skygiants | (no subject)

SO FOUR DAYS LATER I have now read everything that is available to read in English of Seven Seeds, and all I have to say is that I feel like I've been punched in the gut forty times over and I keep happily walking into the fist. Yumi Tamura's brain, man. YUMI TAMURA'S BRAIN. I kind of want to spoil everything and gibber about it, but I'M NOT GOING TO.

I am, however, going to make a short list of things Yumi Tamura has done in her post-apocalyptic shojo manga that I never thought I would see in a post-apocalyptic shojo manga:

1. Two teenagers have sex for the first time; it's pretty uncomfortable, and they get halfway through and decide that they're not all that into it, and it's completely not a big deal.

2. Heterosexual teenaged boy: "Aw, man, sex is off the menu if it means popping off kids."
*TWO MALE TEAM MEMBERS APPEAR, COVERED IN BISHIE SPARKLES*
Heterosexual teenaged boy: "Hmmm. . . ."

3. A character gets pregnant. There is a reasonable amount of page space devoted to her prenatal yoga lessons.

4. One female character has long flowing hair that she's really proud of. But, you know, it's the apocalypse, so she grumbles for a bit about not having conditioner and all her split ends, and then cuts it all off.

5. Girls have periods!

6. NO, I MEAN, SERIOUSLY, and not in a way that's a sketchy plot device! I got really excited about one quick scene where a character was washing out her sanitary napkins, because even that much is never acknowledged in fiction. But then I got to the next arc, which includes a part where a female character has to climb her way through an giant creepy abandoned shelter and single-handedly rescue her two male teammates, while coping with cramps. Her next step, after all this exertion and successful heroics: check out the creepy abandoned shelter bathroom so that she can change her pad. (Then they carry off all the toilet paper.)

I LOVE YOU, YUMI TAMURA.

I was going to add a separate section in which I was going to complain about one non-realistic thing I would want fixed, which is that despite a reasonable amount of subtext (seriously, the Team Winter OT3 is so close to canon it might as well be) and the nod to homosexual sex as an alternative to procreation, everyone at this point seems basically heteronormative. But as of the most recent chapter I am pretty sure we are getting indicators that Yumi Tamura is shipping two male characters for real, so . . . never mind! Carry on, Yumi Tamura!

(But if you wanted to throw in some lesbians, I mean, that would be nice. Those two badass morally ambiguous constantly bickering rival architect ladies are right there.)

PS. It's been pointed out to me that I should put in trigger warnings here! So . . . yeah. There is definitely triggery stuff in here, and if you want details I can provide.

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Oh, ohhhhh, this sounds super fabulous! I read your last post about it and was mildly interested, but now more so. My one qualm about post-apocalyptic stuff is generally the creepiness factor... how creepy is it? Or rather, what's the general mood?

It's so good! But, um, it's pretty creepy -- although most of the creepiness stems not from the post-apocalyptic wildlife itself, but from what you gradually learn about the steps the government took to avert it. There's a fair bit of comic relief, and the mood in the present is more optimistic and tends towards people coming together and learning to work together and recovering from their trauma, but there are a few significant backstory arcs that are really dark.

I am so reading this!

DO IT IT'S AWESOME. I can't decide whether I'm frustrated or delighted that it's not yet finished -- frustrated because I want to know what happens, but delighted because there's SO MUCH MORE OF YUMI TAMURA'S BRAIN WAITING.

That sounds AWESOME.

My poor housemates keep having to listen to me shriek about all the things I'm loving. "Becca, why are you grinning?" "BECAUSE SHE FOUND HER INNER STRENGTH AND SAVED THOSE GUYS WITH CRAMPS!"

Those are all wonderful things.

For a manga that features killer zombie diseases, flesh-eating bugs, and the only thirty-one people left in Japan all constantly bumping into each other as they wander across the post-apocalyptic landscape, it is astoundingly realistic!

Edited 2012-04-25 00:38 (UTC)

This sounds... tempting.

Too tempting, given that it's finals week.

FINALS WEEK IS THE BEST TIME TO READ MANGA

. . . at least . . . that's the way I usually do it . . . um >.>

(But actually I recommend saving it as a reward until right AFTER finals, when you have two free days and no regrets!)

WAIT, WAIT. This might have something to do with how I am liable to completely miss what the gender of certain characters are, but...WHICH TWO MALE CHARACTERS?

I HAVE ANSWERED YOUR QUESTION ELSEWHERE but I'm replying here too just to say: SEMIMARU SHIPS IT AND THAT'S NEVER NOT HILARIOUS. Never. Not. Hilarious.