(no subject)

[skygiants]

I am now through volume 4 of Pluto, which I think puts me halfway through? (Note: it is SO BIZARRE to be halfway through an Urasawa series after only 4 volumes.) So far it has not yet made me cry, but hey, there's still four volumes left.

Some disconnected vaguely non-spoilery thoughts:
- it took me forever to realize that Epsilon was the character elspeth_vimes had been warning me about who looked freakily like Johan. This is because I spent the first volume after Epsilon appeared totally convinced he was a girl. (Which . . . is not OOC for Johan either, but I digress.) I am kind of disappointed he isn't a girl (or whatever defines female for a robot); one of the top 7 robots should be!
- that being said, Uran may not be officially one of the Seven Greatest Robots, but she is totally awesome. On the other hand . . . Uran is apparently so hyper-sensitive to distress that she can pick up a lost puppy from twenty blocks away. And Uran lives in TOKYO. It kind of boggles me that Uran is not running off to fix domestic arguments and comfort small children who have dropped their ice cream every other second. (Also, what defines a Greatest Robot? Because it seems like Uran should totally qualify.)
- good lord, some of the parallels here are unsubtle (United States of Thracia? Anti-robot KKK? Really?) However, while I was rolling my eyes at the Robot KKK story to begin with, I am totally fascinated by the way in which it's developing, so . . . all right, Urasawa, you win again!


- I knew Brando was one hundred percent doomed and I am still so sad :(
- I am not sad about Atom, because Atom is in no way permanently dead. Everyone knows this. Toddlers reading this series (if toddlers read this series, which, uh, I don't recommend) probably know this.
- I reeeeally want to know what is going on with Gesicht and Helena's Fake Spain Vacation and Missing Memory Chunk, and I hope that Helena is going to take a larger role in figuring it out. Which seems at least semi-likely, considering that
- obviously the missing memory chunk has something to do with the creation of Pluto, who is tied into Gesicht's identity as possibly human-killing robot in some way, and also
- Gesicht is SO DOOMED. ;_;

Also, while I am on the topic of Urasawa - gramarye1971, I got the Yawara and Read or Die DVDs! I AM EXCITED. :D Thanks for sending them!

Comments

[gramarye1971]

Yay! I think you may roll your eyes at Yawara a little, at least for the first few episodes. But seeing as how it's a 120+ episode series made out of a 29-volume manga, I think it can be forgiven a bit of clunky in the first 19-episode storyarc. And EP 19 is pretty cute, and rather cleverly done. ^_^

[skygiants]

Heh - I will remember this, and be tolerant. *grins* Epically long series do deserve at least a little time to hit their stride. (Also: see again why it is so weird to have Pluto be only eight volumes!)

[furikku.livejournal.com]

I am kind of disappointed he isn't a girl (or whatever defines female for a robot); one of the top 7 robots should be!

I chalk it up to the time period and original writer. :/ Though some genderswap would be nice.

[skygiants]

Yeah, that makes sense. (I may try to genderswap one of them in my head as I read, just for kicks. I mean, robot gender is an interesting question that should allow for some flexibility!)

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Robot gender in Pluto is hilarious to me insofar as it appears to totally reproduce human biological sex (well, the two main categories, anyway; intersexuality etc just does not come up here. Sexuality itself doesn't come up much). It doesn't bug me, because if Urasawa doesn't seem to offer any insights on sex and gender, at least he's not ragingly sexist? He just doesn't seem to think about it. He's not challenging it, but he's not, you know, an apologist for traditional gender construction.

I think Tezuka himself was significantly more interested in sex and gender than Urasawa is--Tezuka wrote Princess Knight (a series about a girl who was given the soul of a boy, and who roams around like Utena; I have been told it's one of the seminal works, if you'll forgive the term, of shoujo manga), and sex roles, sexual relationships, and male-female interactions play a pretty major part in the themes of those adult Tezuka tomes Vertical has been publishing, like Apollo's Song, MW, Swallowing the Earth, and Ode to Kirihito. I think those themes just did not make their way into Astro Boy--or at least not into any of the volumes I've read--and definitely not into the specific story from Astro Boy that Pluto is based on.

[skygiants]

It is kind of hilarious how you get all these robots that explicitly do not look exactly like people, and yet are still completely gendered - Mont Blanc, for example, who is never referred to as anything other than male despite being mostly a collection of circles and spikes. (Though the thing about Urasawa is that (from my limited experience of two series, at least) you can generally expect one main awesome female character, Our Heroine, who is complex and kickass and active, and who interacts mostly with guys. Admittedly 20th Century Boys has two, but so far only one gets to be The Heroine at a time because of the generational thing. Which I think is why I was subconsciously expecting one and exactly one of The Seven to be female, a la Yukiji in 20th Century Boys.)

Yeah, I was flipping through a Tezuka art book in a store the other day - mostly because I was curious about the original Astro Boy designs - and was extremely intrigued by the description of Princess Knight! It does seem like Tezuka was thinking more about gender roles than comes through in the construction of The Greatest Robot On Earth. Uh, at least as translated through Pluto, standard disclaimer etc.

[gramarye1971]

you can generally expect one main awesome female character, Our Heroine, who is complex and kickass and active, and who interacts mostly with guys.

Yawara and Yuriko Hiraga-Keaton (from Master Keaton) pretty much fit this trope, too. ^_^ Yuriko isn't so much of a main character, but she does have a few stories where she's the main character or a strong supporting one and generally is complex and active.

[skygiants]

I have to admit, one of the reasons I'm so interested in Yawara is that I'm very curious to see how Urasawa handles a story where the protagonist (or at least the title character) is female!

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

The protagonist of Happy! is also female--she's a teenage tennis player trying to win championships in order to buy her way out of her worthless brother's mob debt so she doesn't get dragged off by the yakuza to work in a brothel, all the while taking care of her younger brother and sister, because their parents are dead or AWOL or something. I read six volumes in scanlation several years ago, and would KILL to see it licensed so I can READ THE FRIKKIN' END. (Happy! came after Yawara and Master Keaton but before Monster in Urasawa's manga career, and I think it kind of shows--it's his EPIC DRAMA thing, trapped inside a FLUFFY SPORTS COMEDY. I loved it.)

[skygiants]

- hah, okay, that sounds kind of awesome. (Come on, world! Just go ahead and license everything Urasawa has ever written already!)

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

It can't hurt.

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Read or Die. Good series. Not as good as the sheer awesome of the OVA, but...

[skygiants]

That's basically what I've heard. I'm very curious, anyway! (gramarye1971 basically shoved the OVA into my hands last year and said "YOU ARE WATCHING THIS, IT IS NECESSARY." As indeed it turned out to be.)

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

Awesome in a different way! I was initially thrown by it being primarily about a different set of characters than Yomiko and Nancy, but it's so quality, and I so fell in love with the new characters that I actually ended up liking it better than the OVA. And I adore that most of the main characters are women, all of whom have superpowers (Cranky Successful Novelist is a superpower, right?), and their various relationships with each other-- as sisters, business partners, employer/employees, friends, ambiguously-sexual significant others, dependent/primary caretakers--are major, major themes consistently throughout the series. Oh man, I forgot how much I loved this thing! It's pretty solid.

[skygiants]

. . . okay, I am now TWICE as excited to see this series. Thanks! :D

[cerusee.livejournal.com]

If you don't end up loving it, I will eat Tim Hutton's top hat!

[skygiants]

I will have to make sure I love it, then! Because NO ONE should have to risk taking that top hat away from Tim Hutton when he looks as terrifying as he does in your icon above.