced notice.

I've heard that episode three returns to being non-faily? I haven't seen it yet, of course, but that's what I heard.

[calculus_of_destructions]

"Racist as fuck" I think was our household's description. It was also a bit misogynist and, frankly, boring as hell in comparison to the first episode. It didn't have any of the cute narrative tricks or interesting direction and Sherlock didn't really act much in character.

[jesse_the_k]

It's in the public domain so you can grab the text from
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1661

They're the source of uncounted tropes and catchphrases in modern murder mysteries.

[laceblade]

Is this the start of it? In the first chapter, Watson is reminiscing about the 'Case of Scarlet' or whatever, and already married.

[jesse_the_k]

There's tons of it: four novels and 56 short-stories. Given all we know about Holmes already, one can dive in pretty much anywhere. I have a doorstop hardback collected Holmes I'd be happy to lend you. The Wikipedia canon page is quite helpful on dating.

The works were not published in strict chronological order, and Conan Doyle was always including references to prior cases which weren't in the stories -- "the recently concluded case of the charwoman with orange eyes" (as a made up example) which helped to muddy the chronology even more.

I loved The Hound of the Baskervilles best as a kid.