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Nov. 10th, 2008 12:01 pmMy Little Yuletide Request That Could, although still pretty needy, is no longer The Neediest in the Land! I was so overflowing with joy at this that I went back and offered for several more Yuletide fandoms, which was possibly a mistake, but oh well.
Meanwhile, I have a couple of bookloggings that I'm sitting on until I finish the sequels, so instead I will try to catch up on my comics-logging backlog. (A word of advice: never tell comics or manga fans that you would read more comics if you knew where to start or could afford them.)
Over the past month,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushin_doll has lent me all of Gunslinger Girl that has been published in English so far (volumes 1-6) and I kind of love it. Although the title and basic plot description make it seem like a fairly standard girl-mercenaries story - physically damaged girls are recruited from hospitals, turned into child cyborg assassins, and paired up with handlers; you know, the usual. However, despite the assassinations and the chase scenes and all, I would have a hard time even classifying this as action; the series is actually a set of quiet and unnerving character studies of the girls and their relationships with their handlers and each other. The series does a really good job of maintaining the balance between showing the girls as teenagers with ordinary human feelings and concerns, and portraying the essentially dehumanizing nature of the conditioning and training and what that's done to them. I often have a hard time keeping the terrorists and their goals straight, but that's okay because I don't really care; I'm reading for the characters anyways.
PS 238 III: No Child Left Behind, on the other hand, whichcamwyn lent me, was pretty much just sheer adorable. Kids with superpowers! Doing dorky kid things! I don't have much to say about this except that it was continually tongue-in-cheek and a lot of fun.
Less fun, and the only thing on this list that I actually got for myself as opposed to having it lent to me by someone else: the conclusion of Y: The Last Man, Whys and Wherefores. Spoiler-cut even though it is several months since everyone else has read it, just in case. ( Lack of any coherent opinions within! )
Meanwhile, I have a couple of bookloggings that I'm sitting on until I finish the sequels, so instead I will try to catch up on my comics-logging backlog. (A word of advice: never tell comics or manga fans that you would read more comics if you knew where to start or could afford them.)
Over the past month,
rushin_doll has lent me all of Gunslinger Girl that has been published in English so far (volumes 1-6) and I kind of love it. Although the title and basic plot description make it seem like a fairly standard girl-mercenaries story - physically damaged girls are recruited from hospitals, turned into child cyborg assassins, and paired up with handlers; you know, the usual. However, despite the assassinations and the chase scenes and all, I would have a hard time even classifying this as action; the series is actually a set of quiet and unnerving character studies of the girls and their relationships with their handlers and each other. The series does a really good job of maintaining the balance between showing the girls as teenagers with ordinary human feelings and concerns, and portraying the essentially dehumanizing nature of the conditioning and training and what that's done to them. I often have a hard time keeping the terrorists and their goals straight, but that's okay because I don't really care; I'm reading for the characters anyways.PS 238 III: No Child Left Behind, on the other hand, which
camwyn lent me, was pretty much just sheer adorable. Kids with superpowers! Doing dorky kid things! I don't have much to say about this except that it was continually tongue-in-cheek and a lot of fun.Less fun, and the only thing on this list that I actually got for myself as opposed to having it lent to me by someone else: the conclusion of Y: The Last Man, Whys and Wherefores. Spoiler-cut even though it is several months since everyone else has read it, just in case. ( Lack of any coherent opinions within! )
