laceblade

--I am still watching The Newsroom, but I am loving the ever-living fuck out of Political Animals. meganbmoore and liseuse are both writing great thoughts about the show, and I don't have much to add. EXCEPT THAT I LOVE IT SO MUCH.

--I finished reading Kou Yaginuma's 12-volume manga series, Twin Spica. Its premise is really interesting - a small, young girl wants to be an astronaut, so she goes to space school. There are some flashbacks to a tragedy that took place before the series begins. The protagonist, Asami, meets friends at space camp school and it is sometimes pretty adorable.
After a few volumes, though, the story begins to lag.
And then to wrap things up, the manga-ka takes this turn with chronic/severe illness, basically saying that it is okay to literally work so hard that you kill yourself by refusing to live by any standards that aren't the same as your best friends - so long as you're all together.
This was extremely disturbing to me. The emotional impact of a character death had a way different effect on me than it was supposed to, I think, and this narrative thread kind of retrospectively ruined the entire series for me.

--The first omnibus volume of Mitsuru Adachi's Cross Game was emotionally compelling in a way I wasn't expecting. Highly recommended; I'll be reading more.
I somehow came to this book unspoiled despite everyone & their mom blogging about it the last couple years.
I'd also give a shout-out to the flawless backgrounds. Normally I find this vaguely cartoon-ish drawing style hard to get through, but the amazingly well-done backgrounds make it extremely tolerable for me.

--Kaoru Mori's A Bride's Story continues to be fantastic. It's worth picking these up just to sigh at the art. I <3 Kaoru Mori.

--ALSO EVERYONE, EVER, SHOULD READ CODE NAME: VERITY BY ELIZABETH WEIN. HOLY SHIT.

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Manga Bookshelf recently held a blog carnival about series by the group CLAMP.
This post about Why You Should Read Cardcaptor Sakura is great, and includes many images from the series. Cardcaptor Sakura is one of my all-time favorites; this blog post does a great job explaining why.

Mostly what I do with Glee is squee about it, because a lot of other people are way more eloquent than me at a) ripping it apart for its inability to have consistent characters or decent writing after the first 13 episodes, and b) problematizing its often fucked up messages about race, ability, gender, and sexual orientation.

Anyway, just wanted to link to this Tumblr post about last night's episode.

My favorite take-down paragraph is about my favorite number, and its ableism.

( I quote it under the cut because it has spoilers, describe & link to the routine in question, and then I talk about some of my own thoughts, too. )

Side note: I don't think I've mentioned this on a public post, but I"m recovering from surgery at the moment, so I've been delayed and haphazard in replying to comments. FYI!

Shizuka is a 14-year-old girl who suffers from Translucent Syndrome. This means that at times, her body goes completely transparent. There is no known cause or cure for Translucent Syndrome, which is unfortunate, as it affects Shizuka's life daily.

Shizuka longs to be normal, while many of her classmates are jealous of her condition without fully understanding it. People who are often the center of attention long to be able to fade away. Meanwhile, Shizuka is literally capable of fading away, but longs to become an actress when she grows up. She faces animosity about this choice: her father tries to dissuade her from it because of her unreliable body.

Shizuka is often sweet and polite, so watching her struggle with being shunted aside by society is heartbreaking. "I just want to yell out....Look at me! I'm right here!"

In addition to the classmates her own age, Shizuka befriends Keiko, an adult woman who also has Translucent Syndrome. I really liked Shizuka's ability to go and talk to Keiko about what it was like to be Translucent, when nobody else could fully understand what she was going to.

There are some scenes that are simple, and heartbreaking. Such as when Keiko puts on a wedding dress and asks, "Well? How do I look?"

Of course, there are a few things to dislike in this series. Shizuka's school nurse is a total creeper. At one point, she coerces Shizuka's love interest, Tadami, to walk in on Shizuka while she is undressed, and locks them in the room together.

Shizkua is also coerced by her female friend to sneak into Tadami's house to steal back her misplaced journal. Of course, to do this translucently, Shizuka sneaks in while naked.

These elements are pretty annoying in a series otherwise focused on telling an interesting story. They can probably be explained by the series' demographic, which is seinen. Unlike shoujo/shounen, which are aimed at the pre-teen and teenage populations, seinen is aimed at adult men. [Its female counterpart is josei, which accounts for titles like Honey & Clover and NANA].

If you're interested in the series but looking to avoid the annoying "Let's make awkward situations!" bits, I recommend the first volume. I thought it was the strongest with presenting a girl coping with a chronic disease, and minimal on the distracting bits.

Overall, the series does a good job with exploring the ways people cope with and react to disabilities. One chapter focuses on one of Shizuka's best friend feeling guilty after thinking, "I'm glad I'm not Shizuka."
While watching her favorite actress on TV, Shizuka becomes agonized, and thinks out loud, "Why me? Why am I translucent? Is this always going to depress me?"

I should point out that while the scenes I mentioned in this post sound like a huge pity-fest, the manga is equally full of scenes of Shizuka being strong. While I find her love interest annoying, he also does a pretty good job at convincing her to be herself.


There are 5 total volumes in this series, and I'd like to read the final 2 some day, just to see what happens to Shizuka. They have not yet been released by Dark Horse in the U.S., due to issues with finding new translators.