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I hadn't planned to post more book logging for a while, but I ended up with a lot to say about some of these, enough that the document runs just over three pages in Word.
Two of the entries require warnings--
The entry on Arm of Kannon 7 talks about why some Christians may find that volume of the manga (and probably future volumes of it) offensive. It's also potentially spoilery but only for a bit of backstory, nothing I'd consider major.
The entry on Shaman King 13 talks about what I see as some skanky race issues in it.
Arm of Kannon 7 - It's a really, really good thing that certain members of Scott's family will never read this series. (Scott laughed himself silly when I said that. He considers the possibility of, for example, his parents reading manga to be so impossible as to be ludicrous.) This volume continues with the creepy art, gross monsters and such but adds in fictional history that I suspect that many Christians would find utterly blasphemous.
The arm of the title is an ancient, very powerful, parasitic life form that attaches to people and, unless they're extraordinary, turns them into monsters. (I think there's more than one arm, but I'm confused on that point, and it doesn't seem to be important anyway.) This volume offers a few pages of backstory that say that the arm was in Bethlehem, destroying things, when Jesus, a holy man from Nazareth, came and took it into his own body. It gave him the power to perform miracles (which he hadn't really had before), and he died when his body couldn't support/contain the arm any longer. At that point, he gave instructions to Judas to create the Holy Grail, use it to catch and contain the arm, to create a holy sword (called 'Golgotha Christ') and to have his descendents guard all three against the day when the arm would turn evil again. (Jesus had made it temporarily good through the force of his holiness and will.)
I suspect that most people who make it through to v.7 of this series won't be all that offended by the reworking of Jesus' life. There's enough dismemberment, writhing body parts, sexualized parasitism, cannibalism, etc. to put off anybody who lacks a keen sense of unreality when looking at horror. A little Christian blasphemy (or would heresy be the right word? I'm fairly sure the manga-ka isn't Christian, so I'm not sure which words accurately apply) seems trivial to me in comparison.
Well, and also, I don't consider myself Christian, don't see why God would be bothered by art, good or bad, and think that Christianity is not, generally, an oppressed group with no voices of its own. When somebody appropriates Christian elements, they're just working with things that are common as dirt, at least in the culture I live in.
Claymore 3 - Backstory for Clare. Tragic backstory for Clare. Still good. Scott's getting to these before I do.
Good Witch of the West 4 - I feel like the story's moving too fast in some ways, probably it's that Firiel keeps traveling to new environments and meeting lots of new people. I hope that some of the characters introduced at the school come back later. I think that more time would make me feel the political intrigues more strongly. Right now, I feel like I'm being told about them rather than shown them. I still like the series, but I think it needs to put down some roots so that I can find the story.
Hunter x Hunter 16 - My eyes glaze over when I'm looking at the strategy of card use and card collection in the game. I hope the series finishes that quickly and does something else. It's fun to see Gon and Killua growing into their powers, but I think I'd like to see them doing something that doesn't feel quite so artificial.
Law of Ueki 5 - Ueki wants to bring down the bad guys by infiltrating their team. He means well, as always, but he's perpetually unable to betray his principles. He doesn't even seem to make decisions about it. In this volume, we get to see Ueki's family and there's a reveal about his background that adds complications to the story. It gives me hope for plot that isn't just fight after fight. (Though I think there might be many scholarly papers to be written comparing the techniques authors use to vary fights in series that focus on such things. Not one I'm likely to write, but I'd be interested to read it if someone else wrote it.)
I'm a little disappointed to discover that Margaret is male. I'd been glad to see a female in the fight to be king, and the character *looked* female to me, but characters are consistently using masculine pronouns for Margaret, and his son calls him Dad, so... Ah, well.
Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 - This is not my sort of book, but I finished it anyway because it's short. This is a graphic novel set in a civilization created by mice. The Mouse Guard protects travelers against predators and watches the borders of mouse territory against incursions by large predators (or packs of smaller predators). There was a lot of fighting, dying and maiming. The main plot is political/military, but what that plot is doesn't become clear very quickly.
I had trouble seeing the animals that the mice fought as dangerous even though I knew that, for mice, they would be. Particularly, there's a bit involving two mice fighting crabs on a beach. It ought to be a very tense sequence, but it didn't work for me. I don't know that that's a problem with the art. It may simply be that, because I'm not visual, I wasn't seeing the art well. I also had trouble telling various mice apart. That made the sequences in which mice were fighting each other work less well than they might. I generally had no idea who was involved. Three of the characters wear brightly colored cloaks for a while, so I could identify the three of them (though still not tell them apart).
My library shelves this in the children's room. If it were a movie, I'd rate it PG-13 or even R for the violence. I hope that parents will preview it before handing it to younger kids and not just assume that anything about mice must be cute and safe. I suspect that it's in that troublesome area of not really being aimed at teenagers and so not appropriate for the YA department without really being right for the younger kids either. Of course, I tend to have much stronger standards on violence than some other parents do. I don't see handing this one to Delia for another four or five years.
O-Parts Hunter 8 - Ah, the mandatory shonen tournament. Jio and company stumble into it, don't actually know what's going on but have supreme confidence in their own abilities. There's a cliffhanger ending, but it's not making me feel particularly tense because the heroes don't really have an investment in the tournament. Yeah, their opponents wouldn't mind killing them, but there are nearly ten volumes left in the series, so... Still, I'm glad I already have a hold on the next volume.
Shaman King 13 - Oh, you did *not* just do that. Well, yes, I know you did, but... Even as it was happening, I was hoping that it wasn't. I'm so glad that I don't love this series.
This series has always had some issues of cultural appropriation and race. I can't entirely judge, for example, just how offensive the portrayal of the Patch, the Native American tribe that oversees the battle to be Shaman King, is, but I've been suspicious of it. I've gone on reading because it's the sort of thing that's hugely common and because I don't take the series very seriously, don't feel strongly about it as anything but something to fill time occasionally.
In this case, though... This volume introduced a black character from the U.S. He wants to win the shaman fight so that he can become the world's greatest comedian and save everyone through the power of laughter. That's not the oddest reason for someone to be in the fight. There are other, minor characters, who want to win for similar reasons. I could deal with that. His oversoul (spirit partner/servant or familiar or whatever you want to call it) is a jaguar. He fights by integrating it with his body, which is unusual, and more or less becoming a jaguar. Sort of. He learned this in New York City from an old man known as Indio.
The last 25% of the volume gave this character's backstory. That's the part that really hurt. He was a thug, a member of a gang (leader, actually). He's shown mugging a white guy on Christmas, stealing the presents the guy was carrying for his kids and then shooting the guy just to be mean. The character looks like he's about eight.
Other characters in the gang comment that this guy hates Christmas because that's when a burglar broke into the 'roach motel' where he and his parents were living and murdered his parents in front of him. In the same scene, someone addresses a black girl as 'Buffalo Lynn.' (I'm saying 'girl' because everybody in the gang looked so young. She could have been old enough to merit being called a woman. I couldn't tell. And her age doesn't change the name.)
I wasn't surprised by any of it, once I saw how things were going, but I did hope for better. I'll still look at the next volume, but I'll be hoping not to run into anything else of the sort. I don't think I'm overreacting, but I'm not sure I'm not under-reacting.
YuYu Hakusho 11 - I am so ready for this arc to be over. Not that this volume is bad. I just want something other than fight after fight. I might feel differently if I remembered much about the bad guys, but I don't.
Two of the entries require warnings--
The entry on Arm of Kannon 7 talks about why some Christians may find that volume of the manga (and probably future volumes of it) offensive. It's also potentially spoilery but only for a bit of backstory, nothing I'd consider major.
The entry on Shaman King 13 talks about what I see as some skanky race issues in it.
Arm of Kannon 7 - It's a really, really good thing that certain members of Scott's family will never read this series. (Scott laughed himself silly when I said that. He considers the possibility of, for example, his parents reading manga to be so impossible as to be ludicrous.) This volume continues with the creepy art, gross monsters and such but adds in fictional history that I suspect that many Christians would find utterly blasphemous.
The arm of the title is an ancient, very powerful, parasitic life form that attaches to people and, unless they're extraordinary, turns them into monsters. (I think there's more than one arm, but I'm confused on that point, and it doesn't seem to be important anyway.) This volume offers a few pages of backstory that say that the arm was in Bethlehem, destroying things, when Jesus, a holy man from Nazareth, came and took it into his own body. It gave him the power to perform miracles (which he hadn't really had before), and he died when his body couldn't support/contain the arm any longer. At that point, he gave instructions to Judas to create the Holy Grail, use it to catch and contain the arm, to create a holy sword (called 'Golgotha Christ') and to have his descendents guard all three against the day when the arm would turn evil again. (Jesus had made it temporarily good through the force of his holiness and will.)
I suspect that most people who make it through to v.7 of this series won't be all that offended by the reworking of Jesus' life. There's enough dismemberment, writhing body parts, sexualized parasitism, cannibalism, etc. to put off anybody who lacks a keen sense of unreality when looking at horror. A little Christian blasphemy (or would heresy be the right word? I'm fairly sure the manga-ka isn't Christian, so I'm not sure which words accurately apply) seems trivial to me in comparison.
Well, and also, I don't consider myself Christian, don't see why God would be bothered by art, good or bad, and think that Christianity is not, generally, an oppressed group with no voices of its own. When somebody appropriates Christian elements, they're just working with things that are common as dirt, at least in the culture I live in.
Claymore 3 - Backstory for Clare. Tragic backstory for Clare. Still good. Scott's getting to these before I do.
Good Witch of the West 4 - I feel like the story's moving too fast in some ways, probably it's that Firiel keeps traveling to new environments and meeting lots of new people. I hope that some of the characters introduced at the school come back later. I think that more time would make me feel the political intrigues more strongly. Right now, I feel like I'm being told about them rather than shown them. I still like the series, but I think it needs to put down some roots so that I can find the story.
Hunter x Hunter 16 - My eyes glaze over when I'm looking at the strategy of card use and card collection in the game. I hope the series finishes that quickly and does something else. It's fun to see Gon and Killua growing into their powers, but I think I'd like to see them doing something that doesn't feel quite so artificial.
Law of Ueki 5 - Ueki wants to bring down the bad guys by infiltrating their team. He means well, as always, but he's perpetually unable to betray his principles. He doesn't even seem to make decisions about it. In this volume, we get to see Ueki's family and there's a reveal about his background that adds complications to the story. It gives me hope for plot that isn't just fight after fight. (Though I think there might be many scholarly papers to be written comparing the techniques authors use to vary fights in series that focus on such things. Not one I'm likely to write, but I'd be interested to read it if someone else wrote it.)
I'm a little disappointed to discover that Margaret is male. I'd been glad to see a female in the fight to be king, and the character *looked* female to me, but characters are consistently using masculine pronouns for Margaret, and his son calls him Dad, so... Ah, well.
Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 - This is not my sort of book, but I finished it anyway because it's short. This is a graphic novel set in a civilization created by mice. The Mouse Guard protects travelers against predators and watches the borders of mouse territory against incursions by large predators (or packs of smaller predators). There was a lot of fighting, dying and maiming. The main plot is political/military, but what that plot is doesn't become clear very quickly.
I had trouble seeing the animals that the mice fought as dangerous even though I knew that, for mice, they would be. Particularly, there's a bit involving two mice fighting crabs on a beach. It ought to be a very tense sequence, but it didn't work for me. I don't know that that's a problem with the art. It may simply be that, because I'm not visual, I wasn't seeing the art well. I also had trouble telling various mice apart. That made the sequences in which mice were fighting each other work less well than they might. I generally had no idea who was involved. Three of the characters wear brightly colored cloaks for a while, so I could identify the three of them (though still not tell them apart).
My library shelves this in the children's room. If it were a movie, I'd rate it PG-13 or even R for the violence. I hope that parents will preview it before handing it to younger kids and not just assume that anything about mice must be cute and safe. I suspect that it's in that troublesome area of not really being aimed at teenagers and so not appropriate for the YA department without really being right for the younger kids either. Of course, I tend to have much stronger standards on violence than some other parents do. I don't see handing this one to Delia for another four or five years.
O-Parts Hunter 8 - Ah, the mandatory shonen tournament. Jio and company stumble into it, don't actually know what's going on but have supreme confidence in their own abilities. There's a cliffhanger ending, but it's not making me feel particularly tense because the heroes don't really have an investment in the tournament. Yeah, their opponents wouldn't mind killing them, but there are nearly ten volumes left in the series, so... Still, I'm glad I already have a hold on the next volume.
Shaman King 13 - Oh, you did *not* just do that. Well, yes, I know you did, but... Even as it was happening, I was hoping that it wasn't. I'm so glad that I don't love this series.
This series has always had some issues of cultural appropriation and race. I can't entirely judge, for example, just how offensive the portrayal of the Patch, the Native American tribe that oversees the battle to be Shaman King, is, but I've been suspicious of it. I've gone on reading because it's the sort of thing that's hugely common and because I don't take the series very seriously, don't feel strongly about it as anything but something to fill time occasionally.
In this case, though... This volume introduced a black character from the U.S. He wants to win the shaman fight so that he can become the world's greatest comedian and save everyone through the power of laughter. That's not the oddest reason for someone to be in the fight. There are other, minor characters, who want to win for similar reasons. I could deal with that. His oversoul (spirit partner/servant or familiar or whatever you want to call it) is a jaguar. He fights by integrating it with his body, which is unusual, and more or less becoming a jaguar. Sort of. He learned this in New York City from an old man known as Indio.
The last 25% of the volume gave this character's backstory. That's the part that really hurt. He was a thug, a member of a gang (leader, actually). He's shown mugging a white guy on Christmas, stealing the presents the guy was carrying for his kids and then shooting the guy just to be mean. The character looks like he's about eight.
Other characters in the gang comment that this guy hates Christmas because that's when a burglar broke into the 'roach motel' where he and his parents were living and murdered his parents in front of him. In the same scene, someone addresses a black girl as 'Buffalo Lynn.' (I'm saying 'girl' because everybody in the gang looked so young. She could have been old enough to merit being called a woman. I couldn't tell. And her age doesn't change the name.)
I wasn't surprised by any of it, once I saw how things were going, but I did hope for better. I'll still look at the next volume, but I'll be hoping not to run into anything else of the sort. I don't think I'm overreacting, but I'm not sure I'm not under-reacting.
YuYu Hakusho 11 - I am so ready for this arc to be over. Not that this volume is bad. I just want something other than fight after fight. I might feel differently if I remembered much about the bad guys, but I don't.
no subject
Re: Mouse Guard, I've always had problems with the artwork myself. It looks like it's caught in a limbo between cute and serious.
no subject
i suspect that the cute part of the Mouse Guard art is why it was purchased and shelved as a kids' book. Then again, as I said, my standards as to what's too violent for kids may be more stringent than most.