Once a Stranger

So, I've finished reading Vinland Saga.

Then I looked up the fanfics. All five of them. *siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighs*

I hate small fandoms. I mean, I love small fandoms, I just hate how small they are sometimes :p

So Monster, for rebbe. ( i don't think there's a spoiler but i'm not sure this makes much sense without having reading the manga )

Himitsu: the Revelation



In the near future, a technology is developed to be able to watch the visual memories of someone through scanning their brains shortly after the death. A unit of police called Section 9 is developed, specialised into watching the brains of the murder victims and criminals in order to solve cases.

Adapted from a josei manga by Reiko Shimizu (called The Top Secret in its French translation), Himitsu was something of a disappointment. I've watched so many great anime adaptation of manga lately, I had forgotten that it was such a risky form I can be very picky of XD. The problem doesn't come from the plot adaptation or addition, which, for the most part actually were an improvement (especially how they made Nanako a real member of the team SPOILER instead of only introducing her in order to be killed as she is END SPOILER in the manga) and necessary in order to increase the overall story's cohesiveness; but from the show's direction : basically it felt very forced and hammed to the point of cheesiness, always going for the overstated when it should have gone for the understated (especially since most of the plots are horrific and taboo enough in contents, they didn't need oversell the point to shock or hook us in) in a way that removed from the dramatic tension and made me roll my eyes more than a few times. The soundtrack is particularly grating, but, really, this is a flaw of the storytelling in general.

It's not all bad though : the source material is pretty interesting if you like mysteries about dark, mature subjects, with some interesting thematics about privacy and how secrets weigh on people. It can sometimes be gore; and there's a couple of episodes that sort of flirt with a CSI-like freak of the week vibe; but for the most part, it's handled rather elegantly. Most of the stories are well done. The art and animation is pretty good, with a realistic art style and beautiful effects of light. The cast of character is a bit slow to come into its own, but does have a beautiful dynamic when it starts. Our view point character, Aoki, is a young policeman newcomer to the unit. He's pretty straightforward and a bit lacking in confidence. Maki, the leader of the team, is a beautiful man with an aloof demeanour and a great capacity for awesome. Both the manga and the anime play with a sort of slashy vibes between those two in a superficial pandering to fangirls way which I find rather irritating since they obviously have no intention to pursue it any deeper than that.

Anyway, if you're as desperate for josei anime as I sometimes am, I guess I'd still recommend it, with some warning about the eye-roll worthy direction.

I never properly most of the manga I read. I justify this to myself by saying I don't like reviewing little bits of stories, but I don't even when I suddenly devour a huge chunk or even complete series - so, yeah. Let's try to remedy that.

Natsume Yuujin Chou - titled the "le Pacte des Yokai" in the French translation - is an episodic shoujo series about a highschool boy, Natsume, who has the gift of seeing spirits and monsters; and which has always considered this as a curse - being seen as weird by his classmates, and being passed on from adoptive families to adoptive families. His grandmother had the same power and used it to bully spirits into forming many a "pact of friendships" which she collected in a book which is now in Natsume's possession. This brings Natsume a lot of unwanted attentions from yokais which want to steal the book for their own advantage, or to be released from their pacts of friendship. Natsume forms an agreement with one such powerful feeling - Nyanko Sensei - which takes the form of a Maneki Neko to be his bodyguard against the other spirits, and in exchange will inherit the book of pacts once Natsume dies. Meanwhile Natsume will try to release as many yokai from the pacts as he can.
I've started hearing about the anime adaption of this series - mostly in good - a lot lately. There's three volumes of the manga translated in French so far, and it is very good. The art is very thin, delicate and expressive in a way that suits perfectly the sensitive and melancholy nature of the stories. There's also a lot of natural landscapes adding to the lovely poetic atmosphere. The characters and their relationship (Nyanko Sensei is a rather snarky trickster mentor) is well depicted. Despite their very episodic nature, the stories are well developped and usually quite touching, articulated around themes of loneliness, friendship and the difficult of connections between the human world and the spirit world.

Hyakki Yakou Shou - "le cortège des cents démons" in the French translation - is a series with a very similar summary : Ijima Ritsu is the grandson of horror stories writer and medium and has had the same power to see spirits and monsters since he was a little kid. Before his death his grandfather set spirit Aoarashi to protect Ritsu from other monsters - and to possess the just recently dead body of Ritsu's father. Follow episodic stories of Ritsu dealing with some kind of supernatural happenstances, being (snarkily) protected by Aorarashi and bemoaning about his power.
Despite the similarity of formula, Hyakki Yakou Shou has a very different mood from Natsume Yujin Chou, being more truely horror, with a touch of dark humour, and less focussed on feelings, and targetted to a slightly older audience. It's slightly less epsiodic in nature too, having a larger cast of regular characters, including two of Ritsu's (female) cousins who also have some medium powers if less powerful ones. It's just as high quality, though, very intriguing and compelling stories.
Sadly the translation was discontinued after the 6th volume due to lack of money (the series is still ongoing in Japan); and the scanlations available don't reach this point yet.

To keep going on with traditionnal Japanese supernatural stories, Onmyouji is an adaption from famous Baku Yumemakura novel which also had two movies adapted from it; about legendary onmyouji Abe no Seimei solving supernatural cases during the Heian era along with his friend court noble Hiromasa who plays The Watson to Seimei's Sherlock.
This is a gorgeous manga, with exquisite and detailed art (although I occasionnaly have trouble telling characters apart but I blame the Heian fashion - all those hats) and great storytelling. The stories are subtle, complex, sometimes creepy, sometimes touching. Seimei's character is awesome, mischevious and charismatic, and play up to Hirosama's earnest, clumsy and kind personnality with a lot of humour and chemistry. The French adaptation is also extremely well done, with several coloured pages, and annexes going into depth about historical, geographical and esoteric details. There's three volumes translated so far out of a total of 12.

Now for something completely different, Kami no Shizuku - "Les Gouttes de Dieu" in French - is a seinen manga about wine. More specifically, when a famous oenologist dies, his testament determines that the one to inherit his impressive wine collection will be, between his son, Shizuku Kanzaki, who's never tasted wine in his life so disgusted was he with his father's extantricities, and his adoptive son another oenologist; a contest in identifying 12 great wines from descriptions. In order to be his father's inheritor, Shizuku will have to learn all about wine very quickly, with the help of apprentice sommelière Shinohara Miyaba.
One of the thing I love about manga is the capacity to pick any random subject a tell a great story out of it. This is the case here : the art is beautiful, the characters are endearing, and the story is actually very compelling... Sure, it's far-fetched that Shizuku keeps on falling onto situations which his growing knowledge of wine helps solve and lets him develop his knowledge at the same time; and, sure, the way wine is described through full panel landscapes is a ridiculously case of what do you mean it is not awesome... but it works. It makes the idea of wine tasting as something cool, plot carrying and full of imagery accessible, and, also, it's hysterical. Characters both main and secondary and very well developed and plays in and out of the story showing a great mastery of storytelling. I've read up to volume 4 so far, and the plot develops, slowly but surely, with a lot of suspense, humour and entertainment. If this manga doesn't make you into an alcoholic, you have no heart.

That's it, I'm done making you drool about the stuff that gets translated into French for today.

Okay, first I'm feeling much better since yesterday. Hoping it'll hold. Thank you so much to everyone on my flist for being such darlings and comforting me. You guys are the best! ♥ Especially since I know I'm not half as good as you at comforting you when you're feeling down >_>; I'm sorry for that.

Second, I finally got my hands on Pet Shop of Horror (yes, took my sweet time, but it is difficult to find scans of, and it's never been released in France and I don't usually order manga from the US cuz that's kinda expensive) which was indeed as awesome as I was led to believe. Love (as I always do) the whole morality fables / creepy fairy tales / contemporary occult atmosphere and how it mixes domestic comedy. The characters are very much darlings, and the stories are very tight. Of the manga I've read set in the US, I thought it was the most self aware of cultural subtleties and I found the way it lampshades as well as uses (and abuses!) Asia as mysterious/female/magical/suspicious was hilarious. And I really loved the ending, what a perfect fanfic fodder!

Of course as soon as I was finished I was hitting rexluscus's tags to find fics and recs (haven't left comments anywhere yet : you know it's funny I never mind leaving comments on old fics but I hate doing it in fandoms which I'm not familiar with yet) and it was midway to reading a (very nice, very much fluffier than what I usually like but still wonderful) fic that it was kinda hit by how much those characters are similar to Damien and Tarrant. At which point I felt stupid because they're very very similar. Like okay Damien's slightly smarter, and Gerald's slightly less gender-ambiguous. Very slightly. Their relationship's different, not domestic at all, and much more bonding over religion and Biblic jokes which, yeah, not so much with Leon/D. Oh, and all the slashy subtext in Coldfire is unintentional *snorts* And now I feel guilty about not having passed the prologue+first chapter of the big Coldfire reread over at hunters_forest (althought the discussion appears to be quite lively without me so at least there's that).

And now it's 4am and I should get up early tomorrow to go touring the Marais and then watch anime; and the day after that I have to go to my parents to celebrate the Rosh Hashanah, and at some point between all this I need to find the time to download and watch the last Code Geass episode - AND I DON'T FEEL LIKE SLEEPING, like not at all.

I could talk about the movies I've watched lately. Would you want me to do that?

Oh and I'm vaguely considering trying to do NaNoWriMo this year, hoping it would help curing myself of that dryspell of inspiration.

And I need to get train tickets for the Utopiales which got a very drool inducing list of invited writers. There's Richard Morgan too, I've got half of a mind of taking one of those books he recced to me to have him sign to see if he gets mad or laugh because I'm an ass ; and there's Ellen Kushner (although I already have an autograph of her via the lovely generalblossom but now I can get one of her books signed, yay!); and Robin Hobb and Hal Duncan (guess that means I must get off my lazy ass and read Ink).

Actually with that list of writers I hope they're going to at least do one panel about gay and gender queer characters in SFF novels. Would be interesting to see Richard Morgan faced to people like Hal Duncan and Ellen Kushner, especially given how much talks I've seen about The Steel Remains as bold and daring for being a fantasy novel with OMG gay characters and a long and hard graphic gay sex scene, and people asking if it was difficult for him as a straight male to write that. (If so I will totally have to ask Kushner and Duncan if it's difficult for them write heterosexual characters and straight sex!!)

Gahh, I'm so hyper and it's 4am30. When am I gonna be able to sleep? ;_;

I have too many firefox windows opened right now.

Happy belated birthday cteresa ! ♥


I have SHELVES ! I can now buy plenty of books (okay not that it was stopping me before, it was just very hanging about the place in big places)
it's funny how much more home it feels with book-filled shelves. I feel finally at home ♥


Ouran School Host Club is my new crack. I didn't even mean to get into the latest craze that all the cool kids dig, I just picked up that manga called "Host Club : le lycée de la séduction" (yeah that's a horribly cheesy name in case you wonder) and fell in love (okay, i had a vague suspicion it might have been the same stuff)
Anyway, apart from the fact it's good crack, and that the characters are darling, and that I have dozens of flashbacks to other characters about them, I like some of the meta-ish component of the serie. ^_^ And, anyway, you've got to love Haruhi (though i don't like when they make her all girly >_<)


Otherwise, I watched the second season of Kaleido Star (finally!) which was rather dispointing (you were right about that Maya !). Not everything was bad of course, but the themes were so heavy handed (and stoopid, but stoopid !) it was painful, and they forgot to give other characters than Sora and the new characters a point in life. So it appeared that their only drive in life was to support Sora. Gah.


I am horribly bored with work. I almost didn't do anything today. And it wasn't even because I was reading fics. I'm very motivationless lately. Meh.

I did read a couple of good fics I wanted to rec :

Eurydice goes down by bitterfig which is becoming quickly one of my new favourite writer. She's got such a fresh and original take on things.
Anyway this fic is a terrific TonksxLuna which awesome characterization of both Tonks and Luna and several other characters. Highly reccommanded to any Tonks lover.
Summary: AU, post-HBP. Lupin is captured by the Death Eaters. Tonks and Luna Lovegood set out to rescue him. High jinks ensue. Except I don’t write high jinks, so angst and weirdness ensue.

It's not without darkness, but also with humour and has something fairy-talish about it.

(by the way, Maya, bitterfic also just wrote a TohmaxEiri fic, it might be a bit dark for your taste for this pairing, but it's very well written. It made me think of you, so heh ^^)

and The Inescapable Cell by chtonya which is a wonderful Gen piece with Dumbledore and Lucius.
As a story, I wasn't sure where it was going to, but the stunning characterizations made up for it. Especially Lucius'. Good Lucius stories always make my day, and it's very, very rare that I find Lucius hot which was the case there.
The writer apparently writes a lot of Lucius, so I'll have to check up her other fics... especially if there's some LuciusxNarcissa ^_^

Happy birthday to _sasayaku ! *kisses* May you have a great day

Happy first day of Hannukah to my Jewish friends

Happy christmas to my Christian friends

and happy vague oecumenist winter holiday to the others !

*throws kisses around*

Went to see Narnia on Friday, which was a bit disapointing.
It was good, too. I especially liked the children and their dynamics (then again I'm a sucker for family - and especially sibling - drama) however the world of Narnia itself and the atmosphere of the story totally failed to awe me and to make me feel any kind of feeling of wonder and magic. Maybe I was both too spoiled from seeing lots of people talking about it over the years without having myself read the book to get the nostalgia and amazement of it.

Bought O'Brian's Master and Commender from schemingreader's recomandation. It was good, but boy was it difficult to read. Between lotsa technical terms and the historical language, I'd never had so much trouble reading a book in English since Mary Gentle's Book of Ash. I quite enjoyed the wittiness of it, and the characters were very vivid and likeable (even in the main character was so cluelessly adorable that I had to start vizualizing him as a wide-eyed uke if you see what I mean) The story somewhat surprised me by its lack of plot. Not that lots of things didn't happen, just that they were more along the lines of : stuff happens, then other stuff happens, then other stuff happens, with no feeling of overeaching plot or climax.

Also bought a new book by Barbara Hambly : Sisters of the Raven, which I haven't started yet.

Last week I got myself the lattest XXX holic and Tsubasa, which were respectively book 6 and 7. Tsubasa is soon going to reach the part which I hadn't yet read in scanlations, and Holic is already there. I still adore Holic even if I still don't like Watanuki, he does show some redeeming qualities and I found him sweet in some of those chapters. I also got vol 15 of Fruit Basket (Mmmm, Akito) which was very interesting, I need to buiy all the Furuba tomes soon to re read them, too. And vol 12 of Nana, which was good as ever. I'm forseeing a peculiarly tragic ending for this manga. And very little yuri, sadly. At least the Reira x Shin is still the cutest thing ever.

And that's all for now. Gotta prepare for the wedding this evening.

So I missed today two classes for no good reason. Why do I get bored and lazy so easily ? It's like I only have to state of being : hyperactive enthousiasm or gloomy laziness. :/
Anyway, for this reason I spent a lot of time on the web chatting with Maya and Tammaiya some of it might be of interest to other fangirls&boys on my flist ;)

( Tammaiya and I speaking about Subaru and his family )
and :

Kattaiya: 9 fics down. Why do Seishirou/Subaru fics always grow so huge? *woefully pokes with stick* I bet it's because Subaru is so contrary.
DameEtrangere: My inner Seishirou agrees
Kattaiya: My inner Subaru... is contrary at and with me. -_-;
DameEtrangere: My inner Seishirou suggests handcuffs and/or tie play
Kattaiya: My inner Subaru is sekritly interested but mostly freaked out. XD
DameEtrangere: My inner Seishirou winks at your inner Subaru
Kattaiya: My inner- oh screw that.
- cue in a bit of roleplay

and to finish a ( Planetary meme )

and oooooh, ( Exalted quizzie )

Well, I'm done with oral presentations for this year. Hallelujah.

It didn't exactly go well, but whatever. I went home and slept all of the remaining afternoon and it felt good

Was reading the lattest Fruit Basket the other day (it's the one with Kisa on the cover). I love *love* Shigure. There's just something about manipulative, playful, caring men *grin*. There was one line about him being as unseizable as the ocean I felt was very right.
I also love Hiro. Is it just me, or doesn't he look a lot like Rin from Please Save My Earth ?
Also read the lattest Bleach. Still fun, but there's starting to be too much focused on the superpower thing. Waiting to see where it leads, it's an interresting shounen.